[Info-vax] Alpha CPU revision & serial number, blank?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 12/23/2011 3:39 PM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>> SCSI DVD, nice.
>
>     Faster (DMA) than ATAPI (PIO) on an Alpha.
>
>>    I don't hear about them or see them very often.
>
>      From the dark gray color, I assume that the local junk
> store pulled these from some Sun system(s).  I never saw
> anything else which looked related, so my guess would be that
> they saw non-Intel hardware, declared it to be scrap, and
> then pulled the only parts which might appeal to their usual
> (Windows-using) customers.  After the first batch, I never
> saw any more like them.  Whenever I think about all the
> desirable (to me) hardware which gets sent straight to the
> shredder because it doesn't run Windows, I get depressed.
>
>> Did you ever look into SAS/SATA?  [...]
>
>     Not seriously.  For what I do, I don't really need
> hundreds of GB of disk space, and, other than a dead Mac G5,
> I don't have any other hardware which uses SATA, and nothing
> with SAS.  Someday, perhaps.  (Like when I get that Dell
> Precision workstation, load GNU/Linux on it, and quit trying
> to do anything useful on VMS.)
>
>> You wouldn't be able to boot off it either [...]
>
>     So, not much of an attraction.
>
>> [...] SDLT-320 drives [...]
>
>     I complain about the cost of DLT IV tapes (often more than
> $1 each), and I assume that newer, fancier tapes cost even
> more.  Plain DLT is a better match to the whole junk
> collection (and budget) than something more modern.

Perhaps you should remember what those DLT tapes cost when new!  ISTR
that they sold for something like $50 US!  If you can get useable
DLT tapes for $1, rejoice!