[Info-vax] sic transit gloria mundi

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

As part of my hardware upgrade, I just shut down a trusty VAXstation 
4000 90.  It had been up for over a year.  While using DDS, I can't have 
it usefully in the cluster.  After moving to faster ALPHAs, I don't need 
it, and need faster network and disks which only the ALPHAs support as 
well as a more modern TCPIP with more anti-spam features (otherwise I 
have trouble if a VAX gets the cluster alias, so I actually wrote some 
code to keep the cluster alias on an ALPHA as long as one is in the 
cluster, but of course that partially defeats the purpose of the cluster 
alias).

In contrast to my original plans, I won't retire it, but rather keep it
on standby and boot it into the cluster (no problem once all shadow sets
have identical disks again) when I need access to SCSI devices which I
have no room (i.e. not enough free SCSI IDs on the buses on the other
machines) for elsewhere, i.e. old tape drives, CD drives (nice to have 
several at once when installing layered products) etc.  (The limiting 
speed will be the drive speed, so a slow processor, SCSI bus, network 
card etc are not a disadvantage.)

My VMS experience started in 1992 on a cluster with 2 VAXstation 3100
76 (one an SPX) and some sort of MicroVAX (I was also on the 3100s).  
About 20 people were logged in at any one time, some doing image 
processing.  I think the cluster originally cost about DM 100,000.  
Little did I think then that one day I would have 16 VAXen (and 28 
ALPHAs) at home, all for myself.

The VAXstation 4000 is of course similar to the VAXstation 3100, but a 
bit faster, without the annoying 1-GB limit for the boot disk, has a 
standard SCSI cable etc.  A really nice machine.  I'm glad I don't have 
to completely retire it.