[Info-vax] VMS port to x86

[John Wallace]

On Mar 26, 1:44 pm, Johnny Billquist <b... at softjar.se> wrote:
> On 2012-03-26 15.28, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>
>
>
> > In article<jkpldl$m3... at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>, Johnny Billquist<b... at softjar.se>  writes:
> >> On 2012-03-26 03.19, Howard S Shubs wrote:
> >>> In article<00ABED1D.39A43... at SendSpamHere.ORG>,
> >>>    VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>
> >>>> In article<snn049-87o.... at news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture<p... at sture.ch>   writes:
> >>>>> On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 06:24:47 +0000, JohnF wrote:
> >>>>>> Literally hit by a bus??? If ever there was a metaphor...
>
> >>>>> Hit by a Q-bus, I assume. :-)
>
> >>>> or a UNIbus... or a BI bus... or an XMI bus... or a PCI bus...  :)
>
> >>> Don't forget the MASSBUS.  It strikes me (ha!) as being more MASSive.
>
> >> The cables certainly are... :-)
>
> > ROFL.  Those were pipes, not cables!
>
> You could almost think so, except they were flexible, for some
> definition of "flexible". :-)
>
> It was/is hell to pull them into a cabinet and maneuver them in place
> for the connector. A nice feature was that the connector could be set in
> three different angles to the cable. That helped a lot.
>
>         Johnny

I had a trip to a vendor in Leeds once, when my then employers were
looking to replace an 11/70 with an 11/780 (UK readers may know the
vendor I mean). The place we went sold "DEC compatible" kit, where
anything that didn't need to come direct from DEC was replaced with
cheaper alternatives (everything from industrial power supplies to
photocopied manuals to disk controllers and drives). Their idea of an
*external* MASSbus cable was what would now be called a rainbow ribbon
(twisted) cable. You could drive a fork truck over the DEC cables (and
more importantly drop a computer room floor tile on them) and they'd
survive. Not so with the "compatible" ones.