[Info-vax] TK50 - this is annoying...

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2012-10-08 11:28:08 +0000, Roßert G. Schaffrath said:

> On 10/7/2012 9:38 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 10/5/2012 6:48 PM, Lee Gleason wrote:
>>> I recall a VAX Magic session at a DECUS convention in the mid 80s or
>>> so, where someone came up on stage, and, without saying a word of
>>> explanation, set a TK50 tape drive down on the floor  and proceeded to
>>> smash it to pieces with a middle sized hammer. He got a standing
>>> ovation.

Not sure how you'd hammer on EFI or various other transgressions, but 
I'd expect that would garner some applause from an audience, too.

>> 
>> Just having tried booting from one of those is enough to sympathize
>> with that action.
> 
> As bad as TK50's were, they were a definite improvement over the TU58. 
> I recall much lost time waiting for an 11/730 bootstrapping microcode 
> from one of those.

Correct.  The immediate predecessor of the TK50 was not, however, the 
TU58.  It was arguably either the RX50 floppy, or the 9-track magtape.

RX50 was the install media on various MicroVAX I and II systems, and 
derivatives and relatives.  That meant thirty to fifty floppies for an 
OpenVMS install, with some layered products.   Or a dozen or so 
magtapes, between VMS and patches and LPs, if you had a TU80 9-track 
magtape drive or equivalent device hanging off your VAX.

Now would I want to deal with booting a TK50 now or TU80?  No.  There 
have been several generations of better solutions.

As stinky as the TK50 technology is now, it was better than what went 
before it.  Both for DEC to create the installation media, for DEC to 
support (and then have to replace disks in) the installation media, and 
for the end-user to not have to swap the media nearly as often or to 
call up DEC to get replacement media.

Booting a TK50 was a marvelous experience, back then.

It was fast (for its time), and you didn't have to babysit five boxes 
of distro floppies, or a dozen magtapes and where one or two would 
seemingly inevitably cause the TU80 to start "maytagging".   Ok, so the 
hammerhead leader broke off from time to time, or MUA4224: showed up.  
It wasn't like floppies or magtape worked perfectly back then, though.

Old computers have old problems and old limits and old hardware, and 
the folks that are choosing or using the old gear - and for whatever 
reason - may or may not know about the history or the alternatives or 
the limitations.

If you're looking forward with your gear or with your products, then 
you're looking at network installations and related tools, maybe at 
USB, SDHC or SDXC flash media, and likely whether you're rolling out 
updates via InfoServer or vKVM-based mechanisms, or whether your system 
can now (as some boxes can) bootstrap directly from an internet 
connection via files loaded from vendor-provided servers.  And at what 
old iron you can replace.  If you can replace TK50 with a scuzzy CD, 
that's an upgrade.  If you're creating your own systems or 
applications, at whether your boxes can track and update patches online 
(or assist the system manager in queuing the patches and the new 
versions for manual updates) and acquire and update licenses online, 
for instance, is another upgrade.  Technology plows onward.

Looking back at the TK50?  Yeah.  OK.  But why?


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