[Info-vax] terminal servers etc

[Rich Jordan]

On Jan 8, 10:43 am, Rich Jordan <jor... at ccs4vms.com> wrote:
> On Jan 8, 7:40 am, F H <fhs... at gmail.com> wrote:
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> > For those who want to find a DECserver 90M on eBay or somewhere else:
> > please note that not all DECserver 90M terminal servers have a flash
> > memory card present!
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> > There are two or even three types of 90M devices:
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> > - Those without a flash card. They can be recognized by the absence of
> > an inscription on the front panel. They rely on MOP to download their
> > OS.
> > - Those with a 1 MB flash card. They have the inscription "1M Flash"
> > on the front panel. The OS is on that flash card but it takes several
> > minutes to decompress the OS on the flash card into memory. They will
> > download the OS over the network only when a special procedure is
> > followed at power-on time.
> > - It seems that a version exists with a 2 MB (or more) flash card.
> > This system boots stand-alone too and very fast because there is no
> > decompression to be done. I have however never seen this version.
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> Are you sure about the no-flash models?  That doesn't show up in any
> of the networking catalogs I still have (though that predates the
> selloff of the networking division, now owned by VNETEK).  They did
> show 1 or 2MB FLASH models, and also early 1MB RAM and later 4MB RAM
> (for NAS software) but nothing in the 90M without flash boot
> capability.
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> I need to open mine up and see what the flash looks like.  I'm pretty
> sure the RAM is just a standard 72 pin parity SIMM.

OK just opened up a DS90M.  It looks like memory is not upgradeable on
these; there are chips soldered to the logic board.  The only
removable item is a daughtercard that has the flash chips on it.  I
suppose DEC could have sold these units without the daughtercard,
though I can find no reference to that.

I know another 90 module had a SIMM in it but don't recall what it was
now.

The DECserver 700 models that supported flash were physically
different; the non flash models didn't have the flash card connector
at all, but thats no guarantee the same thing was done on the 90M
models.