[Info-vax] Alpha Ready System Upgrade

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <38f67133-de7c-4296-9a64-ac1cfa034dee at googlegroups.com>,
	johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk writes:
> On Tuesday, 12 May 2015 15:05:48 UTC+1, Stephen Hoffman  wrote:
>> On 2015-05-12 13:48:07 +0000, Bob Koehler said:
>> 
>> > In article <5551321c$0$64021$b1db1813$2411a48f at news.astraweb.com>, JF 
>> > Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
>> >> On 15-05-11 18:33, mcleanjoh at gmail.com wrote:
>> >> 
>> >>> Vax is hardware.  Alpha is hardware.  Ergo "Vax Alpha" doesn't make 
>> >>> much sense to people familiar with VMS.
>> >> 
>> >> Wasn't there one VAX model that was sold as being upgradable to an 
>> >> Alpha?  (I guess board swap).
>> > 
>> >    There were more than one VAX 4000 qbus models sold as upgradeable to 
>> > Alpha.  No such upgrade was ever produced.
>> 
>> Interesting.   I don't recall that case; a VAX 4000 Q-bus that was sold 
>> as being upgradable to Alpha short of a box-swap.  There was the 
>> rarely-seen but still available VAX 4000 model 50 upgrade for some 
>> Q-bus boxes, and there were Q-bus expansions for various VAX 4000 model 
>> 1xx seres boxes, but AFAIK all of the non-box-swap upgradable VAX 
>> systems were among the VAX 7000 and VAX 10000 series.   Not the VAX 
>> 4000 series.  Have any more details on that Alpha-upgradable VAX 4000?
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC
> 
> Some VAX 4000 models were sold with the assurance of an "upgrade to Alpha
> in the future", see e.g.
> http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/archive/vax4000_100.html
> 
> In this case upgrade presumably meany get a good deal on an Alpha when
> you trade in your VAX 4000-100, 'cos there's not much hardware they'd
> have in common.
> 
> Similar "Alpha Ready System Upgrade" offers were also available with
> the 3100 Model 80/90:
> http://www.compaq.com/cpq-alphaserver/vax/archive/mv3100_3040_8090.html
> 
> The relevant upgrades were to desktop Alpha systems.
> 
> There was an similar upgrade program for VAX 7000/10000 systems, which
> offered an upgrade to a datacentre-class Alpha system:
> http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/archive/vax7000_600.html
> 
> This is the kind of upgrade that would frequently be called a "fork lift"
> upgrade but that terminology doesn't really seem right for a 3100 or a 
> 4000-100.
> 
> Not sure whether the 7000/10000 upgrades involved a total box swap - in principle they wouldn't need to, would they, but sometimes it was useful
> to arrange for things like parallel running and you just end up shipping
> in a new system and in due course returning the old one.
> 
> I'm going from what I remember of Customer Update articles and such. The
> relevant ones don't seem to be easily findable online. Corections welcome.

I remember my AT&T days.  AT&T sold off the 3B line (minus the 3B1 which
was a convergent and not an AT&T at all) to NCR.  There were "upgrades"
offered for the whole 3B2 line.  Open box, dump out everything but the
power supply, install NCR M68K system in box.  Voila, upgraded 3B2.  :-)

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>