[Info-vax] OT: the Daily WTF for today is a VAX/VMS story

[Chris]

On 02/15/16 02:41, JF Mezei wrote:

>
> It wasn't just the motor that drew power, but the number of electronic
> boards and fans inside.  Each drawer was rated at 15 amps (note that the
> drive drawers had standard 110AC plugs into the cabinet, and the Cabinet
> had huge cable with L530R (or perhaps even bigger).
>
>

All that old kit was a real power hog, but juice was cheap at the time. 
My packaged system 11/730 with R80, RL02 and small cpu drew around
1600 watts and kept my lab warm all through the winter with no other
heating. The RA60 drive, added later, drew around 400 watts spun up
on it's own. The later uVaxII ran at around the 400 watts, still far
too high, but manageable. Fwir, the 11/780 ran at around 6 Kw and that
just for the cpu and no peripherals, ouch !!.

I often wonder how we would all manage these days if system were just as
power hungry as they were back then, around 1990 ish.

I still have a load of RA60 packs in the loft. Are there any working
drives left and will I ever be able to read them ?. Same for RL02, but
have a working drive in store. So much on the 2 do list...

Regards,

Chris