[Info-vax] Used DS-10 or equivalent recommendations?

[Rich Jordan]

On Wednesday, October 12, 2016 at 6:53:48 PM UTC-5, David, Island Computers wrote:
> We're back up
> Got hit directly by Hurricane Matthew
> Our office and my home are on Tybee Island. BANG in the middle of the 
> Hurricane's eye
> 
> THe warehouse (where the free rx2660 is to be drawn from) is in 
> Savannah, where it stayed nice and dry.
> 
> Either way, we are back online - I actually packed the web and 
> mailserver into my wife's SUV and we headed inland. (the storm was 350 
> miles wide so we missed none of the tempest)
> 
> Check out our IC-ZDS10-RP power supply. It will cost you as much to fix 
> it as replace it, that is why we had these made. So far, sold 3500+ of 
> these. You would not believe how many DS10s are still in production
> 
> In fact, when you fly to AU, NZ, Thailand, France, Holland, ATC still 
> use the DS10 with Barco Graphics card for the ATC systems
> 
> 
> On 10/10/2016 8:09 AM, Tom Adams wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 8, 2016 at 8:58:00 AM UTC-4, MG wrote:
> >> Op 7-okt-2016 om 15:34 schreef John E. Malmberg:
> >>> After a power failure here longer than the UPS, my DS-10 is no longer
> >>> functioning.
> >>>
> >>> No Beep tone diagnostics.
> >>>
> >>> No video.
> >>>
> >>> No POST activity for keyboard lights.
> >>>
> >>> Disk activity lights solid.
> >>>
> >>> So it looks like I need a replacement system.
> >>>
> >>> Any recommendations on getting a replacement that I can just move my
> >>> memory, disks, and PCI cards over to?
> >>>
> >>> The islandco website appears down, so can not look there.
> >>>
> >>> I see a number of systems on e-bay at various prices.
> >>
> >> For some reason, or maybe I was unlucky, too, DS10s (or their
> >> PSUs) appear to be prone to electrical issues, especially
> >> after power failures.
> >>
> >> I remember one of my DS10s had worked fine but from some time
> >> onward, after one or more power failures, it began to exhibit
> >> unpredictable behavior.  It would power up, run, etc., but I
> >> would get bizarre errors under VMS, with no explanation for
> >> it in the logs.  The kind of errors you may also expect from
> >> memory faults, but I swapped the memory (and also the disk)
> >> between my DS10s and the problems were really specific to
> >> one DS10.
> >>
> >> My conclusion was at the time that perhaps the PSU wasn't in
> >> order and, just like now, they're relatively hard to come by,
> >> not to mention quite costly.
> >>
> >> Reparing a PSU can be quite dangerous and one has to be
> >> careful, but that hopefully goes without saying.
> >>
> >>   - MG
> >
> > We put our DS10s on UPSes strictly for hardware preservation. We had power supply and mother board failures due to power failures.
> >
> > But this does tend to shift the power supply failures to your next power down, or at least it seems so.
> >

I'll ditto the power supply.  Our production DS10 failed to restart after our office moved.  I talked the boss into getting a new Island p/s rather than a refurb.  It has been running fine since