[Info-vax] MIcrovax 3100-98

[Alexander Schreiber]

Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> On 11/16/2019 9:56 AM, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
>> Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> On 10/31/2019 10:45 PM, Kerry Main wrote:
>>>
>>>> They all laughed and one of them stated he could not remember when they had
>>>> a VAX HW problem.
>>>>
>>>> Good testament to the VAX HW, but not so good for new sales.
>>>
>>> And doesn't that sort of depend on whether you're the vendor, or, a
>>> customer?
>>>
>>> Then there was the AlphaStation 200 power supplies.  Dropped like flies.
>>>
>>> Getting 3 years out of today's PCs is very good luck.  And that's with
>>> HW in general being more robust.
>>
>> I beg to differ. My current home "server" got its last major update, a new
>> (faster) AMD CPU 9 years ago. Has been working fine since. The only h/w
>> changes since then was a harddisk upgrade for capacity reasons. And that
>> is what is basically workstation grade h/w, not a dedicate server machine.
>
> Don't you think doing upgrades is saying the original system is no 
> longer adequate?

Not strictly true, more a case of "hey, I can get a faster CPU for not
much money, why not" - most of the time, the machine just idles faster ;-)

> It's not just HW failures that cause a system to need an upgrade.
>
> Not all CPUs, or memory, use the same motherboard socket.

In that case, the same socket was used, hence the CPU being the only
replaced part.

>
>> Not buying the cheapest crap does help with that, I admit.
>>
>> My home workstation also got a new mainboard, cpu, memory and an SSD several
>> years ago - not because the old kit failed, but because noticeable performance
>> gains were available with newer hardware. Things like memory 8 -> 16 GB, a
>> hybrid RAID1 (spinning rust + ssd) for the root fs and and such.
>
> You've just made my point.  You replaced an old inadequate system as 
> soon as you needed to upgrade it.

Not so much inadequate - it was working fine, I didn't _need_ to upgrade
parts of it. But I could and it would be nice, so I did.

Kind regards,
           Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison