[Info-vax] Multia

[MG]

On 11/8/21 00:52, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> I used mine for years with never a failure.

For approximately how long per 'boot'?


> The heat problem was well known.  Other than ensurinf that it was
> always stood on end to allow for heat flow a small fan made this
> a non-problem. > [...]
> Never had any power supply problems.

Good for you.


> Usually too big and too expensive to get shipped to me and also
> too big and noisy to run in the house.  

The Multia/UDB with a proper fan wasn't silent either, in so
far I recall.


> Multia's will do all that I need to do now and I really liked 
> the little box.  Ran VMS, Linux and BSD on it and all of them 
> performed very well.  I wanted to try Windows NT but never got 
> around to trying it.

Why would you run Linux or BSD on it...?  You'd get a
far more pleasurable experience from just about any
modern x86/-64, Arm, etc. system, which hopefully goes
without saying.

I'm sure the point is arriving fast where a low-power
Arm single board system will emulate AXP faster than
arguably 'even' the most tricked out, max-spec'ed,
Multia/UDB would ever run.

VMS on the Multia/UDB perhaps has some 'curiosity'
value, being relatively unusual, yet with very few if
any actual practical purposes in terms of end usage
though...

Arguably the most 'reliable' OS choice is Digital/Tru64
UNIX, up to the latest version including patches up to
those released all the way in 2010, which runs fully
featured, in so far I'm aware, unlike the unofficial,
wholly unsupported and hacked-together mess of VMS V7.1
and V7.2 (where you could not install certain patches
and additional software, without the risk of breaking
fundamental hardware support).

I remember, just as a sort of experiment, I drove a
SCSI disk array with an LSM/AdvFS stripe set and a
custom external SCSI connector and self-made, custom,
back-panel.  I even combined it with a compatible PCI
audio adapter, for some "multimedia" support and (non-
existent) 'functionality'.

Useful?  Definitely not, but it was fun and interesting
on some level... for as long as it would run.

  - MG