[Info-vax] VAX 6000 on Young Sheldon

[Neil Rieck]

On Monday, February 6, 2023 at 5:54:41 PM UTC-5, Tony Priborsky wrote:
> I worked at DEC from 1976-1995 and worked closely with the VAX hardware and software groups. I was in the storage organization but did a brief detour to a group that was working on a Security Kernel for the VAX8000 family. The storage racks they wheeled into the dorm looked like the RA series but possibly were RL02 or RK07. They weren't on the screen long enough to tell. The CPU cabinet was definitely a VAX6000 but the submodel wasn't detailed enough to tell. The problem with all of this is that EVERY ONE OF THOSE RACKS ran from 220V power, including the CPU. So when Sheldon plugged it into the 110 wall outlet that wasn't real...

I was going to same the same thing. Our VAX-6000 required a 3-phase power source (measuring between any phase and neutral was 120v but measuring between any of the phases was 208v). It has been a long while since I looked at the schematic but "I think" the 3-phase power supply could be reconfigured to use single-phase 240v.

All that changed with Alpha where I never saw a power supply requirement requiring more than 120v (at least in North America)

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
https://neilrieck.net