[HECnet] SSD for Vax

[Hans Vlems]

DEC had solid state disks, all das iirc


Van: Johnny Billquist
Verzonden: donderdag 10 oktober 2013 11:29
Aan: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Cc: Mark Wickens
Onderwerp: Re: [HECnet] SSD for Vax


On 2013-10-10 09:46, Mark Wickens wrote:
> On 10/10/2013 08:17, Daniel Soderstrom wrote:
>> Has anyone tries this? Running my Vaxstation non-stop reminds me how
>> much noise these old drives make.
>>
>> Has anyone tried SSD drives? Must be good for the PSU it terms of heat
>> and current draw.
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
> There has been very little success with IDE to SCSI converters on this
> age of machine.

Hmm. bad IDE to SCSI converters?

> Remember also that even 4000/90 vintage VAXstations generally have an
> upper limit of 18GB.

Uh? That got to be a limit in VMS in that case. I can't see how the 
hardware would have that limit.

> I don't recall anyone even getting an IDE drive to work, let alone an SSD.

IDE and SSD are two completely unrelated things as such. However, if the 
SSD have an IDE interface, then you obviously need the IDE to SCSI 
converter.

> Would love to be proved wrong however! I'm surprised someone hasn't
> written a software based SCSI drive emulator the same way that you get
> floppy emulators.

Probably mostly because of speed issues. You have some very tight timing 
requirements, and a SCSI interface runs way faster than a floppy.

> Consider running the machine diskless, booted off the network with
> off-node disks.

That definitely also works.

Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
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