[rescue] DEC 5000?

[Mike Katchabaw]

Hi!

Recently, our campus computing center's MASPAR box went belly up.
It's a shame, because it was a nice box with 2K 386 processors in it
-- a nice beast in its day.  The power supply died, and the front end
to talk with it was toasted.  Consequently, the box is being
decomissioned and our group has the chance to take what's left, if we
want it.  Apparently, getting the power supply fixed shouldn't be a
problem, so it's a matter of finding a replacement front end.

Sadly, no one we can find knows a whole lot about the front end, other
than it was a DEC 5000.  From what I can find, it's neither an Alpha
nor a VAX, but rather some kind of MIPS RISC system.  Is that correct?

Apparently the backend would really like to have a DEC 5000 for its
front end.  We have all of the software and tape backups necessary to
get this running and feed jobs to the backend.  Would anyone know
where we could find a DEC 5000 or parts for one?  (I haven't
personally seen the toasted front end yet, so I'm not quite sure what
died on it either.)

Any help or info you can give is greatly appreciated!

Many thanks in advance!

Mike.
(katchab at csd.uwo.ca)