[rescue] A Vax Question

[Steven M Jones]

alex at lava-net.com wrote:
> My main question is, what is a good 
> solution for storage on these machines these days? It currently has 4 
> RD54s (1 dead) on an RQDX3, though I wonder if there's something better 
> available at a reasonable price?

That depends a great deal on what you consider reasonable. Working RD54s 
tend to bring high prices on eBay, which might fund your other storage 
options.

SCSI disk controllers (some are limited via firmware to tape only) are 
also expensive, but are probably your most flexible choice.

ESDI controllers are available, but the availability and remaining 
service life of drives is an open question.

DSSI controllers are available, and used drives can still be found. But 
again, how long will the drives last? They haven't been manufactured for 
some time. A twist would be to get a KFQSA DSSI controller and something 
like an HSD05 or HSD10 DSSI-SCSI bridge, you can put the HSD into a 
BA350 SCSI shelf and use SCSI drives via DSSI. Note that I haven't tried 
this, though I grabbed some HSDs a while back to try it out someday.

You _could_ get yourself a KDA50 and hook up an RA-series drive, but 
consider the impact to your power bill as well as availability of 
spares, etc.

> I tried going the NFS root a while 
> back, though I got extremely slow performance out of the Deqna controler 
> (about 200kb/s transfer).  Is this normal?
>   
The DEQNA was not really considered a great performer. That said, if 
they'd received the appropriate ECOs over the years I found them to be 
reliable controllers within their limitations.

The DEQNA was replaced by the DELQA, the best variant of which was 
supposed to be the DELQA-YM. No recollection of any comparison numbers 
though.

--Steve.