Oh yeah,

I'm a newcomer to this group but hooked to the fun already.

I started out with 4 VAX 6420 (one of which actually was a VAX 6440)
off my workplace. Those were clustervaxen, bare machines not
ready to run standalone. One was announced to me having power system 
problems and there was one rear cabinet door missing. So I 
killed one for spare parts (see http://aurora.regenstrief.org/VAX/anatomy.html)

I decided to keep one and the parts and give the others away
to help the cause. One went to Brian Chase, who in return
organized the truck that brought the remaining two to my 
house (thanks Brian!).

The other two I am now tinkering with trying to set up two
machines that work well and be able to do something. I have
turned one into a 3460 with 6 processors and 512 MB RAM
maxing out the XMI part. Still got two free XMI slots waiting
for a KFMSA for DSSI. I am buying stuff that I can get
in terms of DSSI and BI boards etc.

I just got the pair of blowers out of the dead shell of the 
VAX I dismantled. Needed to get the second VAX 6420 running.
Will give this one away to Buck Caldwell if he can fit it
in. Otherwise will keep, sell parts or trade against a 
VAX server 4000/something that's smaller but still interesting.
As I said, I am hooked to this new hobby.

What for? VAX 6460 will run Ultrix first, then NetBSD or the
first thing that comes along doing SMP. Will hack in XMI and 
BI to NetBSD as soon as I finally have some storage to boot
and build from (which hopefully happens before my family 
comes back, because then I'll have to take care of my kids 
too.) May need a second VAX for remote kernel debugging, perhaps 
a PC with cross-development tools might work as well?

I will restore it to a BSD system that is as close to 4.3 BSD in 
its full glory as it gets in terms of userland, but with a kernel
that does SMP and the neat stuff. Will do some development
and experimentation in parallel systems, databases and stuff
on it. As soon as I decide to afford a highspeed Internet
connection, will leave it on as a public server of some kind,
domain server, web server, mail server etc. and some sort of 
cyber-museum for people who want to play with UCB Pascal, Ingres 
and Franz-Lisp.

I have my computer room in the basement in the laundry 
room. I do not plan to clutter up my house with all kinds
of smallish and dysfunctional old VAXen. My dream is still 
a VAX 11/780 because it's so beautiful, 11/785 at best. I am 
looking to gather stuff for select larger systems, as fully 
equipped as possible. All must have CI and I will couple them
in a CI Ethernet. Don't care about HCS. DEC hardware was 
certainly cool, in software I will only do Unix/TCPIP and 
standard protocols (like NFS.)

I will show this stuff to my kids, neighbors, students, and
whoever to see what a "real" computer is (as soon as I fully 
understand what a real computer is :-). 

Since I do all my development work on Unix, I can do that on
the VAXen just as well as anywhere else. This is the first time
that I have fun doing hardware stuff, so I will let my conventional
PC computing equipment lapse for another couple of cycles to
free the budget for the fun stuff.

BTW, once my VAX 6460 is up I will call her PHICUS. Why? Well,
in 1992 I bougth an i486 with 160MB HDD to run 386BSD 0.0new
on and called it PLOCUS. PLOCUS stands for "Personal LOw Cost
Unix System" and sounds cute. PHICUS will be "Personal HIgh
Cost Unix System", reminding me of the fact that that old
metal box in my basement once was probably more expensive than 
what I payed (and still pay) for my house last year :-)

regards,
-Gunther

-- 
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D.                    gschadow@regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist      Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor        Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960                         http://aurora.regenstrief.org