On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Chuck McManis wrote:

> At 03:27 PM 6/26/01 -0400, NetBSD Bob wrote:
> >How about we design it, with 512mb ram and a scsi controller or two
> >on a single 3.5 inch HD form factor card, mounting a big blower on top.
> 
> One of the things that would be really "fun" to do would be to take a 3.5" 
> SCSI drive and "dress it" as an RA82 by scaling down the RA82 dimensions 
> until the 3.5" drive mechanism just fits inside. Now scale up to some 
> reasonable whole number fraction and using that build some scale 11/780 
> cabinets. There should be plenty of room inside the cabinet to fit an FPGA, 
> a 4MB X 32 simm, and a couple of connectors. You will probably need to use 
> light pipes to simulate the front panel lights but you could then have a 
> "table top" VAX that looks like a VAX. :-)

Now, *that* I would buy... :-)

The only problem with all this speculation is that the drawings for the
11/780 will only give you the micromachine. You still need the microcode
for the VAX to make it a VAX. And microcode means memory. And that is
where your bottleneck for the 500 MHz version sits.

Oh, and yes, there is quite a lot of microcode for the VAX. :-)

Hmmm, is there any smaller type of floppies than 3.5 inch? We need
something cute for the front end...

Oh, and making a VAX-11/780 also means you need to implement a F-11...
(Or did the 11/780 have a T-11?)

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol