Re: OT

On 2026-08-23, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 23/08/2026 17:53, Robert Riches wrote:
>> On 2026-08-23, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I know someone with a VAX in his home office. Think it runs VMS
>> 
>> Any idea which level of VAX?
>>
> Not exactly. It runs of a normal 230V/13A socket
>
>> Not all VAX machines were the same.  IIRC, in the US a 750
>> required a 220V 30 or 40A power feed and some cooling, while
>> either a 730 or Microvax could be powered from a regular 120V
>> outlet in an office environment.  On the other hand, the 9xxx
>> models were a lot larger/hungrier/hotter.
>> 
>
> Don't think its a microvax. From online images an 11/750 ?

230V/13A could probably handle an 11/750.  In the 11/750 at the
small company where I worked in 1980-1983, the CPU and such were
in a cabinet about the size of a full-size washing machine, and
each of the DEC-supplied disk drives (26MB, RK07, IIRC) was
around 18-24" wide attached to the side.  A 160-470MB disk, about
14" diameter platters, could be stuffed into the bottom of a disk
cabinet.  RAM was 0.5MB from DEC and 2.0MB from System
Industries.

I wrote software to manage the customer contact database in an
ISAM file, where VMS supplied all the ISAM logic--IIRC from the
Record Management System/Services.  At first, the company could
only afford two $10K languages, so DEC BASIC and Fortran were it.
It's interesting to write database editing on VT100s in Fortran.

IIUC, after I left in 1983, TransEra BASIC was developed on that
11/750.

-- 
Robert Riches
[email protected]
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)