The dot-pitch on that monitor is incredible for 1989!

I used to make those hard drives, although that one is a Singapore manufactured model, most DEC drives for uk models came from the Conner Peripherals plant in Irvine just 10 miles up the road from the Digital plant in Ayr. The model you have is a Digital rebrand of a Conner 30120 'Hopi' SCSI drive, they had their own firmware. Your Machine probably originally came with something like an RZ23 100MB half height drive. This video brought back great memories of working at Conner before Seagate bought them over and ran them into the ground. Great video series, keep up the great work :-)

@badmeme486

5 жыл бұрын

My dad worked there back when he was a teenager! There was so much industry back then.

I first accessed the internet through a VAX, so these machines are special to me.

Just imagine this thing in the system manager's office in the early 1990s. Thanks for restoring it to the condition it deserves.

As a past DEC Field Engineer repairing DEC Equipment it is nice to see some of our DEC equipment come back to life. Note: I worked on DEC PDP-10 KA, KI & KL mostly. also did some work on PDP-9 and 15 and some PDP-11. Still have my books for LSI-11 and 10.

@ghostdog688

6 жыл бұрын

Fred Nordhorn i wish I could have been around to see those “mini” computers up and running. Ever since I read about the Pdp-11 I’ve wanted to see one myself. Sadly nothing that I’m aware of nearby in Dundee.

@TheStefanskoglund1

5 жыл бұрын

A PDP-10 KA isn't really a mini - more like a main frame

@AlienPsyTing1

5 жыл бұрын

PDP-10's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I used to bitch about being senbt out to fix 11/23's, mVax 2000's LA50's 11/780's grrrrrr but brilliant machines especially the genius of Vax Clustering - awsum kit I crid the day my company died ;(

@johnrickard8512

5 жыл бұрын

Might you know where I might find an iso(or equivalent) for OpenVMS for my DEC PWS 500au? I've been trying to track that down for some time(along with other original hardware that it didn't have/needed replaced) and that is the last piece of the puzzle for me!

@AlienPsyTing1

5 жыл бұрын

@@johnrickard8512 try here John www.openvmshobbyist.com/forum/viewthread.php?forum_id=110&thread_id=6 if I get time I'll see if I can sniff out an ISO on HP's ftp servers or you could look

This series has reminded me a bit of the old SPARCstations I used to work with. Good times, good times.

I worked for a now defunct chemical manufacturer throughout the '90's, and where I worked was dependent on an old DEC Vax system that had been updated, maintained at quite considerable expense. I remember those keyboards being gorgeous compared to some of the rubbish nowadays. The DEC Vax systems were also rock solid having up time measured in years/decades. Brings a tear seeing the old Vax keyboard, proper man cavery.

Actually I had to use OpenVMS and even write programs on it in 2007 at the introductionary university course in Hungary. I still remember that you can go into a directory that does not exists yet (without an error) and there is a way to ask "is this directory I am in now in existence?" - haha it looked like the whole system is designed around never running into an error, but for some reason always doing something :-). Very nice job that you made it work. I have never seen one in my life as we all accessed the machine through the network from a pc :-(. It looks like extremetech though!

When I clicked on the video I didn't know if the alcohol was going to be for you or the computer :)

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Andy R Mrs Man Cave visited a cider museum today and came back with goodies, I did pretty well!

If you want to dual boot this with NetBSD, then you can get a more familiar Unix based system running - including the X Window System. The monochrome and most common colour frame buffers are supported. (No disrespect to VMS - I learned to program in C on a VT320 terminal connected to a Vax running VMS).

@genkiadrian

3 жыл бұрын

Since you're mentioning NetBSD, the GCC backend for VAX needs some love so there is a Bountysource campaign to financially support that work: www.bountysource.com/issues/91495157-vax-convert-the-backend-to-mode_cc-so-it-can-be-kept-in-future-releases

Enjoyed the series, looking forward to the next one!

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Corbin Davenport thanks Corbin. Me too, not sure what it will be yet but I have a few hardware reviews to entertain until I get a good pickup to work on

@CDRiley

5 жыл бұрын

@therealnightwriter you dont have a volume button?

Pretty sweet. I'm from Worcester, MA. Near DIGITAL's HQ. My Dad went to WPI. I was skilled on VAX at twelve. Which was good. I used them at University. Again over Y2k at Blockbuster. I have nothing but fond memories. Playing Adventure, or Rogue. Secretly changing settings at random to keep workmates confused. I may look at eBay. See what is in my area. Great series.

Really liking these restoration videos you're doing. Look forward to the next project!

Oh that console font looks fantastic!

@scose

6 жыл бұрын

Yes!! maybe the best I have ever seen on a CRT!

@7:17 - "512 meg block size", did you mean "512 byte block size"?

Ah, "RetroManCave" - nice name! I've been enjoying your channel a lot: good quality, nice relevant information and interesting projects. Keep up the excellent job

Keep up the great vids man really enjoying what you're doing. Thanks!

I've got one of these awesome machines with everything but an original monitor. You'll need to install DECwindows to get any kind of GUI at boot. DECwindows is much like Windows 3.1 in that it operates on top of VMS, which since it's inception was a command line OS. Typically you install DECwindows during the VMS install, but it's an option that can be installed later.

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

DECtechGuy With that usernane I trust you! I did indeed choose the DECWindows option at startup and said Y to make it my default windows manager.

@ChristopherMyersisnt87

6 жыл бұрын

Ah well then, check to make sure you have the required layered product license loaded. That's the next obvious thing. Less obvious things are of course more technical, but more interesting!

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

DECtechGuy I'll check that out thanks

A really impressive machine for the time. Great job on the restoration.

What a beautifully crisp display! At fisrt I thought i was looking at a vector monitor...then the scan sync made me realize it wasn't.... incredible!

Love to see more DEC gear. Love seeing someone else with this stuff running

See this video makes me regret throwing away a computer I had. Looking through some pictures I think it was an IBM 7011, a POWER workstation from the early 90's. I got it in a pile of IBM PCs and had no idea what to do with it at the time, I didn't even have a monitor it could plug into and no way of using it. It was extremely heavy for its size, I got tired of lugging it around, and eventually took it with a truckload of monitors and older PCs to be recycled. In fact, out of that huge pile of old PC stuff, I only kept one thing: my trusty DEC Pentium 90 machine. Besides the power supply failing once (and it's an odd one, luckily I knew someone with a pile of identical machines) it's always been reliable.

I love the font and the display on this! Wow.

Screen resolution is really great.

My only experience with DEC was PDP-11/70 running RSTS/E - got used to DCL/CCL really quickly on that baby. Then in my career I managed a Data General MV9600U - running AOS/VS II, DG's version of VMS.

I love your videos. .. they have a laid back 70s Open University (UK) vibe. Keep up the great work 😊

It’s alive!

Can you get some version of Berkeley Unix running on it? Probably the most classic of VAX operating systems, even more so than DEC's own VMS.

Cliffhanger ending. This is like the ST:TNG ep where Picard gets taken over by the Borg. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

@picc9000

5 жыл бұрын

Fire.

@ericmallory3050

3 жыл бұрын

This needs a follow up...

Thats a very pleasing crisp font!

Fantastic videos on VAXstation

Damn, you can really tell the difference looking at the screen shot on the last video and this one.

2018 is 40 year anniversary of OpenVMS. Hopefully it is also the year when it will be released on x86 as promised :)

Holy crap.... that's what I call "back to the roots"!

Fantastic series! Love these videos. 8) A Vax was the first proper computer I ever used back in 1987 at uni, 1MB quota! :D.

Oh god. Flashbacks of using these terminals when I worked for Barclays.

Well done!!

Fascinating stuff. Around the time this machine was built, I was learning COBOL on monochrome text terminals attached to a VAX mainframe. Yup, some universities were still using those monstrosities in the early 90s. Of course, I've forgotten literally everything I learned about VMS and COBOL since then. Never had occasion to remember either one, so that was a year of learning wasted LOL

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

In the mid 90s I was set to study C programming at college, the tutor left and we had to study COBOL instead! It has never been a requirement in subsequent jobs 😂

@aitchpea6011

5 жыл бұрын

@@RMCRetro LOL I think it was already obsolete when they were teaching it!

I've not thought much about Vax/VMS since college - the "vax" we used my second program was a DEC Alpha. I never had a console login, and always connected via telnet or networked terminal. Didn't know there was a GUI for VMS.... That was early 1990's. Mostly used it for email and IRC. Occasionally used it for asynchronous gopher &/or FTP - request the list on day 1, get it on day 2 and put in the file request, get the file on day three, log in via dial-in and kermit or zmodem download to the apple II or the mac.

Excellent and very interesting videos many thanks! :)

Nice and clean!

If you can find it... There was a version of Netscape navigator that ran on decwindows. I used to have one of these... Model 76 with a color display, a couple of 1GB storage expansions, numerous CD rom drives, an infoserver and also a decstation. Sadly, all of these ended up in a dumpster at some point in the late 90s.

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Damon Bravo great thank you! I'm struggling to vet DECWindows on the tiny hard drive I have in it. Might have to find an upgrade

This is like Nostalgia Nerd grew up into the UK version of 8bit guy.

That monitor is beautiful!

beautiful font face/typeset, and a lovely crisp display. Did you ever get a part 4 where you had the GUI running?

Loved this video so much that I want to have my own VAX station at home.

I used to own this in the 90s, running Ultrix and Motif GUI

There used to be an free shell accounts on an OpenVMS system run by Beave for years. Sadly it's no longer running, but I used it a bit a few years back to get some experience with it. Nice video series.

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

You might enjoy this, you can get a free account at the LivingComputerMuseum to logon to a VAX-11/785 over here: www.livingcomputers.org/Request-a-Login.aspx

@oldschoolsean2702

6 жыл бұрын

Nice find! Cheers bud.

I really Enjoyed this great video nice work

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

Thanks Ian

It turned out great! I'd really be interested in seeing the gui and just general operation of the computer. Lovely video!

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

R. F. R. I'll get a little extra video up to show it for sure once I've cracked it

@yereverluvinuncleber

6 жыл бұрын

There is no GUI. Command line DCL.

@RanFuRe

6 жыл бұрын

Well, that's fine, too :)

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

yereverluvinuncleber there is indeed, it's optional but a gui is there

@backtogeek

6 жыл бұрын

did this ever get done or is it in the long list of long term pending videos?

about time you did a Ep.4 dont you think? RAM fault diagnosis is not so hard, and most of us could use a refresher. It will be interesting to see the SCSI + "NI" fault diagnosis and fix as well. Not to mention an Ep.5 with OpenVMS/VAX usage of the GUI (and initial non-GUI usage).

@RMCRetro

4 жыл бұрын

Hey Paul, thanks for watching this, it's an oldie. There will be no further parts as I sold it to a programmer who would make much better use of it than me. It was a fun machine to explore though as someone with no background of DEC machines, I learned a lot

love the terminal font

There was a room of old DEC machines at my uni which had those kind of mice ... and an even worse type that had two conical wheels on the bottom instead of ball. You had to fight to get that mouse to move where you wanted to.

The cave has a window?!?

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Lyall Moffitt only when I roll the boulder out of the way

About 16 years ago I had an account on an AlphaServer running OpenVMS. It was a standard issue for all people in the research building even though I had no actual use for it. I did however play around with the BASIC interpreter in it for fun.

Can you please do a restoration on that lovely grey/black trinitron you own ? That would make my day - one of your original subscribers here. BTW gr8 video and that crt is clean crisp, could you tell me what tube is fitted Inside please. It'll be a Samsung chunghwah or Philips

When ever I watch retro-resto's, I want to go out and find an old computer machine and try my hand at it. I have to figure out what machine. I guess what ever one i can find cheap or free lol. Thanks for the video. 8]

What a tease! You promised a follow-up, it's been 6 years now... does the VAX still work? I want to see it do something!

I don't suppose there could be some way to work around bad memory regions by having the kernel pre-allocate those regions at bootup time, so the failed memory can never be used for anything. Maybe it already does that, since it detected the memory failure? Anyway it's great that you have a functioning system despite the memory issue.

Is there ever going to be a follow up video? Did you manage to get the GUI up and running and figure out / fix the memory errors?

ahh memories of dec net and dec windows :)

cool background tunes

Hee. Reading the title, I was wondering if it was going to be the isopropyl alcohol for cleaning, or a different kind of alcohol for the tech. ;-) Nice job on fixing the system.

Puc mouse..awsome 😀😀😀😀..on plastics I boil them..much better....use rust removal next time ha? Nice work on that vms👍👍👍👍

You forgot to torque those giant keyboard bolts 😂

This brought back memorys me beeing the vax/vms system operator in my old department during the early 199x years, very nice! How much did you have to pay for the power supply replacement?

Buy yourself a variac. You will then be able to bring up theses old machines slowly. The PSUs capacitors are the components that go pop with greatest frequency. Bring it up slowly next time to avod damage.

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

+yereverluvinuncleber good tip thanks

oh god mouseball gunk i remember that!

0:16 MYST!

Excellent. How much did you get it for?

I might try to re-install OpenVMS on my DEC PWS 500au...though like you I doubt that I'll know what I'm doing...

Could you do a video running research unix on this?

RMC I happened to have a digital DEC Mate III that is beyond repair (at least in IMO) but the circuit boards are intact and the power supply or boards seems at fault.This computer has been left in the rain and has been painted on but it *may* still be salvageable even if the boards were to be cleaned up and reused. The only reason why it was painted on is because the machine was thought to be useless, but in turn it is not very common after all. - Major corrosion to the PSU - Some major cosmetic damage - Ports are fine, shielding seems shiny (the ports have received painting too) - The floppy drive lights up!!! There is power going to some parts of the computer but I don't know what exactly. It is half working I guess.(I live in Australia BTW)

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Wow that sounds like a real challenge. I guess get it out on the bench, remove any optional parts, test the PSU and start by testing the board for continuity problems and work from there. Although maybe don't ask people to "look at my DEC mate" in your Aussie accent, might go badly wrong.

@penguinsushi8442

6 жыл бұрын

Here are the specs: www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=468 Apparently it supports colour! The thing is I don't have a monitor for it :( Do you have any suggestions on how to get one? If the machine turns out to still be working properly once repaired.

i really need your playlist of the background music

The hdd is a relabeled Conner.

Was there a next part ?

any update on the VAXStation?

Great channel, have enjoyed your videos. What is the name of the music from 3 mins to about 5 mins please? Keep up the great work. Thanks

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

James Reynolds thank you and welcome to the cave. Music listing is in the description but do let me know if you can't find it. They are copyright free so should be a google away

Where do you buy your isopropyl alcohol from?

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Rob Ert Ebay of all places. I'm surprised it can be posted

Urg, mouseball gunk! They still get junk, sadly. It's just on the teflon feet these days.

@krashd

6 жыл бұрын

My mouse gets muck in it's eye and either stops dead or loses one whole axis of movement until I turn it over and blow on the laser or brush it. Still a million times easier than having to remove a ball and trying to scrape gunk from two tiny rollers that like to hide the gunk on the side of the roller facing away from you. Kids today have it easy with mice :D

Any word on a follow up video on openvms?

VMS is a doddle it was about as English as you could get - (forerunner of Win NT) sam(ish) guts

I'm not sure retrobriting the keyboard with the electronics still in is a good idea. I think the peroxide is corrosive and could really mess things up.

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Agreed. Got away with it but in my latest series I'm popoing the key caps off to be safe

@pablorai769

5 жыл бұрын

RetroManCave Popping or pooping? Popoing is bril though

@samhackett5715

5 жыл бұрын

Did someone say Popo? @@pablorai769

show sys, dir/date, show mem, mc authorize > show */brief, show user, set def [-], set def sys$login - that'll get you started.

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

+yereverluvinuncleber Thanks. I got the OS installed and have figured out how to install the gui components from the CD... I'm just lacking disk space so need to spend time removing the components not needed to free up space, and then I can install it. Hoping to do that very soon now I've finished the Amiga refurb

@BertGrink

6 жыл бұрын

RetroManCave I've got some SCSI harddisks for which i have no use,,, one is, i think, an 18GB one; you can have them if you'll just pay for the shipping (from Denmark, so it shouldn't be too exorbitant, i hope)

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Gert Brink Nielsen thanks Gert. Since fixing this up I have passed it on to someone who will get much more use out of it than me, they collected it this weekend. I appreciate the offer

@BertGrink

6 жыл бұрын

I understand, and hope the new owner will get a lot of good use out of it. You're welcome, by the way.

3 years later, where's the GUI?

I wonder why you clean old rusty screws? New ones are easy to find.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

It's fun 😁 and kind of nice to use original parts where possible in a restoration

wheres the next video?! ;D

still waiting on the gui upate video

Could an ultrasonic Jewelery cleaner be used to clean many of the small parts?

@joshuarosen6242

6 жыл бұрын

That doesn't sound like a very good idea with 30 year old electronic components that may well be a bit delicate.

@crossbow1203

6 жыл бұрын

I meant the screws, clips etc. I don't think new or old electronics would improve with a total imersion in cleaning fluid. LoL!

+RetroManCave You should also consider using a SCSI to SD adapter as the SCSI HDD will eventually die. www.itead.cc/scsi2sd.html or www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD

Personally, I just loved cleaning the gunk off of mouse balls. :P

OpenVMS is... weird. If you are used to UNIX and DOS, anyway.

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Ian Dunbar it really is, some good tutorials out there but I need to take some time to work through them. I see a x86 version is coming soon which will be interesting to play with

@n124lp

6 жыл бұрын

I was a VMS system admin back in the late 80's and early 90's. Yes, it was different, but in many ways better than the OSes that survived it. I hope that you are enjoying learning your way around it.

@boardernut

6 жыл бұрын

OpenVMS is still alive in banks and business where security matters, and the administrators are very well paid.

Where is the revisit?

Why OpenVMS and not BSD?

Attempting to boot from CD with BOOT DKA400 and I get error message ?42 DEVOFFLINE. Cant figgure out how to make it ready to boot. I can see it when I do a SHOW DEV and it is on SCSI controller A with an ID of 4. Pls help! Thanks!

Why is there no Part 4 where you demonstrate the GUI on the VAX?

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

Thanks for watching. I wasn't able to install all the components needed to demonstrate it on the HD capacity, even formatted with a fresh install. The machine was sold to a programmer who put it to more regular use than me. I hope to visit another VAX some time they are lovely machines

@meneerjansen00

5 жыл бұрын

​@@RMCRetro: Thanks for clearing that up. I remember the VAX as a machine that I had to install applications for to "talk" to by a PC. Some important software still ran on VAX machines in the 90's. I thought that a VAX was a big machine from the 70's like a mainframe. :-)

@MultipleObjectSelector

5 жыл бұрын

@@RMCRetro if you want to do a video on VMS, look in to SIMH. It should allow you to run VMS for VAX or Alpha on a Linux host (maybe windows?). DECWindows is an X client, and should be able to connect to the Linux machine's X server.

i expected it just to blow up when you told it the date....

This is a little bit offtopic: I own a really old laptop. The problem is the keyboard is almost useless and it's also missing a key. Any suggestion?

@RMCRetro

6 жыл бұрын

Keyboards are usually easily swapped out on old laptops. What model is it

@andreslb151

6 жыл бұрын

It's an Epson Actionnote 500C

Why running windows when you could be running Unix! :) (NetBSD runs on those things) Lovely machine tho. State of the Art. Plus great restoration work!

@joshuarosen6242

6 жыл бұрын

It's not running Windows. It's running VMS.

@boardernut

6 жыл бұрын

May be he was just being a smartass, Windows is pretty much VMS, in particular NT 3.5 and 4.0 do you know the story behind ?

Shame you couldn’t get the original software and os. Like an SGI’s natural environment is at a place like Pixar or ILM or some CAD/CAM design house with their $10000 a seat licensed software and custom addons Where was this used?