14 Nov
2010
14 Nov
'10
2:14 p.m.
On Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:38:29 -1000 (HST)
Tim Newsham <newsham(a)lava.net> wrote:
How much does an old pdp-11 type system cost these
days
Depending on the source you may get it for free or you may pay several
thousand $$$$.
How much power do they take up to power on?
IIRC
my PDP-11/73 with some periperal controllers and two 5.25" ESDI
disks takes less then 200 Watts.
Whats maintenance like on those things?
Nothing
special. Some peripherals may need maintenance like cleaning
tape drive heads.
There are several models of the PDP-11. From small systems like the /03
to big multi rack instalations like the /70. If you want a small system
to play around at home look for a later QBus model, i.e. PDP-11/[5789]3.
Those machines come in or can be reduced to a single 3U 19" rack mount
box called BA23. The BA23 can be mounted in a flor stand, no need for
a 19" rack.
There is a slightly larger box, the BA123. The BA23 and BA123 where
common boxes for MicroVAXen too. So if you get just the OBus card set
for a PDP-11 you can convert a MicroVAC to a PDP-11. Many peripherals
are comon to PDP-11 and MicroVAXen like RQDX3, TK50 / TK70, ...
All you need to convert a QBus MicroVAX to a PDP-11 are a QBus PDP-11
CPU and memory. (I went this route.)
--
\end{Jochen}
\ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}