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From: kellym@tekgen.TEK.COM (Kelly Mc Connell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: DEC maintenance on 86XX requires VMS?
Message-ID: <1476@tekgen.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 14-Jul-87 21:15:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekgen.1476
Posted: Tue Jul 14 21:15:50 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jul-87 03:28:03 EDT
References: <1805@megaron.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: kellym@tekgen.UUCP (Kelly Mc Connell)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 18
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:3251 comp.sys.dec:276

In article <1805@megaron.arizona.edu> whm@arizona.edu (Bill Mitchell) writes:
>We've got an 8600 maintained by DEC that we run 4.3BSD UNIX on.  The system
>has a UDA50+RA60 (removable pack) on it; DEC required that we purchase this
>so that they could boot VMS on it if need be.  We're about to buy some new
>disk hardware and we came up with a scheme that could save us about $15k if
>we could take the UDA+RA60 off the 8600 and put it on another machine, but
>our local DEC office says that they are not permitted to maintain the 8600
>unless they can bring up VMS on it and without the UDA+RA, they can't do that.
>

How about just buying an additional UDA-50 for the second machine (about 5K
list) and connecting port B of the RA60 to that UDA.  My group does the 
hardware support for TEK's Vaxen and we also require a removable disk for 
the same reason, but we have some sites that share one RA60 between as many 
as four Vaxen (We move the SDI cable to whichever system needs the RA60
during maintenance).  This has worked out very well and everyone happy.

Kelly