topic Re: FT810 substitute in Operating System - OpenVMS

FT810 substitute

bkelly13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:10:44 GMT

We have an FT810 that has had one half die due to failed power supply and the other half may be on its last legs. Its been running for over 15 years and been extremely reliable so that's understandable.

Regardless, the application was developed on a 750 and consumed between 30 and 50 percent of that computer's capacity. We do have a MicroVAX available that I suspect could carry the load. Can anyone tell me if the MicroVAX has at least the capacity of the original VAX 750. The application is written in FORTRAN and it uses a Xyplex terminal server for lots of serial I/O. Any thoughts on putting an I/O intensive application on a MicroVAX?

Thanks for your time.

Re: FT810 substitute

Steven Schweda — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:19:09 GMT

There's more than one model of MicroVAX.

Other than a MicroVAX I, however, practically
any of them could probably beat a VAX 11/750.
Very old disks could be a problem on a very
old system. A more complete and detailed
hardware inventory might be helpful.

Re: FT810 substitute

bkelly13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:26:26 GMT

The FT810 is rather on its last legs, but its bored silly running this application. We have an FT110 in unknown condition and the MicroVAX. I think we should take the effort to port the application to either or both of the other VAXes and see it they can handle the load.

I did not know about the different versions of MicroVAXes but will check that out and try both computers.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Re: FT810 substitute

Hoff — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:01:57 GMT

There's a reasonable likelihood that a VAX emulator package (simh or CHARON-VAX or such) would be faster than a VAX-11/750 for this particular task, and most any MicroVAX 3000-series or VAX 4000-series box that you would scrounge up will be faster than a VAX-11/750.

I've ported various VAX Fortran code over to Mac OS X; most Fortran is (usually) platform-portable, unless it is laced with platform-specific calls. Porting Fortran code forward from a VAX to a newer version of OpenVMS VAX or to OpenVMS Alpha is rather easier.

There are VUP values posted at the AlphaServer web site.

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/performance/perf_tps.html

Re: FT810 substitute

Steven Schweda — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:05:02 GMT

> [...] most any MicroVAX 3000-series or VAX
> 4000-series box that you would scrounge up
> will be faster than a VAX-11/750.

I'd expect a MicroVAX II with a SCSI disk to
be faster than a 750 in most cases.

Re: FT810 substitute

bkelly13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:20:54 GMT

Thanks guys. These computers havn't been powered up for years so I will give them a try and see what happens. It will be mid next week before I have a response.