DECstation 5000/1xx specific notes

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I have two of this breed.

The first one (and my first DECstation at all), a /133, I purchased from a small local reseller in 2004. Quite expensive, but hey, I was a rookie back then. And I was "desperately" looking for appropriate hardware to run the ULTRIX CDs I had picked up from a junk pile. Originally, the box was part of a control system, probably a power plant (conventional or nuclear, no idea). Quite funny to see my cave partially turning into an industrial control room :-) Of course I replaced the system disk(s), but kept the original ones in a safe place.

The second one, a /125, I obtained from another collector for a few bucks. Came with almost no RAM (16MB in eight 2MB modules), so I had to spend all my spare RAM for the 1xx series to equip it with a decent amount of memory. On this occasion I learnt that the lowly 2MB modules are the same as for the DECstation 2100.
The original disk (on a handcrafted mounting, the original disk carrier got lost) had some unimpressing ULTRIX installation on it, but produced a lot of errors at boot time, so I replaced it with a freshly formatted disk.
I decided to give OSF/1 for Mips a try on this machine, since the 5000/1xx series is the only supported hardware for this strange OS.

Pixx

DECstation 5000/125 front view DECstation 5000/125 inside DECstation 5000/125 inside, other view DECstation 5000/125 inside w/ disk DECstation 5000/125 rear view

Bootable CD-ROM

Boots from external RRD40 (and the internal one, of course)
Last updated: 27-Sep-2010, M.Kraemer