From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Aug 27 05:05:57 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id FAA28286 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 05:05:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shell.monmouth.com (root@shell.monmouth.com [205.164.220.9]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id FAA28269 for ; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 05:05:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from i4got.lakewood.com (fh-ppp1.monmouth.com [205.164.221.33]) by shell.monmouth.com (8.8.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA08605; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 08:02:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from pechter@localhost) by i4got.lakewood.com id IAA00522 (8.8.5/IDA-1.6); Wed, 27 Aug 1997 08:05:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Bill Pechter Message-ID: <199708271205.IAA00522@i4got.lakewood.com> Subject: Re: ? power outages and file system corruption In-Reply-To: from Simon Shapiro at "Aug 26, 97 10:10:16 pm" To: Shimon@i-Connect.Net (Simon Shapiro) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 08:05:23 -0400 (EDT) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Reply-to: pechter@lakewood.com X-Phone-Number: 908-389-3592 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Hi Wilko Bulte; On 26-Aug-97 you wrote: > > ... > > > These things are mostly used for NFS servers. Called 'Prestoserve' > > and not limited to only Sun machines. I think there is even a special > > NVRAM SIMM you can put into your Sparcstation. > > That was a standard feature on all DEC Vax 7xx. I saw it on 750's and > 780's. Unix could not make use of it for some reason. But RSTS and > VMS sure did. Nah, time of day clock battery backup was standard on 11/780's Memory battery backup was an option on both. Neither one were nvram. Neither one avoided disk checks on power fail (VMS mount verification). The batteries needed to be checked occasionally and replaced if they were bad. VAX/VMS, however did great powerfail recovery. I dropped the power to an entire computer room at Fort Monmouth as a test. The 6 RP06's and 2 RM05's spun down, the cpu fans went quiet. The VT100's froze and blinked out. I waited 5 minutes and flipped the main circuit breaker on. The machine reloaded the console firmware, checked the memory status, and resumed execution of empire (or some other game which was the VAX/VMS rogue equivalent on all terminals) at the next move. Unix would do the same thing based on the memory register status being ok. Believe me, I worked 8 years with DEC Vax/Vms -- 6 with DEC. Also, RSTS didn't work on Vaxes... that was PDP11 only. > > Simon > Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Pechter | 17 Meredith Drive Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 | 908-389-3592 pechter@lakewood.com | Save computing history, give an old geek old hardware. This msg brought to you by the letters PDP and the number 11.