DECpc AXP 150 (JENSEN)

It was a long journey to eventually get one of these machines up and running. I ended up with two prototype parts units after a working machine was unfortunately scrapped due to a mistake out with my control a number of years ago. I did get a sort of working machine out of the bits I had and acquired a spare motherboard and RAM along the way. Unfortunately none of those attempts lasted and I eventually found another machine which was free to a good home. The problem there was it was in Holland! Luckily I knew someone who was kind enough to collect it and bring it over next time he was visiting.

On receiving the machine from Holland, I made the best machine out of all the bits I had and put the front panel from the machine pictured above on this new machine as the original front panel for it had suffered some damage and was broken into a few pieces.

The resulting machine has 2 SCSI cards with the correct firmware for OpenVMS and OSF/Digital UNIX support, a Compaq QVision 1024/E, a DE422 NIC, Microsoft Sound Board and 256MB of RAM. For storage I had one RZ25E from one of the prototypes and a couple of drives (RZ26L and RZ28B-E) from the new machine. Instead of relying on these long term I opted to install a spare SCSI2SD that I’d received with my VAXstation 4000-90. I also fitted the RRD42 CD-ROM and TZK10 QIC Tape drive from one of the parts machines.

The machine has been running happily and I even demoed it running Windows NT 3.51 and OSF/1 2.0 at the DEC Legacy 2022 event (pictured below, alongside my MicroVAX 3100-90 and VAXstation 4000-90)

I’ve had it running Windows NT 3.1, 3.51 and 4.0, Digital UNIX 4.0E and OpenVMS AXP 7.2 from the SCSI2SD and OSF/1 2.0 from a PiSCSI (formerly RaSCSI) connected to the 2nd SCSI card. I plan to upgrade the OpenVMS install to 7.3-1 (the latest officially supported on JENSEN) in an attempt to get the Microsoft Sound board working under VMS as the version of Multimedia services I need doesn’t seem to work on 7.2. The main reason it has 7.2 for now is that I found an original install CD for it in the RRD42 drive when I first ejected it. I also plan to use the PiSCSI to setup more images with older versions of VMS and Digital UNIX to experiment with. I’m particularly keen to try and get one of the original AXP VMS versions up and running.