Cleaning the VAXstation
My VAXstation 4000 VLC seems to have lived a hard life - when I got it, the plastic was filthy and every groove in the case was caked with black grime. I wouldn’t be surprised if it once lived in some sort of industrial setting - wherever it lived must have been hot because it came with a decidedly non-standard cooling system:
Well look at that! It even seems to have a hot-rod heat sink! pic.twitter.com/3nowGkHi2L
— cron mom (@sophaskins) August 16, 2017
That picture is from after a quick cleaning - I saved a deeper rejuvination until last night. I disassembled the whole thing and tried to scour every last bit of dust, dirt, or gunk. Before putting it together this evening, I figured I’d take a few pictures of the components to share.
Clockwise from top-right, the components in the above picture are:
- the RAM sticks - I love the “Digital” logo silkscreen on the third one
- the motherboard
- the “graphics module” - it’s not any particular bus, though, and it includes the mouse, keyboard, and sound circuitry as well, so I think it’s more of just “another layer of motherboard”
- the SCSI cable - it serves both internal drives and as the external port
- screws and fasteners - the plastic pop-rivets are, shall we say, Not My Favorite (the manual simply tells you to “remove the five rivets” when removing the motherboard - the shape my knuckles are in suggests that’s easier said than done)
- the power cable for a hard disk
- a SCSI2SD acting as the hard disk - the original disk that came with the machine makes terrifying griding noises
- (in the center) the included SCSI terminator that needs to go on the back of the computer at all times
Once I fastened all the parts back in place, I hooked it up to see if things were still working:
and thankfully, they were!
vaxstation reassembly progress pic.twitter.com/KSgnz2Q2Rh
— cron mom (@sophaskins) May 4, 2018
Not too bad for a few evenings’ work! One day I’ll have to try out Retrobriting the case since the plastic has yellowed quite a bit, but at least now it’s not hiding tons of dirt.
