I recently acquired a DECimage X terminal, which is theoretically a VXT-2000 with an add-on 2D accelerator. Unfortunately while the terminal is badges as a DECimage it didn?t include the board, just a frame buffer.
Does anyone have a spare DECimage board they?d be interested in parting with, or know a reasonable place to obtain one?
How about other components for this machine? I have the AUI/thin Ethernet card and wouldn?t mind replacing it with the AUI/twisted-pair card, and I?d also like to max out the RAM: It has 2MB onboard and I have the riser card with SIMM slots and one SIMM for an additional 4MB.
It uses what I?m told are DEC MS200-AA (2MB) and DEC MS200-BA (4MB) modules, which look like regular 72pin SIMMs. Are they special or are they compatible with anything common?
? Chris
Sent from my iPad
>I recently acquired a DECimage X terminal, which is theoretically a
VXT-2000
>with an add-on 2D accelerator. Unfortunately while the terminal is
badges as a
>DECimage it didn?t include the board, just a frame buffer.
That's unfortunate. My VXT2000 doesn't have that board either, I've
always wondered how much it helps. I'm not too sure if the bottleneck is
usually the 10mbit networking or the graphics. Probably depends a bit on
whether you're using modern X11 applications or not. Modern stuff all
likes to assume true-color (24bit or thereabouts) and render stuff
locally and send it again to redraw, rather than rendering on the
(remote) xterm it seems...
>Does anyone have a spare DECimage board they?d be interested in
parting with,
>or know a reasonable place to obtain one?
Unfortunately, as I already stated I don't, and my only idea where to
get one is ebay and similar sites, which I'm sure you already know.
>How about other components for this machine? I have the AUI/thin
Ethernet card
>and wouldn?t mind replacing it with the AUI/twisted-pair card, and I?d
also
>like to max out the RAM: It has 2MB onboard and I have the riser card with
>SIMM slots and one SIMM for an additional 4MB.
No clue where to get a twisted pair module, but mine has one. I
currently have it hooked up to our thinnet segment though, and I've had
it on our thicknet segment previously (now we have a proper VAXen
occupying that transceiver).
>It uses what I?m told are DEC MS200-AA (2MB) and DEC MS200-BA (4MB)
modules,
>which look like regular 72pin SIMMs. Are they special or are they
compatible
>with anything common?
>
>? ? Chris
>
>Sent from my iPad
Here's where I can help you. The SIMMs aren't really anything special,
you can use 2MB and 4MB modules. The VAX SOC in the VXT is slow enough
that you probably don't have to worry about access time, so 60 or 70ns
modules are probably both fine. If you don't have a 4MB module laying
around, you can use an 8MB or 16MB module, but you have to install a
wire from a ground pin to A10 on the SIMM connector and fix the presence
detect bits, IIRC. (A0-A9 gives 1024 rows and columns, 1M-word per bank,
4 bytes per word, so 4MB SIMM. DEC left the unused address lines
floating, and that causes issues with bigger SIMMs). You can also
install a single jumper IIRC to make 16MB SIMMs appear as 4MB, and 8MB
SIMMs appear as 2MB (it's just grounding one of the PD lines, I don't
remember which). The most you can fit into a VXT2000 is 18MB IIRC,
that's 3 4MB SIMM, + 4MB on the riser itself + 2MB on the motherboard.
Lastly, you'll need the VXT2000 SW, which I extracted from some VMS
(infoserver?) CDs several years ago. Someone put them up on
terminals-wiki.org, so you can grab them there:
http://terminals-wiki.org/collections/DEC/vxt2000.zip
VXT021KT10.SYS is the full blown VXT software including local side
applications, like DECWindows etc.
VXTLDR021.SYS is some intermediate loader you can use to get an NFS swap
file or something like that if you have an infoserver or VMS running the
infoserver software IIRC.
VXTEX020A.SYS is *just* the X server IIRC, missing the local side
applications but having a smaller memory footprint. This doesn't even
have a window manager, so you'd have to use it with a remote one and set
up XDMCP.
The terminals boot from MOP or TFTP/BOOTP with late enough firmware. MOP
has a daemon available for linux and BSDs, if you'd like to go that
route, but otherwise TFTP/BOOTP is probably better supported by modern
infrastructure
Hopefully this was helpful. If you have any further questions, don't
hesitate to ask. I'm probably one of a few people who bothers to keep a
VXT around running, so I can probably answer most questions you might
have about setup and operation.
Best Regards,
Joe Zatarski
Hey,
Anybody happen to have any documentation for a Clearpoint SNXRAM card?
I?ll take any version ( though I have the /12 card ). I?m trying to figure
out the jumpers on this board. It generates a memory error in my Sun 3/110
but not sure if that?s because of overlapping addressing.
I?ve tried searching for the doc for years ( this year I?m trying very hard
to get my Sun 2/120 and Sun 3/110 running correctly. Got my Sun 1/100 and
Sun 4/110 booting correctly, disk images are almost ready for them )
Earl
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Howdy,
I?ve recently gotten a second Sun 3/Xxx 3 slot VME chassis, however the
power supply is a EU version, 240v. I know on a number of ?newer? power
supplies there is a switch to go from 240 to 115. I?ve taken this one
apart ( at least to the point where it comes off the bottom of the VME
chassis ? but left the thick cables still connected. ) I haven?t found any
switch or any indication that it can switch. Googling and looking at the
FEH hasn?t yielded any info either.
Anybody know if it?s possible to switch this type of PS?
Thanks
Earl
Sent from my iPhone
Howdy,
Wondering if anyone has used a SCSI2SD card with a Sun 3 class machine. I
know Walter B has had success with the Sun 2( that?s next on my list after
I get the Sun 3/110 working with one. )
I have some Version 5 of the card. (I also have a version 3 card that I
tried long ago, with little success). The new current firmware is much more
understandable in terms of setting it up.
However with a known good image ( obtained from Walter B) I can?t get it to
go past the message ?Waiting for disk to spin up...?
followed by ?Please start it, if necessary , ? OR ? press a key to quit.?
I know the card doesn?t need to spin up ? so question is, what is the boot
prom waiting for? I expect it?s just something off in my config but so far
everything I?ve tried yields the same result.
Anybody have a config.xml that works that they could share? ( and which
firmware version it works with? )
Thanks
Earl
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I have a Sun 3/50 diskless workstation in the Boston area, which I'd
like to see go to a good home.? I no longer have the monochrome monitor
that went with it, but I do have the original keyboard and mouse.? It
hasn't been powered up in some time, but worked without problems until I
took it out of service.
? Contact me at guy.fedorkow at gmail.com if you're interested?
Thanks
/guy
Hi guys,
Today I found a TEAC MT-2R cassette tape drive on a radio amateur
flee market. These tape drives use a tape cassette similar to the
audio tape cassette. The MT-2R tape deck has servo control logic
for tape motion and a CPU with firmware taat makes the tape unit
a block-addressable device (AFAIK).
However, I can only find doc of the MT-2ST, but that is another MTU.
Does anybody have doc of the TEAC MT-2R ?
Thanks,
Henk, PA8PDP
I have been experimenting with a SCSI21SD V6 card trying to get it to work
on a VAX 4000-200 running VMS 5.4 using a KZQSA. It seems to recognise that
there is a SCSI device there, but any attempt to access the device from VMS
5.4 results in a Fatal Drive Error. I tried booting a VMS 7.3 image from the
SCSI2SD card and that worked.
Obviously I have played with some of the settings, like SCSI2 mode etc, but
I have not found anything that works. Has anyone succeeded in getting this
board to work on VMS 5.4?
Thanks
Rob
Hi all --
Anyone happen to have any documentation for the Andromeda VDC-11? This is
a dual-height qbus board that provides 512x256 graphics and can act as the
PDP-11's console device (it emulates various different terminals, depending
on the model of the VDC-11). I'm interested in programming information as
well as jumpers and connector pinouts.
Thanks!
Josh