3 Nov
2009
3 Nov
'09
9:42 a.m.
On Nov 3, 2009, at 9:38 AM, JP Hindin wrote:
Much to my embarrassment I discovered the issue was _not_ the
speed, or
noisy lines, or corroded batteries or RS232/423 problems. I was a
total
nitwit and neglected to notice I had it set to 8E1 instead of 8N1.
Remarkably with this small change, I can now speak to it clearly at
9600bps.
<Hand to forehead repeatedly and with force>
Ahem. ;)
What line speed are you running at? I have a
4000/300, too (great
machine - congratulations!), and I haven't had that problem with
either a VT420 or a terminal emulator. I'm using 8N1, so I'm sure
you're right there. But I wonder if the VT240 is just not keeping
up with the VAX, i.e. insufficient speed and buffer space. I've
seen that before, where a terminal *can* talk 9600 but can't do it
for very long. Hm, I think I have a VT240, maybe I should give it
a try.... -- Ian
VT240s, while wonderful in other ways, are very slow terminals.
It wouldn't surprise me if he were simply getting overruns. Should I be amazed or not that this 4000/300 has a
half-gig of RAM? My
first 4000/300 came with a single 32M board, this one comes with 4x
128M
boards (one of which is flaky). The documentation I can find says the
4000/300 maxes out at 128M, which... clearly isn't so:
http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VAX4000_Mem_Count.JPG
Holy crap!! That's a huge amount of memory on a VAX. HUGE. Score!
Where would the sages suggest I begin in tracking down
a fault in
one of
the four boards:
http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VAX4000_Mem_Errors.JPG
Hmm, ouch. :-( Is the service manual for the '300 CPU around? It
should tell you how to decode the message and will probably get you
down to the chip level.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
