Hello,
Just my 2 cents:
It's only the 4000/9x that gets so confused by the NetBSD booter that it
won't boot unattended anymore. It will throw a "SYS"-error (0200).
My 4000/60 is happy with NetBSD, booting all the way to whatever OS i
throw at it. Just don't POWER DOWN your terminal while connected.
This will be interpreted as a break on the console line, which throws
you into the console monitor, just like a HALT.
Disconnect your terminal.
As a proof, this email is sent to the list via my 4000/60, running
NetBSD without a console terminal attached. (Some proof, i know ... 8-)
The 4000/vlc works just as well.
To get the 4000/60 autobooting you have to have
        SET BOOT dka0 (or whatever your system disk is)
        SET HALT 1
        SET BFLG 0
Most NetBSD's up to 1.5.2 garble the "HALT" setting on shutdown, so you
should check this ("SHOW HALT"). Valid values are:
        3: Machine halts on powerup (Manual boot)
        2: Automatic reboot
        1: Automatic restart
        0: same as 2
"Automatic restart" is usually the default, since it tells the VAX to
try to quickly recover from e.g. a power failure. Try 0 or 2 as well.
If all this does not help, you might have a dead battery. But you should
get some error on powerup then.
Hope this helps
Michael Schneider (ms)
On Mon, 2001-12-24 at 20:36, Robert Schaefer wrote:
 ----- Original Message -----
 From: "Doc" <doc(a)mdrconsult.com>
 To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
 Sent: Monday, December 24, 2001 01:52 PM
 Subject: Re: More... Re: VS4000 hardware questions
  It looks like you're saying that, having booted NetBSD, I can no longer
 run the VS4000 headless? Right now, set to serial console, it won't even
 post until I power up the serial terminal. And on this box, powering
 down the VT420 is a guaranteed halt. Have I misconfigured something, or
 am I stuck with this?
  The 3100 m38 autoboots NetBSD quite happily with no console attached.
 Since the hardware notes at NetBSD didn't give any warnings, I sort
 ofexpected the same. 
 From what I have heard, seen, and possibly
mis-remembered or -understood, 
 having once run NetBSD on a VaxStation 4000-90 (and
possibly similar models
 such as the -60 an -vlc) you will need to manually enter 'boot' at the
>>>
 console prompt, as the SYS subsystem fails a minor (possibly checksum) test.
 I haven't experimented with this much at all, other than a test-boot of VMS
 to see if it would correct whatever might be wrong.  I have not attempted to
 set any kind of automatic boot/halt/whatever flag to see if it really *does*
 halt the boot process.  Chuck McManis may have a better idea of what is
 going on, ISTR he was looking into it.  There are a number of knowlegable
 people on port-vax(a)netbsd.org who will have better answers than I.
 I'm nearly in a position to bring my VAX cluster online (VAX 6000-320,
 VAXstation 4000-90, VAXstation 3100-40, & soon a VAX 4000-200) so I will be
 more interested in making the m90 boot headless in the Not Too Distant
 future, and I'll probably take a look at the code myself.  Not that this is
 any indication of my programming skills (or lack thereof!), but more eyes
 can't hurt anything.
 Doc 
 Bob
  
--
Michael Schneider                       email: ms(a)silke.rt.schwaben.de
Germany                                  
http://www.vaxcluster.de
            People disagree with me.  I just ignore them.
                         (Linus Torvalds)