6 Aug
2001
6 Aug
'01
12:21 p.m.
On Mon, 6 Aug 2001, Tom Owad wrote:
This is likely off-topic - I have no idea how old the
DEC 3000 is - but
I'm hoping it will fall cool hardware exception.
I think its either a model 600 or 700. At any rate, its very large and
is a tower design. I have not yet used the system and am trying to get
it to boot. I do not have a keyboard, mouse, or monitor for it, so I
need to connect via terminal, but am having som trouble.
The 600 is a desktop model, so I am assuming that you are referring to a
700. The DEC 3000's usually expect the keyboard/mouse cable to be present.
If it doesn't detect them it will generate an error. In order to use it as
a headless system make sure you flip the small switch that is on the back
where all the ports are. Then the machine will ignore the keyboard error
and use the serial console port.
For a terminal, I am using an Apple Powerbook G4 with
ZTerm set to 9600,
8, n, 1. I'm using a Keyspan USB-Serial adapter and a null modem
adapter. I've connected my "terminal" to the 25 pin printer serial port
on the DEC 3000.
That is not a serial port, actually it is parallel. The serial ports in
the DEC3000 are MMJ type, which is a modied phone jack and propietary to
DEC. Try to find an MMJ to DB9 or 25 converter. That is your serial
port...
I power up the DEC, it does its whirling and spinning
up, but I never get anything at all on my terminal.
I've tried booting
with the S3 switch (whicdh I understand is supposed to change from kb/
mouse/monitor to console mode) in both directions, but to no avail.
The LED on the front reads "FD". It's possible that the RAM I have
installed (which I got from another DEC 3000) is not appropriate for the
system.
Putting RAM is also tricky, you need to put them in groups of 8 simms per
bank, all of the same type in each bank. A bank is defined by all the
simms at the same height (the model 600, which I am familiar with has the
memory simms plugged into 4 sets of raisers, so bank 1 = all the simms
that go near the motherboard from the bottom, and bank 2 = all the simms
that go on top of bank 1)
/--> simm raiser
/
i.e. Bank2 ====-| |-==== --> simm
| |
Bank1 ====-| |-====
| |
------------------- (motherboard)
Any suggestions on what I need to do to get this to
work are very much
appreciated. This is completely out of my area of expertise and I hate
to keep power cycling the DEC while I experiment.
Good luck, hope this helps...
Thanks!
Tom
_______________________________________________________________________
Francisco J. MesaMartinez http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~javi
_______________________________________________________________________
Basking Engineering Ctr #228 email:javi@cse.ucsc.edu
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064 phone:(831) 502-2073
_______________________________________________________________________