Vaxstation 3100 basics

< The box is a model VS42A and has a 3.5" floppy and 2 X 100Mb internal SC < hard drives. It has what looks like 8Mb of RAM to me, whatever is on th < main board plus a 4Mb extension. Ok you have a 3100, with 12mb ram (VMS runs in 4 or more). This is plenty. The two RZ23l drives are plenty of space for VMS. < < On powering up it says KA 42-A v1.3, does a hex countdown and finishes w < a ">>>" prompt. < < Command "b" causes it to display ESA0 and stop. < Command "?" gives an error message. < Command "c" causes a drive to start. It then displays an error message " < ERR PC=00000000" and then lists a table I can't decipher that seems t < list drives and includes "VMS/VMB" and "Ultrix" along the top. It then h < prompt " [ESA0:] >>> ". < At that point command "b" results in a series of errors: < 83 BOOT SYS < ?41 DEVASSIGN,B < 84 FAIL ESA0 is the eithernet. So it was trying to NETBOOT! The boot device is likely DKA300. DKA is disk, scsi bus A X00 is the device number. < How can I find out if it has an operating system? or have I already prov < it hasn't? Try booting! >>> B DKA000 through 700 see if they all fail. < It looks like it is at least NEARLY 10 years old. 9 max. depending on model maybe less than 5. Though KA42A is likely a 3100 M30 nice little box actually. Allison