Setting up a VAXstation

I[ve yet to meet an engine where you don't change the oil by removing the drain plug on the bottom of the sump.... Oh, absolutely. And the only way to get the experience of driving an E-type is to actually drive one. Sure. Which is why I _can_ understand people who own and drive classic cars but pay others to maintain them (assuming the latter are actually clueful...) But that's not the same thing. The point is that if you want the expeirence of driving an E-type, you have to do that, in a real E-type. There's no simulator that comes close. You can't make your modern car behave in the same way. But if you want to run, say, RSX-11 or CP/M or an HP9830 program there are simulators that run on modern PCs that let you do jsut that. And the classic software 'looks and feels' just the same. So unless you want to get inside the classic hardware, or unless you have some physical interface board you wish to use, I am still puzzled as to why you run the old hardare. I know why _I_ run it, but then (a) I like diving into the circuitry and (b) I do have strange interfaces for most of my machines. True enough. But I find there is certainly beauty in these old computers, and _that_ eauty can only be appreciated if you understand how they work. See what you're missing out on by not looking into the older machines. The machine with that 16-layer board wasn't even described as a computer. It's a calculator. The PSB is actually the main ROM -- the bits are stored by inductive coupling between the PCB tracks inside this multi-layer board. 512 locations of 64 bits IIRC. THis machine, the HP9100B, is probably the most beautiful piece of engineering I've ever worked on. But you only spot that if you understand what's going on inside. -tony