Backing up VAX/VMS?

Hi Guys, Recently acquired some VAXen - I have a soft spot in my heart for VAX/VMS as I worked professionally as a user on a VAX/VMS system for quite some years, however I have little to no experience from a system administration standpoint. What I have: VAXstation 3100, currently running NETBSD VAXserver 3100 - Installed hobby version of OPENvms on it. VAXstation 4000 VLC - Has a full VMS 5.5 installed on it. Datability VCP300 16-port LAT terminal server (The VLC appears to load LAT networking when it boots, but I haven't looked into it further yet) My immediate concern is that I'd like to make a full backup of the VMS 5.5 on the VLC, and also attempt restoring it to another drive. Not quite sure what the best way to go about this is, and I want to make sure I *DON'T* cause any damage to it in the process, so I'm looking for someone experienced in VMS who can give be a bit of advice/guidance. I've got some documentation that I've dug up on the web including a VMS administrators guide, and I also have the full VMS 4.0 documentation set (about 3-feet of paper!). I've seen reference to booting stand-along BACKUP - I do have the OPENvms install CD which appears to boot to a configuration which can do stand-alone BACKUP (at least it can restore from a backup image on the CD). Possible backup media that I have available: - A pair of Exabyte HH-CTS 8mm DAT tape drives - A SONY SDT-5010 4mm DAT tape drive - SCSI ZIP Drive - Another SCSI hard drive Are any of these feasable as a backup medium for VAX/VMS? (All three of these machines have SCSI ports) If so, any pointers as to how to configure the drives/media to be recognized and accessable to the stand-alone backup, and info on how to perform such a backup would be most appreciated. I'll probably pull the original drive and install OPENvms to another drive for a "test run" before I try and backup the original system. Related topic: Keyboard/Mouse emulator? So far most of what I've been doing has been via a serial console, however both the 4000 VLC and the VAXstation 3100 support keyboard and mouse - The VLC has a VGA video connector, and I've found a couple of LCD monitors supporting sync-on-green which work on it. I've also scrounged up an LK-201 keyboard which works, and I'm working on acquiring a DEC mouse ... I did figure out how to activate "dead rodent mode" which lets me do mouse movements through the keyboard, and DEC windows does come up and run! I found details of the keyboard and mouse protocol in the back of a Microvax manual, and have been toying with the idea of building a small embedded controller to take a PC (PS2) keyboard and mouse, and emulate the DEC equivalents to the VAX - would anyone else be interested in this? Regards, Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html