Vax Station 3100

From: "Neil Cherry" <ncherry(a)home.net>

> According to message I found during a web search, I may have purchased a > lemon. It states that the machine won't boot without a keyboard and mouse. > Well I don't have any. I'll have to hunt them down and then load *BSD.

You may have read about the insidious mouse port dependency on these machines :) These systems must have either a mouse or a "mouse port terminator" installed on them to boot NetBSD (and others, perhaps) from the graphics console. I think more information on them can be found on the NetBSD/pmax Web site, or you could also probably look it up by typing something like "DECstation 3100 mouse terminator" into your favorite search engine. I'm not sure if its a problem if you boot the system off a serial console (which, incidentially, you can do; just hook up a terminal to the port with the printer icon next to it and flip the little DIP switch S3 on the back of the system - then you don't even need a mouse, keyboard, or monitor). Unfortunately, unless you have a MMJ terminal (VT3/400 series) you'll need to either buy or build a converter to break out MMJ to something more useful. The only problem is that (out here, at least), MMJ plugs are just about impossible to find and the converters (MMJ->DB25) cost $25 from DEC. Ouch!