16 Mar
2010
16 Mar
'10
5:51 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Sridhar Ayengar
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 9:00 AM
To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Booting a VAXstation
Dave McGuire wrote:
"standard"
That's what mine are. As Sridhar and others have said, that rear connector takes a
unique DEC cable. Fortunately, because 3100s were very common, so is the cable. ISTR the
only configuration is [weird 68-pin] <--> [Centronics-style 50-pin].
Internally, they are a standard 50-pin IDC to the back of a drive. One problem you may
have, though, is that you may be missing the 'sled' that holds the drive in place.
This isn't a showstopper, but it does mean you have to ensure that the drive (just
sitting in the case) can't short out itself or anything else. I have a machine like
that, and I just don't move it. :-)
ISTR installing VAX/VMS 7.2 on a 209MB drive. I wasn't trying to do DECwindows,
though. -- Ian
>>> I have a VAXstation 3100 model 38 I
bought on eBay for the
princely
>>> sum of ?0.99. Sadly it came without
disks and I have no wide-SCSI
>>> disks of <1GB.
>>
>> That machine doesn't have wide SCSI. It's 8-bit ("narrow")
10MHz.
>
> I don't wish to question authority, as it were, but the internal
> cables are 104 pin (If I'm counting them correctly) and the external
> SCSI port on the back is 72-pin mini-D. That *looks* like wide SCSI
to
> me! If it's not, then what kind of
cabling is it? The ordinary
> narrow-SCSI stuff I knew from back in the '80s and '90s was 50-way
> ribbon cables with 50-pin IDC connectors internally and either 50-
pin
Centronics or D25 connectors externally.
It's 8-bit 10MHz. :) Those machines were designed before the SCSI connectors were standardized.
These are the machines with that weird HONDA68F connector on the
backplate, right? But the internal ribbon cables should be
[weird_ribbon_connector]->50-pin IDC, right?
Peace... Sridhar