10 Jun
2006
10 Jun
'06
4:35 a.m.
On 6/7/06, Henry Ji <ying6926 at ureach.com> wrote:
I am new to old vax computer. Help is appreciated.
DEC rtvax 1000 620QY-A2 (1989 or 90?) From hard drive LED and LED display on the back the
booting is all fine.
It has two DB9 connectors on the back. I could not get matching monitor. Tried CGA
nothing come out. Use DB9 to DB15 connector cable nothing came out on modern VGA monitor.
But the monitor senses something and LED in front of VGA became green for a second and
became yellow again.
You will almost certainly not be able to use a PC monitor with this.
If you have a DE-9 connector as your output, I'd expect that the video
card in the VAX is looking for a monchrome monitor like the ones on
Sun3 workstations. My memory is that DEC color frame buffers tended
to have BNC connector or DA-15 connectors, not DE-9s. If you have a
monochrome buffer, the video signal will be nowhere close to what a
CGA or EGA or VGA monitor is looking for - it will be more like a
workstation "megapixel" monitor wants to see - much higher res than
EGA or VGA. A high-res modern monitor might be adaptable, but you
might need to invert the H sync and V sync, or combine H and V sync
into Composite Sync, etc.
It will be helpful if you open the machine and determine the model
number of the frame buffer cards in the VAX. That would allow folks
to give you specific suggestions on what monitors might be compatible.
One of those DE-9 connectors is probably the console serial port.
With the right combination of switches on the back, etc., and the
right cable (*not* a PC serial cable), you can hook up a dumb terminal
or PC running a comm program to watch the boot and probably to log in.
Many VAXen were used this way, without any frame buffer whatsoever.
You could at least determine the OS version, etc., and even to break
in and reset the SYSTEM password, etc., from a serial console.
Is this syn issue or analog/digital issue? Any way can
I open the chasis and figure out what kind of monitor I need?
Yes... you are looking for handle numbers on the cards like M8xxx that
will identify what options are in your machine. With module numbers,
you can determine what frame buffer is in there and what sort of
monitor it is expecting.
How do I prepare one hardware backup plan like floppy
and tape similar to floppy and CD on model PC?
Is there a TK50 drive in the machine? (identical cartridge size to a
DLT/SDLT) Also, if there's a floppy drive, it's most likely to be an
RX50 - single-sided dual drive. It's possible to write those from a
PC with a 5.25" drive.
When the OS is running, you can make a backup tape, or you can boot
from floppy the "Standalone Backup" package
and backup the disk
without worries that some program has some file open.
How do I restore?
Boot a Standalone Backup TK50 or RX50 set.
When these machines were in common usage, folks with software support
contracts would get new OS distributions on some form of tape (TK50,
9-track...) along with the latest Standalone Backup set for whatever
boot medium they'd registered with their contracts. I have seen SA
Backup on TU58 (small tapes), RX50, TK50, and RL02, depending on the
target machine.
-ethan