John, <Yes, the terminal is set up exactly the way the MicroVAX 3100 manual said t <set it up, 9600, 8-n-1, I believe.. I can hear the disk spin up. I can <hammer away on the keyboard all I want and the terminal never reads more <than that gibberish... Your pinout (connections) are munged. I'll bet you used pin1 from the terminal(protective ground) instead of pin7 (signal) ground. Allison