15 Mar
2010
15 Mar
'10
6:20 p.m.
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.
But I want to get it working & looking at the old dead kit pile.
As far as I know you can't boot a traditional VAX from a disk of
<1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow narrow SCSI
disk, like an
80MB or something, and put most of it on the only Wide SCSI disk I
have, a 10GB...?
I was considering either attaching an external SCSI2 disk of 80-120GB,
or possibly trying to fit one internally if I can find an appropriate
convertor. I have a fast/wide 8GB or 10GB disk I could use for main
storage, but I don't think I can boot from it... Can I?
My VMS knowledge is /very/ rusty & I was only ever a sysadmin, not a
developer. I've never brought up a bare system or anything.
Also, I have several external SCSI CD-ROMs, including 2 Apple units. I
seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block size, same as Sun kit...
is that correct? How would one tell if a certain drive could do this
or not? Is it a DIP switch setting or just a SCSI bus command?
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
15 Mar
15 Mar
6:28 p.m.
On Mar 15, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
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.
As far as I know you can't boot a traditional VAX
from a disk of
<1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow narrow SCSI
disk, like an
80MB or something, and put most of it on the only Wide SCSI disk I
have, a 10GB...?
You can use a sub-1GB disk to boot from, yes. Booting is, as I
understand it, the only restriction.
Also, I have several external SCSI CD-ROMs, including
2 Apple units. I
seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block size, same as Sun kit...
is that correct? How would one tell if a certain drive could do this
or not? Is it a DIP switch setting or just a SCSI bus command?
You need a drive that supports 512-byte blocks.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
6:52 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 11:28 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Booting a VAXstation
On Mar 15, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both plentiful and cheap at local second-hand
stores. Since they won't work with a PC, they have 'no' value....
I have installed the core of VMS and booted from a small-ish drive, but you rapidly run
out of space. -- 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.
As far as I know you can't boot a traditional
VAX from a disk of
<1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow narrow SCSI
disk, like an
80MB or something, and put most of it on the only Wide SCSI disk I
have, a 10GB...?
You can use a sub-1GB disk to boot from, yes. Booting is, as I
understand it, the only restriction.
Also, I have several external SCSI CD-ROMs,
including 2 Apple units.
I
seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block
size, same as Sun kit...
is that correct? How would one tell if a certain drive could do this
or not? Is it a DIP switch setting or just a SCSI bus command?
You need a drive that supports 512-byte blocks.
-Dave
7:07 p.m.
Ian King wrote:
I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both plentiful
and cheap at local second-hand stores. Since they won't work with a PC, they have
'no' value....
There are many many PC-compatible CD-ROMs that also talk 512-byte
sectors. There might be some in your/his pile already.
I have installed the core of VMS and booted from a
small-ish drive, but you rapidly run out of space. -- Ian
Is it possible to boot VMS in a small partition in the beginning of a
disk and have another partition elsewhere? I've never had cause to try
this, since I have a giant pile of 500-1000MB disks lying around.
Peace... Sridhar
7:15 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Sridhar Ayengar
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 12:08 PM
To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Booting a VAXstation
Ian King wrote:
Sure, although making sure you have all the logicals set right in the startup scripts can
be tricky. -- Ian
I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both
plentiful and cheap at
local second-hand stores. Since they won't work with a
PC, they have
'no' value....
There are many many PC-compatible CD-ROMs that also talk 512-byte
sectors. There might be some in your/his pile already.
I have installed the core of VMS and booted from
a small-ish drive,
but you rapidly run out of space. -- Ian
Is it possible to boot VMS in a small partition in the beginning of a
disk and have another partition elsewhere? I've never had cause to try
this, since I have a giant pile of 500-1000MB disks lying around.
Peace... Sridhar 
16 Mar
16 Mar
3:18 a.m.
On 3/15/10 12:07 PM, "Sridhar Ayengar" <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
Ian King wrote:
Toshiba SCSI cd-roms have jumpers that can be cut to set it to 512 byte
blocks, and plextor SCSI cd-rom drives have a jumper for doing so.
I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both
plentiful and cheap at local
second-hand stores. Since they won't work with a PC, they have 'no'
value....
There are many many PC-compatible CD-ROMs that also talk 512-byte
sectors. There might be some in your/his pile already.
I have installed the core of VMS and booted from
a small-ish drive, but you
rapidly run out of space. -- Ian
Is it possible to boot VMS in a small partition in the beginning of a
disk and have another partition elsewhere? I've never had cause to try
this, since I have a giant pile of 500-1000MB disks lying around.
Peace... Sridhar
5:33 a.m.
A lot of old NEC drives have this. I picked one up at a Goodwill for $7 -- Ian
________________________________________
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of
Geoffrey Reed [geoffr at zipcon.net]
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 8:18 PM
To: cctalk
Subject: Re: Booting a VAXstation
On 3/15/10 12:07 PM, "Sridhar Ayengar" <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
Ian King wrote:
Toshiba SCSI cd-roms have jumpers that can be cut to set it to 512 byte
blocks, and plextor SCSI cd-rom drives have a jumper for doing so.
I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both
plentiful and cheap at local
second-hand stores. Since they won't work with a PC, they have 'no'
value....
There are many many PC-compatible CD-ROMs that also talk 512-byte
sectors. There might be some in your/his pile already.
I have installed the core of VMS and booted from
a small-ish drive, but you
rapidly run out of space. -- Ian
Is it possible to boot VMS in a small partition in the beginning of a
disk and have another partition elsewhere? I've never had cause to try
this, since I have a giant pile of 500-1000MB disks lying around.
Peace... Sridhar
7:57 a.m.
On 3/15/10 10:33 PM, "Ian King" <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote:
A lot of old NEC drives have this. I picked one up at
a Goodwill for $7 --
Ian
________________________________________
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf
Of Geoffrey Reed [geoffr at zipcon.net]
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 8:18 PM
To: cctalk
Subject: Re: Booting a VAXstation
My favorite is the high speed SCSI plextors :) but the one I have is a
burner also.
1:19 p.m.
Geoffrey Reed wrote:
And so do many Pioneer drives, and a lot of Sony drives do the right
thing when faced with the SCSI command.
Peace... Sridhar
Ian King
wrote:
Toshiba SCSI cd-roms have jumpers that can be cut to set it to 512 byte
blocks, and plextor SCSI cd-rom drives have a jumper for doing so. I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both
plentiful and cheap at local
second-hand stores. Since they won't work with a PC, they have 'no'
value....
There are many many PC-compatible CD-ROMs that also talk 512-byte
sectors. There might be some in your/his pile already. 
2:50 p.m.
New subject: Yamaha V9958?
Does anyone know where you can order one of these (AKA MSX-Video?). Barring that, its
earlier cousin the 9938 would be good also.
12:47 p.m.
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote:
When you say "a small-ish drive", what counts as "small" for VMS? Or
rather, what sort of drive should I be looking for to /not/ have to
muck around when installing it?
My hope is to get the machine booting into DECwindows. I don't plan to
use it as a server, more as sort of glorified X-terminal if anything.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
-----Original
Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 11:28 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Booting a VAXstation
On Mar 15, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both plentiful and cheap at local second-hand
stores. ?Since they won't work with a PC, they have 'no' value....
I have installed the core of VMS and booted from a small-ish drive, but you rapidly run
out of space. ?-- 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.
As far as I know you can't boot a traditional
VAX from a disk of
<1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow narrow SCSI
disk, like an
80MB or something, and put most of it on the only Wide SCSI disk I
have, a 10GB...?
? ?You can use a sub-1GB disk to boot from, yes. ?Booting is, as I
understand it, the only restriction.
Also, I have several external SCSI CD-ROMs,
including 2 Apple units.
I
seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block
size, same as Sun kit...
is that correct? How would one tell if a certain drive could do this
or not? Is it a DIP switch setting or just a SCSI bus command?
? ?You need a drive that supports 512-byte blocks.
? ? ? ? ? -Dave
10:28 p.m.
When you say "a small-ish drive", what
counts as "small" for
VMS? Or rather, what sort of drive should I be looking for to
/not/ have to muck around when installing it?
My hope is to get the machine booting into DECwindows. I
don't plan to use it as a server, more as sort of glorified
X-terminal if anything.
I used to have VMS (V5.5, V6) + DECnet-Plus on an RD54 (157MB).
I would say that 300MB or so is comfortable for VMS + DECW +
a bunch of layered products. You can always hang an additional
disk (> 1GB) on there for data.
Antonio
1:03 p.m.
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
Yes, but how do I *tell*, that's the question!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
On Mar 15, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
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.
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.
As far as I
know you can't boot a traditional VAX from a disk of
<1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow narrow SCSI
disk, like an
80MB or something, and put most of it on the only Wide SCSI disk I
have, a 10GB...?
?You can use a sub-1GB disk to boot from, yes. ?Booting is, as I understand
it, the only restriction.
Also, I have several external SCSI CD-ROMs,
including 2 Apple units. I
seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block size, same as Sun kit...
is that correct? How would one tell if a certain drive could do this
or not? Is it a DIP switch setting or just a SCSI bus command?
?You need a drive that supports 512-byte blocks.
3:31 p.m.
On Mar 16, 2010, at 9:03 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
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
"standard" SCSI connectors were standardized.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
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.
4 p.m.
Dave McGuire wrote:
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 "standard"
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
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.
5:29 p.m.
On Mar 16, 2010, at 12:00 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
It's 8-bit 10MHz. :) Those machines were designed before the
"standard"
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?
That's the one.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
> 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.
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
10:32 p.m.
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.
The VS3100s all take 50-pin SCSI-1 disks. The internal cabling depends
on the exact model but all three styles of VS3100 use 50-pin disks.
You can get 68-pin SCSI-2 disks to work with an adapter (usually).
Antonio
15 Mar
15 Mar
8:44 p.m.
cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org wrote:
As far as I know you can't boot a traditional VAX
from a disk
of <1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow
narrow SCSI disk, like an 80MB or something, and put most of
it on the only Wide SCSI disk I have, a 10GB...?
I guess that a VS 3100-38 will happily talk to a wide disk
if you use one of those "50-pin to whatever" converters:
my VS 4K will talk to various 9GB IBM drives with 68-pin
connectors (SCSI-2) and I have had it talk to drives
with SCA connectors too.
If you can find a console ROM dated later than (iirc) April 1992
then you can forget about the ~1GB issue. Obviously if you can
find such a ROM, I'm probably not the only one who would be interested
in an image of it :-)
I was considering either attaching an external SCSI2
disk of
80-120GB, or possibly trying to fit one internally if I can
find an appropriate convertor. I have a fast/wide 8GB or 10GB
disk I could use for main storage, but I don't think I can
boot from it... Can I?
Assuming the old style ROM, you'll have issues. You can do a bunch
of fiddling but it's not easy and it will come back and bite you.
You have to format the drive for ODS-2 and allocate all the space
beyond the 1GB boundary to a disk image file (all this done, presumably
on another machine). Then install OpenVMS and use LDDRIVER to
access the rest of the disk as a logical device (LDA0:).
My VMS knowledge is /very/ rusty & I was only ever
a
sysadmin, not a developer. I've never brought up a bare
system or anything.
If you stick to a system disk < ~1.073GB (or find a newer ROM)
you'll have no problems.
Also, I have several external SCSI CD-ROMs, including
2 Apple
units. I seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block size,
same as Sun kit... is that correct? How would one tell if a
certain drive could do this or not? Is it a DIP switch
setting or just a SCSI bus command?
VAXen (and Sun boxes) want 512-byte sectors (or, rather, something
that emulates 512-byte sectors). If it boots a bootable OpenVMS
CD then it's comaptible :-)
Antonio
16 Mar
16 Mar
12:56 p.m.
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 8:44 PM, <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote:
Sounds a bit too much for a 1st-time installer!
Well, what size of disk would I want? I may have some 500MB units
knocking around, possibly bigger. The problem now is finding ones
/small/ enough, not big enough!
Oh dear. That's the best way to tell?
Is there any incantation I can type at the firmware monitor to tell me
if it "sees" a device as a CD-ROM? Or is being seen as a CD no
guarantee?
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org wrote:
I think that's unlikely, unfortunately. Part of the reason I want to
brush up my meagre VMS skills is 'cos I am out of work at the moment,
and remarkably, I am seeing a few tech support positions out there
that want VMS experience.
But practically, what this means is: No Money. Ergo, I can't afford to
buy any new bits. The reason I got this machine was its extreme
cheapness! (Under a pound - for Colonial types, that's about a buck
sixty.)
As far as I know you can't boot a traditional
VAX from a disk
of <1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow
narrow SCSI disk, like an 80MB or something, and put most of
it on the only Wide SCSI disk I have, a 10GB...?
I guess that a VS 3100-38 will happily talk to a wide disk
if you use one of those "50-pin to whatever" converters:
my VS 4K will talk to various 9GB IBM drives with 68-pin
connectors (SCSI-2) and I have had it talk to drives
with SCA connectors too.
If you can find a console ROM dated later than (iirc) April 1992
then you can forget about the ~1GB issue. Obviously if you can
find such a ROM, I'm probably not the only one who would be interested
in an image of it :-) I was
considering either attaching an external SCSI2 disk of
80-120GB, or possibly trying to fit one internally if I can
find an appropriate convertor. I have a fast/wide 8GB or 10GB
disk I could use for main storage, but I don't think I can
boot from it... Can I?
Assuming the old style ROM, you'll have issues. You can do a bunch
of fiddling but it's not easy and it will come back and bite you.
You have to format the drive for ODS-2 and allocate all the space
beyond the 1GB boundary to a disk image file (all this done, presumably
on another machine). Then install OpenVMS and use LDDRIVER to
access the rest of the disk as a logical device (LDA0:). My VMS
knowledge is /very/ rusty & I was only ever a
sysadmin, not a developer. I've never brought up a bare
system or anything.
If you stick to a system disk < ~1.073GB (or find a newer ROM)
you'll have no problems. Also, I have
several external SCSI CD-ROMs, including 2 Apple
units. I seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block size,
same as Sun kit... is that correct? How would one tell if a
certain drive could do this or not? Is it a DIP switch
setting or just a SCSI bus command?
VAXen (and Sun boxes) want 512-byte sectors (or, rather, something
that emulates 512-byte sectors). If it boots a bootable OpenVMS
CD then it's comaptible :-) 
5:54 p.m.
Liam,
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:56:32PM +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
I think that's unlikely, unfortunately. Part of
the reason I want to brush
up my meagre VMS skills is 'cos I am out of work at the moment, and
remarkably, I am seeing a few tech support positions out there that want
VMS experience.
If your main goal is brushing up you VMS skills have you considered running
VMS under an emulator on your PC? There's a howto on installing/running VMS
under SIMH at:
http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html
Also, I'm not familiar with the details but I think it's possible to install
VMS under SIMH and set it up to act as a boot server where you could use it
to boot your VAXStation over the network.
--
Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!
10:35 p.m.
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 5:54 PM, Kevin Monceaux <Kevin at rawfeddogs.net> wrote:
Liam,
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:56:32PM +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
That's a good point - thanks for the idea.
I had thought that one way to go might be to get SIMH running and
net-boot the VAXstation off that, if I couldn't find a suitable
CD-ROM. But meantime, this might be my best bet for now.
So after a few hours' fiddling, I now have OpenVMS 7.3 installed on a
SIMH VAX under Ubuntu 9.10 (64-bit)! This has been rather entertaining
The snag is, although I have an ancient hobbyist CD, I don't have a
licence & the UK user group doesn't seem to do free memberships. I've
emailed their VMS chap to ask how I might proceed...
Many thanks for the reminder! I do at least feel that I am on the way
now, but it's not the same as the real thing, is it? :?)
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
I think that's unlikely, unfortunately. Part
of the reason I want to brush
up my meagre VMS skills is 'cos I am out of work at the moment, and
remarkably, I am seeing a few tech support positions out there that want
VMS experience.
If your main goal is brushing up you VMS skills have you considered running
VMS under an emulator on your PC? ?There's a howto on installing/running VMS
under SIMH at:
http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html
Also, I'm not familiar with the details but I think it's possible to install
VMS under SIMH and set it up to act as a boot server where you could use it
to boot your VAXStation over the network.
--
Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!! 
11:31 p.m.
From: Liam Proven
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 3:35 PM
So after a few hours' fiddling, I now have OpenVMS
7.3 installed on a
SIMH VAX under Ubuntu 9.10 (64-bit)! This has been rather entertaining
The snag is, although I have an ancient hobbyist CD, I
don't have a
licence & the UK user group doesn't seem to do free memberships. I've
emailed their VMS chap to ask how I might proceed...
Membership in the US chapter is free even for the international set. Go to
http://www.decuserve.org for details.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
11:58 p.m.
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 11:31 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at vulcan.com> wrote:
From: Liam Proven
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 3:35 PM
Wonderful! Many thanks.
The registration process alone was nostalgic!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
So after a few hours' fiddling, I now have
OpenVMS 7.3 installed on a
SIMH VAX under Ubuntu 9.10 (64-bit)! This has been rather entertaining
The snag is, although I have an ancient hobbyist
CD, I don't have a
licence & the UK user group doesn't seem to do free memberships. I've
emailed their VMS chap to ask how I might proceed...
Membership in the US chapter is free even for the international set. ?Go to
http://www.decuserve.org for details.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
17 Mar
17 Mar
1:14 p.m.
Liam,
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:35:05PM +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
Many thanks for the reminder! I do at least feel that
I am on the way now,
but it's not the same as the real thing, is it? :?)
You're welcome. You're right, it's definitely not the same as the real
thing. I have a VAXStation and a MicroVAX at home and to me they're not
even quite the same as the "real" thing. My first taste of VMS was on a VAX
11/750.
--
Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!
6:08 p.m.
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Kevin Monceaux <Kevin at rawfeddogs.net> wrote:
Liam,
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:35:05PM +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
A pair of 11/780s here, in a cluster, which was the main computing
resource of Royal Holloway & Bedford New College, University of
London, in 1985-1988.
Let alone the computer, the *monitor* on my main PC probably has more
processing power now. I'm sure any modern printer does. Half a MIPS
per node. The smallest embedded ARM could surely stomp all over that
now, I guess...
I am not the devoted fan of DEC keyboards of many, though. They're
wonderful and far better than almost any modern devices, but I still
prefer an IBM Model M, such as the one I'm typing on right now. :?)
It's probably All Wrong to drive even a simulated VAX with an IBM
keyboard, mind you...
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508
Many thanks for the reminder! I do at least feel
that I am on the way now,
but it's not the same as the real thing, is it? :?)
You're welcome. ?You're right, it's definitely not the same as the real
thing. ?I have a VAXStation and a MicroVAX at home and to me they're not
even quite the same as the "real" thing. ?My first taste of VMS was on a VAX
11/750.
16 Mar
16 Mar
10:30 p.m.
VAXen (and Sun
boxes) want 512-byte sectors (or, rather, something
that emulates 512-byte sectors). If it boots a bootable OpenVMS CD
then it's comaptible :-)
Oh dear. That's the best way to tell?
Is there any incantation I can type at the firmware monitor
to tell me if it "sees" a device as a CD-ROM? Or is being
seen as a CD no guarantee?
10:41 p.m.
On Mar 16, 2010, at 6:30 PM, <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote:
SHOW DEVICE will tell you what it sees on the bus, but that's
probably just whatever shows up in the SCSI ID. It's probably
not until you try to boot that an incompatibility would show up.
Well the device inquiry SCSI command doesn't involve a block
number, so yes, this would be correct. The limitation is the number
of bits in the SCSI CDB that are used to represent logical block
numbers.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
VAXen (and Sun boxes) want 512-byte sectors (or,
rather, something
that emulates 512-byte sectors). If it boots a bootable OpenVMS CD
then it's comaptible :-)
Oh dear. That's the best way to tell?
Is there any incantation I can type at the firmware monitor
to tell me if it "sees" a device as a CD-ROM? Or is being
seen as a CD no guarantee?
5404
days inactive
5406
days old
27 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
arcarlini＠iee.org -
geoffr＠zipcon.net -
IanK＠vulcan.com -
Kevin＠RawFedDogs.net -
lproven＠gmail.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
oltmansg＠bellsouth.net -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
RichA＠vulcan.com