Any time I've seen "keyboard error 4", it's been produced by a terminal. In theory, the terminal could be faulty but so far I've always found that either the keyboard plugged in to the terminal is faulty or there is nothing plugged in to the terminal where the keyboard should be. Problems with a keyboard attached to a VAX 3100 tend to produce much more obscure error reports including a bunch of hex numbers during the power-on tests. If you don't have a graphics monitor and intend to use a terminal as the system console, plug the keyboard into the terminal, not into the VAX. The little switch at the back of the VAXstation ("S3"?) then needs to be set to the correct position (it may be already). If this is not done, you can still log on at the terminal once everything is working but you can't use it for console commands and it will not be possible to install the operating system from scratch. Once the switch is set correctly and the terminal cabled up correctly, you should see the output of power-on tests on the terminal when the VAXstation is switched on. I had a bit of hassle getting my membership number from my local Decus chapter (it's probably called something else now) which I had previously joined for free but once I got that, everything was straightforward. There is no handholding though - you type the relevant details into a form on the web and the licenses arrive in your email. Regards Peter.