Bringing the VAX 4000-300 back to life. - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

31 May 2007

I'm not sure about the back up but the -200 has a TK70 as does the -300.
So if I can prepare a bootable tape I should be able to boot the -300
...
 from it and maybe even get a system onto it.  
As to attaching one of the drives from  the -300 to the -200. I'll
investigate the types. However both systems are DSSI bus so to a first
approximation they should be OK. Sorry I'm a bit slow, its not that my
memory of stuff I knew 25years ago has gone its just the access time has
increased!!!

Rod 

-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy
Sent: 31 May 2007 16:24
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Bringing the VAX 4000-300 back to life.

At 9:48 AM +0100 5/31/07, Rod Smallwood wrote:
...
 Boot er no but as it seems as the system spent some or
all of its life 
in the insurance industry I'm not surprised the disks have been wiped.
Ok so next move. I'm going to try and make a VMS 6.2  bootable tape on 
the -200 as the -300  has a TK70. 
Can you run a backup from one disk to another.  If you can clone the
disk in your -200, then you can stick the new disk in your -300.

...
 The -300 also has a KZQSA (SCSI) controller and whilst
they are no good 
...
 with hard drives I think they work with CD ROM's I
also have a stand 
alone SCSI CD drive (Yamaha CRW4416SX) it has the really small SCSI 
plugs (inch and a bit long) on the back and the KZQSA has the really 
big ones. 
Cables for such connections used to be quite common, I should think it
wouldn't be that hard to find them in the UK.

The tricky questions are, does the CD-ROM drive support 512-byte blocks,
as I believe that will be a requirement for booting VMS. 
(Actually is this still a requirement on the latest versions of the
OS?)  Also, does the board require DEC drives to work?

A quick bit of googling doesn't answer the 512-byte question, but turnes
up the following manual.
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/english/product/computer/pdf/crw4416sx_e.pdf
I also see where it was apparently a popular drive for people wanting to
hang a CD-RW drive off of a Sun box.

Zane

-- 
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet)           | Classic Computer Collector |
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