>> show device

me console. the problem Hi Bryan, This looks pretty good. There are no double question marks which would indicate possibly more serious failures. ? CLK suggests the time of year clock is not set because the battery is bad. (I suggest removing the battery before it leaks.) ? DZ usually means that one of the serial ports could not be tested (the one you have the console terminal connected to). The other results are all good. What happens when you give it a BOOT command? Regards, Peter Coghlan.

and a Hi Bryan, Now that you mention it, your TEST 50 output (quoted below for reference) is not showing any SCSI controllers. There ought to be either one or two of them, depending on the model. As far as I recall, some of the 3100s have a the floppy connected to a SCSI controller but others have a non-SCSI floppy controller like the one in the VAX 2000 which I think shows up as DUA2 instead of DKAsomething. Have a look at the where the SCSI connectors go - it might be to a daughter board in the top corner. There may be one or two 40 pin NCR5380 SCSI controller chips on it. Check that this board is correctly connected to the system board - it probably sits directly into a couple of connectors on it. If there is a cable instead, make sure it is plugged in properly. If you are good with a multimeter, check that it is getting power. I hate to say it but I have a Microvax 3100 (rather than a VAXStation 3100) which has failed in a similar manner - both SCSI controllers are not visible. They are on the system board though, not on a daughter board. I doubt both failed independently - probably some support circuitry they have in common. If you can't get the disks working, it should still be possible to boot the operating system of your choice over the network if you have a suitable boot host (which might not have to run the same os) or emulator. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

I confirmed that there is a NCR5380 chip on the daughterboard and that everything was connected. Still no joy. The one thing I'm wondering is this. If you look at the attached picture below from http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/vax/vs3khw.html, you will see there is a 40-ish pin EPROM (?) in the bottom row of chips third from the left. Mine just has an empty socket there. Is it possible this is causing the problem?

On Thu, 2016-02-18 11:08:28 -0500, Bryan C. Everly <bryan at bceassociates.com> wrote: I'll have a look at my machines once I'm back home (one to three hours.) If I have a machine with a SCSI daughterboard like you have, I can probably give the EPROM to a friend for reading it out.

On Feb 20, 2016, at 7:29 AM, Jan-Benedict Glaw <jbglaw at lug-owl.de> wrote: Actually, there were even more 3100 machines than I thought. But none of them had a board like that one mentioned above. So it seems I cannot help you. MfG, JBG -- Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de +49-172-7608481 Signature of: GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? the second :

Richard Thanks for the note. I think I might have a unique beast on my hands. The controller board has a single SCSI connector and an MFM connector for my floppy drive. There is an empty socket on the board (bottom row third from left if you are standing above the machine with the front facing you) and every other photo of any 3100 SCSI board shows a chip with a sticker on it (EPROM?) in that socket.

Also I found a SCSI only controller on eBay for $30 that did have the eprom in it so I picked it up. I will try it and see if I can at least see the SCSI bus and drive. If that works then what do you think my odds are of being able to move the eprom over to the SCSI/MFM board and getting my floppy working?

On Feb 20, 2016, at 7:12 PM, Richard Loken <rlloken at telus.net> wrote: I vote against moving the eprom to your controller, I expect they are not the same. If you can get the SCSI controller working then pretend you don't have a floppy drive, it would be more useful to install a CDrom drive, I have seen VAX/VMS distros on cds and on TK50 tapes but never had call to want a floppy drive. I think the 3100 will be very particular about the model of CD drive that you attach. So I looked in mine and sent you a couple pictures of the SCSI controller which does not have a floppy controller on it. I have a couple manuals for the VS3100 but I cannot find them at the moments. Since I had the box open, I removed the NiCd battery pack which is not leaking but just might do that some day. I am interested in knowing what is gained by having an floppy drive since most VAXstations do not seem to have one. I have worked mostly with large VAXen: the VAX 8600, 8650, 8820, 4000 model 300, and 4000 model 505A as well as two little VAXstations: the 2000 and the 3100 and none of them had a floppy drive. -- Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!" ** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black

On Feb 22, 2016, at 12:24 AM, Richard Loken <rlloken at telus.net> wrote: I can see why you want one but I wonder what motivated Digital to decide whether to install a floppy or not. I am quite certain that they had no motive to help us install OpenBSD. -- Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!" ** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black

Peter, I confirmed that there is a NCR5380 chip on the daughterboard and that everything was connected. Still no joy. The one thing I'm wondering is this. If you look at the attached picture below from http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/vax/vs3khw.html, you will see there is a 40-ish pin EPROM (?) in the bottom row of chips third from the left. Mine just has an empty socket there. Is it possible this is causing the problem?