Well, I fired up my recently-acquired uVAX II/RC up this afternoon, and whaddaya know... it boots! Thanks to the reams of information which I have dutifully stored away, I was able to get the system passwords reset, and I have VMS V5.4 signed on. Now I need that DECUS Hobbyist license. This machine originally booted into some kind of communications software.. but it went by too fast to read much more than TCP/IP and (I think) Excelan, or EXlan, or something.... This Machine has 1 RD53, 1 TK50(?) and a Cipher Data flatbed 9trk tape drive. (no floppy) The cartridge drive is not happy.. it will load the tape, but the red load light stays on, and VMS reports "device not found", and SHOW DEV shows it as unmounted. I would *really* like to discover how to mount/access the Cipher drive.. I have VMS 4.3 manuals, but I haven't found the right info yet on where to look for the device drivers and other procedures. The Cipher came installed with this machine, so I'm assuming at some point someone was using it... maybe. ;} ANYWAY: Thanks to Allison and Megan for various bits of wisdom that I have vicariously snagged and now put to good use. Now to wedge this thing into the rest of the gear in the Computing Centre (AKA Rapidly Shrinking Living Room). Sigh. Why did it have to be Minicomputers??? Why couldn't it have been Stamps?? Bottlecaps?? Toothpicks from Around the World????? Cheers John