Jerome Fine replies: The "lotta stuff" was there only for a very short demonstration to show it could be done. At the time, the "lotta" stuff" was worth far more in a BA123 with triple the number of boards, although those same Hitachi hard drives were used there as well. Probably the first step is to add 22 bit address support to the backplane. That requires a steady hand with a soldering iron and probably is best done with old lead solder since the added wires will be attached to solder points that already have lead solder. In any case, almost no additional solder is needed. About the best wire to use is wire-wrap since it is thin, but very sturdy. Keep all the insulation except for the 6 mid points where the wire must be soldered to the existing backplane. 4 wires with 8 connections each are all that is required. If you require help locating the solder points, I can look at one of the VT103 backplanes that have been modified. Fortunately, DEC never attempted to use a PDP-11/03, so the 4 address lines at not attached to anything else - like power. And having mentioned power, it is possible to solder wires to the backplane 5V and 12V that can then be used to power a hard disk drive. Any 3.5" SCSI hard drive can be supported, but the less power needed the better. The VT103 power supply has a maximum draw on the 5V of just 16 Amps, so be careful. Back when all of that work was first being done, an ST412 (actually an old RD51) 5 1/4" hard disk drive was available and could be just barely squeezed under the tube. However, an RQDX1,2 was out of the question since they require 6 Amps for the 5V. An RQDX3 is probably OK when used with a quad CPU like the M8189 or the M8190 (since there are no boot ROMs on any RQDXn controller). I guess that you could type in a boot program (if you don't do it too often) using hardware ODT - it takes about 5 minutes. Either a dual or a quad KDJ11 can be used. Almost EVERY quad KDJ11 is really the same as a PDP-11/83 except for the 18 MHz crystal. And since you can't use PMI memory without further modification of the first 2 slots to add ABCD like the first 3 slots on a BA23, it seems that you are stuck with an ordinary PDP-11/73. Most VT103 systems came with a paddle card that was intended to be used with a DLV11-J and a dual PDP-11 Qbus card. The paddle card connected the terminal and keyboard to the 4th channel on the DLV11-J that was then strapped as consol and the normal 25 pin serial connector on the back could then be connected to a second serial channel on the DLV11-J (and probably sent to a serial line printer). As for the SCSI host adapter, if it has boot ROMs (most third party DEC MSCP SCSI host adapters do), then you can easily use a dual M8192 with a DLV11-J as the serial interface. Add memory and you are in business - after you load the SCSI hard drive with files. In most cases, an RX23 (3 1/2" HD floppy) can be attached to the SCSI host adapter which can then be used to transfer small file. In addition, if you can find an Iomega SCSI insider, they support 100 MB replaceable media. Since both replaceable media drives can also be attached to a PC running E11, that can serve as your source for files. Of course, E11 will also allow your SCSI hard drives, but Windows is extremely difficult to convince (I have done it - ask if you want the details) that there is a SCSI hard drive that has an RT-11 file structure. And finally, ask Zane about what you need to connect a CDROM drive to your SCSI host adapter on the PDP-11. On the PC side, I think that E11 will recognize a DVD drive with a CD and it is possible to burn a CD on the PC with an RT-11 file structure, although I will have to recall the details of how the actual burn was done from the file of the CD image. Can I answer any other questions? Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.