So what OS will run on a vaxstation 3100?

On Sat, 2002-06-22 at 07:35, Doc wrote: They had linux up on it in single user mode at least 18 months ago now, i'm sure they've progressed further. Get on the mailing list if you're interested... Alex -- Live like you will never die, love like you've never been hurt, dance like no-one is watching.

On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Peter C. Wallace wrote: and... I should have guessed. You always have everything DEC.... Did you get a total for shipping those cables yet? Doc

On Sun, 23 Jun 2002, Fred deBros wrote: In the experimentation I and my friends have done, that's an unqualified "maybe." It depends a lot on the relative drive geometries. If the geometry matches, you should be good to go. I think it also depends on whether you dd at the filesystem level or the raw device level. It works wonderfully on floppy disks and on CD-ROMs, and apparently works fitfully on hard drives. Doc

Peter C. Wallace said: I (more or less) works fine on I386 with linux, too, as long as your drives are the same geometry. If not, the first-stage loader gets real confused and you can't boot... though this can be fixed easily if you put the target drive in a working system and reinstall the bootloader (say, lilo) on it. - Dan Wright (dtwright(a)uiuc.edu) (http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright) -] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [- ``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.'' Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Roger Merchberger wrote: OK, OK, it was hyperbole.... In fact the VS3100 I just bought is supposed to be running Ultrix. It _is_ very hard to find. Especially with enough PAKs to make it useful. Doc

On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, Geoff Reed wrote: I run NetBSD on all of mine - works wonderfully! -- -Linc Fessenden In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded - Yeah right...

Did they run that with a classic machine like a DEC PDP-? The accelerator at Purdue University used to have a PDP-9 (I think) attached to it... --tom At 09:44 AM 6/22/02 -0400, you wrote:

On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Merle K. Peirce wrote: Mmmmm, biscuit!! Doc

On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Clint Wolff (VAX collector) wrote: <Doc hangs his head in shame> Sorry. I hate it when anybody else does that. Digital DEC Vax VaxStation 4000 & 20" monitor was a 4000/90 w/ 80MB, VRT19-HA and a QIC tape drive. Went for $501 Ouch. Doc

On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Zane H. Healy wrote: For $500 I could have bought my 500au twice. And to tell the truth, though that VRT19 is nice, for _just_ what shipping it would cost, I can get a much better, newer compatible display. I think it comes down to bragging rights, in the end.... Doc

While looking around for "stuff" at the thrift stores, I ran into a couple of items that may interest someone. One was an Appllo 700-series pizza-box-thick box with no keyboard or monitor, but obviously an ethernet port and other conventional hookups. The other was a Mac ColorClassic. I mention these only because someone has mentioned them before. There was no price on the Mac, but the Apollo box was $5. If anybody wants this stuff badly enough to pay freight (via USPS) I'll try to get it and ship it to you for cost. Dick

I just picked up a PC at the local thrift store. It has a board that's a half-height ISA card with the designation SCB5 Junior. It's got a mini-din at the backpanel, though it's definitely not the keyed sort used by a mouse or keyboard. I've got to admit, I'm puzzled. The PC, BTW, was a 150 MHz Packard Bell "Platinum" with a 5 GB WD drive and a 56x CDROM, along with the "usual" sound and modem boards and the usual built-ins. It had no keyboard or mouse, and therefore cost only $1.99. I've already established that the drives work, and the machine, which has 48MB of 72-pin DRAM, also seems to run without a hitch. Unfortunately, the OS will have to be reinstalled, since it was passworded. I snagged a similar one last week, with a 1.6GB HDD and an 8x CDROM, but it has a TV card that I'd like to make work if it's possible. Anybody have any experience with this Packard Bell stuff? Dick

On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Richard Erlacher wrote: Do you mean half-height? or half length? Is there any circuitry or chips on the board? That might help to narrow the choices bus mouse scanner (particularly hand scanner) graphics tablet camera sound . . . WHICH OS? NT has real passwords, but is probably crackable. 9x passwords are NOT even intended to keep you out, and you can create a new "login" without having to crack the old one. What kind of partition does it have?

I've looked at what's on the HDD using DOS, and it's Win95, of which I have lots of copies already. I think I'll just sap the partition and start over. Yes, it's possible it's a bus mouse board, but the connector isn't the keyed sort that I've seen on mouse adapter boards in the past. does that seem likely to you? An Apple serial cable (from a Mac) plugs in just fine. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tothwolf" &lt;tothwolf(a)concentric.net&gt; To: &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2002 8:06 PM Subject: Re: [OT] Waddizzit??

Being a little hard on Yugo there, aren't we :)? The thing I remember most about Packard Bell was that a friend of my wife's bought one (without asking my advice), needed some help, and it had tamper resistant seals over the edges that asserted a voided warranty if the case was opened. My thoughts were along the lines of "how dare they?"

Sounds like what was sometimes refered to as a PS/2 power supply. I don't know who started calling them that. I've never seen a PS/2 with a power supply that looked anything like what you describe. Don't most powers supplies look like that now? Unless you really like the thing..... I'd stripp it, recycle the steel and find a real PS/2 or something, anything, better than a PB. Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA Ethan Dicks wrote:

But this is a 486 class PB with an 83mhz upgrade...... still 486 class. A PS/2 P90 is superior to this PB. Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA jpero(a)sympatico.ca wrote:

It's true, they are likely to be junk, as are Compaq, Dell, and Gateway products, mostly made here in the U.S. However, I've had one running quite solidly for about 5 years. I paid $10 for it at a thrift store back then, when a 133 MHz Pentium was still worth bending over and picking up, but then, times have changed. My son and my eldest (sorta) stepdaughter both have PB "Force 999" boxes that have never given cause to cuss 'em. Those are like the 5-year-old 2nd-hand (I bought 'em all at the same time for $30). Each one has had 32 MB since I got 'em, and, as I said, they've lasted fairly well, producing homework, etc, for the whole time without problems. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Hildebrand" &lt;ghldbrd(a)ccp.comTo: &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.orgSent: Saturday, June 22, 2002 8:18 PM Subject: Re: [OT] Waddizzit?? mini-din at or and a I've of will it any It's too bad Detroit can't produce better cars than those Yugos. <sigh> time was, when you could actually get a good made-in-USA product.

I have a Packard Bell Platinum that has a TV card in it. It's a P166. I might probably have the drivers for the TV card, as I purchased the machine NEW (gasp!) back in 1995 or 1996 or so. It still runs - my wife uses it to surf the net and E-mail. As for the TV card, you need to run a cable from the connector on the back of the card to the similar connector on the video card. - Bob -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-admin(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Richard Erlacher Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2002 8:55 PM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: [OT] Waddizzit?? I just picked up a PC at the local thrift store. It has a board that's a half-height ISA card with the designation SCB5 Junior. It's got a mini-din at the backpanel, though it's definitely not the keyed sort used by a mouse or keyboard. I've got to admit, I'm puzzled. The PC, BTW, was a 150 MHz Packard Bell "Platinum" with a 5 GB WD drive and a 56x CDROM, along with the "usual" sound and modem boards and the usual built-ins. It had no keyboard or mouse, and therefore cost only $1.99. I've already established that the drives work, and the machine, which has 48MB of 72-pin DRAM, also seems to run without a hitch. Unfortunately, the OS will have to be reinstalled, since it was passworded. I snagged a similar one last week, with a 1.6GB HDD and an 8x CDROM, but it has a TV card that I'd like to make work if it's possible. Anybody have any experience with this Packard Bell stuff? Dick

Richard, Are the passwords set in the BIOS or in the OS? If they're set in the BIOs you can usually reset them by shorting two pins together on the motherboard. A lot of times there's a sticker inside the cover that shows how. If not then you should be able to find the instructions on the web. The cards sound interesting. It would definitely be worth the effort to break the password protection and see if there is software for the cards is on the drives. You might want to pull the drive and put it into another machine as a second drive and then boot from the primary drive and see if you can locate the card SW and copy off of the second drive. I find lots of PCs with interesting cards and IF the hard drive is still installed it's usually pretty simple to locate the card SW. I good file lister like LIST.COM helps. I also use Undelete to find any deleted files. You can also try to look up the card's FCC ID at the FCC's website. And/or look up the model number with a Google search. Let us know what the card is if you find out. Joe WHOA! I just found it. I looks like it's the interface card for a Logitech scanner. I searched for "scb5 junior" using Google and found this: Message Posted by Greg T.Bzdell on July 06, 2000 at 06:51:31: Due to hard drive and memory problems, I would like to take Win 3.1 off of my 486,but I have been unable to locate a Dos driver that will work my Logitech scb5 junior board my Scanman 256 is using. The only dos driver that logitech currently has on their site is for scb1 thru 4 and does not even recognize the scb5 junior. Has anybody run into this problem and knows how to get the board working in DOS. Actually, I am using DR-DOS 7.03. Thanks for any help. END At 06:55 PM 6/22/02 -0600, you wrote:

Howdy, I'm very familiar with Packard Bell, We were a service center for about 10 years or so. On the back of the machine is a number that begins with 800 or 848 etc. it's 9 digits long. if it is a tv card then there is a cable that runs from the back of the card to the bottom of the computer for video input. it's a special cable. I might actually still have one or two in stock. If the password is in bios, then the 9 digit number will help in determining which pins need to be shorted. If I can help let me know. Bill Richard Erlacher wrote:

The 9 digit number on the back of the machine will tell me what the format number is. The original software needs that format number to put the correct software on the hd. It is also possible that the system needs the boot disk for it. to access the software. Bill Richard Erlacher wrote:

It's not the CMOS password that prompted me to hose the hard disk. There weren't any files I needed anyway, and I prefer to start afresh. I have lots of "official" Windows licenses. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sipke de Wal" &lt;sipke(a)wxs.nl&gt; To: &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2002 3:51 PM Subject: Re: [OT] Waddizzit?? BIOs A you on as locate still lister And/or Logitech mini-din or and a I've of will it any