Purchased a Microvax 3800 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

9 Dec 2015

I got the power cord for the microvax 3800 in the mail today. I checked the
fans as someone suggested, they Spin nice and smooth. I Iooked over
everything, nothing seems out of place. I powered the machine on. Very
quiet. I expected it to be much louder.

I turned the machine on and nothing exploded.
The KA660 cpu board has that little red lcd display ion it. A F is
displayed. Not sure if that is normal or not. I need a console cable. I
have a vt100 that works over here. What is the cable called, is it
something i could buy, or is it something that is easy enough to make?

--Devin

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 3:37 PM, devin davison <lyokoboy0 at gmail.com> wrote:

...
  "So a 9-track open-reel SCSI drive should work
just as well as a DDS,
 DLT, SLT drive."

 Oh wow. i had not even considered that. I have a pdp 11 with a beast of a
 9 track tape drive in is's own rack, that would be interesting if i could
 get a scsi tape drive for the vax and use some big tapes to move data
 between the two.

 On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se>
 wrote:

  On 2015-12-08 17:02, Paul Koning wrote:

 On 2015-12-07 20:36, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote:

  On 7 December 2015 at 14:29, Johnny Billquist
<bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:

> I think all (modern PDP-11) OSes can install from TMSCP tapes. RSTS/E
> is
> more picky than some others, though, if I remember right...
>
> Yes, RSTS/E installs from TMSCP just fine (as can RSX-11/M+); I know
 that in simh you can bring up Ultrix-11 3.1 only on TMSCP
 (specifically a TK50), at least if you want all of the packages to
 install. I've installed RSTS/E 10.1-L from MASSBUS, TS11, TM11, and
 TMSCP in my various experimentation with emulation, it really doesn't
 care what the tape is as long as your SYSGEN device is consistent.

 One detail on "it doesn't care what the tape is": RSTS kits on 1/2 inch
 tape come in 800 and 1600 bpi versions.  They have different boot blocks,
 each of them designed to work with all tape drives/controllers supported on
 RSTS that support the density in question.  For example, the 1600 bpi kit
 doesn't boot on a TM11 controller, and the 800 bpi kit won't boot on a
 TMSCP controller.  This matters if you try to boot one in an emulator where
 physical tape density doens't have any meaning.

 Unsubscribed from cctalk now, so I'm not sure if this will get through or
 not.

 The RSX installation tape should boot from all tape devices, no matter
 what density. The disk boot blocks are somewhat more specific. MSCP sits
 together with massbus and RK06/RK07. RK05, RL01/02, RP02/03 as well as P/OS
 drivers are separate boot blocks. Of those, only the RL02 is actually
 supported by M+. So in practice, you only see one of two disk boot blocks
 around for M+. 11M use pretty much anything, I'd think.

         Johnny