22 Jun
1998
22 Jun
'98
2:14 p.m.
Classic daisy-wheel printer for sale.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~hills/dwp.htm
22 Jun
22 Jun
2:46 p.m.
New subject: MicroVAX 2000
Saturday at the local swapmeet, I picked up a MicroVAX 2000. It is a
neat little package, but now that I have it what can I do with it? And
how do I do it?
This one is a Model 625NT-AA, and comes without harddisk. It appears
that there is a resistor board installed to provide a load comparable
to the drive on the power supply. According to a rather sketchy spec
sheet that I d/l'd from DEC, it can handle a maximum 318mb local disk.
Based on the 53C80 chip installed, I presume that the drive should be
SCSI.
At the rear of the machine are three sub-D connectors, one each 25-pin,
15-pin, and 9-pin. What are their functions? The 15 and 9 are
presently encumbered by a plugin box that has three RJ45(?) connectors.
Network link?
I have not had any real success in discovering anything in the way of
documentation for this critter on DEC. Am I looking the wrong place?
- don
3:29 p.m.
New subject: MicroVAX 2000
Saturday at the local swapmeet, I picked up a MicroVAX 2000. It is a
neat little package, but now that I have it what can I do with it? And
how do I do it?
I'm not sure how simular this is to a VAXstation 2000, but the VS2000 has
the advantage of being able to format the MFM disks (not sure if this is
true with the uV2000).
You might want to check the MicroVAX/VAXstation FAQ at
http://anacin.nsc.vcu.edu/~jim/mvax/mvax_faq.html
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
3:34 p.m.
New subject: MicroVAX 2000
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7:49 p.m.
New subject: MicroVAX 2000
On Mon, 22 Jun 1998, Seth J. Morabito wrote:
**** snip ****
Saturday at
the local swapmeet, I picked up a MicroVAX 2000.
Aaah, MicroVAX! One of my favorite computers :) Congratulations! The MicroVAX and VAXstation 2000's take MFM
harddrives, usually the DEC
RD-series (RD52, RD53, RD54). If you can get your hands on an RD54,
that's what you'll want -- around 170MB, plenty of room for a
"full-ish"
Sounds like a Maxtor 2190 clone.
VMS 5.5-2 installation. I really don't know about
the resistor board,
though -- I'm afraid I've never seen one.
Back to that SCSI -- the SCSI in the MicroVAX 2000 was for use only
with the TK50Z-FA tape drive, a 95MB cartridge tape system which looks
almost exactly like today's fancy DLT tapes (It's DLT's grandfather,
pretty much). TK50 is an extremely common format for older (early to
mid-80's) DEC software distributions. The firmware in the MicroVAX
makes it impossible to boot off of any SCSI device besides the TK50,
unfortunately.
Is that the 4" square (about) tape cartridge that i see a lot of
occasionally?
It sounds like you don't have the external
connector option that had
a 50-pin Centronics (for the TK50) and a 50-pin D-sub connector for
external MFM drives. That means you can pretty much safely ignore the
NCR53C80, unfortunately :)
No, but there are a 50-pin and a 60-pin header on the motherboard that
are not presently used.
**** snip ****
You didn't mention another connector, but I
believe there has to be
either a BNC connector (for thinnet) or a 15-pin Thicknet connector on
the back of the system, toward the upper right. Look for a connector
that has a hash-mark (#) next to it. This is your 10mbps ethernet.
(Lance ethernet, I think?)
The BNC is there, I just flat forgot to mention it.
**** snip ****
a disk, your options are pretty limited right now:
You can run it as
a diskless machine in a VMS VAXcluster, or you can netboot NetBSD from
another system. I've been doing that with mine for a while, and it
works fairly well, though it's tricky to set up. See:
The VMS VAXcluster is not an option, but the netboot may be.
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/vax/index.html
for details, and
http://world.std.com/~bdc/projects/vaxen/index.html
for excellent info about netbooting NetBSD.
Good luck!
Thanks! I will probably need it. My only other DEC experience is with
the Rainbow :)
- don
8:05 p.m.
New subject: MicroVAX 2000
makes it
impossible to boot off of any SCSI device besides the TK50,
unfortunately.
Is that the 4" square (about) tape cartridge that i see a lot of
occasionally? 
4:29 p.m.
The Hills wrote:
Classic daisy-wheel printer for sale.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~hills/dwp.htm
Not classic enough for me. Now if it were a silver-case Daisy
Wheel Printer II, that'd be different.
--
Ward Griffiths
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows.
Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else.
Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_
9532
days inactive
9533
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