VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[Jay Jaeger]

On 9/4/2021 5:44 AM, Adrian Graham wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 4 Sep 2021, at 02:42, Jay Jaeger via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org 
>> <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
>>
>> On 7/14/2021 12:32 PM, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:
>>> VT100 to the rescue, the VLC is fine talking to it so now I'm 
>>> wondering why
>>> my old faithful hardware UART in this PC I'm typing on now has let me 
>>> down.
>>> The BlueSCSI appears as 7 devices though, which is usually a 
>>> termination or
>>> ID problem so I now need to dig out an external terminator for the box
>>> since it's never had one. The hard drive in there has been good at
>>> providing its own TERMPWR which the BlueSCSI should too but I'll play by
>>> the rules to test things properly.
>>> Cheers,
>>
>> I think BlueSCSI will only appear as the devices you have image files 
>> named for on its SD card.
> 
> What I meant was on a SHO DEV I got 7 Quantum Fireballs (DKA0-500, 
> DKA700), in my VAX days this meant there was either an ID conflict with 
> another device on the bus or a termination issue. I only had one image 
> on the sdcard which was ID0 so there weren’t any other devices present, 
> so it had to be a termination issue.
> 

Or a bug.

I don't think that these boards will *provide* terminator power, but I 
haven't looked at the schematics carefully.  If the VAX does provide 
terminator power, it might not be enough to both do that and power the 
blue pill.  I power mine from the 4 pin molex drive power connector by 
using a 4 pin molex to Berg connector adapter to match the connector on 
the one on the BlueSCSI board.

BTW, a caveat:  There is a "Black Pill" version from Tech By Androda out 
there.  The blue.scsi site that points to it indicates that BlueSCSI is 
open source (which it is), but THAT one, the one I bought from Tech By 
Androda IS NOT OPEN SOURCE.  He won't provide the code.  Not even 
binaries on his web site.  (There IS a warning about that on the page 
for the Black Pill (F4) version.)

Also, I see that version 1.0c of the open source  Blue Pill version has 
a fix that involves TERMPOWER: "Fixed issue with external power and 
TERMPOWER".

JRJ