Vaxstation 3100 basics

From: Olminkhof <jolminkh_at_nsw.bigpond.net.au>
Date: Thu Nov 26 01:48:44 1998

I have managed to find and cobble together enough bits of hardware to have
an operational vaxstation .... I think.

I've never played with one before or even seen one. What now?

The box is a model VS42A and has a 3.5" floppy and 2 X 100Mb internal SCSI
hard drives. It has what looks like 8Mb of RAM to me, whatever is on the
main board plus a 4Mb extension.

On powering up it says KA 42-A v1.3, does a hex countdown and finishes with
a ">>>" prompt.

Command "b" causes it to display ESA0 and stop.
Command "?" gives an error message.
Command "c" causes a drive to start. It then displays an error message "ISP
ERR PC=00000000" and then lists a table I can't decipher that seems to
list drives and includes "VMS/VMB" and "Ultrix" along the top. It then has a
prompt " [ESA0:] >>> ".
At that point command "b" results in a series of errors:
83 BOOT SYS
?41 DEVASSIGN,B
84 FAIL

How can I find out if it has an operating system? or have I already proved
it hasn't?

None of the stuff I have found on the web so far goes this basic.

It looks like it is at least NEARLY 10 years old.

Thanks
Hans Olminkhof
Received on Thu Nov 26 1998 - 01:48:44 GMT