Vaxstation 3100 basics

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Thu Nov 26 08:42:35 1998

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

Ok you have a 3100, with 12mb ram (VMS runs in 4 or more). This is plenty.

The two RZ23l drives are plenty of space for VMS.

<
< On powering up it says KA 42-A v1.3, does a hex countdown and finishes w
< 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 "
< ERR PC=00000000" and then lists a table I can't decipher that seems t
< list drives and includes "VMS/VMB" and "Ultrix" along the top. It then h
< prompt " [ESA0:] >>> ".
< At that point command "b" results in a series of errors:
< 83 BOOT SYS
< ?41 DEVASSIGN,B
< 84 FAIL

ESA0 is the eithernet. So it was trying to NETBOOT!

The boot device is likely DKA300. DKA is disk, scsi bus A X00 is the
device number.

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

Try booting! >>> B DKA000 through 700 see if they all fail.

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

9 max. depending on model maybe less than 5.

Though KA42A is likely a 3100 M30 nice little box actually.

Allison
Received on Thu Nov 26 1998 - 08:42:35 GMT