Well it lives again, sorta. (YAV)

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Fri Dec 17 23:40:15 1999

Yet-another-VAX has been restored to almost operating condition :-)

Thanks everyone on the backplane, I didn't have the emply slot it just
looked like it shipped that way given the description in the Module
Database book. I put in the minimum system (CPU, Memory, DELQA) and that
booted, then I swapped out the CPU for a KA655 I had handy and used it to
probe around. So far so good, then installed the Dilog drive card, that was
recognized after I correctly oriented the 34pin cable (it was one of those
"rainbow" cables and neither polarized nor marked vis-a-vis pin 1.

That got me the drive to be visible, which, when I tried booting it,
started loading VMS 5.4, and I foolishly told it what the date was and it
explained that my license for VMS was expired. Not a problem with my handy
dandy License PAK from DECUS, but then I tried to bring up the TK50 that I
added to the system
        I disassembled enough to route the cable.
        Installed the M7546 and the TK50
        Powered on and did a SHOW DEV and it showed up.
        Then I put in a TK50 cartridge, and got nothing but blink.
         -- Can't get the tape out (without disasembly)
         -- Now the show dev doesn't show the tape! (the card shows
            up but it hangs trying to talk to MUA0. (sigh)

The ethernet works however. Next step will be to netboot it into VMS or
NetBSD.

Note to Eric Smith: You can't get the serial console to work with the
VCB02, period.

Its got a couple of 16MB cards in it so it is a pretty sweet machine at the
moment.

If I can't resuscitate the TK50 I'll put a TQK70 and TK70 in there instead.
Its a much more reliable drive anyway. I'm also trying to construct a sort
of qbus extender with a couple of Qbus slots on the outside for doing board
testing.

--Chuck
Received on Fri Dec 17 1999 - 23:40:15 GMT