Greetings and Questions

From: Kirk Davis <kbd_at_ndx.net>
Date: Wed Jan 13 01:50:46 1999

Hi all - I'm new to the mailing list and have just started
collecting various pieces of retro computer paraphernalia. Had
some fun today at the local salvage yard prying open a VAX 8800
looking for interesting bits.

Did manage to get the console. Various people have told me that
this is most likely a PRO350 or PRO380 (PDP!!!!). Looking inside it's
got a RD52 and a set of floppies along with the associated controller
cards and the main board. It appears to be in good shape - when I
turn on the power, it goes though it's self test and appears to boot
from the hard disk.

Now for the questions:

1. What are my options are far as os'? I'm told that it most likely
has a subset of RT11 on the drive. Is this my only option or is it
possible to install other PDP11 based os' on this system?

2. The back panel has a serial port and a monitor port (along with
what appears to be a printer and AUI network port). There is no
direct keyboard input that I can see. I connected a serial terminal
to the system and tried various baud rates and parity selections
(300-19200, 8-n-1 & 7-e,1) and have been unable to get the system to
respond. I'd assume some sort of signon banner at boot but since this
was a dedicated console for a vax it's limited to the output only on
the other monitor port? Maybe someone can enlighten me....

Thanks muchly for any info,
Kirk Davis
Received on Wed Jan 13 1999 - 01:50:46 GMT