Vax 3100/80 among other things.

From: cvisors_at_carnagevisors.net <(cvisors_at_carnagevisors.net)>
Date: Fri Apr 19 08:38:54 2002

Hi All again.

I have to say the Vax I got last week has been heaps of fun, picked up a
couple of bits for it today, like about 20 backup tapes (unfortunatly not
TK50 tapes) And a Nice VT420 Terminal.

Anyway decided to let VMS wait for a little before I try and learn this
odd but interesting system, (I am going to be joind decus so I can get new
VMS media as the machine didn't come with any) so I have had a look at the
other avalible OSes that are avalible for the VAX.

A quick question was ULTRIX ever avalible for the uVAX 3100/80?

The two "free" operating systems that seem to be avalible for the 3100/80
are NetBSD and OpenBSD (there seems to be a version of linux but it seems
to be quite imature.)

I now have had a play with both (and If anyone ever needs a hand setting
up either of these just give me a yell.)

The NetBSD install was realy easy, I booted the vax via the network, and
then did a [ctrl] + [z] and then using ftp pulled the .tgz files to the
vax and installed the os from the local hard drive. The only issue was
that the NetBSD install was sparse to say the least, and after compiling a
couple of things (which was quite slow, but no where as slow as my first
linux pc ;) I decided to give OpenBSD a go.

OpenBSD is great, still it doesn't have all that I want, but has a lot
more than NetBSD. The install is a little hairy in places, and it took me
a while to configure the FreeBSD i386 box I am using for a boot server
(the OpenBSD net boot process is a little differnt that NetBSD) but the
install went painlessly.

To sum up, and sorry if this is a little off topic. If anyone is looking
for something other than VMS to run on their Vaxes, I would reccomend
OpenBSD over NetBSD.

I Hope I havent bored you too much....


Benjamin
Received on Fri Apr 19 2002 - 08:38:54 BST

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