MicroVAX-II questions

From: Doc Shipley <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Fri Mar 8 02:57:14 2002

Thanks, Bill!
  Just got home with my brand-spanking-old MVII and set about playing
with it. It's indecently clean inside, cables all in good shape, fans
all free and clean, cards well seated.
  I even managed to get them all back in properly, in order, and the
cables connected right.
  So let me see if I got this right, as this is the first working QBus
system I've gotten:

Boards, in order:
   M7606-AF MV-II CPU (KA630-A) w/1M RAM & serial console line
   M7608-BP 4M RAM card for KA630
   M7609-AH 8M parity RAM " "
   M7504 DEQNA ethernet
   M7546 TQK50 tape controller
   M9047 Grant card
   M8053 DMV11 Serial controller
   M3104 DHV11 8-port async serial DMA mux
2x M3107 DHQ11 " " " " "

Storage:
2x RD53-A 70M Micropolis 1325
   RD54 190M Maxtor XT-2190
   TK50 95M CompacTape drive

  This means I would, if I had the distribution hardware for the DHQ11s,
have 25 serial interfaces? (plus console) What exactly is the DMV11?
"Synchronous communications controller" sounds like it requires a DMV11
on the other end as well.
  Everything VMS I've looked at says the DEQNA is unsupported in VMS
>v5.2. Is that unsupported as in "don't call DEC/Compaq/HP", or
unsupported as in "it don't work"? Am I stuck with NetBSD then? Does
anyone know if NBSD will mop-boot over the DEQNA? I don't have VMS
older than 6.2.

  Anybody have 2 breakout boxes for the M3107, and no M3107? We could
equalize.... For that matter, if anybody needs the card, I'll just
share.

  Oh yeah. It boots. VMS 5.2, but it's looking for the rest of a
cluster, and apparently a lot of its filespace was remote. Bummer.
Other than that, and the fact that I can't get it upstairs, it's a cool
"little" box.

  You know you're over the edge when the lack of ethernet access in your
garage is a problem.

        Doc
Received on Fri Mar 08 2002 - 02:57:14 GMT