Vaxstation 2000 and VXT software, 4 plane color supported?

From: Soeren Gust <sgust_at_ithh.infoserv.de>
Date: Sat May 31 18:18:15 2003

Some time ago I got my hands on a Vaxstation 2000. I searched for some
Information about the machine and read somewhere that it should be possible
to run the VXT X terminal software on the VS 2000. The only version of the
VXT software I found was in VMS BACKUP format which I could not read. So I
put NetBSD on the machine, it runs disk-less from a PC with Linux.

Last week I searched again and found version 2.1 of the VXT software in tar
format, so I could finally try it. It works, but only in monochrome. If I
put my VS40X 4 plane color option board into the machine it seems to crash
when it has finished loading. Some pixels get randomly set and the machine
does not react on the break switch at the back. Is the color board
supported by the VXT software? Or is it a firmware issue? My board has
version 1.4, are there newer versions available? Or even older version?
Anybody want to swap firmware dumps?

The loading process via mop often takes several retries or even fails
completely, especially when loading the full VXT.SYS version. It seems to
work better if there is some load on the Linux server, perhaps the mop
daemon sends the data too fast. Has anybody else seen this effect? Is it
possible to use the VXTLDR.SYS to load the rest of the software via TCP/IP?
I know nearly nothing about DECNET and don't have any other DEC equipment
to run it on.

Another minor problem is that I don't have a real DEC mouse. I use a small
Atmel AT90S2313 micro-controller as protocol converter. It currently only
supports one mouse button and needs an Amiga mouse, but I plan to adapt it
to PS/2 mice. The information about the DEC mouse protocol I found leaves
some minor questions. How many packets per second does a real DEC mouse
send in stream mode? I chose to send 60 per second, as this was easy to
implement via the timer0 interrupt on the Atmel. What does a real DEC mouse
return as revision and manufacturer code? I return 0 for both but fear that
there may be some software which expects real data.

Soeren Gust
Received on Sat May 31 2003 - 18:18:15 BST