MicroVAX 3100 Questions.

From: Scott Stevens <chenmel_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Sat Dec 4 18:17:31 2004

On Sat, 4 Dec 2004 18:13:07 -0500, you wrote:

>On Saturday 04 December 2004 17:43, Scott Stevens wrote:
>> Today at auction I acquired a MicroVAX 3100 system. It's my first
>> VAX hardware.
>
>Ahh, you're the guy... I was only interested in making sure it didn't
>get scrapped for parts, really. Anyways, I'm glad it went to someone
>who'll appreciate it. I was afraid it was just a clueless idiot, who'd
>get it home, figure out what it is, and then throw it out, but it seems
>my worries are unfounded. : ) There seemed to be a lot of those there
>after the Cisco gear today.
>

There are always a lot of choppers/scrappers and Windows-only people
at the IUPUI auction. I spend a good amount of time steering 'regular
folk' types looking for a home computer away from UNIX hardware and
huge SGI/Sun monitors that they'd end up ditching after they gave up
trying to use it.

At one of the earlier sales this year somebody bought a whole skid of
Sun Ultra 5/10/20 boxes (I was carrying some stuff to the car when it
came up unexpectedly and came in just as the bidding closed!) for
$100. I heard later from someone else that "he never figured out what
any of it was" and has probably stripped drives and memory before
pitching most of it. Theres a lot of hardware-death out there
committed by people with a Windows CD, a phillips screwdriver, and
half a clue.

>
>You should be able to, but you'll need the proper CDROM drive. I've had
>good luck with the 1" tall cdroms in Sparcstation 5's and 10's, which
>is basically the same as an RRD42. If you don't have any let me know,
>I've got some stock of them.
>

I've had good luck getting plain old Apple CD drives to boot in Sparc
hardware (that can take the normal width CD), and have one or two
drives that I was able to get to boot AIX on an ancient RS/6000 box I
have (got two more huge RS6K boxes today for $5 each- off topic here,
tho, too new). I'll dig around in stuff. Is there such a thing as
bootable CD media for this MicroVAX that I could create? Maybe I need
to dig around at NetBSD/vax for a while to get started... (getting
NetBSD running is always a good way to 'wring out' an unusual system
if it's supported)

>> 4. What is the console on this hardware? It has the three serial
>> ports on RJ-type connectors, and from what I gather this is a
>> TTY-only machine, no framebuffer, etc.
>
>Should be the MMJ connector labelled "3" IIRC. If want a proper MMJ
>cable, I've made them for people on the list before. If not, a piece
>of 4pr phone cable with the tab filed/cut off should be able to connect
>it to an RJ45->DE9 or DB25 adaptor properly. Xyplex, Sun, and
>Cisco-wired adaptors should all work with it. If you want a pinout,
>search google for "xyplex pinout" and hit I'm Feeling Lucky.
>

I found the Xyplex info in Google. I probably have one of these
adapters lying around here someplace, but storage/organization here is
kinda in crisis mode, so I'll probably have to make another by
splicing a phone cable.

Scott
Received on Sat Dec 04 2004 - 18:17:31 GMT