VAX questions (3100/76)

From: Saquinn624_at_aol.com <(Saquinn624_at_aol.com)>
Date: Sat Jan 22 21:04:09 2005

Thanks for everyone's help in the past- adamg helped me get my Apollo running
and Dwight Elvey gave me more info on the Polymorphic Card (don't have a kbd
yet- nor any firmware so that project is on hold for a while). The S-100
manpage is great-the only manuals I couldn't find were the IDS modem and the
Digital Systems 8" floppy.

Now I'm trying to get my first VAX up, and it's having SCSI issues.
(VS3100/76, 32MB, no GFX option, no kbd/mouse, no drives,10bT tranceiver

With the cable plugged in (no devices), bus A fails with FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF FFFFFF03 FFFFFFFF FFFFFFFF.
If you take off the cable from the KA43, it passes the test. Presence or
absence of the terminator on the bus makes no difference.
If it were not for the fact that it works without the cable, I would assume
that the system board was dead, and probably toss it (it doesn't look easy to
replace the 5380s) but I don't want a VAX to die unnecessarily, and I'm not
sure where to go from here as far as troubleshooting.
When I got it, the SCSI cable was unplugged so it might have been yanked on
before someone realized there were clips, but it doesn't appear obviously
damaged.

Does anybody know how Digital marketing explained the 68-pin SCSI and MMJ as
improvements, or did they even try?

-Scott Quinn
Received on Sat Jan 22 2005 - 21:04:09 GMT