In article by Mike W.: > I have a digital microvax II in a 'world case'. I was wondering how to > hook it up and make it fly. I was told that it runs the Micro VMS OS, > but no to get get it on the machine, Model: one of two: VS12W-B2 or > V512W-B2. It is an old sticker, could be a 5 or an S. A tape drive is > installed, but no tape disk came with it. Is there another OS it can > run? Yes, it will run UNIX, the timesharing system by Ritchie and Thompson, Berkeley VAX version thereof, the current version of which is 4.3BSD-Quasijarus maintained by me, the WWW page for which is: http://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/ Running UNIX requires a UNIX source license (True UNIX never had, doesn't have, and never will have a concept of "binary only"), but these days SCO gives them out for FREE! You have a tape drive, so you will have no problem with installation. I have supply you with the boot tape, but you'll have to reimburse me for the tape and shipping. > How do I hook up the Console to work on it. For that matter, what does > the console look like? You need a standard RS-232 terminal. The console port connector on the MicroVAX is of a rather odd standard, though. A DEC BCC05 or BCC08 cable will connect it to a standard RS-232 DB25M terminal. If you want or have to make your own cable, I've got the pinout for the MicroVAX console port connector somewhere. > [...] nothing on 'where and > how the cables go on the back (bulkhead). The I/O distribution panel on the back provides external connections for all Q-bus modules you have. You'll have to tell us what Q-bus modules you have so that we can tell you what external connections they need. You obviously have the CPU, which has one external connection: the console port which I just told you about. > I need to know how, why and > when to turn the knobs on the back. On the CPU module bulkhead there are two knobs and one switch. One knob selects the console port baud rate. I think this one is obvious. You can use any of the baud rates printed around the knob, but 9600 baud is standard. The other knob selects between normal operation (the arrow icon), console language selection (the talking face icon), and console port loopback test (the T in the circle icon). I always leave it on the arrow icon. Finally, the switch selects between maintenance mode (halt enabled, stay in the console on power-up) and production mode (halt disabled, boot the OS on power-up). These correspond to the dot- inside-the-circle and dot-outside-the-circle icons, respectively. For now leave the dot inside the circle. For more info subscribe to the Quasijarus mailing list and ask there. Send subscription requests to: quasijarus-request at ivan.Harhan.ORG -- Michael Sokolov Harhan Engineering Laboratory Public Service Agent International Free Computing Task Force International Engineering and Science Task Force 615 N GOOD LATIMER EXPY STE #4 DALLAS TX 75204-5852 USA Phone: +1-214-824-7693 (Harhan Eng Lab office) E-mail: msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG (ARPA TCP/SMTP) (UUCP coming soon) Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) id GAA48495 for pups-liszt; Sat, 27 May 2000 06:46:12 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from ivan.Harhan.ORG (ivan.Harhan.ORG [207.55.197.4]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id GAA48491 for ; Sat, 27 May 2000 06:46:08 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG) Received: by ivan.Harhan.ORG (5.61.1.1/1.36) id AA18967; Fri, 26 May 00 15:44:45 CDT Date: Fri, 26 May 00 15:44:45 CDT From: msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG (Michael Sokolov) Message-Id: <0005262044.AA18967 at ivan.Harhan.ORG> To: pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au, tscowboy at willapabay.org Subject: Re: Dead MicroVAX II :( Sender: owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk David O'Brien wrote: > The port-vax at netbsd.org list is full of very VAX clueful people. So is quasijarus at ivan.Harhan.ORG. -- Michael Sokolov Harhan Engineering Laboratory Public Service Agent International Free Computing Task Force International Engineering and Science Task Force 615 N GOOD LATIMER EXPY STE #4 DALLAS TX 75204-5852 USA Phone: +1-214-824-7693 (Harhan Eng Lab office) E-mail: msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG (ARPA TCP/SMTP) (UUCP coming soon) Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) id GAA48519 for pups-liszt; Sat, 27 May 2000 06:52:57 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from ivan.Harhan.ORG (ivan.Harhan.ORG [207.55.197.4]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id GAA48515 for ; Sat, 27 May 2000 06:52:52 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG) Received: by ivan.Harhan.ORG (5.61.1.1/1.36) id AA18987; Fri, 26 May 00 15:51:29 CDT Date: Fri, 26 May 00 15:51:29 CDT From: msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG (Michael Sokolov) Message-Id: <0005262051.AA18987 at ivan.Harhan.ORG> To: pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au, tscowboy at willapabay.org Subject: Re: Dead MicroVAX II :( Sender: owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de wrote: > If you want a modern Unix OS [...] If he did, why would he want a VAX? Someone who detests "modern" pee sea hardware and prefers the vastly superior classical DEC stuff (like I do) would surely feel the same way about software (again like I do). Why should one treat hardware and software differently in this respect? Why mix-and-match the wonderful classical hardware with crappy bloated "modern" software? -- Michael Sokolov Harhan Engineering Laboratory Public Service Agent International Free Computing Task Force International Engineering and Science Task Force 615 N GOOD LATIMER EXPY STE #4 DALLAS TX 75204-5852 USA Phone: +1-214-824-7693 (Harhan Eng Lab office) E-mail: msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG (ARPA TCP/SMTP) (UUCP coming soon) Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA48765 for pups-liszt; Sat, 27 May 2000 08:22:49 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from europe.std.com (europe.std.com [199.172.62.20]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA48761 for ; Sat, 27 May 2000 08:22:44 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from bdc at world.std.com) Received: from world.std.com (bdc at world-f.std.com [199.172.62.5]) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA20256 for ; Fri, 26 May 2000 18:21:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (bdc at localhost) by world.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA28977 for ; Fri, 26 May 2000 18:21:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 15:21:49 -0700 From: Brian Chase To: pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: Re: Dead MicroVAX II :( In-Reply-To: <0005262051.AA18987 at ivan.Harhan.ORG> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk On Fri, 26 May 2000, Michael Sokolov wrote: > jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de wrote: > > If you want a modern Unix OS [...] > > If he did, why would he want a VAX? Someone who detests "modern" pee > sea hardware and prefers the vastly superior classical DEC stuff (like > I do) would surely feel the same way about software (again like I do). > Why should one treat hardware and software differently in this > respect? Why mix-and-match the wonderful classical hardware with > crappy bloated "modern" software? This list is definitely geared towards people running classic OSes on classic systems. I actually really enjoy having lots of the bloated modern hardware running on my VAXen. So much contemporary software compiles and runs right out of the tarballs under NetBSD/vax. And honestly, a lot of it performs quite admirably on even my humblest of MicroVAX II's. I see nothing incompatible with loving modern OSes running well on ancient hardware. :-) -brian. --- Brian Chase | bdc at world.std.com | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ ----- All math equations have a fistfight on at least one side. -- K. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) id BAA51832 for pups-liszt; Sun, 28 May 2000 01:50:42 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de (sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de [131.246.137.50]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA51828 for ; Sun, 28 May 2000 01:50:36 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de) From: jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Received: from aixs1.rhrk.uni-kl.de ( exim at aixs1.rhrk.uni-kl.de [131.246.137.3] ) by sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de id aa24765 ; 27 May 2000 17:49 MESZ Received: from forelle32.wohnheim.uni-kl.de ([131.246.141.32] helo=unixag-kl.fh-kl.de) by aixs1.rhrk.uni-kl.de with esmtp (Exim 3.03 #2) id 12viqD-0007Sy-00; Sat, 27 May 2000 17:49:33 +0200 Received: from unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA15426; Sat, 27 May 2000 17:49:01 +0200 (CEST) Message-Id: <200005271549.RAA15426 at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 17:49:00 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Re: Dead MicroVAX II :( To: msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG cc: pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au In-Reply-To: <0005262051.AA18987 at ivan.Harhan.ORG> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk On 27 May, Michael Sokolov wrote: >> If you want a modern Unix OS [...] > > If he did, why would he want a VAX? Someone who detests "modern" pee sea > hardware and prefers the vastly superior classical DEC stuff (like I do) would > surely feel the same way about software (again like I do). Why should one treat > hardware and software differently in this respect? Why mix-and-match the > wonderful classical hardware with crappy bloated "modern" software? Sure. That is the reason why I referred both the quasijarus project and NetBSD. I wanted to give _him_ the choice. I own a lot of different old machines. (DEC, Sun, HP, IBM, ...) On most of this machins runs the same OS, NetBSD. I like it to see the same software running on an old VAX and on a state of the art Alpha. I am usung NetBSD for years now, so my preference of NetBSD is historical too. -- tsch��, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/