On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Sheila&bob wrote:

=>2.  So, this implies I just have to plug in a vt220 and power the beast
=>up, is this correct?

I bought a stripped DEC 3000/300LX from a surplus auction (no keyboard
or mouse, let alone monitor), and that's what I did (except it was to
an IBM 3151 in my case:).  There is a jumper on the motherboard you
alter to tell it to use a serial console.  It worked fine.

According to my "DEC 3000 Model 300 Series AXP Hardware Reference
Guide" the 300/300X/300LX pretty much are all identical except for the
CPU speed: 125 MHz (300LX), 150 MHz (300) and 175 MHz (300X).  There
is a model 300L which is a little more stripped down: 100 MHz CPU
speed; no turbochannel expansion slots; and 1024x768 internal
framebuffer instead of 1280x1024.

Note, it says in the same manual that you can use the alternate
(serial) console by changing the jumper setting *or* simply detaching
the keyboard before power on.  The serial console is 8/N/1 9600 baud.
The alternate console jumper is W2 (at the front of the motherboard,
just behind the internal hard drive bay nearest the power supply.  
Bridging pins 1 and 2 sets the internal graphics port; 2 and 3 select
the serial port. (Pins 3 and 4 are reserved.)

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"I don't live today; maybe tomorrow..."
	--- James Marshall Hendrix