On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Jacob Suter wrote:

> (not like I am complaining or anything), and am wondering if the PIO is
> just a "temporary work around" or is there something potentially better
> out there?  

Yup, DMA transfers.  The DMA stuff works on the VS3100/M76 but not the
others.  I'm not sure the details of why this is so.  I've been working on
grokking the existing VS3100 scsi code, but I'm a novice at debugging
NetBSD kernel source so the success of my attempts will likely be limited. 

> moving one console cable between multiple vaxes (like yanking it out of
> the printer port on one of the boxes to another) while they are live? 
> Will this cause any hardware/software issues?

I won't vouch for the sanity or safety of doing it, but I do it all the
time without problems :-)  I'm not sure how healthy it is for the serial
printer hardware, but the voltages are very low so I don't imagine it
being much of an electrical threat.  There are no problems with the
software aspect.  At least with my DEC terminals and minicom under Linux,
when I power off the terminal or exit minicom, they send the break
sequence to the VAXstation which halts it.  What I normally do when I want
to power off a terminal is to yank the console cable and then power off
the terminals to prevent the VAX from being halted. 

-brian.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian D. Chase         Systems Coordinator        brian.chase@carpediem.com
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