Michael Sokolov wrote:
> 
> Justin T. Cragin <beyond@virtualworld.net> wrote:
> > Is the vs3100 supported, if so, to what extent?
> 
> Both KA42 (VS3100 M30/38/40/48) and KA43 (VS3100 M76) are supported, but I
> personally find this support unusable because it's very half-way and buggy. The
> most serious problems are with DMA and SCSI. And BTW, if you have a KA42 with
> a SCSI/MFM mass storage daughterboard, it's not supported.

The machine will still run, but you cannot use the SCSI subsystem (worst
case scenario, pull the ribbon cable going between the system board and
the daughter board).  PIO isn't much better in reality, but at least it
does work..

Guys, whats the deal with the PIO stuff...  Can anything be done or is
it a matter of "fix the rest of the kernel to make one thing work?"

> I would personally recommend waiting until I release my work on making a real
> OS for these machines based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe, using Ultrix in the meantime.

Both Ultrix and 4.3-Tahoe are commercial, are they not?  Not everyone
has the same personal opinion about copyright law and apparent desire to
spend time in jail.
 
> > Do I HAVE to use a serial console?
> 
> Yes. (And in this case my OS won't be different.)

"Your" OS?  Not another "I'm gonna take my toys and spend the rest of my
life showing you my OS is leet than yours" insanity.  Can you say
"OpenBSD" (can you say "Lame-o BSD")

> > Is the graphics console working?
> 
> No. (Again, in this case I can't help you either.) I personally find using a
> real terminal always better than using that graphical thing. What do you need
> graphics for anyway? Using graphics on VAXen destroys their divine VAXness!

Ok...  DEC mono monitor... 19", perfectly clear, with a whole @#$@load
of pixels, and the mono vt320's I happen to have are aproximatly 10"
usable and awfully nasty to look at after a while (whats the scan rate
on these things, 20hz?).

Most of us don't really care how terribly "vaxish" it is.  Hell, if I
didn't have those vt320's I'd probably be using Hyperterminal (ugh) on
my win95 box as a terminal (and have thought about it many times while
trying to trouble shoot problems)