On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Jesper Frank Nemholt wrote:

> Someone is selling VAX3100s close to where I live and I thought I'd go
> buy one (or two or three), but I'd like a bit of advice.
> 
> They're all without any OS (OpenVMS), and I don't think there's any
> documentation or any other software with them, so I will have to start
> from scratch.
> 
> I can see on the VAX port homepage that disks aren't supported on the
> 3100, is this still true ?  It appears that it should be possibly to get
> them running NetBSD by booting over network, and that my Linux (RH5.0)
> should be able to serve that purpose, is this correct ? 

Yes on running it diskless, and yes on being able to netboot from Linux.
It's a non-trivial task with Linux, but it can be done.

> I've seen that a Linux/VAX project exist, but their mail-list server and
> the whole project appears rather dead. Anyone here who knows the current
> status of that project ?

There was a little burst of activity the Linux/VAX list back in July, but
I don't think great progress is being made on their port.  At least not
yet. 

> I've heard that it's possible to get OpenVMS in some sort of a limited
> student licence, is this correct ? (I would like to run VMS on one
> machine and NetBSD or Linux on the other), but I don't have the money to
> go buy VMS.

See: http://www.montagar.com/hobbyist/index.html


> Would you suggest that I wait for another and better supported VAX
> machine to show up, or to put it in another way, is the 3100 a bad
> choice (when we're talking low budget stuff that won't fill up my whole
> apartment and eat hundreds of kilowatts every hour) ?

The VS3100's are great little machines which require hardly any power.
They aren't blindingly fast, sort of on par with low end 386's but still
quite functional.

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!