At 10:31 PM 2/3/02 -0800, Jan Gray wrote:
>Inspired by Chuck's House of VAX, and eager to relive those halcyon days
>of my youth in which we happy few Waterloo undergrads shared a
>VAX-11/780 running 4.1 BSD with a load average around 100, I bought a
>VAXstation 4000/60 off eBay last summer.  It arrived damaged, with about
>fifteen gold leads mashed together on two of the QFPs.  It languished in
>the garage.  (Later I bought two more 4000/60s, unnecessarily, it turned
>out.)

Glad you have it running, your FPGACPU stuff has inspired my FPGA hacking ...

5. QUESTIONS

>1. Re: 4000/90 corrupted NV RAM (SYS 0512): Has anyone fixed theirs, and
>if so, how?  An earlier message indicated a MOP program might fix it.

No fix as of yet. It requires fixing the checksum in NV RAM which gets 
corrupted by NetBSD. To fix it we need an image of an uncorrupted Flash.

>2. Why can't my VAXen boot off my newer 10K RPM drive?  Is there
>anything I can do except netboot my kernel off an NFS share, or boot
>locally from an older SCSI disk?  Can I boot (fetch netbsd) off one disk
>but use another for my entire file system, including the root partition?

It sounds as if you're drive is waiting to be given a 'spin up' command. 
Check to see if there is some way to jumper it so that it spins up on 
power-on. Most of the 10K drives I've seen are designed for servers and are 
"spin on startup" types. The SCSI driver in NetBSD doesn't do this yet.

>3. For automatic boot on power up on my other (non-90) machines, should
>I set HALT to 2 or 3?

Set HALT to 2, this is "AUTO REBOOT", HALT = 1 is "AUTO RESTART" which 
attempts a restart before a reboot (great for VMS, not so good for NetBSD :-)

>4. I have 1 4000/90, 3 4000/60s, and 2 VLCs.  I think I want 1, 1, and
>2.  I'm willing to donate one of the unwanted 4000/60s to the NetBSD/vax
>effort -- do you folks need a new build or test machine...?

Presumably you've removed any memory from the 4000/60 you can use in your 
4000/90 ?

>5. I am looking for more RAM for my 4000/90.  Can I use 4000/60 memory?
>What other systems' memory is compatible with 4000/90?

Yes, although you really want to find the 16MB Simm things. They come up on 
Ebay sometimes.

>6. What is the definitive story with the MMJ-DB9 cable CRPT bit errors?
>I even tried an H8571-J (see
>http://www.partner.compaq.com:9003/public/cheat_sheets/cables/padapters.
>html) on my PC's DB-9 serial port, and I still see these errors.  I also
>see them on a cable with just TXD+ TXD- RXD- RXD+ wired up.  I find the
>only thing that definitely works is to disconnect the cable, power on
>the machine, wait until it is well through self-test, then connect the
>cable.

Personally I think it is that "modern" PC's use drive levels of +/- 5V so 
that they can save a connection to the +/- 12V supply on the bus. Its still 
legit RS-232 but gets hairy on the DEC-423. My "old" SiiG COM5 Board (adds 
a serial port above COM4) works fine and the COM1 & 2 on the mainboard 
(Asus) give CRPT errors (same cable). My "final" fix was to get a terminal 
server (DEC 700-16) and connect it to the consoles of the VAXen in da' 
House and then talk to them via console server.

>7. With any of the graphics displays (VLC, 60, 90) I think -- is it
>possible to access and write the frame buffer RAM?  I have searched
>google for specs on these cards to no avail.  Are there VAX VMS driver
>sources available that would reveal how to address the frame buffer
>memory and/or control regs?

VMS sources are out there, presumably there is information in them about 
the frame buffers. Its a royal pain to find it however. No one from 
DEC^H^H^HCompaq^H^H^H^HH-P has been willing to front for us and get the 
docs out. I can't find anyone in the field/service/sales organization that 
will help either.

>8. Does anyone have a source for the DEC adapter that converts 3 BNC
>with sync on green into a standard VGA connector?

There are lots of those on Ebay. Most DEC resellers have them for about $10.

>9. Has anyone else ever seen the VAXstation 4000/90 console print output
>in "fits and starts"?  Any idea what the cause might be?

That's a new one on me. Is it possible there was something injecting noise 
into the ethernet port and causing a zillion interrupts or something?

Enjoy the VAXen, they are a blast.
--Chuck