my experience with DEC3000/300 was very succesfull.
IT was quite easy to install NetBSD afeter I change the original scsi
disk. I put inside a brand new 32GB scsi-III disk and I installed
NetBSD 1.5 from CDROM.
Not only Pelican has an historical importance it is even a kinda
FAST machine. In my case I got 160MB RAM and this DEC3000 of mine is the
secondary ?DNS server of my LAN (500 machines), it also serves as
imaps server for 2 different mailing lists, and it is also my developer (C
and C++) machine. It's a great piece of iron.

Rick


On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Jochen Kmietsch wrote:

> Hello!
>
> On Sat, 12 Oct 2002, Michael G. Schabert wrote:
>
> > How exactly is it "far less hassle" for every single person with a TC
>
> Well, I never said that it was easy to get NetBSD on a Pelican.
> In fact, compared to a recent Linux-installation it's a PITA, and I did
> swear often enough about all the edges and corners, the old 1.5 system
> (compiler from 1991...), etc.  Still, when you finally get it to run and
> that old box spins up it's disk, it was worth the hassle.  This is
> computer history kept alive.
>
> > machine to be forced to individually go through the steps of putting
> > it physically near another system, piece together a null modem cable
>
> Depends.  I had a VT220 terminal anyway, which is actually easier to
> handle than the GDM-1961 VRT screen.  And I thought that everybody who is
> brave enough to mess with a computer like that has a null-modem-cable in
> his scrap-box.  I even have one that has 9-female and 25-male for my
> Suns :)
>
> > than it would be for one person, once, to make a kernel on an
> > existing system that will work on a TurboChannel machine and make it
> > available as an option on the NetBSD ftp server?
>
> Go for it.
>
> > That is just insane.
>
> Isn't trying to keep these boxes running anyway?  They are noisy and slow
> (at least a Pelican, compared to a somewhat up-to-date PC), but still fun
> to play around with, at least at the approriate level of Geekness.
>
> Jochen
>
>