I went home and tried another CDROM drive, an old Mitsumi SCSI 1x and it was ok.

I did a
>> cnfg 3

and it showed the other CDROM, that wouldn't boot, as type 'file' like the hardrive.  The
Mitsumi showed up as CDROM.

Like I said, the DEC 3000/300 was ok with the other drive so...<shrug>..

jam