> Can I just hang them off the SCSI
> port in the back?

The hardware is 100% normal SCSI, but sooner or later you'll definitely run
into software problems. I have recently led a talk-to-death discussion of this
topic on this list, look for it in the archives. Basically, for marketing
reasons DEC doesn't want you to use this port as normal SCSI, instead intending
it only for connecting an external TK50 tape drive. That drive is a special
version of TK50Z. It appears that the protocol used to communicate with this
tape drive is not SCSI common command set (CCS), but something like TMSCP over
SCSI. The system ROM on KA410 (the system board in MV2000 and VS2000) speaks
this protocol instead of CCS, so forget about booting from SCSI disks unless
you can get a friendly UFO pilot to fly right into DEC's top secret archives
and steal the system ROM source code for you. Second, if you want to use VMS or
Ultrix, be prepared for a lot of grief. When they boot, they check the CPU
type, and if it's UV2, they artificially disable the CCS-speaking SCSI drivers
and replace them with the TMSCP over SCSI one, in essence engaging in
artificial feature blocking. But even if you use NetBSD/vax, which doesn't have
this problem and always speaks CCS, the system ROM will still give you a lot of
grief. Even if you don't try to boot from a SCSI disk and pray that all your
disks are already properly formatted, the system ROM probes for a TMSCP over
SCSI-style TK50Z drive using the TMSCP over SCSI protocol during
initialization, and depending on the details of this protocol, this probe may
be intrusive to CCS-speaking SCSI devices. For more details on my TMSCP over
SCSI considerations, see my last posting on the subject, which is archived for
your convenience at <http://sclwww.scl.cwru.edu/~mxs46/cpu13.txt> (although it
will make more sense if you also read the whole thread leading to that
posting).

Sincerely,
Michael Sokolov
Phone: 440-449-0299
ARPA Internet SMTP mail: sokolov@alpha.ces.cwru.edu