>From: Christopher Sekiya <wileyc@sekiya.twics.co.jp>

>I'm guessing that no one in the NetBSD community possesses the relevent
>docs.  How forthcoming is DEC with such information, and what is the best
>way to approach them?

If a doc isn't orderable the easy way (i.e. DECdirect), it'll be hard to get
DEC to help out.  They have a tendency to lose things, so digging up docs would
take a bunch of effort, all to help people who don't increase DEC's sales and
might even hurt by making it easier to stay with old equipment rather than
upgrading.  (Then again, I thought I saw 4000-series VAXen in a surprisingly
recent DECdirect catalog, but if any of the line is still a current product
they might want to keep the docs off the streets for different reasons.)

DEC *employees* are another story, just like anyone else their offices are
stuffed full of everything they've ever worked on, and they may have manuals
that have officially disappeared.  It would be rude to nag a particular
employee to stick their neck out and distribute copies of a manual that's
officially not available (even if there's no reason why not), but you never
know when someone who's interested in the project will volunteer what they
have (or better yet, share first-hand experience).

John Wilson
D Bit