Spoonday, 17 orbtwists into Glabulary, The Laughing Fool thus spat into h=
is
perl scripts:

Thanks to Bernhart Buckel for replying so promptly.

My 4000/60 is destined to run NetBSD/VAX embedded in an auto, and hopeful=
ly
VMS and (if functional) vaxlinux. Please help me.

B>That's good, LK 201 I presume.

Yes. And a "hockey puck" mouse. The keybd works with the boot monitor.

B>VR297-DA, I assume. The disk might be a RZ24 (245MB). NetBSD should
B>fit nicely on the machine.

The monitor is (I can't see it now) AFAIK a VRT17-DA. 17 inch. I tried to=
 make
it do 56Hz by messing with its hidden trimpots on the left side of the si=
nside
of the case. Its severely un-calibrated. Do the vax gods here know if a
standard monitor repair shop droid would know how to re-calibrate it? Cou=
ld I
do it with a 60Hz generator and patience? Its very delicate, and I don't =
know
what those trimpots really mean. There are 10 of them, I believe.

    Thleffing> weird kind of floppy card. Appears to be DEC part. I'd

The card is a "DICEON 1A" from the lith on the dorsal side. Do the vax go=
ds
know if this baby can load a kernel and do tricks? I am still confused as=
 to
whether my ethernet or my SCSI (I have 32mb of ram) will work. I recall
something about the LANCE chips not working with 32mb?

    Thleffing> what the status LEDs and the fancy magic tones it emits
    Thleffing> on boot mean?  5) What kind of terminal emulation

B> No idea. Maybe Michael Kukat <michael@vaxpower.de> can tell you.

If Micheal Kukat is on this list, your SMTP server does not like somethin=
g,
but it could be my perl scripts. :) Pointers?

    Thleffing> plan to embed it in my 1981 Toyota Tercel.

B> <EVIL LAUGHTER> That's a good one! </EVIL LAUGHTER>

Yeah, well lets just say that I want a bumpersticker that says "My other =
car
is also a minicomputer."

B> Netbooting with a linux box is not a big deal. It's pretty well
B> explained on the NetBSD pages on http://www.netbsd.org.

It looks simple. But I'm wondering about that ethernet!

B> As long as you can manage to drain +/- 12V and +/- 5V from it I don't
B> see a problem here. But I'm no EE, just a mathematican...

I am currently using a salvaged VPR power box from a tugboat to partition=
 my
three deep cycle marine batteries that drive the sound system etc. The ca=
r
weighs 850lbs dry, and about 903 with the batteries! That pesky -9V on th=
e
VS4000 supply is going to be interesting. Suggestions?

    Thleffing> I am _not_ joking. Ideally I would like to use a spare
    Thleffing> 400mb Quantum (I understand I can do this?) with VMS in
    Thleffing> the thing too.

B>It sepends. I gather that VMS is somewhaty picky about non-DEC
B>hardware. YMMV.

I was told by a guru guy (who muttered about spiradisk or something, and =
PDP
binaries... whatever) that it would go up to 4Gb drives. He pissed off to=
 the
USA, so I am wondering if I will have to pass geometry info etc to the bo=
ot
rom, or whether its smart enough to probe LUNs &c.

Also, if I am forced to use PPP on this baby, can I make the console poin=
t to
a dummy device or a pty? Its ugly, but I need the serial port so that I c=
an
upload nefarious things in absence of ethernet.

I also wonder about the shape of that serial port. Is there a proper ITU =
name
for that thing? Is it just a null modem with a goofy end? Man...

-tlf

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