Alejandro Arrieta wrote:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> Im a CS student in Chile (Southamerika), i work as one of the
> Network Administrators of the CS department, using Solaris and Linux
> on i386, sparc and alpha boxes. In the server room was an old
> MicroVax 3300 very durty. I clean it up, take out all the spider and
> other bugs that live in there. And connect it to the power. It power up
> and make the noise of some hdd spinning up, and with the cover off
> a lot of lights started shining. Then i search what OpenSource OS
> support this machine and i found NetBSD :-)
> Im downloading it right now, i read the faqs, and docs,
> see the pictures....

> I have search but have not found any document with specification
> of this machine, behind the cover there are a lot of connectors, i

Have a dig through www.vaxarchive.org

> recognize a SCSI, AUI, coaxial connectors, but are two Centronic type
> (printer) and one like rj11 but diferent. I suppose that the centronic
> are serial connectors. I want to connect a console to it (Wyse terminal).

From the Vax Hardware reference (from the above site), there's no SCSI
on the MicroVAX 3300. I'm going to bet that they're 50-pin centronics
connectors (like SCSI-1), which (I think - I may be wrong here) are to
connect to external DSSI (precursor to SCSI) drives. I don't know about
the centronic (printer) connector; presumably you mean 36-pin centronic?
The 'like RJ11 but different' is most likely to be a serial console (for
VT3xx and similar).

> In the server room i cant found the tapes of this machine, can i netboot
> this old pal???? in all the docs about netbooting there is no comment
> about this machine.

I think it depends on the ethernet card that's in there. Just follow
through the netbooting procedure described in the HOWTO, and hope it
works. Various people seem to have trouble netbooting though (myself
included).

> Any advice or link will be welcomed. Sorry for my english, any correction
> is welcomed too :-)
> 
> Thank U
> 
> Alejandro Arrieta Rios
> aarrieta@inf.utfsm.cl

Dan
-- 
dankolb@ox.compsoc.net  Oxford University Computer Society Secretary

--I reserve the right to be completely wrong about any comments or 
  opinions expressed; don't trust everything you read above--