On 11 May, Kevin M. Myer wrote:

> First, how do you boot from the floppy drive?  
Do a 
show dev
at the >>> prompt. I think the floppy has to show as a SCSI disk. 

> I followed the installation
> instructions, and used rawrite to place a copy of the install program on a
> floppy (I also tried using dd).  However, all my BOOT RX25 or BOOT FLOPPY
> commands failed.  
The problem is: The bottstrapper on the floppy must support the
machine. I think there is currently no boot floppy image available, that
supports the VS4k60. So you have to netboot the machine. See the NetBSD
netboot HOWTO on http://www.netbsd.org and
http://world.std.com/~bdc/projects/vaxen/index.html 
And get the latest -curent snapshot, not 1.4.2. Only current will be
usefull on the VS4k. 

> Secondly, regarding the video card - can it be made to work with a VGA
> monitor in any way?  
Just try. Many monitors can deal with sync on green. There is no risk
of damage if it fails. (If the monitor can handle the H-freq. of the
VAX.)

> Which leads me to my third question.  Does this VAX have serial
> ports?  [...]
A serial console is what you want to use with NetBSD, because NetBSD
currently does not support the VS4k video. Put S3 behind the flap on
the front to the upper position an you get a serial console at the
printer port. Pinout of the MMJ plug is at
http://anacin.nsc.vcu.edu/~jim/mvax/mvax_faq.html 

> Any help would be greatly appreciated, 
Just ask, and you will get help. :-)

> or else I guess the VAX will have to go to the dumpster.
I have a VAXstation II GPX, 2000, 3100m76, 4000/60 and many other
old Unix boxes. (Yes, I am a collector. :-)  ) These systems are nice,
old Workstations and still usefull for learning more about Unix and
software engineering, can be used for some (low to mid bandwith)
network serving (mail, news, disk, print, web, ...). 
So _do not dump old Unix machines_! There are a lot of people out there
that will pay at least the shipping if they can get such a system. 
-- 



tschüß,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/