Wow, BA215's are falling out of the sky these days. From none to four on 
E-bay, and this one and a couple of others I've seen.

Its a nice system, 2.6VUPS or so which makes it about 2/3 the speed of your 
M38. Can be upgraded to a VAX 4000/200 by replacing the CPU board with a 
KA660. (5 VUPs) The CXY08 is a serial mux card, generally cables are pretty 
easy to come by if  you know any DEC scrappers (look like a printer 
connector on one end and four DB25's on the other)

The TK50 is a lose, most have been upgraded to TK70s (much more reliable). 
There are only 6 slots and they are all Q/CD (no dual wide card stacking) 
so you're a bit limited in your configuration choices. Typically CPU + 2 
memory for 32MB + TQK70 + Serial cards. The DSSI on-board isn't supported 
yet by NetBSD but you can plug in a card for either DSSI (KQFSA) or SCSI 
and use that.

--Chuck

At 12:12 PM 9/8/00 -0400, NetBSD Bob wrote:
>I have  first dibs on a MicroVAX 3300 BA215 cabinet tower with a label
>that indicates it is a 640QR-B2.  Cards are TKQ50, CXY08, MS650, and
>KA640.  It has a TK50 tape.  What is the CXY08 (looks like a serial
>card maybe)?
>
>Can anyone suggest any relative merits or demerits of such a machine
>compared to my VS3100 M38 class machine, as a small NetBSD server
>perhaps?
>
>It looks cute, in that foot square 3 foot high tower, and might be fun
>to play with, or boot from, or use as a small Apache toy at home.
>
>Will it run VAX 4.3BSD?
>
>Where do I find a listing of the prom commands for it?
>
>Any insights are appreciated.
>
>Thanks
>
>Bob