> James Green wrote:
> 
> I am at a stage where my NetBSD/i386 box is almost finished being setup for
> the vax netboot.  My vax is a MicroVAX 3 in a BA123.  I am just a bit
> confused with where I am going to see the output of the kernel.  On the back
> there is a panel marked Emulex with 8 Male DB25's.  These are connected to
> an Emulex card with not much more than it's name on it.  These DB25's are
> ladled Channel 1 to Channel 8.  Should I be plugging in a terminal on #3?

I suspect this is just a farm of serial ports.
 
> The box also came with a VT320 and a cable that seems to connect the DB25 on
> the back of the VT320 to a 15pin (-ish :-) female elsewhere on the back of
> the box.  There is a 3 position switch near this 15pin with a red 7-segment
> "digit" type LED indicator.  There is a dial next to the LED that looks like
> baud speed.  There are three symbols next to the switch, but it's not
> immediately clear what they mean.  Should I stick with this VT320 and play
> with the switch??

This sounds like it should be the console.

Is the cable connected to a DB9 connector?  This is the console port.
The cable is special (shorts pins 8-9 I think which signals a console
connection although your uVAX-III may not care - other DEC hardware does)

If you place the switch so the dot is inside the circle I believe that
is 'break enable' which means hitting the break key on your console
terminal will put the system down to the PROM monitor.  The other direction
and you tend not to accidentally halt your running system with a mis-type B^)

Yep, there is a baud rate selector dial and the middle one is, well, I
forget.  Mine is set to the arrow which i think is normal mode.

Make sure your baud rate matches between the switch setting and terminal.

The red LED should march down in value as the CPU does its self-test.

You should (eventaully) also see some activity on the console too, that
mimics this, i.e. counts down as it runs self tests and eventually you
are hoping to see a '>>> ' prompt on your VT320.

Presuming you've got a DEQNA or DELQA ethernet card, then I think 
'>>> B XQA0' will ask the ethernet card to netboot...

Watch /var/log/messages for the mopd message with your VAX asking for
data...

Cheers,

-- Ken