At 04:26 PM 12/20/2000 -0500, corleyja@hushmail.com wrote:
>Yes this is a TK70 drive (or so the little sticker says on the front).

Yup, pretty common.

>So DSSI is only supported on a MSCP controller...  How do I find out if
>I have a MSCP controller?

You don't. If you did, the DSSI drives would show up as DUxnn (MSCP disks 
start with the DU prefix, SCSI with the DK prefix, and DSSI (native) with 
the DI prefix)

>   In case it hasn't become apparent, I'm not at
>all familiar with VAX hardware and I am really not that familiar with *BSD
>-- I'm really a Linux guy and this is my first foray into the BSD world.
>  I've tried to peruse the archives of this list, but I'm sure I missed a
>whole bunch.  In short, please be as patient as you have been so far.  From
>what I've seen so far this is the most helpful newsgroup I've ever posted
>to.  But I digress.  So if I have useable hardware that I can boot to, is
>there any documentation on how to do that (I assume I follow the netboot
>procedure and then sacrifice a small animal and make the magic incantation
>:-)?

Yup, the netboot-HOWTO faq will serve you well. A couple of things to watch 
for:
         1) Linux servers tend to lie about offering NFS V3 support so for
            the NFS exports to the vax force it to not offer Version 3 NFS.
         2) The switch on the front of the VAX that selects the AUI or the
            BNC network connector can get dirty and prevent packets from being
            sent, received, or both.
         3) If you get a VAX running VMS on the network it sometimes tries 
to "help"
            the MOP Booting process and that can be irritating.

>   Also, if I need to rearrange some internals in order to get these
>drives working, is there some documentation on that?

DEC machines are extremely well documented, unfortunately not a lot of 
relevant documentation on the 4000/300 series is on-line.

The way to get your drives working is to obtain a KFQSA controller (its a 
plug in card) and the appropriate cabinet kit (the silver bar thing that 
covers the card and has a connector on one side) They come up on Ebay now 
and again and there is a relatively large DEC re-seller business out there 
that makes their living keeping such machines "alive." Once you get the 
KFQSA you will need to configure it (a non-obvious process) and then 
disconnect the CPU from the internal DSSI bus and connect the KFQSA card to 
it instead.

I'm working on DSSI support in my spare time but first out of the gate will 
be SII (aka MicroVAX 3300/3400 support) rather than SHAC0 (VAX 4000/200 - 
700 support). I'm taking some time off from my real job next week so I'll 
get to play with it a bit (maybe Santa will bring me a KA690, wouldn't that 
be nice.)

--Chuck