On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 01:11:20PM -0500, Brian Chase wrote:
> 
> Well if you actually have a TZ30 and are wondering if it'll work on a
> vanilla SCSI bus (I can't imagine it wouldn't really?), then why not just
> hook it up and try it?

that's the plan, just need to get around to it.

> There's a TK50Z used on the VAXstation 2000 which is said to be slightly
> odd wrt the flavor of SCSI it uses.  Still, in the case of TK50s, I'm not
> entirely sure what to believe concerning the VAXstation 2000 SCSI support
> and the TK50Z-FA and TK50Z-GA tape drives.  Both of these use the original
> style TK50 drives with an adapter board slapped onto them to talk SCSI.
> The TZ30 actualy sounds kind of nice.  I wouldn't mind having one myself.
> :-)

yeah, it's a pretty neat thing, instead of the big "paddle release" of the TK
drives, it has a lever that you swing left to right, so it fits in a half-height
5.25" drive bay.  VERY slick.

> Many of the Ultrix and VMS people say that the VAXstation 2000's SCSI
> isn't actually real SCSI and only supports a specific model of DEC
> crippled TK50Z tape drive.  In reality it is actually a genuine SCSI
> controller.  With the NetBSD/vax 1.4.1 release, I was able to hook-up a
> SCSI disk drive to the system, create a filesystem on it, and install
> NetBSD/vax without problems (except that it was slow PIO mode SCSI at the
> time of the 1.4.1 release.) The VS2000 firmware doesn't support the disk
> drive as a *bootable* device, though someone has made mods to the original
> ROM images to allow SCSI disk booting.

i believe that nothing is impossible.  that probably has something to do with
growing up with my father.  he likes to do one impossible thing a week if he
can. :)

> I've also had some interesting discussions with VAX hardware resellers
> when they asked me why I'd be interested in things like VAXstation
> 3100/M76s and VAXstation 4000/60s.  When I mentioned my intentions to run
> Unix (NetBSD) on them and to use them for servers, they insisted that Unix
> would run on these boxes because these particular models only support VMS.
> They also told me that I wouldn't be able to run them as multi-user
> systems because the hardware didn't allow it.

VAX only runs VMS.  geeze, don't you know anything? :)

> I suppose if you see the whole world through the tinted lenses of DEC
> products and their scheme of selling crippled licenses for workstation
> class machines.  If I tried explaining to them otherwise they just sort
> of looked at me like some wet-behind-the-ears kid.  Of course this was
> back in the 1.3 days when VAXstation 3100 support was still very new.
> I'd imagine that any clueful resellers have found NetBSD/vax enthusiasts
> as a great segment to market their old VAX systems.

i'm sure that at this point (especially since the VAX line is all but out of
the market, or on its way out) the DEC resellers are learning the "truth" and
that the NetBSD/vax enthusiasts are their _only_ market.

-brian