the upgrade involved a backplane swap. the 4000/[34567]00s are not qbus. 
(some 300s needed an upgrade to support the ms690s, too)

isildur

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Henry R. Bent wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I'm going on a trek this weekend to pick up a VAX 4000/200.  It's in a BA440
> enclosure with a TK70, 2 DSSI drives, and I believe some sort of graphics
> option.  Of course I'd like to get NetBSD on it, but I'll need some sort of
> Qbus SCSI adapter, right?  Aside from netbooting and NFS-mounting, of course.
> 
> My main question, though, is about upgradeability.  The /200 is somewhat
> limited in its speed compared to other 4000 series systems, and I'd ideally
> like to upgrade the machine to a /300 or /500.  Compaq claims (at
> http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/vax/archive/vax4000_200.html) that this
> system is non-upgradeable.  However, my guess is that this info is based on a
> /200 in a BA213 rather than a BA440.  So would it be possible to swap the
> processor board with one from a /300 or /500 to achieve a faster machine?  My
> apologies if this is an obvious question, but I'm pretty new to the world of
> VAXen, having just come from experience with DECstations.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> -- 
> Henry Bent                       henry.bent@oberlin.edu
> Want the Stars Productions       http://www.wtsp.org
>