Consider visiting the House of VAX at
<http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/computers/vaxen>
and check out the section on decoding the front panel glyphs...

Onward
At 05:09 PM 4/28/02 -0400, Henry R. Bent wrote:
>1. Power connection.  The socket looks like it would take a standard power
>cord but it's got a piece of plastic blocking the top.  In all my boxes it
>seems to be the one thing I'm missing.  Can I scrape some plastic out of the
>top of a regular power cord and use it?  The power rating does say 11.2A at
>120V so perhaps DEC is just making sure you use a safe power cord.

Uses a high temperature IEC cord, as Dave mentioned you can get them from 
Cisco support shops, some HW stores will special order them. Or you can dig 
out the plastic and use a non-high temperature cord. Given that your system 
is not fully loaded this won't be a problem.

>2. Disk connections.  I've got two RF31s and a TK70 with front panels in the
>drive bays.  I even have spare DSSI ID plugs!  My question though is about the
>expansion connectors to the left of the Qbus slots.  The bottom one is labeled
>"BUS C" and has a DSSI terminator on it.  However the top one looks like a
>Centronics 50pin and doesn't have a terminator.  Is this also used for DSSI
>connections, or is this some sort of SCSI connector?  My curiosity has been
>piqued because I recieved a standard Storage Expansion box with two RZ57s as
>part of the lot.

The BA430 chassis that your CPU is in has a 50 pin back plane for the 
disks. On the DECSystem 5500 that backplane was SCSI, on the 4000/200 its 
DSSI. The appropriate terminator needs to be installed and the other port 
covered with a red cover. (actually it doesn't have to be red but the DEC 
docs on the 430 chassis specify it that way :-)

>3. KA660 bulkhead.  There's a two-position switch selectable between a dot in
>a circle and a dot outside a circle.  This is next to a three position switch
>with a profile of a face, an arrow to the two-position switch, and a T in a
>circle.  What does all of this mean?  How should I set it for standard
>booting?

See the web site, I can never remember off the top of my head which is which.

>4. Simpact ICP1622T Qbus card.  I believe this is some sort of terminal server
>interface but I haven't been able to find more information than that.  What
>does this connect to?

Its some sort of communications card, the DEC Comserver software supports 
it according to this page <http://dnpg1.dnpg.com/dr/servers/descrip/dspax.txt>

>I'd also like to say that I got a LOT of documentation (~6 boxes worth) in
>gray binders about VMS and stuff like CDD/Plus, DATATRIEVE and VAX FMS.  I
>believe the VMS version is V5.4.  If anyone needs any docs like this, contact
>me off-list and I'll see if I have what you need.  I haven't had the energy to
>sit down and go through it all yet so I can't really provide a list.

Actually that isn't complete. The full set should have been approximately 
12 binders if it included the system site guide and setup. However its 
always good to get _some_ documentation. My guess is that your system will 
be running 5.5H4 which was the first 5.x release with solid support for the 
4000 series. Otherwise it will be 6.0 or 6.1

--Chuck