I hope that this is an appropriate question to ask in this mailing list.

I have acquired some old VAX hardware (VAXstation 4000-60, VAX 4000-100, and 
one of the VAXstation 3100s).  I've been trying off and on for a few months 
to get an operating sysetm installedo n each of them.  I realize how picky 
these computers are about what CD-ROM drive they will work with, and have 
tried various drives - three old Sonys, a Plextor, a NEC and a Pioneer. 
Most have a specific setting for blocksize and I know that most Digital 
hardware needs the 512-byte block size rather than 2K.

Last night, I was trying to get the 4000-60 running.  To make a long story 
short, although I can boot off an OpenVMS install CD, installation always 
fails - I don't have the precise error text with me right now, but the 
machine asserts that DKA100 (the SCSI hard disk) is offline.  This happens 
with several of the CD-ROM drives (a couple won't work at all with this 
machine, no surprise).  I reformatted the drive using TEST /USER 10 (or 
whatever it is precisely :) ) and the format succeeds (although it takes a 
long time) but the error continues when I try to install again.  The drive 
is a roughly 468-MB DEC drive so it definitely should work with a VAX; it's, 
as far as I can tell, the factory drive for this machine.  (The other 
machines have DSSI drives and I get the same problem.)

So... I burned a NetBSD installation CD and nothing happens at all.  With 
some of the drives, the activity light is flashing about every 2/3 of a 
second or so and persists for several minutes before I get a boot error on 
the VAX.

Googling hasn't been very illuminating.  Any ideas?  My amateur theories...:

 - none of my CD-ROMs are compatible (if that were the case, I shouldn't be 
able to boot OpenVMS though, right?)
 - the hard disk in the machine is defective (why then would it successfully 
format?)
 - I'm having read issues with these old drives when using burned media (I 
burned OpenVMS on a good Taiyo Yuden CD; maybe the drives can only sort of 
read it... I burned NetBSD on a decent Ritek CD but the reflectance might be 
lower and the old drives can't read it at all..?) (why would my OpenVMS 
installation fail with a "drive offline" error and refer to the hard disk, 
and always at the same point?)

Any suggestions or ideas?  These are modestly equipped machines but I would 
love to get them running.  My intention is to put OpenVMS on two of them and 
make a VAXcluster as a playtoy for the local Linux/BSD club (even if it 
isn't a *nix, it is Open Source now), and put BSD on the other just because 
I can and I want to.

I have a couple of AUI to UTP transceivers so I can try netbooting.  I have 
a Sparcstation 20 running NetBSD 2.0 that I can use as the boot server. 
Perhaps this is the path of least resistance.

Jim