Booting a VAXstation

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 6:52 PM, Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
>> bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire
>> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 11:28 AM
>> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
>> Subject: Re: Booting a VAXstation
>>
>> On Mar 15, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>> > I have a VAXstation 3100 model 38 I bought on eBay for the princely
>> > sum of £0.99. Sadly it came without disks and I have no wide-SCSI
>> > disks of <1GB.
>>
>>    That machine doesn't have wide SCSI.  It's 8-bit ("narrow") 10MHz.
>>
>> > As far as I know you can't boot a traditional VAX from a disk of
>> > <1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow narrow SCSI
>> > disk, like an
>> > 80MB or something, and put most of it on the only Wide SCSI disk I
>> > have, a 10GB...?
>>
>>    You can use a sub-1GB disk to boot from, yes.  Booting is, as I
>> understand it, the only restriction.
>>
>> > Also, I have several external SCSI CD-ROMs, including 2 Apple units.
>> I
>> > seem to recall that VAXen want a weird block size, same as Sun kit...
>> > is that correct? How would one tell if a certain drive could do this
>> > or not? Is it a DIP switch setting or just a SCSI bus command?
>>
>>    You need a drive that supports 512-byte blocks.
>>
>>           -Dave
>>
>
> I have found such CD-ROM drives to be both plentiful and cheap at local second-hand stores.  Since they won't work with a PC, they have 'no' value....
>
> I have installed the core of VMS and booted from a small-ish drive, but you rapidly run out of space.  -- Ian

When you say "a small-ish drive", what counts as "small" for VMS? Or
rather, what sort of drive should I be looking for to /not/ have to
muck around when installing it?

My hope is to get the machine booting into DECwindows. I don't plan to
use it as a server, more as sort of glorified X-terminal if anything.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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