VAX Networking

[jscheef]

I'm starting to set up a donated uVAX 3100. I know nothing about VAX that isn't printed on the outside of the case. The machine has been sitting in an office for about 10 years. Prior to that it was in daily use. Judging from the peripherals that came with the machine, they used DECconnect to connect the terminals. A few MMJ cables came with the machine.

I doubt the company had the machine connected to the Internet. That's where I will need the most help. Right now I need some guidance on what to expect when I turn it on for the first time.

Thanks,
Jim

[ericj]

I have none of the 3100 series, but I'll see if I can help.

First I'd recommend googling for a manual for your system. There's almost certainly one out there somewhere. Manx is a good place to start, but there are others:

http://vt100.net/manx/search?q=3100;start=60;on=0;cp=1

One of these manuals should have the diagnostics information so you know what the blinkenlights on the back of the box mean, and so you know what the startup messages mean.

You'll need some way to hook up a console, of course, as I don't know if the uVAX 3100 has a framebuffer. Did you get a terminal with this system? If you have a VT320 or later, the terminal will have an MMJ port, so use that, otherwise you'll need something to adapt the MMJ port on the console to a DE9 or DB25 serial connector. You may have received such a dongle among the donated parts, otherwise you can solder one together pretty easily. I have one here with part number H8575-A, which is an MMJ-DB25F that will let you connect the console to a PC's serial port. There are others, but some may require a null modem adapter to connect to a PC.

Next, you'll need some way to install an OS on the machine unless you want to leave the existing system software there. How you get an OS onto the system depends a lot on what you have to work with. Does the box have an internal CD-ROM? If not, does it have one of the special non-standard SCSI cables that were used on the 3100 series? The 68-pin SCSI connector is a special DEC-only single-ended SCSI narrow, so you'll need the special DEC cable to hook up external SCSI devices. I have one here on my Infoserver, so I can check the part number if you need it.

I'll assume you want to leave the existing software. Set your terminal to 9600-8-N-1 and power on the box. What you see next depends on the system (see manual) but whatever it is, the system is going through its self-diagnostics at this point. You should eventually get an error message and/or a chevron prompt. From the chevron prompt, type "show dev" which will show you the devices available on the system. Assuming the 3100 is a SCSI system, your disks will show up as DKA0, DKA100, DKA200, .. etc. To boot from one of these you type "boot dka200:" etc.

Assuming there's a bootable OS on the volume you selected, you will eventually be greeted with a login prompt of some kind. How you proceed from here depends on whether you know the system password and what OS is installed on the box. If it's running VMS and you don't know the password there is a way to reset it, so if this is the case let me know and I'll dredge up the info.

You might also try the following for help with your new VAX:

classiccmp/cctalk mailing list
comp.os.vms
comp.sys.dec

[PhotoJim]

These are interesting machines.

I have an old VAXstation 4000/60 running OpenBSD 4.0 right now. It works well. Not fast. I upgraded the RAM from 16 to 32 MB just a few weeks ago.

I have a 4000/100 VAX and a VAXstation 3100 of some sort kicking around too.

You can get a free license to OpenVMS if you like but there is a learning curve. As cool as it would be to run VMS I am more and more tempted to just deploy OpenBSD on the other beasts. :)

[Thrashbarg]

jscheef, what operating system do you want to run, or what does it have already?

Also I assume it doesn't have 10baseT but 10base2 or 10base5.

I got a VAXstation 4000/60 a week ago and I found it relatively easy to set up on my network. I got an old 10base NIC with a BNC connector on it and wired it up, then configured the NIC on the server as a bridge with the main network interface.

The 10base2 equipment is still easy to find at electronics stores, just some T junctions, two 50 ohm terminators (one and only one attached to ground) and at least 1.5 feet of BNC cable. A multimeter is essential for making sure it's all connected correctly.

You can also get AUI (10base5) to 10baseT adapters cheaply off eBay, etc.

As for the OS, OpenVMS isn't quite as difficult as you may think, there's heaps of information about it on the Net. I'm picking it up quite nicely, it's just the initial shock which is difficult to get over.

Of course if you want to stick with something familiar there are the BSD's or Linux.

[PhotoJim]

I got AUI to 10BaseT adapters... much more convenient than coax. I did have my VAXstation 4000/60 on AUI for awhile though. I like running it on UTP cable better because now I don't need my bridge to be up for it to have connectivity with the rest of my LAN.

I'm not quite sure what to do with it. :) Sendmail configuration scares me, and OpenBSD doesn't have a postfix package. The latest version won't compile. Ditto for irssi, which is a nice cli-based chat client.

When I get more time in a few weeks I will work on putting OpenVMS on the VAX 4000/100 again. I need to get a CD-ROM drive that will work really reliably with it; the one I have has to be hard reset constantly. I got around that with the 4000/60 by doing a network install.

[jscheef]

Eric,

This uVAX is a regular multi-user machine so the console is on a terminal. There is a special port for this. I have several manuals but not any for the uVAX hardware. I had found that website you reference and have downloaded several hardware manuals. The OS is OpenVMS - don't know what version yet - and it is installed along with several applications. I got all of the software licenses from the owner along with all the manuals they had. This machine was well cared for and is totally pristine. Along with the uVAX itself, I have an expansion chassis with several hard drives, an external TK50 tape drive and a tabletop 9-track tape unit that they used prior to the TK50. There are four terminal (one missing a keyboard), two terminal servers, and miscellaneous SCSI and DECconnect cables. They had it fired up when I picked it up, so I know it boots. The expansion chassis was giving errors, so that may have a problem but I suspect it will be OK. Oh, I forgot the three printers and one printing terminal (a typewriter-like device, not a DECWriter). Like I said in my forst port, they ran their business on this thing. They gave me the system manager password, so I should be able to make it all work. I'll follow your suggestions when I power it on - hopefully tomorrow.

Thrashbarg,

You are correct that it has both AUI and 10Base2 connections. I'm familiar with thinnet from the days before UTP became popular. A hub with a coax uplink should allow connecting the two media types.

PhotoJim,

I plan to run a museum exhibit on the machine - what I call "The Green Screen Experience". Further details are yet to be developed. I had planned to do this from a Linux box, but then this fell in my lap. I would really like to run All-In-One to show people what office productivity was like before PCs.

Here's what I need to know right now: The machine does not have a CD-ROM. Can I connect any SCSI CD drive or was there something special about one from DEC? Where are the drivers? Is there a utility to configure hardware like a CD-ROM drive? Where?

After that, how do I determine what networking is installed? If I'm really lucky, they had Phase V installed and I can configure TCP/IP. How do I find out?

What type of router would I need to just run DECNET (no IP) on the uVAX and connect to an IP network? PhotoJim, you mentioned a bridge; what is the model number and how does (did) it funtion on your network?

Thanks, you've been quite helpful thus far.

Jim

[jscheef]

Hello guys,

Well I finally turned the thing on last nite. It started up to a >>> prompt. After some looking in the manuals (and reading your replies) I tried typing 'boot'. The good news is this worked. The bad news is that one disk is bad. The good news is that the bad disk is the swap disk, so the boot process completes, but with errors about the swap space being full.

So, how do I figure out which disk (out of about five) is the bad one? Is there a utility that manages the disks? How can I get an overview of the system to see what is where and how big and how full each disk is? Or more likely, what DCL commands will do the same thing?

Jim

[PhotoJim]

No idea about the disk diagnosis. :)

These machines use only CD-ROM drives that support 512-byte blocks, and only very old drives, by my experiences. If you can find a 1x or 2x SCSi CD-ROM with jumper-selectable block sizes, that will probably be the best. I have a 12x with a jumper that kind of works, but not really. I have to hard reset it constantly to keep it working.

[jscheef]

PhotoJim,

Helpful tidbit there. I have a stack of old SCSI CD-ROM drives so maybe one will work.

What about disk drives? Is there something special about DEC disk drives? How large a drive do I need for swap? Is this dependent on RAM?

Thanks,
Jim

[PhotoJim]

What about disk drives? Is there something special about DEC disk drives? How large a drive do I need for swap? Is this dependent on RAM?

I can't really comment about OpenVMS, but I can tell you about my experience with the VAXstation 4000/60 and OpenBSD.

My VAX came with a pair of 504 MB DEC SCSI hard disks. One was bad. The other is a little noisy but it works well. My brother-in-law had a spare 4.3 GB Seagate Barracuda drive. Just for giggles i connected it to the VAX and it works fine. You have to create a relatively small boot partition (mine is about 500 MB, and I have / on it) that the VAX can handle. I then mount the rest of the drive as / (with a third partition for swap of course) and then the DEC drive is /home. Looks like I put a little bit of swap on the DEC drive too.

As for how much swap, it really depends. A rule of thumb is 2x physical RAM, but it really depends on what you do with the computer. My system has 64 MB of swap on the big drive and 32 MB on the small drive. With what I do with it, it's never run out of swap.

If you're tight for disk space you can use NFS mounts for some of your space. You can even have a diskless machine and put the whole system on an NFS share. Swap can be done that way too but it's pretty slow.