So I've got my new VAXStation here; it's in good shape, powers on and appears to get through the self-test. However, I'm having some problems:
* I don't seem to be getting a picture out of the video card (PV21X-GD high-resolution color board.) I'm using an LCD monitor (Samsung Syncmaster 193p Plus) that is supposed to support sync-on-green (and that definitely supports the resolution and refresh rate used) with a makeshift cable setup (RS/6000 3W3-to-BNC cable plus 3xBNC-to-VGA cable - I gather that the RS/6000 has red and blue switched around, but I accounted for that and anyway it should only affect the colors, not the ability to form a picture.) But I'm not getting anything - the monitor OSD is claiming "no signal," not even that it's out-of-range. Is there some trick to this that I'm missing?
* More problematically, I can't get to the console over the serial port, either. I have the baud rate set correctly on my terminal, but I'm not seeing any output at all. Do the console functions only work over the MMJ RS-423 serial port and not the DB-25 RS-232 one?
Edited by commodorejohn on December 01 2012 18:24
Okay, my serial adapter got here this morning, and she's booting to the console over the serial port It's actually got the full 104MB of RAM; this was more of a score than I'd realized! Still having some trouble, though. For starters, SHOW DEVICE doesn't seem to list the hard drive, so I'm assuming some SCSI voodoo is in order. Joy. :/ (That, or my 68-to-50-pin adapter doesn't work - entirely possible, as I've never actually used it before. I need to get my PC SCSI controller installed so I can verify some of this stuff...)
Furthermore, while it recognizes the CD drive just fine, when I try to boot from it (b/r5:10000000 dka400:, according to the OpenVMS VAX install guide,) it loads from disk and then just sits there. It might simply be taking a while, but there's no further disk activity, and the two times I've halted it in the middle, it's shown the exact same PC value, which kinda suggests that it's just sitting idle at that address...is there something I'm missing, here?
Install SimH or other VAX emulator on a platform with network support through a TAP device or even better a dedicated physical or emulated NIC on another computer.
Install VMS on it and configure it as a LAVC BOOT node.
Boot your VAXstation as a diskless node and see if it can recognize your hard drive.
Or have the VAXstation MSCP access the drives from SimH and do not worry about having local hard drives on it.
VMS on Alpha Emulators can also be MSCP boot servers for VAXen, but that is harder to set up.
VMS on Alpha emulators can also be set up to be an Infoserver node. In that case the VAX would not be a cluster member, but you could still boot from a CD-ROM served on the network.
malmberg August 04 2022 No more VAX hobbyist licenses. Community licenses for Alpha/IA64/X86_64 VMS Software Inc. Commercial VMS software licenses for VAX available from HPE.
ozboomer July 20 2022 Just re-visiting.. No more hobbyist licenses? Is that from vmssoftware.com, no 'community' licenses?
valdirfranco July 01 2022 No more hobbyist license...sad
mister_wavey February 12 2022 I recall that the disks failed on the public access VMS systems that included Fafner
parwezw January 03 2022 Anyone know what happened to FAFNER.DYNDS.ORG? I had a hobbyist account here but can longer access the site.
gtackett October 27 2021 Make that DECdfs _2.1A_ for Vax
gtackett October 27 2021 I'm looking for DECdfs V2.4A kit for VAX. Asking here just in case anyone is still listening.
MarkRLV September 17 2021 At one time, didn't this web site have a job board? I would love to use my legacy skills one last time in my career.
malmberg January 18 2021 New Hobbyist PAKs for VAX/VMS are no longer available according to reports. Only commercial licenses are reported to be for sale from HPE
dfilip January 16 2021 Can someone please point me to hobbyist license pak? I'm looking for VAX/VMS 7.1, DECnet Phase IV, and UCX/TCPIP ... have the 7.1 media, need the license paks ... thanks!
It's actually got the full 104MB of RAM; this was more of a score than I'd realized! Still having some trouble, though. For starters, SHOW DEVICE doesn't seem to list the hard drive, so I'm assuming some SCSI voodoo is in order. Joy. :/ (That, or my 68-to-50-pin adapter doesn't work - entirely possible, as I've never actually used it before. I need to get my PC SCSI controller installed so I can verify some of this stuff...)