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DEC 4000/500 with no Operating System

g4ugm said:
The fuse is only to protect the cable. If the lead comes with 13amp that is fine. In fact you probably need 13amp. The PSU in the BA440 is usually rated 1.2kw and whilst that is only around 5amp the in rush current will be more so 13 amp is appropriate.
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Thanks! That saves messing about. I just need the plug to arrive and I can check the VAX survives the car journey to my home (and the wrestling up the stairs!)
 
Hi Pile-o-stone,
Bit late to the party here - how have you gotten on?
I'm either North of Sheffield or in Manchester and have a bunch of VAX kit I could help you with. If you want to get VMS onto your box, your best bet as someone else has mentioned would be to netboot it into a SIMH hosted cluster then go from there. Happy to come spend a saturday afternoon or something with you getting it up and running.
 
gslick said:
This one has been listed for quite a while:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/333565886301
CMD CQD-203/T Qbus tape controller $170, plus shipping

Swap the two EPROMs and the PAL and it becomes a CQD-203/TM
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Hmmm, a while ago i read somewhere that people wanted to try this also with different controllers (CQDs ??); but afaik i read nothing about success in doing so.

As i have circa about half a dozen CQD-200/220T models or others i would be interested in doing this also.
Do you have any pointers where to look - that would be great :)
TIA
 
Wildfire said:
Hmmm, a while ago i read somewhere that people wanted to try this also with different controllers (CQDs ??); but afaik i read nothing about success in doing so.

As i have circa about half a dozen CQD-200/220T models or others i would be interested in doing this also.
Do you have any pointers where to look - that would be great :)
TIA
Click to expand...

Archived CMD CQD-200/TM Firmware can be found here. I have used the CQD-200 B2 Release version. I don't know about the CQD-200 E1 Release version.

https://web.archive.org/web/1996122...teqlist.dbm&product=116&Type=1&Title=Firmware

https://web.archive.org/web/1996122...com/ftproot/pub/dec/qbus/firmware/200y_b2.zip

That firmware should also work on the MTI QTS-30, which is the same PCB as as the CMD CQD-200.

In addition to replacing the two 27C256 firmware EPROMs, the CSR decode PAL also needs to be replaced. Attached is ABEL source code that I reverse engineered for a CQD-200/TM 22V10 PAL, and a compiled JEDEC file.

The CQD-220 needs different firmware and PAL.
 

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  • cqd200tm.zip
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g4ugm said:
Yes its me again. OK the if its a 4000/500 I think you are pretty much stuck with VMS as that has DSSI disks (Its like SCSI but DEC specific) and from a briefs scan of the FAQs NETBSD does not appear support the DSSI controller in the bigger VAX/4000. (I may be wrong)

NetBSD/vax notes on System Models

www.netbsd.org
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True, NetBSD does not support the DSSI disks. But if you don't mind an older version of OpenBSD, that might work instead. Even though the driver codebases between NetBSD and OpenBSD are similar, they are not identical. See:

https://www.openbsd.org/vax.html

It looks like OpenBSD 5.8 supports a bunch of older SCSI chips; I don't know what's in your machine. I've been running OpenBSD 5.8 on my VAXStation 3520 with no particular problems, using the built-in DSSI SCSI to control a SCSI2SD. That said, the documentation link does call out my machine specifically:

SII (sii) on-board SCSI on VAXstation 35x0/38x0 I/O module
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though this means that the SII driver is in the kernel, and it might just work for you.

Michael
 
ethump said:
Hi Pile-o-stone,
Bit late to the party here - how have you gotten on?
I'm either North of Sheffield or in Manchester and have a bunch of VAX kit I could help you with. If you want to get VMS onto your box, your best bet as someone else has mentioned would be to netboot it into a SIMH hosted cluster then go from there. Happy to come spend a saturday afternoon or something with you getting it up and running.
Click to expand...
Hi, apologies for not responding, I had some family issues and so my retro hobby was put onto the backburner. It would be fantastic to get some help as my background is more IBM PCs and I really don't know where to start with my VAX. I have an old laptop that I installed Linux onto, so if that is fine for SIMH then I could bring it into Manchester and meet in a bar/coffee shop with good wifi and get SIMH running on it. I could also mosey over to Sheffield if needed, please let me know whatever's the most convenient! Cheers!
 
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Pile-o-stone said:
Hi, apologies for not responding, I had some family issues and so my retro hobby was put onto the backburner. It would be fantastic to get some help as my background is more IBM PCs and I really don't know where to start with my VAX. I have an old laptop that I installed Linux onto, so if that is fine for SIMH then I could bring it into Manchester and meet in a bar/coffee shop with good wifi and get SIMH running on it. I could also mosey over to Sheffield if needed, please let me know whatever's the most convenient! Cheers!
Click to expand...
The Phil Wherry pages here https://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html pretty much covers installing OpenVMS on SIMH. Worth trying when you have a moment.
 
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