MicroVAX 3100 and VAXstation2000 ROM Upgrades

eugene

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Nov 3, 2009, 8:14:53 PM11/3/09

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I've heard vicious rumors here and there that there existed EPROM
upgrades for the MicroVAX3100 series to allow for larger boot drives.
I've heard another vicious rumor that there's a VS2000 upgrade that
would allow for booting from the SCSI port. Given the numbers of
MicroVAX 3100 that I have in my collection and the dead VS2000 hard
drive I have it's sure be appreciated if I could find a copy of these
EPROM upgrades. I'd be very grateful!

marmotking

Roger Ivie

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Nov 3, 2009, 11:09:08 PM11/3/09

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There was a fellow named Wolfgang Moeller who did an EPROM for the 2000
that spoke SCSI; he also modified one of the VMS device drivers so it
could use SCSI disks. Last time I went looking for it, I was unable to
find it.

Here is a message talking about it:
http://users.bart.nl/users/pb0aia/vax/vs-scsi.html
--
roger ivie
ri...@ridgenet.net

Roger Ivie

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Nov 3, 2009, 11:11:42 PM11/3/09

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I just tested the FTP URL from that message, and it works; looks like
it's online again.
--
roger ivie
ri...@ridgenet.net

eugene

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Nov 4, 2009, 12:38:26 AM11/4/09

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> I just tested the FTP URL from that message, and it works; looks like
> it's online again.
> --
> roger ivie
> ri...@ridgenet.net

oh wow, excellant! thanks!

H Vlems

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Nov 5, 2009, 7:44:06 AM11/5/09

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I looked at the site once but couldn't figure out how to do this
myself.
Would you care to share your experience here?
Hans

Roger Ivie

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Nov 5, 2009, 11:20:15 AM11/5/09

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On 2009-11-05, H Vlems <hvl...@freenet.de> wrote:
> I looked at the site once but couldn't figure out how to do this
> myself.
> Would you care to share your experience here?

I never did it; when I had the equipment and the enthusiasm all in one
place, I couldn't find the stuff.
--
roger ivie
ri...@ridgenet.net

Bob Koehler

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Nov 5, 2009, 3:48:56 PM11/5/09

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I've heard of people burning proms for the purpose of booting
3100 series from larger disks, but I don't know where you can find
them. You can boot from larger disks if you position all the
files correctly, but you have to watch out for getting them
respositioned if you apply a patch. I think you get them all
positioned correctly if you do a backup/image from an existing
bootable disk who's used space is smaller than the 3100 PROM's
size limit.

There was no SCSI port on the VS2000, but the port was very close
to SCSI and I read of people who got SCSI disks to work on it with
a couple of wire changes.

sadness

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Nov 8, 2009, 8:33:07 AM11/8/09

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On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:48:56 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:

> There was no SCSI port on the VS2000, but the port was very close to
> SCSI and I read of people who got SCSI disks to work on it with a
> couple of wire changes.

Well, not.
There is a standard scsi port on the VS2000, driven by an NCR 53c80 scsi
controller, the same used in some vs3100, isn't "very close to", IS scsi.
The limitation in fact is just in software, if you install the pk2k driver
you could use whatever scsi device you like on the vs2000, and if you
patch the firmware you could also boot from that.
(and you need no wire changes)
just read here http://users.bart.nl/users/pb0aia/vax/vs-scsi.html

I have two vs2000 with a standard scsi disk installed, patched eprom, and
pk2k driver installed on vms so i speak from direct experience.

--
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www.unsupported.info - img.unixantichrist.net