[Info-vax] MicroVAX 3100-30 - won't boot...

[Michael Kraemer]

In article <MPG.25a6bdddc98a2c6c9898eb at news.enta.net>, AdeV
<spam at solutionengineers.com> writes:
> H Vlems may or may not have intoned:
> 
> > A microVAX 3100-30 is not fast but it won't take half an hour to
> > format a disk. Which, incidentally, it doesn't. The installation
> > procedure initializes the disk, which puts a label on the disk and the
> > filesystem.
> 
> Hm, damn. It was a theory, at least
> 
> > A microVAX 3100-30 is quite selective, it won't just boot
> > off any cdrom drive.
> 
> The CD is the drive which came with the machine; not that that's 
> necessarily any indication of it's suitability, mind. It is kind of 
> floating around in there, not held down by anything other than its 
> cables (and some sellotape now...)
> 
> 
> 
> > Is it a DEC drive or something else?
> > In case it is third party hardware make sure it is set for 512 B block
> > transfers.
> 
> It's a Sony CDU76S drive. I can't see anywhere to set the block size; so 
> either it does it by default, or not at all.
> 
> I have a Plextor PX-12csi here which does have a BLOCK jumper setting; 
> I've just installed that to see if it'll do the job, but now I need to 
> go find a CD caddy... (it's never easy...)
> 

It's not just that 512 byte story,
VAXen are extremely picky as far as boot CD-ROMs are concerned.
I never had success beyond original RRDxx and possibly 
Toshiba XM-4101B. Even the often cited panacea "Plextor"
sometimes fails. 
A list of tested machine/CD combos can be found at

http://sites.inka.de/pcde/dec-cdrom-list.txt