[Info-vax] Exploring a hard drive on a new Vaxstation

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 01/28/2018 12:22 PM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <05681177-9fca-4f27-9768-9eea4fa5799a at googlegroups.com>,
> Cliff Miller <cliff52 at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> I have a Vaxstation 3100 Model 30 which came with an RZ23 hard drive.  I
>> access the system with a serial console cable. The system boots to the
>>>>> prompt and self-tests just fine.  When I try to boot from the hard
>> drive, however, it returns "File not found." I am reluctant to
>> initialize the drive and start from scratch as I am curious to see what
>> was on it. What are my options for being able to explore the hard drive?
> 
> If the machine won't boot from this disk, you need something else to
> investigate.  Connect the disk to another machine, or boot standalone
> backup from CD or whatever and explore the other disk.

He said he got a "File not found" error.  At the dead sergeant
he should have been typing a device name, not a file name.  Would
help to know what command he actually typed.

As for exploring the disk, I would hope that the previous owner
wiped the disk before letting it go as there could have been
proprietary data or commercially licensed software on it.

> 
> Note that the 3100 Model 30 is slow, even for a VAX.  I don't think one
> can put disks of reasonable size on it, due to some firmware limit.
> 

2GB I think but only for the boot device.  Slow, like beauty, is
in the eye of the beholder.  I still like to play with my real
PDP-11s which are slower than a VAX (well, not sure bout the 11/93.
it might actually be faster than some of my VAXStations  :-).  I
have 4 PDP's running now and have been getting an itch to fire up
a VAX or two lately.  Might be able to use them for a couple of
my funtime projects.

bill