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Douglas Meade | 8 Mar 2003 16:35
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Re: DSSI cabling on MV3300

Kevin,

About a year and a half ago, I found a site on the web advertising 
used DEC stuff, and I bought two of those cables for $25 each.  I've
got the receipts and stuff at work.  I think I advertised the place 
to this lists at the time, but that post is probably hard to find.

Doug

On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Chuck McManis wrote:

> Ebay generally will have them for less than $500, look for the two diagonal 
> screw knobs as your clue that it is what you want. For the 3300 the one you 
> want will have a right angle connector on one end and a straight-in 
> connector on the other. Many DSSI-DSSI cables are right angle to right 
> angle (which you could use but it looks weird on the storageworks shelf.
> 
> I haven't tried a 68pin SCSI cable, I don't believe the connectors are 
> actually compatible. But would love to be proven wrong on this.
> 
> Also to run NetBSD on the 3300 you will want to get your hands on a KFQSA 
> card, this talks MSCP on the Q-bus (supported) and DSSI to the drives. 
> NetBSD doesn't yet support the on-board DSSI interfaces.
> 
> --Chuck
> 
> At 11:09 AM 3/7/03 -0500, Kevin D. Ogden wrote:
> >Hi, I have a MV3300 w/ HSD05 in a Storageworks shelf.  I have a question
> >that's not directly NetBSD related, the install will come later once the
> >hardware is running.  Where can I get an external DSSI cable for less than
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Robertdkeys | 9 Mar 2003 05:50
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Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

For the sake of discussion.....

I am a great lover of NetBSD VAX, and have been for several
years, especially on old machines.  I run 4 qbus boxes, and
around a dozen other VAXen ranging from MVII's and VS2000
boxes on the slow end to the moderately zippy 4000/60's on
the other end.  Alas, I am woefully short on 4000/705A class
and up machines (someday.....(:+}}...), and short on the big
ancient iron like 11/750's and up (someday an 11/750, someday,
someday.....(:+}}...).  But, I am running into problems on the
older machines that make NetBSD VAX less and less fun,
from any sort of practical sense.  About a year or two back,
I posted some observations comparing 4.3BSD Tahoe (the
Quasijarus 0a suite), NetBSD's 1.0A, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4.1,
and 1.5, and 1.5.1beta) with the general conclusion that
1.4.x was about as good as it got on the old hardware
(typically anything 1 vup and under).  I was chided a bit,
in a cheerful and for discussion sort of way, that I should
get modern and it would get better.  Well, after further
testing, over the past couple of months on 1.6, and the
currents, up through 1.6P,  which is as late as my bits
go, I have to stick by my guns, and suggest that on the
old machines, anything after 1.4.x is a great leap backward.
I don't say that in a derogatory way, but in a manner that
hopefully will let others consider the problems, and maybe
make some adjustments in where things are going in the
great ol' NetBSD VAXland.  In my opinion, NetBSD-1.4.x
(1.4.3 or thereabouts) is as good as it gets on the old slow
hardware.  Anything 1.5 and later is definitely slowing down,
even the currents.  Anything later is definitely bloating, even
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der Mouse | 9 Mar 2003 06:35
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Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

> I tried KA630 (MVII) board sets in the box, but things got so bad in
> terms of usable speed, as to be laughable.  [...]  A whole system
> build is approaching a forever time limit on such a machine.

For what it may be worth: I'm using an OS based on 1.4T (2000-02-19),
on a diskless KA630-based machine with maxed-out RAM (9M - that _is_
maxed-out for a KA630, right?).

For a build of the world (cd /usr/src; make build - what -current calls
"build.sh", loosely speaking), allow a week and at least three reboots.
(I don't know whether it's an OS bug or my hardware, but every once in
a long time something goes wrong and a block cached for a file gets
corrupted; this usually means cc1 coredumps.  The only sure fix I've
found is a reboot.  Someday I may try to track it down.)

Boot time is only a couple minutes, but this _is_ a pre-rc.d userland.

> The stripped kernel has only the MVII, MVIII cpus, one
> controller,FFS, DHV-11, loop and ptys.

INET?  INET6?

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Chuck McManis | 9 Mar 2003 06:50

Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

At 12:35 AM 3/9/2003 -0500, der Mouse wrote:
>(9M - that _is_
>maxed-out for a KA630, right?).

Nope, max on a KA630 is 16M

--Chuck
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der Mouse | 9 Mar 2003 06:52
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Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

>> (9M - that _is_ maxed-out for a KA630, right?).
> Nope, max on a KA630 is 16M

Oh, cool!

Is it possible to have more than two RAM boards, or do RAM boards >4M
exist?  I thought those were the limits, and those give 9M.  (Is there
a limit at 16M?  I'd expect something like two 8M boards, or four 4M
boards, either of which I would naïvely expect to give 17M.)

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Chuck McManis | 9 Mar 2003 07:22

Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

Max is 16M, two 8M boards will give you that. When 16M is present the 
on-board 1M disables. You can run 2 x 4 and 1 x 8 or 2 x 8. If you run 3 4M 
boards in the BA123 you get 13M. The BA23 only has 2 CD slots for memory so 
you have to use two 8M to max out on that system.

--Chuck

At 12:52 AM 3/9/2003 -0500, der Mouse wrote:
> >> (9M - that _is_ maxed-out for a KA630, right?).
> > Nope, max on a KA630 is 16M
>
>Oh, cool!
>
>Is it possible to have more than two RAM boards, or do RAM boards >4M
>exist?  I thought those were the limits, and those give 9M.  (Is there
>a limit at 16M?  I'd expect something like two 8M boards, or four 4M
>boards, either of which I would naïvely expect to give 17M.)
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der Mouse | 9 Mar 2003 07:29
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Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

> Max is 16M, two 8M boards will give you that.

Ah, perhaps the KA630 experience my memory is relying on was before 8M
boards, or we just didn't have any, or something.  Or perhaps I'm just
plain misremembering; it _was_ a long time ago.

> When 16M is present the on-board 1M disables.

Ah, that explains that.

> You can run 2 x 4 and 1 x 8 or 2 x 8.  If you run 3 4M boards in the
> BA123 you get 13M.

You can run three RAM boards?  The little private bus cable has had
only three connectors in every system I've seen, two for RAM plus one
for the CPU.  Do you have to make a 4-connector cable, or what?

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Chuck McManis | 9 Mar 2003 07:40

Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

At 01:29 AM 3/9/2003 -0500, der Mouse wrote:
>You can run three RAM boards?  The little private bus cable has had
>only three connectors in every system I've seen, two for RAM plus one
>for the CPU.  Do you have to make a 4-connector cable, or what?

The MVIII upgrade came with a 4 connector cable to run 3 x 8M + CPU for a 
24M system (and then 48M with 3 x 16M) I've got two of the DEC ones and one 
from an OEM with 5 connectors for use in their card cage with 5 ABCD slots 
that could take memory.

--Chuck
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der Mouse | 9 Mar 2003 07:51
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Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

>> You can run three RAM boards?
> The MVIII upgrade came with a 4 connector cable to run 3 x 8M + CPU
> for a 24M system (and then 48M with 3 x 16M)

And that works with a MVII?  That's good news; I would not have
expected the bus to Just Work with more devices than it's designed for.
But then, the KA630 dates from the era when DEC overdesigned heavily.

Would I be correct to assume that it will Just Work to take a piece of
50-pin ribbon cable and attach four connectors to it?  Maybe add two
connectors to a stub SCSI cable swiped from a SPARC?  Or is there
something magic about the cable itself?  (I note the connectors are
physically compatible with SCSI 50-pin ribbon cable connectors of the
old SE flavor....)

That would push me to 13M...maybe not 16, but better than 9. :)  And if
I can score an 8M board somewhere, that _will_ push me to 16.

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Michael Kukat | 9 Mar 2003 08:54

Re: Observations on NetBSD VAX on old machines.....

Hi !

On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, der Mouse wrote:
> Would I be correct to assume that it will Just Work to take a piece of
> 50-pin ribbon cable and attach four connectors to it?  Maybe add two
> connectors to a stub SCSI cable swiped from a SPARC?  Or is there
> something magic about the cable itself?  (I note the connectors are
> physically compatible with SCSI 50-pin ribbon cable connectors of the
> old SE flavor....)

Ih the years the MicroVAX II was made, nobody had to think about special magic,
as computers were some kind of magic themselves. This is a absolutely usual
50pin ribbon cable with IDC connectors punched on. I think you just have to
keep care of the distances between the connectors, just look at the "template",
the original cable for this.

...Michael

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