VAXstation 3100 M30 ("PVAX" )

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General Technical Information

HOSTNAME	GRYPHON2
SYSTEM CPU	DEC VAX, CVAX @11 MHz KA42-A V1.2
CACHE (2nd, 1st D/I)	32 KB, 0 KB / 1 KB
RAM	16 MB (Max. 32 MB)
SCSI BUS	Combined floppy, MFM and NCR5380 SCSI 5 MB/s controller board
OPTION BUS	N/A
GRAPHICS	Onboard mono video and GPX option board 8-plane 1024x864 @60Hz
HARD DISK DRIVES	2 x 1 GB Seagate Hawk 3.5" SCSI disks 104 MB DEC RZ23 3.5" SCSI disk 650 MB DEC RZ56 5.25" SCSI disk
FLOPPY DISK DRIVE	DEC RX23 (3.5" floppy drive)
NETWORK	10 Mbps ethernet LANCE AM7990, selectable AUI or BNC
OS	ULTRIX V4.2 ULTRIX-32 V3.1 OpenVMS 5.5-1 (original RZ23 disk)
YEAR	1988
SPEED	2.8 VAX MIPS
POWER CONSUMPTION (MAX.)	180 W
COMMENTS	This system runs old versions of ULTRIX and OpenVMS, to get the right retro feeling.
ESTIMATED PRICE '89	$30,000

Bootlog Information

Ultrix-32 V3.1 (Rev. 9) System #1: Mon Jul 4 17:32:35 EDT 1988
real mem = 16654336
avail mem = 12600320
Buffer configuration adjusted to run with small system page table
using 321 buffers containing 1665024 bytes of memory
KA420 processor with an FPU
sdc0 at uba0 csr 0x200c0000 vec 0x1fc, ipl 0x14
rx2 at sdc0 slave 2
scsi0 at uba0 csr 0x200c0080 vec 0x1f8, ipl 0x14
rz3 at scsi0 slave 3 (RZxx) [ MICROP 1528-15MD1066702 DD24 ]
sg0 at uba0 csr 0x3c000000 vec 0x44, ipl 0x14
se0 at uba0 csr 0x200e0000 vec 0x50, ipl 0x14
ss0 at uba0 csr 0x200a0000 vec 0xc0, ipl 0x14

History and other comments

I got this machine for free from my brother living in Helsinki, Finland. I believe he bought it on auction well before I got my first VAX computer. It's in very good cosmetical condition, but the RZ23 is quite noisy after many years of spinning. The system originally had two RZ23's but one of them was damaged beyond repair (head - disk platter crash) and was replaced by a newer disk.

In 2004 I got a disk image copy of ULTRIX-32 V3.1 for VAXen. It was no installation kit so it took some time before I finally bothered to hook up a disk and 'dd' the image file to one of my disks, only to find out that there was no generic kernel on the / filesystem. There was, however, a standalone installation kernel in the /usr file system for me to use use to get things going. With the help of a DECstation running ULTRIX 4.5 (that was able to read/write on the ULTRIX-32 V3.1 filesystems) I was able get the VAXstation to first boot the standalone kernel and from there build a generic kernel, then once I had the generic kernel, I could boot up the VAXstation more or less normally.

In case you pay attention to details, the DEC LK401 keyboard and DEC VXXX-GA mouse that are in the picture did not come with this VAXstation, they are a bit newer than the computer itself.

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Last updated:

7-8-2008