[rescue] DSSI Drives for VAX 4000-300

[David A de Gruyl]

I recently obtained a VAX 4000-300 which has a DSSI hard drive 
interface.  The single drive in the unit is a DF31, which is a 384 MB 
HD.  I am wondering if anyone knows of a source for larger hard disks 
which I could use in this machine (for not a lot of money, if possible).

Additionally, I believe that this machine has a SCSI qbus expansion 
card, or at least that is what it looks like.  If I could figure out 
what kind of card it is, I suppose that I could attach an external SCSI 
drive.  My main goal is to not have to NFS mount over 10Base2 for the 
the applications / build space.

My intention is to install either NetBSD or OpenBSD on this machine, as 
it currently has VMS 5.5 on it and does not talk TCP/IP (as far as I 
know).  I also have VERY limited expirience with VMS.  Operating system 
advice is also welcomed.  I currently have MicroVAX 3100-20 running a 
slightly customized version of OpenBSD which I paired down to improve 
performace, and my initial installation will probably be this version of 
OpenBSD.  

This machine was originally connected to an external cabinet with a 
large spool (self threading) tape drive, a cassette drive, and (I think) 
additional hard drives.  I was unsuccessful in disassembling the 
enclosure, so I could not verify the HDs.  I also had no way of moving 
the full enclosure to my apartment (stairs / space issues).  The 
problems relate to frozen screws, so I think I might try liquid wrench, 
or a drill. If you have any ideas, or a home, let me know. (This 
enclosure is in central New Jersey)

David

-- 
David de Gruyl <david at bhaermandegruyl.org>