Paul Duncan <paul@chaos-hovel.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Is this DSSI bus something like a DEC SCSI equivalent?

Something like that, yes.  :-)

> There's a flying lead coming out of the front panel with a 50 way
> centronics style connector on it, and I had thought this to be SCSI,
> was I wrong.

Probably not SCSI -- it should have shown up in "show dev" then.  It
might be that you've got a CXY08 in there.  See that thread for info.
In any case, check what it's connected to internally.

> In the top left of the front panel there's what looks like one of
> these new style D type SCSI connectors with the blade-like pins,
> what's that?

That's the DSSI bus, for external connections.  DSSI is kind of cool,
actually.  We've got two VAX4000/700 systems at work, plus two disk
cabinets (they look like the main cabinets, but house only DSSI
disks).  There are several DSSI busses, and they all run from one VAX
through a number of disks to the other VAX, so all disks are available
physically to both machines.  In a pinch, with no network connections
working, the darn things can even route DECNET over DSSI!

-tih
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