I looked in the vax owner's manual.  Forgot there were two switches.
Top switch in enable mode, bottom switch in either halt or update to
prevent an autoboot attempt and allow console induced halting.

On Tue, 22 May 2001, Paul Thompson wrote:

> On Tue, 22 May 2001, Gunther Schadow wrote:
> > yes, but how long does that take? And will this ever succeed in
> > autoboot mode without a useful device to boot from? Guess I should
> > have put the switch into Update mode.
>
> You mean enable mode?  Update is for firmware updates (from memory) enable
> allows you to halt the boot with CTRL P.
>