I couldn't wait any longer. Got home from work a little earlier than normal and decided to power up one of my vaxen, you know, the 6000-420 that we were talking about earlier. We had gone through the power stuff enough in theory. I still haven't got the right receptacle, but I simply opened the plug and removed it. I removed some of the insulation, opened my circuit breaker box in my garage, ripped out the washer-dryer line and stuck the black and brown wires into the 220 V breaker. I wired the two black ones together so that those went in one phase and the red one into the other phase. I left blue (neutral) open and I left protective ground open just for now. Then I powered up the breaker, pushed in the main T-shaped switch, measured the receptacles real quick to find the typical odd pattern of potentials. Then I stuck in the key and turned to "STANDBY". And there the blowers went on and indicator lights were on too. BTW the sound of the blowers was very nice. Not loud at all, very calm. Anyway, my lower switch was set to "AUTOSTART" and I left it that way. With the upper switch at STANDBY I had a red standby light on and the red FAULT light was also on. FAULT doesn't sound too good or does it? While I had the backdoor open I saw one of the DC regulators with the green "CH OK" light on but the other two were off. Hmm, time to read the manual (I have a VAX 6000-400 Owner's Manual, if you need a copy, let me know). The manual said that the FAULT light is on during selftest and is expected to go off sometime (it didn't say how long it might take though.) So, I took my heart in both hands and turned the upper switch once more to ENABLE. Now the yellow ENABLE light went on and the green RUN light went on too. RUN was on, then it flashed, and went off again. FAULT was on all the time. Also the other two DC regulators had CH OK on now. Aha, this is as advertized: the standby position only powers the memory (i.e., half of the XMI cage), not the processors and not the VAXBI. BTW, on the back I had a red light besides the ethernet port, that light was flashing sometimes, but not often (no ethernet was actually hooked up, but I did test with an AUI-2-TP transceiver and saw a green POLARITY and POWER light.) I also put in a tape, just to see whether it would do something. The tape operation was as expected, "open handle", stick in tape, "tape in use" ... but nothing exiting happened. Pushed the "unload" button waited until green light came on, removed tape, thank you. Time to hook up a terminal to see whether I would get any messages, after all that's what I was doing this for. I had a box of adapters so I took a D-25 to RJ something adapter with one of those Cisco rollover flat wires hooked into a RJ something to D-9 adapter on my laptop. (I have used the RJ to D-9 adapter before and I know it works as a NULL modem just fine.) My terminal at 9600 bps did not show anything however. I powered the system down and -- nice and slow -- up again. No signs of life on the terminal. Not sure if the D-25 male port on the back of the VAX is wired as a DTE or a DCE. Since it is a computer I thought it would be a DTE, but maybe not. Also I don't really know how those D-25 to RJ something adapters were wired. So I popped the latter adapter open and exchanged pin 2 and 3 (RX and TX). Still no luck. But as I was fiddling with the terminal plug the tape drive acted strangely. It toggled between "tape in use" and "pull handle" as if it thought it still had a tape inside. Then I heard a soft beep once or twice. Could have been the tape alerting. However, I was focusing on the terminal thing and as I swapped the RX and TX lines and plugged the D25 back in I think I have seen stuff blinking strangely, as if power was low. Shortly after that all power was shut off. I checked the supply box and obviously the relay was still on. Turning the key off and on would produce the clicking sound of the relay. But no lights, nothing. I did not smell anything suspiciously (like fried components). And my working with the terminal plug certainly hasn't caused the power failure. The time the system was powered and acting was about 15 to 30 minutes. Now, 45 minutes later I just tried again. No luck. So, I guess I have broken something more seriously. Too bad. I'm not devastated because I have both a spare machine and spare parts and I think the problem can still be repared as it must be in the power control module. But it is a major set back because I won't risk my other machine and I now have to figure out what went wrong and how I can repair the problem. Also, YOU should be VERY careful if you have only one machine. Do not try what I tried unless you believe to know what I did wrong or what might have gone wrong without any mistake on my part. So, let us gather some theories about what might have gone wrong with it. Anyone with a working 6000 system please let us know: - Was it O.K. that the FAULT light never went off? I think it was probably O.K. since there is no boot device whatsoever. - Please give some specifics about the power up procedure. How long is the FAULT light on? Until system goes into console mode? Or until a first quick round of selftest? - Will it ever go into console mode if it's set to AUTOMATIC boot and can't find a boot device? - Might the strange acting of the tape have something to do with it trying to tell me that it really wants to boot and since the tape is the only bootable device present, it wants a booting tape? - How is the console plug on the back wired? As a DCE or a DTE? (To avoid misunderstandings, does one need a null-modem to hook up a laptop's RS232 port or is a straight-through cable required?) I believe that none of the above things has to do with the eventual breakdown. The real crucial questions now are: - What caused the power failure? Why after 15 or more minutes of what seemed like reasonable behavior of all observable components? - How can the failure possibly be fixed? - Should I have chosen a different hookup? Like leave on line open, like connecting the NULL wire? Like swapping some wires in some way? - How will we ever find out so that we can try this again without loosing yet another machine? I still hope the machine isn't lost but everything is now much harder.