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From: abstine@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Arthur Stine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec,comp.arch
Subject: Re: DECstation 3100 info.
Message-ID: <2056@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 89 02:40:43 GMT
References: <617@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Sender: abstine@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
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From article <617@blake.acs.washington.edu>, by lgy@blake.acs.washington.edu (Laurence Yaffe):
> 
>     Does getting 3rd party SCSI drives also entail getting a device driver
> from the 3rd party vendor, or are all SCSI drive alike?  (I know next to
> nothing about SCSI devices.)
> 
> On an unrelated note, does someone know if the keyboard of the DECstation 3100
> has a reasonably-placed escape key?
> -- 

It depends on the third party device. Disks should be just fine, since DEC
supplies a device driver for the SCSI drives (although I am unsure of whether they check for their device types explicitly or not. I think their intention 
though is to make it as flexible as adding 3rd party disks to a Sun). Tape
devices and other SCSI things will probably need their own device driver
unless the device looks like a TK50Z or the RRD40 optical drive. DEC has said
that they will be supporting additional SCSI devices in the future though...
whatever that means...

As far as the keyboard, I believe from what I have seen that the keyboard is
the same as the other VAXstations, the LKxxx type keyboard, which has an
escape key in a dumb place. Sorry...

art stine
sr network engineer
clarkson u