[JohnnyJohnny]

I picked this up on eBay without knowing too much about the condition of the system, nor what it included, but it was cheap so decided to try my luck. 



I've now had a chance to completely disassemble it and get everything cleaned up. After I pulled it out of it's shipping box, I popped the lid and had a quick look inside. Everything looked in place, so I tried booting it, but after about 2 seconds the PSU would shut off. OK, don't despair, this may need a little more work.

I stripped everything down to its component parts and cleaned off the dust. All the circuit boards and wiring looked fine, and didn't see any sign of leaking caps or magic smoke damage. I cleaned all the contacts and got everything put back together, and consulted the DEC User Information Guide I found online. Looking through all the jumpers and connections, I noticed that nothing was plugged into the CPU fan header, and that there's no CPU fan at all. Knowing that server/workstation systems generally require all fans to be present and working, I scrounged up an appropriate fan, replaced the connector with one that would fit the header, and plugged it in. Success! System booted right up....into OpenVMS v6.2! 



This machine is dual-headed - it came with two Digital Powerstorm 3D30 graphics cards - I can't imagine why anyone would need two monitors on a transactional system, other than maybe for redundancy. 

Anyways, since I don't have a compatible keyboard/mouse for this system yet, it's as far as I got. I'm just happy that I was able to get it to power on, the Dallas RTC seems OK (for now), the RAM and devices work, and it's got an OS to boot into.