MicroVAX 3100 Questions.

[Scott Stevens]

Today at auction I acquired a MicroVAX 3100 system.  It's my first VAX
hardware.

I don't know a lot about it and thought I would ask here for help.

I put up a picture of the system on some personal webspace.  The page
is:  http://sasteven.multics.org/MicroVAX/MicroVAX3100.html

The system is a low-profile box, with one opening in the front face
with a 5-1/4" form factor tape drive presently installed.  There are
free connectors and space inside for a single narrow SCSI drive.  The
system has two mezzazine-mounted memory cards inside and appears to
have 16 megs of RAM on the cards.

The model plate on back (one of the pictures on the page I put up)
reads:  
Model- DV031DTA-A - A01
S/N- KA324TJ182

Some questions:

1.  I notice on the Web that there is quite a bit of info about
MicroVAX 3100 systems.  I also see that there are a variety of models.
Is there an easy way to figure out which one I have?

2.  Would it be possible and/or work to replace the tape drive with a
SCSI CD-ROM reader?  I don't have a source for tapes.

3.  Is it worth putting VMS on this box?  It looks like it could run
NetBSD as well.  I also have McKusik's BSD archive CD set that he
sells.  Is there a flavor of vintage UNIX that I could put on the
system?

4.  What is the console on this hardware?  It has the three serial
ports on RJ-type connectors, and from what I gather this is a TTY-only
machine, no framebuffer, etc.

5.  Is there a thorough hardware reference for this machine out there
on the net that I should get?  I looked on the HP/Compaq site, and it
appears that they pay a small amount of  homage to the system, but
without much substancial info.  A hardware reference manual in PDF
would be great.

Any and all info would be appreciated.  If there's a good site that I
should be pointed to (there seems to be tons and tons of info out
there, which results in Google pulling up a huge mass of stuff to weed
through) instead of answering these specific questions, a pointer to
it would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott.