18 Jul
2023
18 Jul
'23
12:30 p.m.
Some questions if you don't mind ;-))
- Could you please give some instructions how you managed to install V1.0?
- What kind of error messages did you get when you wanted to install V1.2?
- What microvax1 simulator did you use: the OpenSiḿh one or that from Simh
(Mark Pizzolato)?
- What is in your microvax1.ini file?
This is what I get when trying to boot the 1st V1.0 floppy:
Logging to file "ULT012_MV1_001.log"
sim> b rq1
.2..1..0.
Boot
: ra(1,0)vmunix
186016+46652+44656 start 0x10bc
Ultrix-32m V1.0 System #1: Fri Aug 17 11:57:07 EDT 1984
real mem = 2093056
avail mem = 1511424
using 102 buffers containing 208896 bytes of memory
MicroVAX 1, microcode level = 5
Q22 bus
rqd0 at bus0 csr 172150 vec 774, ipl 17
ra0 at rqd0 slave 0
ra1 at rqd0 slave 1
ra2 at rqd0 slave 2
panic: iinit
syncing disks... done
dumping to dev 901, offset 0
dump succeededRebooting...
.2..1..0.
Boot
: ra(1,0)vmunix
186016+46652+44656 start 0x10bc
...
Ulli
Am Mo., 17. Juli 2023 um 20:42 Uhr schrieb Henry Bent via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>gt;:
On Mon, 17 Jul 2023 at 13:06, Henry Bent
<henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jul 2023 at 12:59, Ethan Dicks via
cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
That seems to have worked perfectly. Thank you for the utility and the
explanation. Now off to working on the next steps!
-Henry
A brief follow-up on this: After lots of (virtual) disk-swapping I was able
to upgrade an existing 1.0 system but was not able to install a 1.2 system
from scratch. It seems that there is some sort of bootloader issue with a
clean install, which I suspect might be a SIMH problem and I will follow up
there after some more investigation.
I truly feel for the folks who had to do this at the time, using 38
floppies on a MicroVAX I. The installer does give time estimates for
certain milestones so that you could go and get a coffee or whatever.
"Configuring vmunix, this takes about 30 minutes" is certainly indicative
of the relative speed of the machine at the time. Also there is an
indication that there was a tape distribution but so far that has not
surfaced. I'm not even sure what medium that would have been - RC25?
From: http://www.chdickman.com/pdp11/pro380.txt
"The RX50 floppy starts at track 1. Track 0 is logically placed after
track 79. The sectors are interleaved 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8,
10. The track shift and interleave must be taken into account when
moving disks between real PDP-11 and emulators."
I have had good luck with a secfor convolver from the same page as this
comment:
http://www.chdickman.com/pdp11/lbn2rx50.c
It will go both ways, to and from physical block order and logical block
order.