HECnet May 2013

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38 participants
680 discussions

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by clemc＠ccc.com

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote: Well, in all honesty. We did just cover network booted PDP-11s. Not to mention that PDP-11s could boot from tape pretty much from day 1. Yep - but it was a different target customer originally. The 11 was the take over the laboratory systems that the 8 had. And many of those systems did not have rotating storage in them. Cassette tape was not unheard of (and the PDP-11's could boot from cassette tape). The Vax was envisioned as a system that could move into the same class of customer and (use) as the 10 (and this start the 36/32 bit war). But both vax and 10's were supposed to the computing hub. As I have said before, the 750 was a part of that war between LDP (laboratory data products) enterprise folks. It's a big reason why Masscomp was formed. Dave Cane used to say that the MC-500 was the computer he had always wanted the 750 to be. That said, you're right, at some point -- network boot because de rigor but I >>think<< that was all post BI systems and long after I was tracking the vax closely.

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by b4＠gewt.net

On Fri, 17 May 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote: On 2013-05-17 21:22, Cory Smelosky wrote: On Fri, 17 May 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote: On 2013-05-17 21:13, Cory Smelosky wrote: On Fri, 17 May 2013, Bob Armstrong wrote: Really? Not from tape? Interesting design choice... Old VAXes booted standalone BACKUP from the console media (TU58 or RX01). SA BACKUP then could talk to tape drives just fine. It's all you need to install VMS, so that was all they did. Ah right. Makes more sense how. How were the VAX BSDs installed then? Standalone bootloader on a floppy? The one time I did it, I actually hacked the boot loader into memory from the console, and started from there. The boot loader was listed in the manual. But (as I mentioned in another mail), this came from MtXinu. Not sure how other BSDs did it, as I never had an original distribution from any other. But once you had the system installed, you also created a console media which could boot the thing, as VMB was not able to boot a Unix system anyway, even from disk. Ahhh. That'd be why when I've installed 4.3BSD on the -11/780 simulator I needed an external executable to boot it. That sounds likely. Modern versions on VMB can boot Unix (like the version distributed with simh), but it still also requires that the system understand the information it gets passed by VMB. Doubt 4.3 understands that. NetBSD works fine with VMB. Even on the 11/780, now that we've identified that NetBSD wrote broken boot blocks for a long time, and that has been fixed. Yeah, I'd be surprised to see 4.3BSD understanding that. I wonder what my copy of The Design and Implementation says about the boot process... I like how recent NetBSD still supports the 11/780! Johnny -- Cory Smelosky http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2013-05-17 21:22, Cory Smelosky wrote: On Fri, 17 May 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote: On 2013-05-17 21:13, Cory Smelosky wrote: On Fri, 17 May 2013, Bob Armstrong wrote: Really? Not from tape? Interesting design choice... Old VAXes booted standalone BACKUP from the console media (TU58 or RX01). SA BACKUP then could talk to tape drives just fine. It's all you need to install VMS, so that was all they did. Ah right. Makes more sense how. How were the VAX BSDs installed then? Standalone bootloader on a floppy? The one time I did it, I actually hacked the boot loader into memory from the console, and started from there. The boot loader was listed in the manual. But (as I mentioned in another mail), this came from MtXinu. Not sure how other BSDs did it, as I never had an original distribution from any other. But once you had the system installed, you also created a console media which could boot the thing, as VMB was not able to boot a Unix system anyway, even from disk. Ahhh. That'd be why when I've installed 4.3BSD on the -11/780 simulator I needed an external executable to boot it. That sounds likely. Modern versions on VMB can boot Unix (like the version distributed with simh), but it still also requires that the system understand the information it gets passed by VMB. Doubt 4.3 understands that. NetBSD works fine with VMB. Even on the 11/780, now that we've identified that NetBSD wrote broken boot blocks for a long time, and that has been fixed. Johnny

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by b4＠gewt.net

On Fri, 17 May 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote: On 2013-05-17 21:20, Bob Armstrong wrote: Also, the VAX-11/750 do not even use VMB... The 750 _could_ use VMB; you just had to load it from TU58. The 750 just didn't need VMB to boot from disk - it just had a "shortcut" (some might say a "hack") for that path. True. And the hack was pretty much "do it like PDP-11s do". :-) I have no problems with that approach! And I believe the hack worked just as well for booting Unix too; that's why the 750 was very popular with Unix sites. Indeed. For all of its primitiveness, this was actually an advantage. And of course, nobody ever wanted to boot anything but VMS... ;-) Well, DEC didn't, and they did build the machine after all. Didn't seem to stop any of the Unix crowd from using it too. :-) Don't get me wrong. I like bashing the VAX (and DEC), but I actually like the machine. Johnny -- Cory Smelosky http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2013-05-17 21:20, Bob Armstrong wrote: Also, the VAX-11/750 do not even use VMB... The 750 _could_ use VMB; you just had to load it from TU58. The 750 just didn't need VMB to boot from disk - it just had a "shortcut" (some might say a "hack") for that path. True. And the hack was pretty much "do it like PDP-11s do". :-) And I believe the hack worked just as well for booting Unix too; that's why the 750 was very popular with Unix sites. Indeed. For all of its primitiveness, this was actually an advantage. And of course, nobody ever wanted to boot anything but VMS... ;-) Well, DEC didn't, and they did build the machine after all. Didn't seem to stop any of the Unix crowd from using it too. :-) Don't get me wrong. I like bashing the VAX (and DEC), but I actually like the machine. Johnny

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by b4＠gewt.net

On Fri, 17 May 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote: On 2013-05-17 21:13, Cory Smelosky wrote: On Fri, 17 May 2013, Bob Armstrong wrote: Really? Not from tape? Interesting design choice... Old VAXes booted standalone BACKUP from the console media (TU58 or RX01). SA BACKUP then could talk to tape drives just fine. It's all you need to install VMS, so that was all they did. Ah right. Makes more sense how. How were the VAX BSDs installed then? Standalone bootloader on a floppy? The one time I did it, I actually hacked the boot loader into memory from the console, and started from there. The boot loader was listed in the manual. But (as I mentioned in another mail), this came from MtXinu. Not sure how other BSDs did it, as I never had an original distribution from any other. But once you had the system installed, you also created a console media which could boot the thing, as VMB was not able to boot a Unix system anyway, even from disk. Ahhh. That'd be why when I've installed 4.3BSD on the -11/780 simulator I needed an external executable to boot it. Johnny -- Cory Smelosky http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bob＠jfcl.com

Also, the VAX-11/750 do not even use VMB... The 750 _could_ use VMB; you just had to load it from TU58. The 750 just didn't need VMB to boot from disk - it just had a "shortcut" (some might say a "hack") for that path. And I believe the hack worked just as well for booting Unix too; that's why the 750 was very popular with Unix sites. And of course, nobody ever wanted to boot anything but VMS... ;-) Well, DEC didn't, and they did build the machine after all. Didn't seem to stop any of the Unix crowd from using it too. Bob

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2013-05-17 21:13, Cory Smelosky wrote: On Fri, 17 May 2013, Bob Armstrong wrote: Really? Not from tape? Interesting design choice... Old VAXes booted standalone BACKUP from the console media (TU58 or RX01). SA BACKUP then could talk to tape drives just fine. It's all you need to install VMS, so that was all they did. Ah right. Makes more sense how. How were the VAX BSDs installed then? Standalone bootloader on a floppy? The one time I did it, I actually hacked the boot loader into memory from the console, and started from there. The boot loader was listed in the manual. But (as I mentioned in another mail), this came from MtXinu. Not sure how other BSDs did it, as I never had an original distribution from any other. But once you had the system installed, you also created a console media which could boot the thing, as VMB was not able to boot a Unix system anyway, even from disk. Johnny

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by b4＠gewt.net

On Fri, 17 May 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote: On 2013-05-17 21:00, Cory Smelosky wrote: On Fri, 17 May 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote: Unibus VAXen basically means VAX-11 machines. They booted either from VMB on console media, or (for the 11/750) from a boot block. No network capabilities there. They could not even boot from tape. Johnny Really? Not from tape? Interesting design choice... That's one way of putting it. Another would be "annoying". Yeah. VMS distribution did come on tape, but you also got a floppy or TU58 from which you booted the standalone backup on the VAX, and then did the installation using that. Now, if you instead wanted to install something like Unix from a tape, you had to enter an initial bootstrap by hand into memory. At least the MtXinu distribution actually have the bootstrap codes for all VAX-11 systems listed in the manual. (Quite helpful when I was installing 4.3 Reno from tape, as it turned out those bootstraps worked for my Reno tape as well, on an VAX 8650.) That does sound rather helpful. I like useful manuals. ;) Johnny -- Cory Smelosky http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

11 years, 6 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by b4＠gewt.net

On Fri, 17 May 2013, Bob Armstrong wrote: Unibus VAXen basically means VAX-11 machines. They booted either from VMB on console media, or (for the 11/750) from a boot block. TO be fair, the limitation on booting was mostly just that nobody bothered to implement support for any other device in VMB. It wasn't any kind of hardware limitation. Later versions of VMB (e.g. in a MicroVAX) could boot directly from various tape devices. Really? Not from tape? Interesting design choice... Old VAXes booted standalone BACKUP from the console media (TU58 or RX01). SA BACKUP then could talk to tape drives just fine. It's all you need to install VMS, so that was all they did. Ah right. Makes more sense how. How were the VAX BSDs installed then? Standalone bootloader on a floppy? Bob -- Cory Smelosky http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

11 years, 6 months

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HECnet May 2013