[Simh] RAUSER limit, connecting to physical devices

[Shawn Hicks]

Large Disks: I converted our VAX/VMS system to disk file images. One of 
the disk images is 3.57GB. I used the binaries for windows with ethernet 
support (download from 
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/sources/simhv35-1-exe-ether.zip ) The 
system recognizes all the disks and VMS mounts all of them (after some 
handy adjustments to the mount and logical scripts by Roger). I then 
downloaded the sources ( 
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/sources/simhv35-1.zip ) and compiled under 
linux with network support. The linux build does not support a disk 
image of more than 2000MB. Networking comes up correctly and the other 
disks mount, but not the 3.57GB disk (the other disks are under 2GB). I 
thought the VAX disk size limit is 8GB. Where can I find the patches to 
support larger disks? Is the source for the windows port different than 
the 35-1 source?

Async DecNET: DDCMP over async to a real microvax that doesn't have 
ethernet. We have dependencies on the floppy drives in the microvax. I 
found the information about connecting terminal lines to a socket/telnet 
server on the host. Is there a way to connect to a physical async port 
on the host? If not, I think a simple terminal server like the Moxa 
N-Port 5210 ( http://www.moxa.com/product/NPort_5210.htm ) would allow 
me to connect the microvax async port to a TCP socket in the emulator. I 
guess I could configure all the DZ/TT interfaces to run DDCMP, then have 
the terminal server initiate a socket connection to the host. I think it 
would be better to have a dedicated socket for a single TT device.

The SCSI tapes: We have about 30 5GB 8mm tapes which were managed by a 
product called Computer Associates Archiver. I attempted to attach 
/dev/st0 on the linux system to the TS device, and VMS tried to use it. 
I discovered that there must be a tape in the drive to boot SIMH with 
this configuration. Unfortunately I encountered I/O errors and 
complaints about block size. I attempted to dd the first megabyte of the 
tape and got the same errors. I haven't resolved the source of this, but 
I will have another 8mm tape drive to test with on Monday. If anyone has 
migrated away from the tape hardware, I would like to know how you did 
it. I assume that with a working tape drive I can dd an entire tape to 
file, then attach the file to the TS device. Unfortunately it sounds 
like I will have to restart SIMH
to change tape images.


All suggestions and comments are welcomed,

Shawn Hicks