[Simh] Re: Simh Digest, Vol 19, Issue 7

[Norman Lastovica]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com
> [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com]On Behalf Of Bob Supnik
> Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 5:20 PM
> To: simh at trailing-edge.com
> Subject: [Simh] Re: Simh Digest, Vol 19, Issue 7
> 
> As far as I know, you can't migrate an existing commercial VMS license to 
> SimH.  VMS commercial licenses are not valid on SimH, only the hobbyist 
> license.  HP will not support VMS on SimH.  It will support VMS on 
> Charon/VAX, provided that the underlying hardware is from HP.

	My understanding is that, within practicle limits, HP will support
VMS running on Charon/VAX.  One of the limits is that if HP has trouble,
you might be forced to reproduce your problem on "real" VAX hardware (this
gives them a reasonable out in case of a bad emulation).  I would have to
suspect that they'd be willing to do something similar in the case of
SimH.  If you can reproduce the problem on real hardware if needed they
would "support" it (assuming you have a valid license *and* a valid and
up-to-date support contract).

> I don't know if a VMS disk from one system can successfully boot on a 
> different hardware platform.  VMS doesn't have a SYSGEN procedure; it 
> discovers how to configure itself during the boot process and loads the 
> proper modules accordingly.  

	in my experience, a system disk from any vax system will work just
fine on any other vax system (within the bounds of supported hardware -
for example, VMS V3.0 might not work on a VAX 7000 system).  On my laptop,
the container files (virtual disk image) of my VMS V7.3 system work just
fine when "booted" from either SIMH or CHARON/VAX regardless of the actual
CPU type being emulated.

> If you want to try your disk image on SimH, 
> you need to "roll out" the disk as a block-by-block image to a file.  For 
> example, you could copy the system disk and save it as a file on a PC using 
> TCP/IP.  (I don't know  what VMS comand would do this.)  Then configure 
> SimH's MSCP disk to have the same storage capacity as the disk image, 
> attach the disk image to RQ0, and see if it will boot.

	the easiest way that I've found to do this is to install the LDDRIVER
software from the OpenVMS freeware CD on your existing Alpha/IA64/VAX VMS
system.  Then create a container file (LD CREATE, SET FILE/CACHE=NO and LD
CONNECT...) of the  right size for whatever disk you'll emulate (RA92, RA70, 
whatever).  Do a BACKUP/IMAGE/IGNORE=INTER of your existing VAX system disk 
to the LDAx: device.  LD DISCONNECT.  Then FTP in binary mode the container
file to your PC.  Configure SIMH to connect this container and then boot from
it.
	
> /Bob Supnik
> 
> At 12:00 PM 6/15/2005, you wrote:
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> >Today's Topics:
> >
> >    1. Migration utilities. (Angel)
> >
> >----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >Message: 1
> >Date: Wed, 15 Jun 10:24:48 2005 +0000
> >From: "Angel" <angeld at xasamail.com>
> >Subject: [Simh] Migration utilities.
> >To: simh at trailing-edge.com
> >Message-ID: <20055151024.ica0ba1cf25eid at localhost.localdomain>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> >Sirs, I am trying to replace a VAX machine with SIMH; what is not
> >clear for me is which are the right utilities, and how to use it,
> >to do the job without reinstalling the whole VMS OS again.
> >
> >Thank you very much for your kind collaboration.
> >
> >Best regards.
> >
> >     http://www.xasamail.com/
> 
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