[Simh] More on VAX Emulation under Linux

[Paul Hardy]

I could buy Exceed (at a non-trivial price) to run on my Windows laptop, but it would be even nicer if SIMH emulated one of the low-end the Vaxstation graphics cards (QVSS?). There was talk a few years ago of this being on the 'to do' list. Has it made any progress?

I can't offer to do it myself (>10 years since I did any significant programming), but I'd happily help debug if someone else did.

As a private project I'd like to get working and preserve in SIMH a major Vaxstation-based mapping and cartographic system that I was the architect of.

-- 
Paul Hardy
Email:   paul at paulhardy.net, web: www.paulhardy.net

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Hittner, David T. 
  To: simh at trailing-edge.com 
  Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 6:19 AM
  Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: [Simh] More on VAX Emulation under Linux


  Can't answer your autoboot question. Look in the SIMH FAQ and see if the answer is there. Make sure that you can write (save) the NVR file, so that the changes can be saved for the next run. The order of the dep bdr 0 may be important - it might need to be after the NVR load and/or the set cpu conhalt.

  Running X on the system... you can start X (@DECW$STARTUP) on a MicroVAX 3900 if you have the proper PAKs and software loaded, so that you can connect to VMS via X using an external XServer, but since the MicroVAX 3900 does not have the VAXStation 3900's QDSS graphics console hardware, you cannot have a local X graphics console monitor on the system.

  I connect my Hummingbird X Server (on Windows XP) to my SIMH VAX running DECwindows to give me the nice DECterm all the time. Much better than a standard VT220 emulation.

  Dave




----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of John
    Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 7:46 AM
    To: simh at trailing-edge.com
    Subject: [Simh] More on VAX Emulation under Linux


    'lo all...

    Well, I have an emulation of VAX running under SIMH and it works Ok, thanks to Phillip Wherry's article, Running VAX/VMS Under Linux Using SIMH.

    I've followed everything listed in the article and even though there are a couple of things that need to be updated in it (specifically about what happens when registering the VMS Licence PAK), I've been able to get my 'VAX' (window) running under Linux (I'm using a derivative of Slackware Linux called Zenwalk Linux).

    Not being super-clever in terms of Linux, I was wondering how the system might be set-up so that it 'effectively' boots as a VMS system.  I'm currently following the article and have a call to the VAX emulator in a script that is called from /etc/rc.d/rc.local (and run with a delay as a background process), as well as running Linux without X11.  This means the PC boots as a text-screen only Linux PC and I need to type ALT-F8 to get to the VAX 'console'.  When I do, the system is resting at the boot prompt ('>>>') and I can start the VMS boot process manually.  I have the dep bdr 0 and set cpu conhalt commands in the vax.ini file, as written later in the article but the emulation still wakes-up at the boot prompt the first time.  If I shutdown the VAX emulation (with/without reboot), it behaves as expected... but how to get it running that first time?

    Also, I wonder if it is possible to get Motif/DecWindows running in this sort of system...  We have the licence PAKs etc but will the software/emulator handle the GUI side of things...  or do I need to have a real VAXstation?

    Many thanks, once again, for any suggestions.

    Regards


    John



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