[Simh] What is the file VAX/vmb.exe for?
Peter Lund
firefly at vax64.dk
Wed Aug 29 09:52:29 EDT 2007
On Wed, 2007-08-29 at 08:50 -0400, Thomas Pfau wrote:
> The 11/780 had a small LSI-11 that performed console functions. During
> the bootstrap process, the LSI would load VMB.EXE into the 11/780's
> memory, load registers with values telling it what to do and the start the
> VAX processor executing this program. VMB.EXE would then start the
> bootstrap process.
Thank you.
> With SIMH, there is no LSI-11 so SIMH itself needs to get VMB.EXE into the
> VAX memory to start the bootstrap process.
>
> > What is the relation between that and ka655x.bin?
>
> VMB.EXE is a VAX program. KA655X.BIN is microcode.
No, it isn't. It is VAX machine code that implements boot/console stuff
like on the VLSI VAXen that did not have a service processor; the whole
thing ran on the same CPU.
So vmb.exe and ka655x.bin are different kinds of bootstrappers.
Interresting... :)
I wonder what the copyright/license restrictions are for vmb.exe. Can
Debian include it in their packages?
-Peter
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