[Simh] Unix SYS III on SIMH

[Jason Stevens]

>        regarding Sys III on SIMH.
>
>        I also tried some time ago (I think about July 2008, the messages
> are on TUHS mailing list). I had partial success but first things first:

Ok, good to see then I'm not the only one chasing the ghost.. ;)

>
>        Where did you get the tape files from? I can't find them on TUHS.
> I do have some SysIII tapes that were distributed by SCO under their
> ancient UNIX license (prior to the BSD-like open one), but those were for
> PDP-11 and mainly a backup tape (boot  cpio.tape  mini-root  sys3.tar.gz).
> These are also the ones I can find on TUHS.

I got them from TUHS, as I was fortunate enough to have purchased the
$100 ancient unix license which included SYSIII 16 & 32bit.   If you
have a "auXXXXX" license, then contact Warren Toomey, and he can set
you up.

>
>        That one I managed to install albeit through a convoluted process
> involving prior install of V7 (see below).
>
>        Then I have a set of tapes that I got off the Net at some point,
> but have never been able to find again. The set of tapes I have are
> named
>
>        ftp://ftp.es.embnet.org/pub/misc/os/UNIX/sysIII
>
> sysIII_vax780_tape1_set1.tap.gz  sysIII_vax780_tape2_set1.tap.gz
> sysIII_vax780_tape1_set2.tap.gz  sysIII_vax780_tape2_set2.tap.gz
>

There are tap files that were included in the download I got from
Warren, however they didn't work either so I was trying to see if they
were somehow generated incorrectly..   Anyways here is what I have for
these files:

09/24/2007  11:36 PM         9,843,320 sysIII_vax780_tape1_set1.tap
09/24/2007  11:37 PM        12,699,624 sysIII_vax780_tape1_set2.tap
09/24/2007  11:37 PM        12,778,984 sysIII_vax780_tape2_set1.tap
09/24/2007  11:37 PM        12,773,856 sysIII_vax780_tape2_set2.tap

% md5 *tap
MD5 (sysIII_vax780_tape1_set1.tap) = 374c75e529b3b6cc9624b9f40659dbde
MD5 (sysIII_vax780_tape1_set2.tap) = 5b5bd67571ebd1258975dca3259cc813
MD5 (sysIII_vax780_tape2_set1.tap) = 8f6cbd1812c61dd8582a6a17f7a94104
MD5 (sysIII_vax780_tape2_set2.tap) = c6f8a045a2fd30ed906079793af255a9



>        I probably added the sysIII_ prefix myself. If so, then it looks
> like it might be the same you have, only in my case I have a different
> organization and two tapes (I might have rearranged the files when I
> first downloaded them from wherever I did). As I can't trace back the
> files to their origin I can't check any longer (if I just concatenated
> them I might have broken things, who knows).

google turns up a few hits on these files but none of them are
downloadable... Then again I'm thinking it's because they are not for
general distribution, and may have either been out temporally, or just
one of those things where google's web agent can tread where other
browsers cannot.


>
>        Now to the point: I have been trying to read those files in a
> number of ways with little success. So you got a lot farther than I did
> with the VAX. BTW, if you read the mails in TUHS archives, the URL I gave
> may not be valid now (our computer center is at +30C and disks and servers
> are burning out on the clock).

30C?  That'll make for some unhappy machines... I always did hate it
when management wouldn't buy big enough AC's and let the machines
(along with all the important applications) die for a few $$'s...
Funny trying to run a call centre without any network/server/phone
infastructure...

But back to SYSIII

Using the bootstrap .ini from the 32v work from
http://zazie.tom-yam.or.jp/starunix/  is what set me on the path.. I
guess much like going from v7 on a PDP-11, I figured 32v on a VAX
would be the 'right' place to start the whole thing...  Or at the
least to get the setup man page into something that is actually
legible...

>
>        Another possibility is that the tapes might be mislabeled and
> belong to a PDP11 instead of a VAX.

I'm pretty sure they are for the VAX, I managed to get the "sash"
running last night.. I don't  know what to do with it, but the binary
injected into SIMH runs....



>
>        As for SysIII on the PDP11 this is the HOWTO I wrote for the distro
> which is on
>
>        ftp://ftp.es.embnet.org/pub/misc/os/UNIX/sysIII-PDP11
>

I'm going to certainly have a look... maybe the path from 32v to III
is similar, or maybe its enough to get a handle on what goes where...
At the least now that I think about it the PDP-11 ought to read VAX
disks... so it may be enough to verify the miniroot, and figure out
some bootblocks...



>
> José R. Valverde, EMBnet/CNB.
> jrvalverde <AT> acm.org
>

Thanks again so much for some good hints & insight into this whole thing!