[Simh] Vax 11/780 with multiple CPUs?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On Fri, 29 May 2009 08:26:28 +0200 H?lscher <hoelscher-kirchbrak at freenet.de 
 > posits:

> I'don't know whether there was specific console software for the  
> VAX-11/782 (and other dual-/multi-processor machines),

You'll need to know that sort of detail as you proceed.

The older VAX boxes all had (for their time) fairly involved console  
programs; you might well be able to fake most of this for the purposes  
of a basic boot-and-run emulation, though.  You'll really only need to  
deal with fielding references from VMB and SYSBOOT onwards.

> I'd really like to see e.g. a simh VAX-11/782!

Have at.

> What about building the other VAX-11s (750 & 730) for simh?

Well, have at.  You'll need to sort out the boot path and low-level  
physical layout of the boxes to keep VMB and SYSBOOT and friends happy.

This is where the old VAX hardware handbooks and CPU technical manuals  
really help.   These give you the physical memory layout and the usual  
sets of devices.

The old VAX boxes could have significant low-level hardware  
differences from one VAX family to the next.

Differences from one VAX family to the next from user-land code on a  
uniprocessor VAX?  Not so much.

> What else would have to be done except for changing the CPU-ID?

For VAX/VMS, read through the VMS Internals and Data Structures Manual  
(IDSM) for the introductory details of the variant bootstraps, and  
take a look at the SYSLOA* module for the platform in the source  
listings for the specifics.

If I were going to drop some large quantity of coding cycles into  
anything, simh Alpha or such would be more interesting (to me).

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