[Simh] VMS 4.6 won't boot from a Massbus disk

[Peter Allan]

On 29 January 2011 14:33, Wilm Boerhout <w781 at planet.nl> wrote:

> Peter Allan mentioned  on 29-1-2011 15:01:
>
>  Brian, thanks for your advise. Changing the value of RTIME has indeed got
>> VMS 4.6 to boot on my emulated VAX 780, which is terrific.
>>
>> I started by setting RTIME to 1000, as suggested and I decreased the value
>> until the system no longer booted. The smallest value I could use was 26.
>>
>> The system now boots very quickly and there is only about 1 second between
>> the message
>>
>>   VAX/VMS Version V4.6  6-Jul-1987 17:00
>>
>> appearing and the boot sequence finishing. In fact, I could detect no
>> difference between the speed of the emulated system whether I set RTIME to
>> 26 or to 1000, although all I am doing at present is booting the system and
>> typing a few simple commands like SHO DEV D.
>>
>> I realised this is a lot faster than booting from an RA81, which has
>> always worked, but takes about 10 seconds from the above message appearing
>> to completing the boot process. Both systems are clean installs with nothing
>> in the startup .COM files yet.
>>
>> My current configuration is:
>>   One RP06 disk containing VMS 4.6
>>   One RA81 containing VMS 4.6
>>   One RD53 containing stand alone backup 4.6.
>>
>> I discovered that when I boot from the RP06 system disk, the MSCP disks
>> are not recognised and are not available after the system has booted.
>>
>> Right now, I am not to bothered about the MSCP disks not being recognised
>> if the system disk is a Massbus one, but I bet I will be at some time in the
>> future. I tried changing the RQ disk parameters ITIME, QTIME and XTIME, but
>> the little playing that I did did not result in the MSCP disks appearing
>> after the system booted.
>>
>> Anyone got any bright ideas about this problem?
>>
>> Peter Allan
>>
>
> I do not have a V4.6 system at hand, but consider this general principle:
> if you boot VMS from a cloned or freshly installed system disk, it is
> beneficial to run AUTOGEN, after checking MODPARAMS.DAT for anomalies. Could
> it be that when booting from a MASSBUS device, the MSCP driver is not
> automatically loaded? Not sure if V4.6 supports this, but try setting
> MSCP_LOAD=1 in MODPARAMS.DAT, and AUTOGEN the system. Later versions of VMS
> have the SYSGEN command SHOW MSCP_LOAD, SHOW MSCP_SERVE_ALL, not sure if
> V4.6 has this.
>
> It may also take some time for the CONFIGURE process to enumerate all
> disks. Is the configure process started at all when booting from MASSBUS?
> Otherwise, @SYS$SYSTEM:STARTUP CONFIGURE will do so.
>
> /Wilm


Thanks Wilm,

The  @SYS$SYSTEM:STARTUP CONFIGURE command does indeed configure the DUA0
and DUA1 disks.

My system is definitely inconsistent in bringing them up without this. It
seems to recognise them about 1 time in 3 or 4 boots, but more often than
not it does not do so. I have not been able to detect any consistency in
what causes the system to work when it does, so I will use the command above
when I need to.

Cheers

Peter

>
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