[Simh] Basic questions

[Vorländer, Martin]

David,

> Now I'm attempting to import Licenses from Ubuntu. I "select all" and 
> "cut" from gedit and then "paste" into the GNOME terminal where I have 
> started COPY TT: LICENSE.COM. But all kinds of unprintable characters 
> are inserted into LICENSE.COM so that the COM file can't be executed. 
> Obviously the wrong thing to do. Suggestions? 

The standard terminal input buffer in VMS is something like 150 bytes
(which is enough for a human typing, or a 2400 baud modem ;-)
If you hammer on the line with more than that in a short time, data
overruns will happen.

You can either resize the input buffer (which will affect every terminal
in the system) by the system parameter TTY_TYPAHDSZ, or you can switch
terminals to an alternate typeahead buffer whose size is governed by the
system parameter TTY_ALTYPAHD.

For all changes to system parameters, the standard method is to edit
SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT, entering a line like

MIN_TTY_TYPAHDSZ = 1024

and then call

$ @SYS$UPDATE:AUTOGEN SAVPARAMS REBOOT

which will recalculate a whole set of new system parameters (and then
reboot, as most of these are static).

> My second question is a bit more general. After I get the licenses 
> loaded I want to install TCP/IP .. it's part of the .iso file I got from 
> HP. But how do I set up SimH? I've Googled a lot and there seems to be 
> several approaches that have been developed over the years. I can't 
> figure out what's current. Primarily I'm looking for a way to get data 
> into VAX, COMs, ZIPs and EXEs. I'd forgotten that VMS takes a lot of 
> customizing to run smoothly. 

First you have to install the UCX license.

Then you install the kit (named something like *-TCPIP-*.PCSI*) like

$ PRODUCT INSTALL TCPIP /SOURCE=<path-to-PCSI-file>

Then you configure it using

$ @SYS$MANAGER:TCPIP$CONFIG.COM

(if you have an older VMS version, it's named UCX$CONFIG.COM,
and there's no PCSI installation kits).

> And that question leads to DECNet. Does DECNet provide an easier way of 
> getting data in and out of VAX? 

Well, if you do have a DECnet stack for Windows of Linux, then yes, DECnet
could be an alternative to TCP/IP.

cu,
  Martin