[Simh] VAX and disk device size oddness

[Lennert Van Alboom]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 03:51:08PM +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> On 2013-02-15 14:32, Lennert Van Alboom wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >
> >I just started playing with a simh vax again. Built the 3.9 vax binary (on
> >linux/powerpc), and it works fine.
> >
> >Odd thing though: I cannot use RAUSER, it seems. I tried the following line:
> >
> >SET RQ1 RAUSER=20000
> >
> >Which should result in a 20GB disk. No dice though: simh claims "invalid
> >parameter". I tried lowering the size to 10000, 5000, ... no difference.
> >
> >I then tried replacing the RAUSER by RA92, which should be supported and have a
> >~8GB size. This was accepted. However, from the OS (VMS 7.3), after an
> >INIT/ERASE the disk reports 2940951 blocks which is somewhat under 1.5GB. The
> >RQ0 RA90 reports the expected 2376153 blocks or somewhat under 1.2GB.
> 
> Don't know where you got that an RA92 would be 8G. It is really just
> 1.4G. The largest RA drives ever manufactured were the RA73 at 2G.

Aha - so what I'm seeing is normal then. Not sure where I got the 8GB number -
iirc from some usenet post. Guess I should check numbers before taking them for
granted.

> >Now, the host OS is on a PPC G4, which means a 32bit kernel. Is this what is
> >causing this? If yes, can I work around it? I'd prefer something bigger than
> >1.5GB :-)
> 
> RAUSER is what you need. I don't think simh even knows of the RA73...

I would, but that doesn't give me decent size disks... after some trial & error
it seems like I'm hitting the 2GB barrier. RAUSER=2047 works, RAUSER=2048
fails. I don't suppose I can work around this on a 32bit host system, or can I?

Thanks,

Lennert
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