[Simh] Standalone boot on vax8600?

[Henry Bent]

Well, that at least did something different.

sim> boot rq0 /r5:8
Loading boot code from vmb.exe
%BOOT-F-Unexpected Exceptio

The 8600 simulator always seems to cut off the last character of its
messages, I wonder if that's in any way related to the other console
problems.

I tried the standalone boot on the other VAX sims (microvax 1, 2, 3900, and
rtvax1000) and they are all able to load the booter and take console input
(I didn't actually try booting).  This seems to point to there being a
problem with the console on the 8600.  Any tips for where I should look to
narrow down where the problem might be?

-Henry

On 8 July 2014 20:31, Matt Burke <matt at 9track.net> wrote:

> On 08/07/2014 12:50, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2014-07-08 01:50, Henry Bent wrote:
> >> How are standalone programs loaded and run on the 8600?  On the 7x0 I
> >> can do "load -o boot 0" and "run 2" and that will run a standalone
> >> boot.  When I do that in the 8600 sim I get a newline and then the
> >> program just loops forever.
> >>
> >> Alternately, does anyone know the right way to load bootblocks on an ra
> >> disk in Ultrix 1 or 2 so that I can boot off of the disk directly?
> >> Everything I've tried just ends up giving a "%BOOT-F-Unable to locate
> >> BOOT fil" message from vmb.exe.
> >
> > VMB needs to have R5 set to specific values to boot Ultrix.
> > If I remember right, bit 3 (0x8) needs to be set in R5 in order for
> > VMB to just load the boot block from the device and start executing
> > that instead of trying to look for specific files inside a Files-11
> > filesystem.
> >
> > But on a rel 86x0, you can also load other binaries from the console
> > device, and just start them. For old versions of Ultrix, I seem to
> > remember that this is what they did, before VMB gained the capability
> > to boot from a boot block.
> >
>
> The value 8 is correct for R5. To boot this in simh use:
>
> sim> b rq0 /r5:8
>
> On a side note I think this flag is not required on later VAX system
> such as the MicroVAX II. The ROM code seems to work out what to do.
>
> 'load -o' is supported on the VAX 8600 so I suspect there is another
> issue. It could be a problem with the console device as I think someone
> has previously mentioned that there are some issues with my
> implementation (unless this been fixed now?)
>
> Matt
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