[Simh] Standalone boot on vax8600?

[Henry Bent]

I got a console RL02 image from Quasijarus - the only one I could find
easily - but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it.  All I get is
this:

--
sim> boot cs /r5:8
Loading boot code from vmb.exe



Please remove the volume "" from the console device.

Insert the first standalone system volume and enter "YES" when ready:
--

But that's neither here nor there at this point.  The 8600 doesn't seem to
be able to run any standalone utilities - they all print one character to
the console and then stop.  For example, "copy" and "format":

sim> load -o copy 0
sim> run 2
F

sim> load -o format 0
sim> run 2
D

While on any other vax simulator, I get:

sim> load -o copy 0
sim> run 2
From:

sim> load -o format 0
sim> run 2
Disk format/check utility

Enable debugging (0=none, 1=bse, 2=ecc, 3=bse+ecc)?


I haven't done any real testing of the qbus vax sims, I just verified that
they could load and run standalone utilities.

-Henry




On 10 July 2014 19:08, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm <Mark at infocomm.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, July 10, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Jul 2014, Henry Bent wrote:
> >
> > > 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.
> > >
> >
> > 780, 750, and 730 have the same issue...along with not actually booting
> from
> > the console RL, floppy, et al.
>
> The last character output in a message just prior to executing a HALT
> instruction is not surprising since the simulator implements a delay (as a
> number of instructions executed) from when the data is put in the output
> register prior to generating the completion interrupt/status.  The halt
> instruction gets executed before the delay number of instructions have
> completed.  Even if that was 'fixed', nothing operational would change.
>  The reason the message has been generated will still exist.
>
> As for direct support for booting an OS from the console media, the 8600
> supports BOOT CS /R5:xx to boot from the console RL02.  Other than that,
> VMB.EXE is actually performing the boot operation and I think that when I
> checked VMB didn't know how to boot from console floppies on a 780, but it
> can boot from the console TU58 on both the 730 and 750 (BOOT TD /R5:xx).
>
> > > 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?
>
> What media have you tested with on the other (qbus) VAX simulators?
>
> - Mark
>
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