[Simh] Getting rsxs to run on the pdp11 emulator

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-03-03 23:16, Rhialto wrote:
> On Tue 03 Mar 2015 at 22:41:18 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> Something very obvious if you know the actual hardware.
>
> I may be a bit spoiled by (Net)BSD, which prints a nice device tree when
> it boots: you can see which devices are attached to which buses, giving
> their exact names. When simh shows "TU      Massbus adapter 1,
> FORMATTER, TM03, 8 units" it doesn't tell me that said massbus adaptor
> is called "RHB" (although that is mentioned in the help text for RHB).
> It also doesn't help that DEC has these interesting tendencies to have
> rather different names for the devices, controllers and their drivers
> (and each of those is used, in various places). Of course, there is some
> system to it, I see that, but it takes some getting used to...

Well, once you get RSX booted, try "CON DIS FULL ATT" for more detailed 
information. :-)

simh information is about equivalent to trying to get the hardware 
configuration of a PC from the BIOS user interface... :-)

>> I sense a problem here based on you trying to run and operate a system which
>> you know nothing about. You will hit more problems that way. Might be worth
>> researching a bit about actual PDP-11 systems...
>
> I'm trying :)

Excellent! :-)

> Thanks for the exposition about the tapes. I have simply been trying a
> few different configurations I found here and there until I got
> something where I could (sort of) see why it worked.

Happy to help with more information if you, or someone else wants to know...

	Johnny