[Simh] error

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-02-09 22:58, Mark Pizzolato wrote:
> You may recall that older computers didn’t have a way to
> programmatically power themselves down.

Well, this isn't about powering down, but halting...

Older and older... It's actually more of a trait of newer computers... 
Back when you had frontpanels and all that stuff, halting the computer 
were considered normal. With the disappearance of most meaningful ways 
to interact with computers at such low levels, halting the computer also 
went away, as it wasn't that useful, and the question the becomes, how 
would you restart it?

> VMS is one of those systems.

Er... VAX. VMS is an operating system. :-)

> When you shutdown a VMS system it closes all files and cleans up
> everything going on in the operating system then it displays a message
> which says something like “SYSTEM SHUTDOWN COMPLETE - USE THE CONSOLE TO
> HALT THE SYSTEM” and then it goes into an infinite loop with interrupts
> disabled.  The simulator detects this condition which will never produce
> useful results from the simulated system again without operator
> intervention and allows you to do that.

Right.

> Would you want it to behave differently?

I think simh does a reasonable thing, if you ask me. It was a mistake 
that the VAX didn't standardize how to halt or reboot the machine, but 
that is not simhs fault.

And some VAXen do have the ability to power themselves down as well... 
But it's all very model specific.

	Johnny

>
> *From:*Simh [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] *On Behalf Of *Bill
> Cunningham
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 9, 2016 1:46 PM
> *To:* simh at trailing-edge.com
> *Subject:* [Simh] error
>
>      After using shutdown on my virtual VMS, it dropped to the simh
> prompt and had this error.
>
> Infinite loop, PC833DC8D3 (BRB ...)
>
> and the same hex number were the ... is. What does that mean?
>
> Bill
>
>
>
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-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol