[Simh] VAX 730 Console Tapes [was: VAX 8200]

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

> What I started with, though, was managing 11/730s in the mid-80s and was optimizing the order of files on the console tape to be in the order they were requested, so a 30-minute boot process fell to under 5 minutes... nearly all the time spent was doing serial transfers with far, far less tape motion.  -ethan

What always surprised me was that Digital provided VAX 730/750 Console tapes "Out Of Order" (alphabetically) which caused slow cold boot times, and YOU had to create an optimized version of the tape if you wanted a faster boot time. And as Ethan said it really made a difference in the cold boot time.

.. What a pain that was. I guess they never cold-booted the internal development console-tape systems enough to get annoyed enough to optimize the tapes for the customers. I spent a lot of time making boot-optimized console tapes also.

Dave