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

[Dave L]

On Fri, 17 Mar 2017 01:01:51 -0000, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se>  
wrote:

> On 2017-03-16 23:01, Hittner, David T [US] (MS) wrote:
>>> 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.
>
> My only comment is that I normally never booted from the TU58. Why would  
> you do that, except at initial install, or to run diagnostics.
>
> 	Johnny
>

As I recall it was a lot quicker to rewrite the tapes in the HSC than on  
the VAX drive too :-)
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