[Simh] VAX 8600: Can't boot Quasijarus (tape or disk)

[Mark Pizzolato]

On Friday, September 22, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
> Oh, hang on. 'boot tq0' is surely not correct. You do 'boot cpu' and then
> specify the boot device in a console command.

Actually, neither "boot cpu" , nor "boot tq0" are meaningful commands 
with the VAX8600 simulator.  There were no "naturally" or "DEC supported"
bootable tape devices on the original VAX 8600 system and therefore there
is no simulation of things which never worked.  In theory, someone could 
write a tape boot program and it could be loaded into the CPU memory and 
started execution, but I don’t know of any such program.  

If you followed instructions regarding how Quasijarus was originally installed 
on a VAX 8600, then it should work the same as it did on the original hardware.
I suspect that by the time Quasijarus was put together, the MicroVAX systems
were prime targets for system installs, and no or very little effort was put into
getting this stuff to work on the older VAX systems.

Good luck.

- Mark

> On Sat, 23 Sep 2017 00:10:12 +0200
> Dario Niedermann <dario at darioniedermann.it> wrote:
> 
> > Hello! I'm running "VAX 8600 simulator V4.0-0 Beta" (git commit id:
> > c8a420ad) on a Linux/x86_64 host. I've installed 4.3BSD Quasijarus on
> > an empty RA90-sized disk image, following the instructions at:
> >
> > 	<http://www.tavi.co.uk/unixhistory/quasijarus.html>
> >
> > But I could never get the VAX 8600 emulator to boot...
> >
> > From TQ0, attached to the .tap file provided at the site, emulator
> > says "Command not allowed" when I give 'boot tq0'. 'sho tq all'
> > returns "Controller is not initialized", while 'sho tq' outputs:
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > TQ      TU81 (180MB), address=2013F940-2013F943, no vector, BR5, 4
> > units
> >   TQ0   attached to /home/ndr/lib/emu/quastape.tap, read only,
> > write locked, SIMH format
> >         capacity=188MB
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Is this due to the .tap file being (probably) made with the MicroVAX
> > 3900 emulator?
> >
> > Issuing 'boot rq0', the emulator's output is:
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Loading boot code from internal vmb.exe loading boot
> > ra(0,0,0,34): bad adaptor number
> > boot failed
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Is it because I used the MicroVAX 3900 emulator to install BSD on the
> > virtual ra0?
> >
> > TIA for any help...