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<p>I have two physical systems, a VAX 6220 and a VAX 4000-300. The latter system is set up to do a network bootstrap off the 6220 using an EZA0 network device.</p>
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</p>
<p>First, using vddriver and backup/image, I generated and retrieved disk images of the RA92 drives from the 6220. With these disk images, and specifying MicroVAX 3900 on the SimH simulator, I am able to boot up an emulated version of the 6220 on my laptop.
So far so good.</p>
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</p>
<p>My first goal is to get the physical VAX 4000-300 to do its network bootstrap off the emulated 6220 rather than the physical 6220. By the way, I am running SimH 4.0 on Windows 8, it seems to work OK.</p>
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<p>The first problem I ran into was that the simulator presents a different network adapter to the emulated 6220 than it is accustomed to seeing. It typically sees a "BNA-0" interface, but the simulator uses "QNA-0", as derived from the XQA0 device. So, I
found out that I needed to run netconfig.com. When I ran that script, it brought the circuit online.</p>
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</p>
<p>But when I tried to do network boot of the physical VAX 4000-300 off the emulated 6220, it kept saying 'retrying network bootstrap'. So evidently that was not sufficient. Then I came to discover that the 6220 uses DECserver, and there is a dsvconfig.com
script. Once again, because the simulator presented a different network device than the 6220 was accustomed to seeing, the configuration had to be updated. So okay, I ran the dsvconfig.com script, and made it aware of the fact that it is now a "QNA-0" device
rather than a "BNA-0" device.</p>
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<p>So after running both netconfig.com and dsvconfig.com on the emulated 6220, the physical 4000-300 no longer says "retrying network bootstrap". Instead it now appears to be able to communicate, but it says "unable to locate boot file":</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>>>> b eza0</p>
<p>(BOOT/R5:0 EZA0)</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> 2..</p>
<p>-EZA0</p>
<p> 1..0..</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>%VAXcluster-I-SYSLOAD, system loaded from node ORION (AA-00-04-00-B6-11)</p>
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</p>
<p>%VAXcluster-F-BADOPEN, unable to locate BOOT file</p>
<p>?06 HLT INST</p>
<p> PC = 00007395</p>
<p>>>><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Using Wireshark, I captured some of the packets to try to glean some more details, and I see messages like "VAXcluster-F-NOSUCHDEV, nonexistent drive" and "VAXcluster-F-READERR, I/O error reading boot file".</p>
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<p>I am really stumped on this one because basically the disk images should be one-to-one copies of what is on the physical VAX 6220, so other than having to tell it that it has a different network adapter (QNA-0 rather than BNA-0), why shouldn't it just work?
Does SimH not support MOP or DECserver? I did check, and the sysboot.exe file is present in dua0:[sys14.syscommon.sysexe], and sys14 is the directory for the VAX 4000-300 to use for its network boot. So I believe the boot file is available.</p>
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</p>
<p>By the way, the VAX 6220 is running VMS 5.5-2H. And I have set VAXCLUSTER to 2.</p>
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<p>Oh and one more thing, when the 4000-300 fails to boot, on the simulator side of things I see the following:</p>
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<p>%%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 20-JUN-2016 15:10:06.58 %%%%%%%%</p>
<p>Message from user DECNET on ORION</p>
<p>DECnet event 0.3, automatic line service</p>
<p>From node 4.438 (ORION), 20-JUN-2016 15:10:06.58</p>
<p>Circuit QNA-0, Load, Requested, Node = 4.764 (GUINAN)</p>
<p>File = DISK$VMSRL5:<SYS14.>, Operating system, Ethernet address = 08-00-2B-23-9A-F4</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p></p>
<p>%%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 20-JUN-2016 15:10:11.58 %%%%%%%%</p>
<p>Message from user DECNET on ORION</p>
<p>DECnet event 0.3, automatic line service</p>
<p>From node 4.438 (ORION), 20-JUN-2016 15:10:06.75</p>
<p>Circuit QNA-0, Load, Successful, Node = 4.764 (GUINAN)</p>
<p>File = DISK$VMSRL5:<SYS14.>, Operating system, Ethernet address = 08-00-2B-23-9A-F4</p>
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</p>
<p>%PEA0, Port has Closed Virtual Circuit - REMOTE NODE GUINAN<br>
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<p>So it almost looks like it has done a successful load of the system software to the 4000-300, but then the port closes presumably due to not being able to locate the boot file.</p>
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</p>
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<p>My thoughts are that maybe:</p>
<p>1) there is some other config script that needs to be run when using disk images from one VAX system (physical 6220) to another (simulated MicroVAX 3900)</p>
<p>2) SimH on Windows 8 does not really support MOP or DECserver stuff?</p>
<p>3) there is some permissions issue with the boot file (sysboot.exe?), but since it is off a disk image (which should be a one-to-one exact copy), how so?</p>
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</p>
<p></p>
<p><span>Any ideas? Thanks in advance.</span><br>
</p>
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