Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Sat, 13 Jun 2015, Mark J. Blair wrote: How do I respond to tape mount requests on the same console where I'm running BACKUP? When I get the request asking whether to create a new tape volume, it doesn't seem to respond to terminal input. First, initialize all the tapes you might need using the same label as you will use when you run backup. Second, run your backups as a batch job and then VMS does not expect you to reply to requests for new tapes, he just expects the tape to appear. Third, use the /noassist parameter - that makes it clear to VMS that the operator has been laid off and is now working as a greeter at Walmart. -- Richard Loken VE6BSV, Unix System Administrator : Anybody can be a father Athabasca University: but you have to earn Athabasca, Alberta Canada : the title of 'daddy' ** richar...@admin.athabascau.ca ** : - Lynn Johnston
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Jun 15, 2015, at 09:50 , Richard Loken richar...@admin.athabascau.ca wrote: You need to read a little tome entitled Mastering VMS by David W. Byron or maybe The VMS User's Manual that came with VAX/VMS Version 5. I'll look for those. Thanks! ANd the /NOASSIST switch worked for me. I didn't even need to pre-initialize the tapes. I'll probably look into doing things the more traditional batch way once I have multiple terminals and/or networking set up, but for now it's a single-user/single-terminal system. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Sat, 13 Jun 2015, Mark J. Blair wrote: Thanks, I will read that. But how do I enter the reply command when the BACKUP program is hogging the console? Is there a VMS equivalent to the way a task can be suspended in UNIX with ^Z? There are several: $ submit /queue=sys$batch /noprint foo.com $ run /detached foo.exe $ spawn /nolog /process==spawned_foo foo.exe You need to read a little tome entitled Mastering VMS by David W. Byron or maybe The VMS User's Manual that came with VAX/VMS Version 5. -- Richard Loken VE6BSV, Unix System Administrator : Anybody can be a father Athabasca University: but you have to earn Athabasca, Alberta Canada : the title of 'daddy' ** richar...@admin.athabascau.ca ** : - Lynn Johnston
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
Thanks! I'll look up all of those commands to understand them better. ^Y looks familiar. I think this is the second time I have learned about it. :) On Jun 13, 2015, at 18:40, Jerry Weiss j...@ieee.org wrote: If you are running backup and it is asking for additional tapes, then I believe you can do the following ^Y $spawn $ $reply/enable=all Another way is to log on a second time using a terminal other than the console, issue reply/enable and then reply to the messages you receive there. Yet another way is to use BACKUP /NOASSIST - this should avoid issueing OPCOM messages and prompt the issuer of the BACKUP command directly when tapes are to be changed and so on. The standard way of doing backups on VMS is to submit a BACKUP command in a batch job. The operator would normally be logged in interactively and would respond to the OPCOM messages from the batch job and deal with tape mounts. This requires a suitable batch queue to be set up and started. Regards, Peter Coghlan.
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
I'm still fumbling around with the multi-tape backup of the R80 drive and haven't quite gotten it working yet. But I've made some other good progress! That RL02 pack labeled VMS53RL02SYS does contain a working VMS 5.3 installation. I backed it up to tape while booted from the R80, then did a conversational boot on it to reset the SYSTEM password. Now I boot from that pack while trying to get the backup of the R80 drive working, so I can have the R80 drive mounted read-only. I also ran off recursive directory listings of both drives while logging in my terminal emulator, so I can go through them later to see if anything interesting is in there. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Jun 14, 2015, at 02:36, Peter Coghlan cct...@beyondthepale.ie wrote: Another way is to log on a second time using a terminal other than the console, issue reply/enable and then reply to the messages you receive there. I'll eventually hook up more serial lines, but at the moment the room is cluttered enough that pulling out the rack will be frustrating. Yet another way is to use BACKUP /NOASSIST - this should avoid issueing OPCOM messages and prompt the issuer of the BACKUP command directly when tapes are to be changed and so on. That sounds like what I want! It's running now. The standard way of doing backups on VMS is to submit a BACKUP command in a batch job. The operator would normally be logged in interactively and would respond to the OPCOM messages from the batch job and deal with tape mounts. This requires a suitable batch queue to be set up and started. I bet that's how I used to run backups as a student computer operator in the late 1980s. But I probably had no understanding of the DCL script I presumably ran. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On 2015-06-14 19:25, Mark J. Blair wrote: On Jun 14, 2015, at 10:01, tony duell a...@p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: If the connector on the DELUA board is a normal Berg-type header (and I think it is) then maybe you could use a piece of (twist-n-flat?) ribbon cable to make an extension that could be routed through the cable pan arrangement and then connected to the original DELUA cable back in the rack cabinet. That might be a good approach. The DELUA end of the cable has a Berg connector, and the other end has the typical 15-pin D-sub AUI connector with a slide latch. I'll look up the cable wiring to see if signals that would best be twisted pairs are conveniently placed on adjacent odd/even pins, such that twisted pair ribbon cable would work well electrically. Or maybe I can use the round cable that I already have, with P-shaped cable clamps screwed down using the screws at one end of the flat cable clamps. There may not be enough clearance in the tray for that. What happened to the original cable and distribution panel? As a warning - the original distribution panel have a fuse for the 15-pin Dsub, to avoid excessive power use on the connector. If you go directly from the board to a transciever, you might run the risk of damaging the DELUA itself if something goes wrong. Put another way. The design is to have an internal cable from the DELUA to a distribution panel at the back of the machine. There you have the 15 pin AUI connector, which have a fuse. You then had an external AUI cable from there to your transciever, which traditionally sat on a thick coax. Of course, later on, you started having thin ethernet. Still AUI cable and transciever, though. Eventually twisted pair showed up. But you had transcievers for that as well. And if you have room behind the machine, you could connect the thin ethernet or twisted pair transscievers directly to the distribution panel connector, so no actual external cable. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip - B. Idol
RE: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
Ok, next puzzle is figuring out how to route the cable between the DELUA and the bulkhead panel. I removed it because it kept getting tangled when rolling the CPU chassis in and out. The cable clamps under the cabinet deal with flat cables much better than round ones, so I'll need to improvise. If the connector on the DELUA board is a normal Berg-type header (and I think it is) then maybe you could use a piece of (twist-n-flat?) ribbon cable to make an extension that could be routed through the cable pan arrangement and then connected to the original DELUA cable back in the rack cabinet. -tony
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Jun 14, 2015, at 10:01, tony duell a...@p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: If the connector on the DELUA board is a normal Berg-type header (and I think it is) then maybe you could use a piece of (twist-n-flat?) ribbon cable to make an extension that could be routed through the cable pan arrangement and then connected to the original DELUA cable back in the rack cabinet. That might be a good approach. The DELUA end of the cable has a Berg connector, and the other end has the typical 15-pin D-sub AUI connector with a slide latch. I'll look up the cable wiring to see if signals that would best be twisted pairs are conveniently placed on adjacent odd/even pins, such that twisted pair ribbon cable would work well electrically. Or maybe I can use the round cable that I already have, with P-shaped cable clamps screwed down using the screws at one end of the flat cable clamps. There may not be enough clearance in the tray for that. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
If you are running backup and it is asking for additional tapes, then I believe you can do the following ^Y $spawn $ $reply/enable=all initialize additional tapes as needed (prior tape should have rewound…) mount tape $reply/to=MESSAGEID $exit $continue Jerry Weiss WB9MRI j...@ieee.org On Jun 13, 2015, at 8:04 PM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: Thanks! I will try that out. On Jun 13, 2015, at 18:01, Glen Slick glen.sl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 5:45 PM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: Thanks, I will read that. But how do I enter the reply command when the BACKUP program is hogging the console? Is there a VMS equivalent to the way a task can be suspended in UNIX with ^Z? I'm no expert, but I think you can sometimes do ^Y, and then CONTINUE, but only if you only execute built-in commands between the ^Y and the CONTINUE.
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 5:45 PM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: Thanks, I will read that. But how do I enter the reply command when the BACKUP program is hogging the console? Is there a VMS equivalent to the way a task can be suspended in UNIX with ^Z? I'm no expert, but I think you can sometimes do ^Y, and then CONTINUE, but only if you only execute built-in commands between the ^Y and the CONTINUE.
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
Thanks! I will try that out. On Jun 13, 2015, at 18:01, Glen Slick glen.sl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 5:45 PM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: Thanks, I will read that. But how do I enter the reply command when the BACKUP program is hogging the console? Is there a VMS equivalent to the way a task can be suspended in UNIX with ^Z? I'm no expert, but I think you can sometimes do ^Y, and then CONTINUE, but only if you only execute built-in commands between the ^Y and the CONTINUE.
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
Thanks! I'll look up all of those commands to understand them better. ^Y looks familiar. I think this is the second time I have learned about it. :) On Jun 13, 2015, at 18:40, Jerry Weiss j...@ieee.org wrote: If you are running backup and it is asking for additional tapes, then I believe you can do the following ^Y $spawn $ $reply/enable=all initialize additional tapes as needed (prior tape should have rewound…) mount tape $reply/to=MESSAGEID $exit $continue Jerry Weiss WB9MRI j...@ieee.org On Jun 13, 2015, at 8:04 PM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: Thanks! I will try that out. On Jun 13, 2015, at 18:01, Glen Slick glen.sl...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 5:45 PM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: Thanks, I will read that. But how do I enter the reply command when the BACKUP program is hogging the console? Is there a VMS equivalent to the way a task can be suspended in UNIX with ^Z? I'm no expert, but I think you can sometimes do ^Y, and then CONTINUE, but only if you only execute built-in commands between the ^Y and the CONTINUE.
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
I'm having trouble with the password reset procedure (but will resolve it by the end of this message). When I run AUTHORIZE, I get this: [snip] $ set noon set noon $ spawn /nowait sys$system:startup.com spawn /nowait sys$system:startup.com %DCL-S-SPAWNED, process SYSTEM_1 spawned $ %DCL-W-NOLBLS, label ignored - use only within command procedures \SYS$SYSTEM:\ %DCL-W-PARMDEL, invalid parameter delimiter - check use of special characters \.COM\ Did I say that? I meant: $ spawn /nowait @sys$system:startup.com (sorry) Regards, Peter Coghlan.
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
I'm having trouble with the password reset procedure (but will resolve it by the end of this message). When I run AUTHORIZE, I get this: $ run authorize run authorize %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image SECURESHRP -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file PIKE$DQA0:[SYS0.SYSCOMMON.][SYSLIB]SECURESHRP.EXE;2 -SYSTEM-F-PROTINSTALL, protected images must be installed I tried installing my new OpenVMS license pak to see if that would influence it, but it didn't seem to help. Took about an hour for my terminal emulator to slowly type in that 2400 line license file! Ok, let's try rebooting with the new license pak installed... Nope! @DQ0GEN I D/P/L F26200 86 D/P/L F2620C D/P/L F26200 6 D/G/L 0 00A80003 D/G/L 1 3 D/G/L 2 3FB86 D/G/L 3 0 D/G/L 4 0 D/G/L 5 1 E SP G 000E 0200 L/P/S:@ VMB.EXE S @ SYSBOOT SET VAXCLUSTER 0 SYSBOOT SET /STARTUP OPA0: SYSBOOT SET WRITESYSPARAMS 0 SYSBOOT CONTINUE %SYSBOOT-I-SYSBOOT Mapping the SYSDUMP.DMP on the System Disk %SYSBOOT-I-SYSBOOT SYSDUMP.DMP on System Disk successfully mapped %SYSBOOT-I-SYSBOOT Mapping PAGEFILE.SYS on the System Disk %SYSBOOT-I-SYSBOOT SAVEDUMP parameter not set to protect the PAGEFILE.SYS OpenVMS (TM) VAX Version V7.3 Major version id = 1 Minor version id = 0 %WBM-I-WBMINFO Write Bitmap has successfully completed initialization. $ set noon set noon $ spawn /nowait sys$system:startup.com spawn /nowait sys$system:startup.com %DCL-S-SPAWNED, process SYSTEM_1 spawned $ %DCL-W-NOLBLS, label ignored - use only within command procedures \SYS$SYSTEM:\ %DCL-W-PARMDEL, invalid parameter delimiter - check use of special characters \.COM\ $ set default sys$system set default sys$system $ run authorize run authorize %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image SECURESHRP -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file PIKE$DQA0:[SYS0.SYSCOMMON.][SYSLIB]SECURESHRP.EXE;2 -SYSTEM-F-PROTINSTALL, protected images must be installed $ Ok, now let's try the slightly different procedure at http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/204 http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/204 with the vaxcluster stuff spliced in... Much better! Much longer boot time, lots of complaining about terminated licenses (previous attempt to install them must not have worked), but I was able to reset the password. I'm not sure what was different about the other proceduer (maybe the /nowait flag?), and some of the lines don't even look applicable to a non-workstation. Now running the license pak script again, and the output looks a lot more promising. Forward progress continues! -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Jun 13, 2015, at 14:29, Peter Coghlan cct...@beyondthepale.ie wrote: Did I say that? I meant: $ spawn /nowait @sys$system:startup.com (sorry) Aha! Now I understand. Ok, I have the SYSTEM password reset, and the license pak installed. Next task is to perform backups. First attempt to do that has presented my next learning opportunity: How do I respond to tape mount requests on the same console where I'm running BACKUP? When I get the request asking whether to create a new tape volume, it doesn't seem to respond to terminal input. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
Using a version 58 console tape image provided to me by one list member, and massaged into a usable state by another list member, I just booted OpenVMS 7.3 off the R80 drive on my VAX-11/730 for the first time since buying the machine. Woohoo! Excellent! For some reason, I was unable to do that with the version 57 images that I downloaded off the net. Maybe there's something wrong with the VMB.EXE on those images? It always complained of not being able to find the boot file when I tried using it. Once you get logged in to VMS, I think it should be possible to use EXCHANGE to poke around the console tape images on the file level. It might be possible to find the reason for the problem that way? I never got a login prompt, but perhaps that's because I booted with the write protect switch on? VMS would try to write to the pagefile at some point but I think it would write a message (likely many messages!) on the console if that failed rather than sit there doing nothing. It probably hasn't hit the pagefile yet. It appeared to be trying to create or join a VAXcluster for a while, then said something about loading MSCP disk server. Before you do anything, make sure the ethernet network is properly connected or terminated appropriately. If configured to form a cluster, VMS will normally wait for a short period for the other cluster member(s) to appear on the cluster interconnect (usually the ethernet network) before continuing to boot. Try leaving it for a few minutes and you may then get something like: VAXCluster state transition completed. Initialization continuing. Or you might not. In a cluster, each node contributes a number of votes to the cluster. None if the nodes will do anything until a cluster quorum is present (more than half the number of votes usually present in the cluster). If the machine just sits there indefinately after loading the MSCP disk server, you probably don't have enough cluster votes to proceed and the best thing to do is perform a conversational boot which usually involves setting the least significant bit of register R5 to 1 before booting. How exactly to do this varies from processor to processor and I don't know how to do it for an 11/730. When you manage to do this and try booting again, you should get a SYSBOOT prompt and you could: SHOW VAXCLUSTER SHOW VOTES SHOW EXPECTED_VOTES SET VAXCLUSTER 0 SET WRITESYSPARAMS 0 CONTINUE to confirm that the issue is with cluster votes, turn off clustering and proceed with the boot process. I have plenty more experimentation ahead, including seeing what's on that RL02 pack labeled something like VMS53SYS (if I recall correctly). My attempts to boot up the v5.3 standalone backup tape images I downloaded still haven't succeeded. As suggested, I'll see if standalone backup might be on another partition next time I work on the machine. I'd like to try backing up both the R80 and the RL02 to tape if I can. Not exactly a partition, more of use one of a number of different root directories in the same partition to start searching for files from. Eventually, I'd like to run an older version of VMS than 7.3 on it. Preferably, something contemporary to when the 11/730 was still sold, or at least from before any sane 730 users upgraded to newer and faster VAXen. Of course, that assumes I can procure suitable installation media, or usable images with which to create it. I would suggest V5.5-2. This is likely newer than when the 11/730 was sold but I suspect that many an 11/730 would have been upgraded to this version while in service and ended their days on that version. It was regarded as a good stable place to be with few unaddressed issues and it would be increasingly difficult to get useful items such as a stable TCP/IP stack running on versions earlier than V5.5-2. Regards, Peter Coghlan.
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
I don't remember exactly what I have, but the binders that came with my system might include an R80 manual (to be scanned, of course!). -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Jun 12, 2015, at 07:57, Antonio Carlini arcarl...@iee.org wrote: Doesn't control-P on the console halt the machine on a VAX-11/730? It brings up the console prompt, but the (H)alt command just prints the PC rather than triggering a halt on the 725/730. Next time I work on the system (Tonight? Or maybe tomorrow... depends on how cool it is in the evening, as that box pumps out enough BTUs that I need to open windows!) I will try a password reset as described here: http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/204 Oh yeah, I forgot to comment on this earlier: On Jun 12, 2015, at 04:01, Peter Coghlan cct...@beyondthepale.ie wrote: Once you get logged in to VMS, I think it should be possible to use EXCHANGE to poke around the console tape images on the file level. It might be possible to find the reason for the problem that way? I can poke around at the file level with my RT11 filesystem tool: https://github.com/NF6X/pyRT11 In fact, the image I've used to boot the system isn't exactly the one that you fixed for me, but rather a new one I created using its files and bootblocks, with several scripts added to try booting different root directories. On the 730, I don't think I can modify R5 in the boot command. Rather, I would need to either manually type in the whole boot sequence manually, or create a new boot script off-system. I chose the latter, and made a bunch of them to try probing different root dirs on both the R80 and RL02 drives. BTW, standalone backup was not helpfully installed on E on my R80, so once I crowbar my way in, I'll try running a backup under the full OS. And new replies have arrive while I was typing: On Jun 12, 2015, at 08:00, Peter Coghlan cct...@beyondthepale.ie wrote: You can get a free hobbyist license if you join whatever DECUS is called now. I joined a while back, but haven't requested license yet since I didn't have my system serial number handy. I'll pull the rack out and jot down the number before I leave for work this morning. [and an alternate set of password reset instructions] Thanks! This is very helpful, as I am a real VMS noob. My previous experience with it was just using it briefly in one or two classes, and running a canned script to perform backups as a graveyard shift operator (Great pay for a student! And a key to the machine room! And a staff account with no quotas, rather than buying limited time or fighting with everybody else for CPU cycles on a class-account cesspit server! Do homework on a Sun workstation instead of a Wyse terminal! Heck, run a sim on the C240 supercomputer! Giggle!). I can still hear that TU77 howling in my mind. Hmm, I wouldn't mind having one, with a matching 11/780... :) Back in the day, I really hated VMS for no other reason than I liked UNIX and embraced it with the natural snobbishness of a youth growing up in the computer environment of the 80s, where our computer was the best even though the other guy's crappy computer used the same 6502 running at the same clock speed (but mine really was the best, because it used a 6809 :) ). But now I want to learn about VMS and appreciate it for what it is. On Jun 12, 2015, at 08:11, Johnny Billquist b...@update.uu.se wrote: Avoid V5, though. I remember at the time that people was having serious issues with that version. V6 improved things again. I think DEC spent a fair amount of time to improve performance because of all the complaints about V5. V4 would also be good in some ways, but it's old and might feel limited if you want some modern software running... Modern software running on a 730... I don't know if I'll live long enough to wait for it to launch! :) -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: First VAX-11/730 VMS Boot! (was: Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check)
On Jun 12, 2015, at 04:01, Peter Coghlan cct...@beyondthepale.ie wrote: If the machine just sits there indefinately after loading the MSCP disk server, you probably don't have enough cluster votes to proceed and the best thing to do is perform a conversational boot which usually involves setting the least significant bit of register R5 to 1 before booting. How exactly to do this varies from processor to processor and I don't know how to do it for an 11/730. When you manage to do this and try booting again, you should get a SYSBOOT prompt and you could: SHOW VAXCLUSTER SHOW VOTES SHOW EXPECTED_VOTES SET VAXCLUSTER 0 SET WRITESYSPARAMS 0 CONTINUE to confirm that the issue is with cluster votes, turn off clustering and proceed with the boot process. Thanks, that works! I also turned off write lock, which makes it happier. Wow, that boot sure takes forever. What the heck is it *doing* for all of that time? :) And at the moment, it's still booting, as I sip my morning coffee. Just started printing like heck and beeping... Ah, it's printing all of the licenses that have terminated. Maybe I should have lied about the date? Looks like the hostname is PIKE. Sure glad my iPhone boots more quietly. VMS use not authorized on this node. I sure hope it won't enforce that before I can try a backup! Finally! A login prompt! And no clue about the passwords. Uh, how can I shut this beast down without a valid login? !? Great. :) -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check
On 06/07/2015 10:02 PM, Mark J. Blair wrote: And... All diagnostics pass! Woohoo! Great to hear, well done Mark! I hope one of these days soon I'll join you - my 730 was able to boot the last time I powered it up in the early 90s, but I have no idea what I'll find when I finally amass the necessary round tuits... --S.
Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check
On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: I finally got the excellent AK6DN tu58em emulator working as my VAX-11/730's console drive, as discussed on VCF. Could you throw me a link to that please? I have a 730 I'm going to have to have a hack at at some point... Mike http://www.corestore.org 'No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know or see.'
Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check
On Jun 8, 2015, at 07:05, Mike Ross tmfdm...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Mark J. Blair n...@nf6x.net wrote: I finally got the excellent AK6DN tu58em emulator working as my VAX-11/730's console drive, as discussed on VCF. Could you throw me a link to that please? I have a 730 I'm going to have to have a hack at at some point... Sure! I'll take this opportunity to document a lot of the different pieces that I had to dig up to get this all working. First, here is Don AK6DN's TU58 emulator: https://www.ak6dn.dyndns.org/PDP-11/TU58/tu58em/ It's a DEC computer life-saver! I started with v1.4j, and modified it to 1) build on my Mac and 2) remove some delays that caused trouble with the console firmware's very aggressive 20ms IDLE-IDLE to CONTINUE turnaround timeout. Don hasn't had a VAX 725/730/750 to test it against, and it turns out that the 730 didn't like it at first. I've shared my fork here: https://github.com/NF6X/tu58em Note that the master branch, which comes up by default, is Don's original tu58em code. My changes are on the nf6x branch. I believe that Don plans to update his original code based on this experience, but I don't know yet whether he will do it the same way that I did or take a different approach. Both his original code and my fork are likely to change by the time you get back to your 730. :) I got my console tape images here: http://www.heeltoe.com/download/vax/tapes-730/README.html I also put a copy of those images on my GitHub account, along with some other bits such as the extracted files from them: https://github.com/NF6X/VAX-11-730-Console-v57 I have an RL02 pack of the Customer-Runnable Diagnostics that came with my system, and appears to be compatible with the CRD tape in that set of console tape images. I don't have a way to image it yet, but when I do I will add the image to that repository along with the console tape images. In working with the images, I learned that the console boot tapes are in RT11 format, but they don't strictly adhere to the RT11 filesystem documentation. They have, variously, spaces or NULs in place of some key fields such as the first directory segment entry of the header block. That was causing my RT11 filesystem utility to blow chunks on them, so I added a hack to it so it can read them now: https://github.com/NF6X/pyRT11 I have not yet tried to boot my VAX with a console tape image that has been generated with my pyRT11 code, so I don't know yet whether they will like each other. I figure I may need to experiment with that at some point, for example to change the DEFBOO.CMD as appropriate for my system. I found some VAX-11/750 console tape images plus a bunch of other TU58 images here: http://iamvirtual.ca/VAX11/VAX-11-software.html Since I can't seem to boot up my R80 or my other RL02 pack (labeled VMS53RL02SYS on top) yet, I've been trying to bring up the VMS 5.3 Standalone Backup tape images I found there. No luck so far. I have never run a VMS Standalone Backup environment before, but I am blindly hoping that it will be a small VMS environment that will let me try to mount filesystems from my hard drives and see what, if anything, is on them. I would greatly appreciate any clues here, because I'm in unknown waters. If anybody has relevant TU58 images that aren't already archived at one of the sites above, PLEASE share them and/or point me to where they are! And please make sure they get archived! -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check
Mark J. Blair wrote: Since I can't seem to boot up my R80 or my other RL02 pack (labeled VMS53RL02SYS on top) yet, I've been trying to bring up the VMS 5.3 Standalone Backup tape images I found there. No luck so far. I have never run a VMS Standalone Backup environment before, but I am blindly hoping that it will be a small VMS environment that will let me try to mount filesystems from my hard drives and see what, if anything, is on them. I would greatly appreciate any clues here, because I'm in unknown waters. Standalone backup is a very small VMS environment. You get a $ prompt and the only command which it accepts is BACKUP. You don't get to mount anything as BACKUP will perform any mounting needed itself. I'm not sure but it is also possible that only BACKUP /IMAGE works. The typical way to do a fresh VMS install onto a new disk is to boot standalone backup (from a tape or another disk) and then use it to restore the B saveset of the VMS distribution onto the target disk. Then boot the target disk and answer the questions. If you manage to get standalone backup running and want to try reading existing filesystems or distribution media without risking overwriting data you want to keep, you could try something like: $ BACKUP /IMAGE /LOG device: NLA0: With any luck, this should back up the files on device to the null device and list the filenames as it does it. If it complains, try this: $ BACKUP /IMAGE /LOG device: NLA0:SAVESET.BCK /SAVE_SET but that variation probably won't work for distribution media as that will be provied in saveset form and you can't have a saveset as both input and output. Regards, Peter Coghlan.
Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check
The issue that I'm having at the moment is that when I try to boot from either that RL02 pack or the R80, VMB.EXE reports %BOOT-F-Unable to locate BOOT file. I don't know yet whether there's something not-right about the contents of the hard drives, or I need to configure something (?) so VMB.EXE knows what to look for. There can be more than one system root on a VMS system disk, typically one each for different nodes in a cluster, maybe under [SYS0], [SYS10], [SYS11] etc and standalone backup can sometimes be found under [SYSE], if installed. Unable to locate BOOT file may indicate that you are not reading the correct system root or it may indicate that the disk is not bootable or maybe something entirely different. I am not well up on the 11/730 and I hope someone more familiar with their system specific details will chime in. On some other VAX machines but probably not an 11/730, the [SYSE] root would be booted by entering something like: boot /R5:E000 device or maybe: boot /R5:E00 device or maybe even: boot device/E000 or boot device/E00 The boot scripts on the console boot tape appear to set up VMB.EXE by shoving numbers into some registers prior to loading it, and I have not yet located any documentation about what the numbers mean. If it is like other VAX variants that I am familar with, the top eight bits (or maybe four bits - I forget which?) of the 32 bit number that ends up in register R5 is what selects the system root you end up attempting to boot. I wonder if I might be able to back up the hard drives to an absurd number of emulated TU58 images, so that I could then examine those on my modern machine? That sounds plausable. If you backup to a saveset on the emulated TU58, BACKUP should prompt you to change emulated tapes each time they fill up. I could probably back up onto magtape, but I don't have another means to read the tapes yet. I have another tape drive (which needs repair) that I'll eventually include in my PDP-11/44 restoration, but that's a big project, far in the future. Good luck with that one! I wonder if the VMS5.3 standalone backup might know how to back up to some network device? I have an ethernet card in the VAX, so that might be a way to get data off the machine for examination. Standalone backup is not network aware. You need to get VMS booted before you get to use the network. Any suggestions or clues would be greatly appreciated! I'm still learning how to tell the chickens from the eggs. Looks like you're doing well so far! Regards, Peter Coghlan.
Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check
On 2015-06-09 23:54, Mark J. Blair wrote: On Jun 9, 2015, at 14:43 , Johnny Billquist b...@update.uu.se wrote: Yes, R5 is more or less used the same on all VAXen, since this is used by VMB, which almost all VAXen use in one form or another. Thank you very much for the R5 details! I presume that the other registers and the VMB.EXE that reads them are probably machine-specific, as I see all sorts of arbitrary-looking numbers stuffed into them depending on which device the ddnBOO.CMD file corresponds to. It is very bus and controller specific, so it varies extremely much, yes. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip - B. Idol
Re: VAX-11/730 %BOOT-F-Unexpected Machine Check
A couple of folks have clued me in to my mistake: I should have been trying to boot DQ0/1 instead of DU0/1. Now I'm getting disk activity followed by %BOOT-F-Unable to locate BOOT file, which is better! I found 725/730 diagnostics on another tape image, so I'll try running those next. Yay! -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X n...@nf6x.net http://www.nf6x.net/
