Dear SimH people I think I have found a pointer to the issue. The issue apparently being that my VirtualBox simulator under which I run Centos 6 Linux seems to have some challenge providing disk information to the SimH simulator running on Centos 6.
I think I have demonstrated this by first enabling some debugging on the compiled pdp11 simulator (DEBUG=1) and enabling DEBUG=TRACE;OPS;DATA on the RL disk device. When I ran the simulator and merely enabled 11/70, 1MB RAM and a RL0 disk attached, I found the following results (the last few lines only shown): PDP-11 simulator V4.0-0 Current git commit id: 9111a1a6 ====================================================================== Disabling XQ CPU 11/70, FPP, RH70, autoconfiguration enabled, idle enabled 1024KB ... sim> attach RL0 ./RSX-11M_V3.2_RSX11MBL26_3.2.rl01 sim> BOOT RL0 DBG(8281)> RL RWR: >>RL wr: RLDA 000013 DBG(8281)> RL RWR: >>RL0 write: RLBA=013 DBG(8283)> RL RWR: >>RL wr: RLCS 000200 new 000004 DBG(8283)> RL RWR: >>RL GSTA: rlds=000035 drv=0 ... DBG(8320)> RL RRD: >>RL0 read: RLCS=014 DBG(8322)> RL RRD: >>RL rd: RLCS 000014 DBG(8322)> RL RRD: >>RL0 read: RLCS=014 DBG(8324)> RL RRD: >>RL rd: RLCS 000014 DBG(8324)> RL RRD: >>RL0 read: RLCS=014 DBG(8325)> RL OPS: >>RL svc: func=RD drv=0 rlda=000000 DBG(8325)> RL OPS: >>RL svc: cyl 0, sect 0, wc 512, maxwc 5120 DBG(8325)> RL OPS: RL0 sim_disk_rdsect lbn: 00000000 len: 00000400 DBG(8325)> RL OPS: 0000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ DBG(8325)> RL OPS: 0010 thru 03FF same as above DBG(8326)> RL RRD: >>RL rd: RLCS 000215 DBG(8326)> RL RRD: >>RL0 read: RLCS=0215 DBG(8328)> RL RRD: >>RL rd: RLCS 000215 DBG(8328)> RL RRD: >>RL0 read: RLCS=0215 DBG(8328)> RL RWR: >>RL wr: RLCS 000215 new 000000 DBG(8328)> RL RWR: >>RL0 write: RLCS=00 HALT instruction, PC: 000002 (HALT) sim> at which point clearly the BOOT RL0 command will fail (and HALT). So the buffer returned from the disk is all zeroes and is loaded into memory which results as above. I had a think and considered that perhaps the I/O in the simulator(s) was getting confused somehow. So I attached the SAME DISK IMAGE but fetched it from the local PC store by making use of the Shared Folder feature of VirtualBox. This led the disk image to be located on the NTFS Win 10 filestore. And lo, behold! It boots and I get the RSX11M prompt. sim> SET RL ENABLE sim> SET RL0 ENABLE, RL01, WRITEENABLED sim> set RL DEBUG=OPS;TRACE;DATA sim> ATTACH RL0 /mnt/phil/phil_dir/Simulators/rsx3_2/rsx11mbl26_3_2.rl01 RL0: '/mnt/phil/phil_dir/Simulators/rsx3_2/rsx11mbl26_3_2.rl01' Contains an ODS1 File system RL0: Volume Name: RSXM26 Format: DECFILE11A Sectors In Volume: 10240 sim> boot RL0 RSX-11M V3.2 BL26 28K >RED DL:=SY: >RED DL:=LB: >MOU DL:RSXM26 >@DL:[1,2]STARTUP >* PLEASE ENTER TIME AND DATE (HR:MN DD-MMM-YY) [S]: Notice that SimH detects it as a native File11 file system whereas before the format was apparently SimH based on simulator output. Now, given the above, has anyone any suggestions on how I look further on this on the grounds that I would like the setup to be as normal as possible and using "native" files in the VBox/Centos6 system? Phil -- Phil J Fisher phil.fis...@peejayeff.co.uk _____________________________________________________ Email and any attachments sent are scanned by McAfee Anti-Virus but integrity cannot be guaranteed. _____________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh