[TUHS] simh vax and 4.3-quasijarus

[Michael Sokolov]

Rico Pajarola <rp at servium.ch> wrote:

> I installed 4.3-quasijarus on simh [...]
> I have been unable to boot it directly from it's 'own'
> filesystem.
>
> here's what I see, complete transcript at the end
> > >>>boot dua0
> > (BOOT/R5:0 DUA0)
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >   2..
> > -DUA0
> > HALT instruction, PC: 00000C1A (MOVL (R11),SP)

My ability to help you here will be limited because you are using simh rather
than a real VAX. The real KA655 console ROM does not issue halt messages like
the above, its halt message have a different form (the one prescribed by DEC
STD 032-0, VAX Architecture Standard). The last message above does not exist on
any real VAX made by DEC.

> that's obviously not what I want. I tried all combinations of
> installboot and disklabel -B I can think of, both in netbsd and
> quasijarus, and all lead to the same result.
>
> Can anybody tell me the exact incantations necessary to install
> the bootblocks for quasijarus0a [...]

This seems like a simh problem, or, more probably since you can boot That Other
OS successfully, a problem with your installation of 4.3BSD-Quasijarus0a masked
by a simh problem. You've got a halt inside VMB that happened after VMB had
successfully opened the boot device but before it accepted a valid bootblock.
What happens on a real KA655 is as follows: the console copies VMB from the
EPROM to RAM and transfers control to it, which is accompanied by the display
of 2.. on the console and on the CPU module LEDs. At that point the VAX is
unhalted, i.e., the RUN indicator on the front panel lights up. VMB thus runs
as user code and tries to perform the bootstrap. As VMB successfully opens the
boot device using its built-in drivers, it displays the device name in VMS
format on the console. Then if it finds and accepts a valid bootblock it
displays 1.. on the console and on the CPU module LEDs. Finally it transfers
control to the bootblock accompanied by 0.. display. If something goes wrong
and VMB gives up, it prints its own error message on the console and then
executes a HALT instruction to return to the console prompt. The HALT
instruction halts the VAX (the RUN indicator on the front panel goes out) and
invokes the console, which prints the halt message followed by the >>> prompt
as prescribed by DEC STD 032-0.

It looks like you are seeing VMB fail for some reason and halt, giving you the
(not compliant with DEC STD 032-0) halt message from simh. However, you are not
seeing VMB's error message which on a real KA655 will always appear before the
halt message from the console. This is a simh problem, it obviously does not
fully and properly emulate the real KA655 here. I cannot help you past this
point as I only support real VAX hardware. There is probably something wrong
with your bootblock as your emulated VAX's VMB is not accepting it while
accepting the one on DUA1 from That Other OS, but your poor emulator prevents
you from seeing what the problem is.

> So far I have not been able to boot any other VAX operating system
> from the TUHS archive, the netbsd bootloader cannot load ultrix32m,
> 32v and 3bsd.

I don't know / don't care much about That Other OS and its bootloader, but the
format of the VAX unix/vmunix kernel image and its boot interface has remained
absolutely unchanged from 32V through 4.3BSD-Quasijarus0a inclusive (but see
below about VAX model support). DEC has extended the boot interface in Ultrix,
but it's completely backward compatible: as the Ultrix bootloader starts the
kernel with a calls instruction, it passes one argument (calls $1) whereas
traditional Bell/Berkeley UNIX had zero (calls $0). A traditional kernel will
simply ignore this argument, while the Ultrix kernels checks for its presence
(thanks to the wonderful VAX architecture and its procedure call standard that
allows a procedure to determine its argument count) and lives without it if
it's absent. (That argument is a pointer to a structure with useful info,
however, and I plan to adopt this extension in 4.3BSD-Quasijarus1.)

> I have not yet had time to try any of the other 4.x
> bsds, but I assume they'd have the same problem as quasijarus0a.

4.3BSD-Quasijarus0 was the first release to support KA650/655, so don't bother
trying earlier ones. (Although you could try 4.3-Reno if that's what you like.)

> I don't
> have ultrix/vax media to do it right

You can get the complete TK50 distribution (tape images) of Ultrix V4.00 for
VAX on my FTP site ivan.Harhan.ORG in /pub/UNIX/thirdparty/Ultrix-32. I have
full sources for it there too.

> Ultrix 4.3 gives me:
> > 466788+254256+177476+[36984+34990] total=0xecfa2

OK, so the kernel has been loaded successfully.

> > machine check 82: vap 82000004 istate1 7c000c00 istate2 c070fe pc 80001c61 psl 41f0008
> > r0=8000000c, r1=8000167c, r2=0, r3=211bd0dd, r4=0, r5=dd274
> > panic: mchk

Since Ultrix V4.3 perfectly supports the KA655 CPU, this again must be a case
of simh misemulating it.

My advice to you is to get a real VAX.

MS

P.S. You may want to subscribe to the Quasijarus mailing list, send a request
to quasijarus-request at ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG.