[HECnet] SIMH VAX Project

[Mark Wickens]

On 30/06/11 11:58, Mark Benson wrote:
Hi Mark, you do know that one of the symptoms of being a VMS bigot is that unixes look alike :-)
That's kinda like confusing VMS and Windows NT because they both have something to do with Dave Cutler and associates ;)

Actually, when I typed the reply I had forgotten which host os it was. NetBSD is pretty easy to install IIRC, had it installed on a VAX and an Alpha. Never did anything with it.
I have run it on a multitude of architectures. In all cases it's insanely easy to bootstrap. Also they start you out with just the basic OS, TCP/IP access, SSH and no crap to get in the way. Thus it was a natural choice for me as a minimal framework to run SIMH on.

These days all vaxes run VMS as do most alphas. Three alphas run Tru64 though.

I have a policy if not running generic OSs on specialist hardware. If I want a generic OS I use a generic computer I.e. x86_64).

All my non-x86 machines run their intended OSs apart for my zx6000 - I don't need a third VMS machine and I don't have the HP-UX 11i v2 IA64 media that goes with it :(

File not found is a curious error message. It's as if there is a typo in a .conf file in /etc?
Unlikely. The Ethernet works fine :)

/dev/ra0 is a strange name (for me and I know I lead a sheltered life ;-), what kind of hardware is it (1000 Mb/s ethernet perhaps).
Whatever is on the D410PT motherboard. Probably realtek (hence the ra0 - follows old UNIX convention of using vendor names for devices ala wd0 being hard drive storage named for Western Digital)

Or possibly because /dev/ra0 doesn't exist or cannot be accessed by libpcap (does it need root privs to run)?

I strongly suspect libpcap is missing. Pretty much everything is optional in NetBSD!

Mark. if you want me to hook you up with some HPUX media I'd be happy to.

Mark.