[HECnet] two dumb RSX questions

[John Wilson]

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>

I've run into a snag, though.   I'm trying to allow sysgen to
autoconfigure the hardware via ACF, and it hangs on my 11/24 system.
I've tried with both 4.3 and 4.6.   Thinking it might have something to
do with my recently-installed and untested DELUA, I removed it, but I
get the same result.

No guarantees but might give useful data:   do you have any RSTS lying
around?   Its INIT.SYS (the pre-boot system) is *very* ladylike about
frotzed hardware, so it may well pop up a message that leads directly
to the problem, just on the way to that first prompt (and if you do get
that far, "HA LI" might tell you about surprises in your config).

When do you say it hangs, do you mean it's looping (executing PDP-11
code -- might be worth seeing what and/or looking at the stack to see
how it got there), or that the bus is hung and the CPU is stuck?

The hardware is, as far as I can tell, otherwise fine.   I built the
system up from parts a few weeks ago, and have exercised it with RT-11.

The order of dependence on strictly working (and/or accurately emulated)
hardware goes:   RT => RSX => RSTS.   So the fact that something works
with RT proves *nothing*!   (I've learned this the hard way so many times.)

Of course, looked at another way, it's nice of RT to be willing to run
on hardware that's not long for this world...

John Wilson
D Bit