[HECnet] two dumb RSX questions

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-12-23 21:13, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 12/23/2013 06:35 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
      1) Has anyone been able to install the RSX-11M v4.3 distribution
that's floating around?   The tape doesn't seem to be bootable.

The normal distribution was on two tapes. One small tape was bootable,
and contains BRUSYS, while the larger tape is the actual distribution,
in the form of a BRU tape, which is not bootable.

If you don't have the BRUSYS tape, pretty much any version of BRUSYS
should be fine to use. As well as running BRU on an already installed
system, to just restore the first saveset from the tape to a fresh disk,
and then boot that.

    Ahh, got it.   I have a bru64k.tap file that I think came from the same
place.   If you have a brusys.tap file, would you please send me a copy?
  I can't seem to find that anywhere.

Did you try booting the BRU64K tape? Sounds like that should be a BRUSYS system as well.

Not sure what the correct name is. I know it by BRUSYS, but there might be some slight difference between the 11M and M+ standalone BRU, or it might just be different versions of the same.

BRU64K also rings some bell, so I think I've seem that name as well.

      2) Is it possible to install RSX-11M v4.2 or v4.3 onto a dual-RL02
system?   The initial BRU restoration bombs on running out of disk space,
unsurprisingly.   I'd like to get this going for a real (non-emulated)
system which has two RL02 drives.

Yes. I've done this. It might be that you need some special dealings. It
should be in the system installation manual.

    Ok.   I was mainly concerned about the stuff fitting...I'm assuming
4.2/4.3 are larger than 4.1.   4.1 was the last version I ran.

    I've found the relevant sections of the documentation and am reading
it now.

Excellent.

      (I know v4.1 will run on two RL02s, because I ran it decades ago...but
I no longer have that distribution tape)

Nothing have changed on that front, as far as I can remember.

    Ok.   Actually it was late when I typed that, and I misremembered...I
actually ran 4.1 on two RL01s, not two RL02s.   I had a 4.1 distribution
tape, and I took it to a friend's place where he had a system with a
magtape drive and an RL01 drive.   The distribution was the one that
restored onto a set of RL01 packs, five packs I think, and then you run
the sysgen from those, and when you're done, one of those packs is your
new system disk.

Yeah. I've run 11M from two RL02 drives. I think it turned into a five packs setup at system generation, but apart from the swapping of packs from time to time, it worked fine.

    I wish I still had that tape, but sadly it was lost many years ago.

Distribution tape for 4.1? I thought you had 4.3 anyway, so what would you use 4.1 for?

    Thank you Johnny.   I'm sure I will have other questions as I become
reacquainted with RSX.

No problems. Feel free to ask anything.

Oh, and if someone wonder about MIM, I have identified some weird bug in the TCP code that I' investigating, so right now MIM might be a bit unstable, and I've turned off most TCP services.

	Johnny