[HECnet] Getting openvms going

[Mark Pizzolato]

On Wednesday, November 13, 2019 at 4:46 PM, Bill Cunningham wrote:
> On 11/13/2019 7:18 PM, Mark Pizzolato wrote:
> >> On 11/13/19 6:31 PM, Bill Cunningham wrote:
> >>>> The "HELP TQ ATTACH" command should help with more detail.
> >>> I tried "H tq att". Didn't work, humm I think I have 3.9. I will
> >>> look for a newer version.
> >>     You may need to build from source; I suspect that new tape mode
> >> is a fairly recent addition.  Package repositories are notorious for
> >> lagging months or years behind, and simh is under fairly rapid
> >> development these days.  (thanks Mark!)
> >>
> >>                -Dave
> >> Hum ok I compiled simh-master.zip. The source I had I compiled using
> >> gcc was from http://simh.trailing-edge.com so it might've been old.
> >> This newer one is slower but I see the new help tq attach options.
> > What do you mean by "slower".  Slower by a second  or so to get to an
> > initial sim> prompt, or slower to execute instructions?
> >
> > - Mark
> 
> Running on linux starting it up all kinds of printing binary you are running. 

What does "printing binary" mean?

> I used "set rq0 ra92" and "att rq0 vms" a new file was being created and that
> took the longest. Before getting to the backup part of creating from the
> openvms73.iso backup.

The latest code provides more robust/consistent behavior for simulators 
when the simulator user interacts with it.  In this particular case, the 
complete disk image is created at attach time instead of having it 
arbitrarily grow while the simulator is actually running.  Arbitrary 
expansion of the disk image while the simulator is busy executing 
instructions can create crazy errors if/when the host system runs 
out of disk space.  It is best to find this out at attach time rather at 
some random time later.  This approach also supports subsequent 
automatic disk type/size detection when you happen to restart the 
simulator later.  You'll now notice that later attach operations of 
VMS (and most other OS disk images) will announce the disk label 
and it's file system size when you attach a disk that has a ODS1, 
ODS2, RT11, Ultrix partition table, on it.

Feel free to report any problems or other irregularities you may 
observe.

- Mark