[HECnet] Bringing up a MicroVAX 3100-80

[Dave McGuire]

On 3/30/20 9:44 PM, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
> On 3/30/20 6:14 PM, G. wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 30 Mar 2020 17:51:21 -0400, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
>>
>>> What is the recommended way to recover from "FILNOTCNTG" error?
>> Boot the system in some other way (cluster satellite, CD-ROM, etc.) and
>> check that SYSBOOT.EXE is contiguous:
>>
> I hooked up the RRD42, burnt the OVMS-7.3 ISO image on a CD-R, and tried
> to boot dka400, didn't work. The internet is flush with discussions
> about "special format" CD-ROM, ODS vs ISO, 2048 byte vs 512 byte blocks,
> etc.
> 
> My MacBook refuses to brun the VMS 5.5-2H4 ISO from VAXHAVEN ("invalid
> disk image"). So basically I have to research and find a way to burn a
> CD-ROM in the necessary format that will boot the MicroVAX into DCL so
> that I can repair the CONTIGUOUS issue on DKA100.
> 
> I am sure lots of people here have done this - any tips welcome while I
> am trolling the internet.

  (I'm late to the party as always..)

  I've done this many, many times without difficulty, like from the same
.iso file that you have, that has been floating around for years.  I
think I even did it when I had a Mac but that was a long time ago.  Are
you being careful not to burn it as a Mac disk image, but as a raw
image?  Don't pay any attention to the people blathering on about
special formats; burn it as a raw byte image of the disk and it'll work
fine.  Stuff like ODS filesystems, even "ISO" filesystems are captured
at a lower level that way and work fine.

  As I'm sure you know, the term "ISO" is universally used to mean
"image of a CDROM", rather than "contains an ISO-9660 filesystem".
We're talking about the former here, not the latter...don't let MacOS
try to think it's smarter than you are where that's concerned.

  The RRD42 is probably the safest drive to try this with from the VAX'
perspective.

            -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA