[HECnet] SIMH TOPS-20 question --> recipe for handling Tops20 install tapes --> MTBOOT --> create new PS: structure

[Thomas DeBellis]

That is very interesting.  What image did you finally wind up using, 
actually?

I have downloaded images that also seemed to have erroneous data; I 
believe I reached out to you about the gap in NCU/NCP that I encountered.

I believe you will also need to load this tape, which has 2020 
utilities: DECNET-20_V2.1_2020_7-20-82.  However, this that has the 
defective NCU/NCP source.  However, the extracted HTML appears to be 
fine, which is odd...

On 12/26/21 8:43 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
> It turned out the tape image I was using is in fact defective; it ran into trouble at the DLUSER step.  I retried with the image you mentioned, found on trailing-edge, and that worked.  I now have a newly installed 4.1 system.  Neat.
>
> 	paul
>
>
>> On Dec 25, 2021, at 5:42 PM, R. Voorhorst <R.Voorhorst at swabhawat.com> wrote:
>>
>> Actually, come to think about it you should be able to create a new PS in 2
>> phases:
>>
>> 1.	boot tape and create a pristine PS: up to and including DLUSER
>> stuff; see installation manual posted earlier.
>> 2.	boot another monitor, mount the pristine PS as another structure on
>> it; skip the tape 7 files and use monitor dumper to restore the savesets on
>> the pristine structure.
>>
>> Point to check is if a bootstrap is written to the pristine structure but
>> the installation manual will make that clear.
>> If I have some time I will checkthe problem out if the tape has a problem or
>> not and how to create a structure from it; meanwhile you still cann retrieve
>> files which was your primary requirement I believe.
>>
>> Reindert
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Paul Koning [mailto:paulkoning at comcast.net]
>> Sent: Saturday, 25 December, 2021 22:24
>> To: Reindert Voorhorst <R.Voorhorst at swabhawat.com>
>> Cc: <hecnet at update.uu.se> <hecnet at Update.UU.SE>
>> Subject: Re: [HECnet] SIMH TOPS-20 question --> recipe for handling Tops20
>> install tapes --> MTBOOT
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Dec 25, 2021, at 3:21 PM, R. Voorhorst <R.Voorhorst at swabhawat.com>
>> wrote:
>>> I do not see that problem and I posted it here somewhat earlier:
>>>
>>> Swbx04> att -f tu0 simh
>>> Swbx04> g:\temp\bb-d867e-bm_tops20_v41_2020_instl.tap-1
>>> Swbx04> b tu0
>>>
>>> And on console:
>>>
>>> MTBOOT>
>>>
>>> The first must be MTBOOT else you cannot load de monitor with /L and
>> ?G143, so no skipping filemarks are needed as the monitor is the first file.
>>> Mark well, it is format simh=tps!
>> So it is, interesting.
>>
>> What's strange is that -f tpc reports success, while -f simh reports an
>> error:
>>
>> After processing 1159680 bytes of tape data (453 records, 5 tapemarks) Read
>> Tape Record Returned Unexpected Status: invalid record length
>> 19827814 bytes of unexamined data remain in the tape image file
>>
>> but indeed in this format I can boot the tape.
>>
>> 	paul
>>
>>