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

[Thomas DeBellis]

dir mta0: would only work for either a Tops-20 or ANSI labeled tape with 
volume recognition on.  You're not doing that by assigning the tape 
drive directly.

But they're probably not labeled; I don't recall that DEC shipped this way.

If you let me know what tapes you're looking at, I can have a look and 
give you some pointers or tips.

Basically, you're going to need to make a minor change in the 
SYSTEM:CONFIG.CMD file and add a stanza for DECnet.  The config file is 
monitor ver specific, so it would look something like SYSTEM:4-1-CONFIG.CMD.

Everything else would go into the SYSTEM:CMD file which is what is 
(usually) parsed by OPR.  This would have the NCP commands which Orion 
would be sent to the NICE process. DECNET-20_V2.1_2020_7-20-82 has the 
necessary executables, as I recall.

Version for DECnet Phase II may predate an integration with Orion, but I 
don't think so.

On 12/28/21 3:02 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>> On Dec 26, 2021, at 2:10 PM, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> That is very interesting.  What image did you finally wind up using, actually?
> This one: http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tapes/bb-d867e-bm_tops20_v41_2020_instl.tap.bz2
>
> The bad one is this one: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp10/magtape/dec_distribs/TOPS-20/BB-D867E-BM.tap.gz
>
>> 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...
> Now that I have the basic TOPS-20 V4.1, I'm trying to find out how to add DECnet.  There are several tapes out there that claim to be DECnet V2.0 or V2.1.  But I have no idea what to do with them.
>
> The DECnet-20 V2 manual has an installation chapter (chapter 10) but it starts with having the relevant files on disk, and offers no insight on how to get them from tape.  I tried each of the various tape images, some seem to be SIMH and some TPC format, but none of them are anything that DUMPER understands.  I thought that DUMPER is normally how one gets installation files off tape.  (DIR MTA0: doesn't show anything either.)
>
> Any pointers?  Manuals?
>
> 	paul
>