[Info-vax] Trying to boot a MicroVAX II with VMS 7.3

[Wilm Boerhout]

Robert Jarratt vaguely mentioned on 29-3-2009 16:08:
> 
> "JF Mezei" <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote in message 
> news:0016eabc$0$931$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com...
>> Robert Jarratt wrote:
>>> I am trying various ways to boot my MicroVAX II. I am currently 
>>> unable to do
>>> this using MOP because 7.3 does not support DEQNA. So I am now trying
>>> standalone backup using TK50. I created the kit on another machine 
>>> running
>>> 7.3 and put it into the MicroVAX II. After a while I got:
>>>
>>> %SYSBOOT-F-PFN allocation overwrites CI ucode.
>>
>> (help/message)
>>
>> SYSBOOT-F-PFN allocation overwrites CI ucode
>>
>>  Facility:     SYSBOOT, System Bootstrap Facility
>>
>>  Explanation:  The allocation of physical pages for the system page 
>> table,
>>                nonpaged dynamic pool, interrupt stack, and resident
>> executive
>>                overwrites the CI microcode.
>>
>>  User Action:  Reconfigure the system to require less physical memory, 
>> then
>>                reboot the system. Reduce the value of one or more
>> parameters
>>                that control the allocation of physical memory: NPAGEDYN,
>>                BALSETCNT, and VIRTUALPAGECNT (VAX only).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I can't seem to find my original Mivrovax II VAXVMSSYS.PAR file. But I
>> do have some leftovers in my current 192 meg (393216 pages) system:
>>
>>
>> MIN_PAGEDYN=1406464
>> MIN_NPAGEDYN=20132659  ! 10% of physical memory
>> MAX_NPAGEVIR=66437775   ! 33% of physical memory
>> !MAX_NPAGEVIR=100662784    ! 50% of physical memory - 1 page
>> MIN_SPTREQ=110100  ! 28% of physical memory (suggested by B treahy)
>> MIN_INTSTKPAGES=16
>>
>>
>> I had the 50% on for the MVII at 16 megs. Once I migrated to a 192 meg
>> system, the 50% became too large based on what I had read.
>>
>> A 16 meg MVII has 32768 pages to work with instead of the 393216.
>>
>> Also, ensure the sysgen parameter PHYSICAL_PAGES is set to 32768 or to 
>> -1.
> 
> I think my MVII has 8MB. I did a conversational boot and tried setting 
> NPAGEDYN to 1638, which should be 10% of the 8MB. However it insisted 
> that the minimum value was 16384, ie all of my physical memory barring 
> the 1MB on the CPU board. Still, this seemed to get over the 
> SYSBOOT-F-PFN problem but then I got to this:
> 
>   OpenVMS (TM) VAX Version V7.3     Major version id = 1 Minor version 
> id = 0
> 
> %EXECINIT, insufficient non-paged pool
> 
> My suspicion is that 8MB is just not enough for 7.3. Any suggestions on 
> how to get over this problem would be welcome.
> 
> NB There did not seem to be a parameter called PHYSICAL_PAGES
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Rob

I can confirm that VMS 7.3 will boot succesfully on a SIMH 3.8-1 
VAX-11/780 with 8MB of memory. The SIMH MicroVAX 3900 insists on having 
a minimum of 16MB (probably because its physical counterpart does).

So, memory itself should not be a problem for booting VMS 7.3. Could 
still be something in the MicroVAX II architecture, or a hardware 
malfunction.

My system disk has a SYSGEN parameter set created by

SYSBOOT> USE DEFAULT
SYSBOOT> SET VAXCLUSTER 0
SYSBOOT> SET STARTUP_P1 "MIN"
SYSBOOT> CONTINUE

The parameter is called PHYSICALPAGES (no underscore)

/Wilm