[Info-vax] Modern VMS (e.g. V8.4) tape installation?

[JF Mezei]

When I got my first DS10L, I got the OS kit as a disk image.

I ended up loading it onto a VAX disk and then creatinga LACP entry to
allow the alpha's ethernet address to boot from that disk and I played
with the SYSGEN parameters in the apha boot root to enable MSCP serving
(but not clustering initially).

This allowed the alpha to boot from the installation CD which was really
a disk file on a vax with the VAX serving MSCP without the alpha being
in a cluster and that got me to the VMS installation menus.  At one
point in the inatsllation, I had to copy the cluster password file and
enable clustering so that it could access more of the system but I can't
recall exactly where.

I know this doesn't answer the question, but it shows that there are
alternate ways to get an alpha loaded with the OS.

Notethat for VAX, the tape provided a standalone backup as a set of a
dozen or so files at the start of the tape and this allowed yo to then
restore saveset B.

But for alpha, the system expects to boot from a version of VMS on the
CD and use various scripts to load the OS onto the new system disk. So
this is very different and requires a random access device (which a tape
isn't).