[Info-vax] rx4640 fails to boot OpenVMS 8.4

[John E. Malmberg]

On 3/4/2012 10:32 AM, Paul Wuerrer wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I recently acquired a pretty nice rx4640 and thanks to the hobbyist
> program I also got provided with an image of OpenVMS 8.4 for Itanium.
> My problem is that the machine refuses to boot from the burned
> media.
> I've burned the DVD twice, one using wodim on Linux, the other one using
> CdBurner XP on Windows.
<snip>
> I suspect that either the burners I used don't work well with
> EFI-formatted ISOs or the DVD drive in the 4640 might be failing.
> Unfortunately I can't really determine if it's the drive because my
> other machine (a rx2600 I got with the 4640) is waiting for new PSUs at
> the moment.

There is no such thing as an EFI formated ISO.

The Itanium firmware only officially support booting an El-Torito 
configured ISO 9660M formatted CD-ROM/DVD.

So far the ones that I am aware of will also boot DVD that is an image 
of a magnetic disk.

The HP VMS Install media is a dual format ISO 9660 with El-Torito 
extension and ODS-2 volume.

Some burning programs only see the ISO-9660 and do not burn the ODS-2 
portion of the disk.

The disk burning program has to burn a disk image with out paying 
attention to the content.

Many disk burning programs will only burn the ISO-9660 portion of the 
disk image, which will not work for VMS installation media.

I do not know about the firmware CD-ROMs or what the issue there is.

I have imgburn www.imgburn.com that I may have used to burn a bootable 
DVD for my RX2600.  I really do not remember what I actually used.

I have also used Nero to create bootable VMS volumes.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only