[Info-vax] SimH with framebuffer and hobbyist kit?

[Vertis Sidus]

On 2013-04-02, Bob Koehler <koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote:
> In article <slrn3vfsklkdre.pc1.vrtsds at sdf.lonestar.org>, Vertis Sidus <vrtsds at sdf.org> writes:
>> I'd like to use DECwindows in an emulated framebuffer, but the only option I
>> can find for that is the VAXstation 2000 emulator at
>> 
>>   http://www.9track.net/simh/vax410
>> 
>> This is a rather limited system! From what I've read, it really wants VMS
>> 4.x or so, but unfortunately all I have is the current 7.3 hobbyist kit. Is
>> it at all possible for VMS 7.3, with DECwindows, to run in this emulator? Or,
>> is there another framebuffer emulator option that I don't know about?
>
>    I would not be in the least bit surprized if 7.3 ran on a VAXStation
>    2000 emulator.  I would try it.
>
>    Unsupporting older hardware was generally done because VMS required
>    more disk space than any of the disks DEC sold for that model, or
>    there just wasn't enough customer demand to keep testing VMS updates
>    against it.  VMS Engineering had better things to do than spend time
>    ripping out old hardware support.  Emulators often get equiped with
>    much larger disk simulations, RAM, ..., than the real hardware did.
>    And often things would run on real hardware with third party disks,
>    ...

Not so lucky in the case of this particular emulator. As
near as I can tell, the memory won't go above 16MB, and the
only supported storage is two hard drives (RD31, RD32,
RD53, or RD54) and a floppy drive. No CD-ROM, of course. I
don't even get a tape drive.

I used a different emulator to do the initial BACKUP step
and load the installer onto an RD54 image, which seems to
work alright in the VS2000 emulator, up to the point where
it wants the distribution media.

I'm hoping I can use the other emulator to copy over enough 
of the VMS kit to a second RD54 drive so I can do the 
initial setup. I guess I'd have to install DECwindows
separately if I do it that way. And of course, I don't
know what parts of the CD are actually necessary to 
complete the install.

My other idea was to try to do this over the network. I'm
not sure which would be harder.

-- 
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