[Info-vax] VAXStation 3100

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-01-17 01:04:31 +0000, John H. Reinhardt said:

> Depends on the MV3100 model.  I have a Model 95 that boots quite 
> happily from a 36GB disk.  I think it's only the Models 10, 20 and 
> maybe 30 that have the limitation?  I don't remember.

"The version of the VMB primary bootstrap found in the MicroVAX 3100 
models 10 and 20 console ROMs, and the VMB in the older boot ROMs found 
on the (older revisions of) MicroVAX models 10e and 20e series share 
the same gigabyte-sized system disk limits of the VAXstation 3100 
series.
With the oldest versions of VMB, any SCSI disks of 1.073 GB capacity 
and larger require SCSI command addressing larger than the six-byte 
SCSI commands used within the older ROM-based console programs; this 
means that references to core files such as VMB, SYSBOOT, the system 
dump file and/or the system page file must be entirely below 1.073 GB. 
If some or all of the system dump file (usually SYSDUMP.DMP) is located 
above 1.073 GB or should ever become relocated above 1.073 GB by an 
AUTOGEN or an upgrade or a disk restoration, the write operations that 
can occur during a bugcheck system dump will wrap, and the lower ranges 
of blocks can (will) be overwritten; the blocks are corrupted during 
the system dump.
The MicroVAX 3100 model 30 and higher are newer systems and (as the 
model numbers increase) generally faster, and can boot from larger 
disks. MicroVAX 3100 model 10e and model 20e with VMB versions of V6.4 
and later can bootstrap from larger SCSI system disks. All members of 
the VAX 4000 and VAXstation 4000 series systems can boot from larger 
disks."


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