[Info-vax] Building a VAXcluster with SIMH and real hardware

[Antonio Carlini]

On Monday, 31 August 2020 19:00:28 UTC+1, Chris Scheers  wrote:
> I have used a Windows 10 laptop with SIMH as a boot node many times.  I 
> have done this with a VS4000-90.  (Usually I am doing this to copy the 
> data off some VAX disks.)
> 
> I usually use V7.3, but I wouldn't expect the VMS version to be an issue.
> 
> The usual issue is networking.
> 
> For a VS4000-60, your network connector is either AUI or thinwire.  How 
> are you connecting this to the SIMH instance?

A AUI with a DETPM and then Cat-5 to a modern switch. The laptop is also connected to this same switch. When I had a connetion to the house network going before, the VS4060 could quite happily "UCX PING ip-address" and see a response from that ip-address.

> If Windows, you may need to make sure that any of the Ethernet adapter's 
> TOE options are turned off.
> 
> In a recent Windows environment, you may need to turn off ECN.  I don't 
> know if this causes problems for SIMH, but I have seen problems with 
> other emulators.

I'll poke around a bit on Windows. If all else fails, I'll dig out a Raspberry Pi 4 and try that, but it would limit the amount of disk space I have available unless I get particularly creative with NFS mounts or USB SATA docking stations.

Thanks

Antonio