[Info-vax] New guide for hobbyists, OpenVMS 8.4 installation with networking on AXPbox (modern fork of es40)

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 11/9/2020 10:16 AM, Chris Townley wrote:
> On 09/11/2020 16:00, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
>> On 11/9/2020 9:14 AM, Tomáš Glozar wrote:
>>>> This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
>>>> picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
>>>>
>>>> And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
>>>> succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
>>>> either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
>>>>
>>>> $70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
>>>> processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
>>>> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
>>>> Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...
>>>>
>>>
>>> I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
>>>
>>> Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.
>>>
>>
>> Over on the DEC Computer Users FaceBook group there is a fellow, Keith Halewood, that built it on his Pi4.  He had problems with access violations (didn't specify if it were VMS or Linux) which ended up crashing the system.  He wasn't specific on the build so I don't know if it was a 32-bit or 64-bit O/S on the Pi or which Linux he was running. So viability may be very implementation dependent.  He also mentioned that it seemed fairly slow.
>>
> Not too surprising on a Pi
> 
> Chris

Yeah. I wasn't surprised.  I was working on setting up an Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine on my MacPro with 12 3.333Ghz cores to see if performance is acceptable if I gave it a couple virtual cores to run on.

-- 
John H. Reinhardt