[Info-vax] Greater than approx 16GB disk leads to UNXSIGNAL crash

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-05-27 10:35:45 +0000, arca... at gmail.com said:

> On Wednesday, 26 May 2021 at 21:59:52 UTC+1, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 
>> I'm just surprised you think the 100 GB size was supported back then. 
>> It's certainly within the theoretical range for the ODS-2 design, but 
>> the HDD device support back then was a whole lot less than 100 GB. 
>> IDE/ATAPI/PATA device support hasn't gotten anywhere near 1 TiB or 2 
>> TiB, either. DQDRIVER—other than a test driver I'd reworked and 
>> prototyped—was still using 24-bit addressing when last I checked.
>> 
> The nearest I can find to a statement is the FAQ: 
> https://www.digiater.nl/openvms/freeware/v70/vmsfaq/vmsfaq_012.html.

That FAQ entry was a result of trying to stave off the questions, and 
the problems when folks hit one of the limits.

Also check "the fine print" section at the top of the OpenVMS FAQ.

Most device drivers can now support 2 TiB, as quaint as that limit has 
become. AFAIK, IDE/ATAPI/PATA/DQ and the (undocumented) FAT file system 
implementation for the console are among the remaining exceptions to 
storage addressing, if not the only.

> I can't find a V6.0 SPD/New features/Release Notes anywhere (either on 
> the web or here). The last time I looked they were still up at HP but 
> right now I can't find them. I'm sure they're somwhere in archive.org 
> but without even a dead link to follow, I'm not able to get any 
> further. Oh well.

Had a number of discussions with the product managers about the 
contents of the SPDs. The PMs (and eventually, in the hardware support 
database—trying to keep this list on paper is ~doomed) listed supported 
devices. The various PMs weren't big on listing theoretical limits. 
Limits that they didn't (at the time) have a good way of testing. I'm 
also the "guilty party" that caused a number of VAX boxes to marked as 
officially unsupported, with most of those retirements due to 
required-memory increases, or due to bootable media deprecations.

I know this is c.o.v. and we're not supposed to discuss search engines, 
but a DDG or Chocolate Factory search for the following might get you 
closer to your quest: openvms vax software product description 
site:archive.org


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