[Info-vax] VAX VMS 5.4 on Microvax 2

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2021-09-01 13:17:09 +0000, blockhouse007 said:

> Any advice much appreciated.

In no particular order...

Welcome to ~1986.

RD53 was seriously tight with MicroVMS V4.x, much less with something 
as "new" as V5.

An RD53 was somewhere between constrained and overloaded for one 
development user on a VAXstation II.

~Everybody ditched those RD53s in droves for the 
capacious-in-comparison RD54, when those became available.

RF72 is positively cavernous for that era, and you'd need a KFQSA to 
get there from a MicroVAX II.

(And I don't recall the minimum VAX/VMS or MicroVMS version for KFQSA, either.)

I don't recall when RD53 went unsupported, but it was a very long time ago.

The base VAX/VMS V5.x install is capable of performing a subset 
install, and split into parts.

Install on an emulator, hack OpenVMS down to RD53 size, then build your 
own installer. You'll learn much about VAX/VMS and old hardware. And a 
more visceral understanding of why a number of now-problematic 
architectural decisions were made back then.

Smallest I've gotten bootable V3 with enough of DECnet for a 
point-to-point link was onto an RL02, and that took a couple of days' 
effort for testing which pieces were needed and which were not.

Or scrounge a contemporary-to-RD53 V4.* (remastered) version of 
MicroVMS on TK50, or scrounge a VAX/VMS V5.* installer (remastered) 
kit, and install from that.

VAX/VMS and now OpenVMS is far too fond of copying whole disk 
installations around, rather than migrating (just) the contents to a 
new environment. But it was a different era.

STABACKIT.COM is the minimum bootable environment. Run that, and you'll 
be able to boot standalone BACKUP. (Boring.)

VMSKITBLD.COM might allow you to get a kit created.  That (usually) can 
build an installer kit, though it was too often good for a tussle with 
TK kit creation. Kits creation on disks usually worked, but you'd need 
a second disk on that MicroVAX II.

If you want to experiment with STABACKIT (boring as it is) or a 
VMSKITBLD-built environment, build and image that over.

The MicroVMS V4 and VAX/VMS V4 and VAX/VMS V5 kits are split into parts 
to allow them to fit into smaller environments.

if you want to learn more about the era and some of its issues and the 
limits of some of the tools, check the comp.os.vms archives from the 
1980s and 1990s.



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