Well, I'd started two other letters detailing some problems/successes
I've had, never quite got them out. Thanks to Bertram for earlier email,
I should have said that sooner as well as clarified: the difficulty
I had was not with installing a boot block (still not there yet)
but with running the 'tape boot monitor', off various releases of
4.3 tapes.

I thought there would be some who could benefit from my experiences
thus far, or have answers/comments to my questions.


Brian Murray writes:
> 750 running Version 7 Unix at the moment, so I can dd images onto my
> RA81's, the tricky part is getting meg's worth of stuff into it ....
> ...
> I have 2 RA81's ... a TS11 compatible 9 track ... an ethernet card

I had similar thoughts. I know that my TS11 compatible 9 track will not
have support for some time and is not a bootable device, but having an
OS in another place helps to scribble on the disks. I've got VMS (and
am trying to get away from it!)  I'm really trying to do things with a
single disk.  I'm sure there are probably others like myself who either
don't have a network available, or don't have a networking card.
As it is, I don't have a TK50.

I've got some Reno parts (miniroot, root.dump, usr.tar) that I also thought
I could get going. The Reno miniroot panics, probably due to either extra
devices in my qbus OR the fact that the drive is unlabeled. Unlike a
4.3 miniroot, it does recognize the uVaxII.  Of the files in the first
tape file that one would traditionally boot with, I would think I could
extract tsboot and get it to work, but alas that fails miserably. Of boot,
copy and format, only boot works. I've written it as sysboot.exe on an
RX50 in such a way that VMB thinks it's ok, and it works when I don't
have the 9-track turned off.

I admit I've been trying to use NetBSD as a stepping stone to a 4.3 Reno
system, since in the short run I figure it'd have more to offer. From there
I'd plug away with NetBSD on another disk, to try things out.


I've tried several things including:

+	VMS copy miniroot.fs to the drive. Use it to dd itself to ra0g.
	mount ra0g and modify things so that filesystem would in some
	way remount root as writable. Then boot from ra0g, using ra0g
	as it's root. This would allow labeling of a disk from a miniroot.

	If that didn't totally work, copy the reno miniroot to ra0a,
	use NetBSD miniroot on ra0g to dd ra0a to ra0b, and maybe even
	write a disk label...  then boot ra0b.

-   This all fails because ra0a/b is still your root partition, even when
    you say to get boot from g, and put the root on ra0g. Files I've created
    or modified ra0g are there, not in your 'current' root.

+	put the root.cpio on RX50, and then cpio it in from there...

-   the miniroot doesn't read from RX50
	I understand the docs clearly now, it's likes a TK50 or network.

I'm about to just copy root.fs right to the drive and boot it.


Also, This came up but was never discussed (that I saw):
> why racopy wanted to always install on the a-partition of
> a disk then optionally onto another partition.

It's my 'guess' that miniroot.fs has a boot block and maybe a label in
it's first blocks.  This explains how you can boot from the drive you
just installed on, using b/1/3/7/whatever. (Oh, could someone
explain the difference? b/1 works fine for me, docs suggest b/3 or b/7 ...)


I take it the 4.3 and NetBSD filesystems are different? I couldn't
seem to mount the 4.3 fs from NetBSD. 'Course that might have been
the way I put it on the disk...


All in all, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. These guys have
worked long and hard on getting the uVaxII and 750's to have a real OS
and I appreciate it. I know that I have an awkward setup which requires
extra creativity on my part. I realize that I could shell out some $$
to get an arrangement that would work. (where would the fun be?) I
don't know if any 'problem' that I've mentioned here is a bug or if it
was never meant to be stretched as far as I'm trying to.  But hey. You
never know...


Lastly, Does anyone know of a maximum of RD/RX drives that can be put
in/attached to the uVaxII, assuming correct power distribution and cabling.
Maybe it's just the configuration of the RD51 I tried to put in that
I ended up with colliding device ID's (or so it seemed). I don't have
docs on the RD51 to know what ID it has, I was going with what the
owner's manual says "Give it an ID, but it doesn't matter which. VMB or
the controller card will assign the drive an ID in the order in which
it's found."   I thought I wiped out a drive because of that!...

Zach