> > Is there some combination of any of the earlier relases or bits from
> > here and there that will allow booting and installing from a TK50?
> > I am willing to try to roll a few shots in the dark, if I can do
> > it from Ultrix.
> 
> Maybe... with some modifications.  On further consideration, it's most
> likely that something is just hung up with the bootloader.  We got the
> 1.4.1 bootloader to work on non-MSCP SCSI and MFM disks by forcing it to
> use the builtin rom() routines.  I don't know that we did the same for the
> straight SCSI tape devices.

I did some more playing last night, and tried both tape boots using
boot netbsd -d and  ddimage boots off a second HD.  On my MicroVAX
3100/20, it booted the vaxboot fine, either way, then the tape boot
could not find the kernel, regardless.  The ddimage boot of the second
hd found the kernel, but it only loaded up through the program counters
and totalizer (text, data, bss, totals), then stopped, cold.  It nuked
the machine and the VT420 terminal started emitting strange large
graphics characters.  I guess the scsi is not quite there, yet on
my particular hardware set.

> > Pardon me VAX ignorance.... what is the TK50Z that I have, relative to
> > TMSCP?  
> 
> Basically, it's not a TMSCP device.  A TK50 drive hooked up to one of the
> Q-bus TMSCP controllers will appear as a TMSCP device on the system.  A
> TK50Z is a TK50 drive which also has a logic board to allow the TK50 to
> communicate as a SCSI tape drive.  And we're still working out the bugs
> with the whole SCSI thing.

OK... like I said my VAXspeak is not too good, yet.....(:+}}, but thanks
for the explanation.

> > I was thinking that was one of the few scsi tapes that was supported,
> > although when I last tried tapebooting a VAX, it was on a 3500 with a
> > TK70, if memory serves me correctly (about 6 months back).
> 
> That would've been a TK70 connected to a Q-bus TMSCP controller board.
> They do work.

OK.  I got rather frustrated with that machine, the first time around,
and gave it to a friend that managed to short something and totally
cause it to lose its silicon smoke.  When the MicroVAX turned up,
I was hoping that would do better with more normal scsi.

I do have this VAXstation 3100 chassis, sans internal cabling and ram
board, that, if I can find a ram board and that silly scsi cable for,
I will try to play with some and see if that goes better.  The VS3100
seems to be better supported.

> > Well, for the sake of discussion, since the beast has 5 hard drives up
> > under Ultrix, what would it take to build it up from Ultrix?  I could
> > dd boot.fs to the c partition on one of the 5 drives that I could
> > unmount from Ultrix, then boot that.  Would that require 2 drives, one
> > to dd to and boot from, and a second to install onto, or can that be
> > done from one drive? Is everything there in the boot.fs to complete
> > the install?
> 
> In theory you can do this with just one drive, but in practice it's
> been sort of tricky.  Basically, you dd boot.fs to the c partition on the
> first SCSI drive, and you install the system using sysinst onto the second
> drive like you've guessed above.  The following notes are applicable to
> the 1.4.1 release.
> 
> The boot.fs is a filesystem image which contains /boot and the /netbsd.ram
> image in some form, I forget whether it's gziped or not.  Once NetBSD
> boots up and sysinst is running, you should be able to perform an install
> over the SCSI drive you just booted from.  However, when you try to
> re-disklabel the drive, the disklabel program only ever sees the 2000
> blocks from the boot.fs image you dumped to the drive.  Only having a
> 1000KB partion on you're nifty 1GB SCSI drive is sort of disappointing.
> 
> But just a few days ago I found that using "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd0c
> count=2000 bs=512" would effectively nuke the stale partition info.

Yeah, I find that works generically when I blow up HD labels.  dd a few
blocks off another drive and then that writes sufficient label to be
at least read and worked with.
 
> I've not actually tried a single disk boot-and-build like this, but I think
> it'll work. Or at least it should as long as dd is present on the ramdisk
> inside in the netbsd.ram kernel.  I don't recall if it is or not.  
> Another option might to be "cat /dev/zero > /dev/rsd0c" and then crtl-C it
> after a bit.  Once you're booted into sysinst you would exit out of it,
> nuke the boot.fs based partition on your boot disk, and then rerun
> sysinst.
> 
> The down side of the one disk approach is that you'd better get the
> install right on the first try.  If not then you'll be starting from the
> beginning, having to boot Ultrix and dd'ing boot.fs onto the disk again.

Since the MicroVAX has 6 drives up now, I can spare 2 for play.

> As for the questions about seeing Ultrix partitions from NetBSD or NetBSD
> partitions from Ultrix -- I've no idea.  Since they've got the same BSD
> lineage, it's plausible.  I've never tried though, and have to means to
> investigate it.

This still seems like a viable method of doing things.  The upgrades
from 4.2-4.3BSD and 4.3-4.4BSD worked that way.  It is probably a
matter of getting the right bits in the right places, and then dd'ing
a minimal disklabel to the thing with bootblocks, and then booting it.

For the sake of further discussion, and potential booting ease on a
machine like mine that has a plethora of drives available, what might
be the possibility of using a full root file system image that could
be dd'd onto an RZ23/24 (very common starter drives on lowendian decs)
and then build up from that.  If two drives were used, you would have
all the tools handy in that image, and, if you made sure to include
a vi/termcap for VT100, and gzip/gtar in bin, then it ought to be a snap 
to bring it up.  Anyone ever thought of doing something like that as
a full root install?  If you are going to dd an image, why not a full
root?  It is only 32mb or so.

Here's another possiblility... if I installed gzip/gtar/gcc on the
Ultrix, could the kernel be built native on Ultrix, and maybe
disklabel and a few other tools, and just do an overwrite install
from Ultrix, at least for testing purposes.

There has gotta be some way to make VAXbaby happy with NetBSD....(:+}}...

Thanks

Bob