I am not sure that boot.fs actually boots on a
MicroVAX.  I always had to install from 1.4.1,
then on a spare drive manually install 1.4.3.
Nothing in 1.5x seemed to boot, and I need to
roll a tape to actually try 1.6.  At one time
I tested all available versions from 1.0a to 1.5
or 1.5.1, and the ONLY thing that worked half
way reasonably and dependably was 1.4.1.  It
only did a boot, and then you had to ftp install
the rest or go a very arcane manual unroll from
shell.  My thoughts in bringing up the eternal
tape install question is to maybe actually see
if we can arrive at a complete functional tape
install for a change.  I miss the simplicity
of a working tape install, like in 4.3BSD, for
example.  The VAX would be a nice candidate for
a fully functional tape install, I would think.
Alas, I am too ignorant to do the coding work,
myself....(:+{.....although I am half tempted to
try mimicing a 4.3BSD install tape, maybe using
a NetBSD-1.2 VAX tape framework.  I use 1.2 to
label disks for my 4.3BSD, anyway.  If we used
the new sysinstall thing, what would it actually
take to code in simple untar base.tgz, etc.tgz,
and a kernel, from tape rather than manually from tape to a temporary 
directory, where the
new sysinstall goes here and there to go and
fetche the main tarballs?  The rest could maybe
be untarred from one further file on tape, as
a rest-of-system tarball.  I don't ever envision
using X on a 1 vup MicroVAX, but, if needed that
suite could be unrolled from one more whole
tarball.  The whole should still fit on one
TK50 tape.

Thanks

Bob Keys