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Re: DEQNA on MicroVax II



Thank you, Mouse, Johnny, and Martin for the replies.

I am using  a hub that bridges 10baseT and 10base5 which I used many
years ago for this same purpose when I had VMS running.

I'm pretty sure that nobody else is replying to pinging as the replies
are coincident with the operation of the uVax. Surely the known issues
couldn't stop a ping?

I am using IP addresses, it is on my small home network with 30 hosts
and no DNS, I just use the hosts file for mapping of names to IPs.  I
have nmapped the network many times and know al the mac addresses and
IPs assigned by reservation on my DHCP server.

I don't have any other machines with spare disks that I could put NetBSD
on, but if this can't be resolved any other way I could probably buy an
old PC and run it headless to do that :-)

I have put back the 10baseT now since that experiment didn't yield any
results and I need to close the box to please the wife!

It was actually NetBSD 1.43 I was trying to boot so that should
eliminate modern issues. (First message on boot:  'NetBSD/vax boot [Nov
20 2000 00:25:06]')

As far as the DEQNA goes, this is its config:

# ifconfig qe0
qe0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.2.30 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
#

and route table:

 route show
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination      Gateway            Flags
default          192.168.2.1        UG    
localhost        127.0.0.1          UH    
192.168.2.0      link#1             U     
mynetwork        18:1e:78:3:3c:20   UH    
#

It is the same whether I use either xcvr.   I cannot find any data on
what DEQNA parameters I can change on any NetBSD documentation.

I suppose slip over the console might work, but I have no other serial
port other than a dhv11!

Thanks again,

Nigel


 Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
Skype:  TILBURY2591 nw.johnson%ieee.org@localhost



On 08/09/2020 05:03, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2020-09-08 05:27, Mouse wrote:
>>>> I am trying to resurrect an old microVax II and get NetBSD running
>>>> on it.  [...]
>>> [...]
>>
>> Oh, I forgot to say something.
>>
>> You say you've tried 10base5, so this probably is not relevant in your
>> case, but it might be worth mentioning.
>>
>> I've seen old 10Mb-only Ethernets misbehave oddly when connected to
>> modern autonegotiating hardware.  I keep an old 10Mb-only hub around as
>> a glue layer for such machines.  If you don't have such a thing, maybe
>> try forcing the configuration of the autonegotiating hardware on the
>> relevant port to 10/half?  With a peer as old as a DEQNA you won't get
>> better than 10/half anyway, and it may alleviate some of the issues.
>
> I'm using a DEQNA with a gigbit ethernet switch. And it works fine for
> me. Also, I have never seen any issues with packet size.
>
> There are some known issues with the DEQNA, specifically it might stop
> sending/receiving under some circumstances, because of bugs in the
> microcode. This is known, and as far as I can remember, NetBSD have a
> fix in the code to unwedge the controller. VMS eventually stopped
> supporting the DEQNA because of this, while PDP-11 OSes still do
> support it. I know that the RSX drivers also have code to unwedge the
> DEQNA.
>
> I think your suggestion about possibly some other machine responding
> to pings seems likely. There are no good reason why a machine would
> respond to ping, but not be able to send pings itself. But do use IP
> addresses, so you don't rely on DNS, which might not be working properly.
>
> Use NetBSD as the mop server instead of Linux is something I would
> also agree with.
>
> Another point is that current NetBSD might have problems booting using
> mop, and it's a problem that's been around for some time. So locate a
> boot file from around NetBSD 4, which works better. It should be good
> enough to also boot the current installation image.
>
> Booting from tape was known to work at some point, but I seriously
> doubt anyone have tested it in many years. And it will take forever.
> Really, netbooting is definitely the preferred way. I use it whenever
> I need to install on a real machine.
>
>   Johnny
>

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