Re: Can you MOP boot an install kernel directly?

[Jason Thorpe <thorpej%me.com@localhost>]

> On Aug 4, 2025, at 7:45 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost> wrote:
> 
> I'll just top-post to be lazy.
> 
> First of all, as you know, MOP is the "native" way to netboot DEC machines from back in the day. And MOP sortof fills the place of both DHCP and TFTP in one. But it's more targeted for the explicit need of netbooting and remote management. But in a sense, for VAXen, it would be great if we had the possibility of getting all the netbooting though MOP and not need DHCP and TFTP. Not sure if that is possible, though.

Can MOP supply the IP address to the system?  If not, you're not going to be eliminating DHCP (or BOOTP).

> But so, for simh, the controllers do implement at least parts of the MOP on that side. For VAXen, with something like the 3900, the boot roms from the actual machine are included, if I remember right, and so MOP booting will definitely work there no matter what else simh might do.

Yah, my baseline assumption would be "SIMH can MOP boot on whatever real hardware could because you run the firmware ROM".

-- thorpej