On 2025-08-04 18:36, Jason Thorpe wrote:
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 netbootingand 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).
I think this needs some deeper examinations on how flexible some data fields are. MOP can certainly provide DECnet addresses for netbooted systems. Question is - is the format of those messages and buffers flexible enough to also be usable for IP. That's a thing I don't know offhand.
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".
Agreed. Especially for VAXen (which is what's relevant here).
PDP-11 might be a bit more complicated.
Johnny
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Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt%softjar.se@localhost || Reading murder books
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