New guide for hobbyists, OpenVMS 8.4 installation with networking on AXPbox (modern fork of es40)

[Remy]

Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote
a bit on axpbox here:

https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html

I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.

For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
VSI has a hobbyist program, here's my guide how to do that:

https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster should technically be possible.

But now that x86 OpenVMS is around the corner, this guide and emulator have a shorter lifetime, since I hope to just install OpenVMS 9 inside regular old virtualbox.

Why am I posting this on the mailing list? My previous article complaining on the sad state of Alpha emulators sparked quite a fine discussion, but more importantly, I'm looking for feedback on the later parts of the guide. Specificly:

- license issues (required a reboot)
- add a user and privileges
- installation of unzip
- srm information

Most of what I wrote was after much trial and error (this article cost me about 6 days to figure out and write), and I'm not sure if it's correct. I noticed that there was an interactive procedure for user management next to UAF. Also, in the FTP part there was lots of rummaging around with line endings and corrupt files, (binary mode). So I'm not sure if what I documented are the "correct" ways (lots of info online is sparse or outdated), and would like to improve the guide a bit.

[Joukj]

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

Post by Remy
But now that x86 OpenVMS is around the corner, this guide and emulator have a shorter lifetime, since I hope to just install OpenVMS 9 inside regular old virtualbox.
- license issues (required a reboot)
- add a user and privileges
- installation of unzip
- srm information
Most of what I wrote was after much trial and error (this article cost me about 6 days to figure out and write), and I'm not sure if it's correct. I noticed that there was an interactive procedure for user management next to UAF. Also, in the FTP part there was lots of rummaging around with line endings and corrupt files, (binary mode). So I'm not sure if what I documented are the "correct" ways (lots of info online is sparse or outdated), and would like to improve the guide a bit.

as said very helpfull. I used it in 2 cases !) fresh install of
OpenVMs8.4-2l and 2) letting it boot from a disk-file, created years ago
with the free stromasys emulator on linux.(which does not work/exist
anymore).

The only problem I detected was that installing on an IDE-disk from an
IDI cd-rom, resulted in a failed IDE-controler after 30% installation. I
was successful with an IDI cd-rom and a SCSI system disk.

Jouk

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now  Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots  given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas
in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster
should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

[Remy van Elst]

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas
in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster
should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC).

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas
in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster
should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC)

OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system?

[Remy van Elst]

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas
in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster
should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC)

OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system?

Yes. I'll add an issue to add a pre-built release for downloading, that's a good idea.

Building isn't that much work, install the free version of visual studio, enter the github url, click build. that should be it.
Same on linux, install development packages, checkout repository, run cmake to build.

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas
in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster
should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC)

OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system?

Yes. I'll add an issue to add a pre-built release for downloading, that's a good idea.
Building isn't that much work, install the free version of visual studio, enter the github url, click build. that should be it.
Same on linux, install development packages, checkout repository, run cmake to build.

OK, thanks! I'm not doing any development on Windows so I'm not current
in the tools available. I have looked at VS Code (with the VMS extensions),
but the "code" versions of VS maybe isn't enough...

[j***@yahoo.co.uk]

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas
in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster
should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC)

OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system?

Yes. I'll add an issue to add a pre-built release for downloading, that's a good idea.
Building isn't that much work, install the free version of visual studio, enter the github url, click build. that should be it.
Same on linux, install development packages, checkout repository, run cmake to build.

This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).

And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?

$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I had been wondering about trying SIMH/VAX on one of these, iirc it's
already known to run on ARM given the right incantations, but AXPbox
sounds much more interesting, at least as a filler-in till the real
native OpenVMS-on-ARM comes along. Or doesn't, as the case may be.

I'd offer, but just at the moment I might struggle to find the free
time.

[Remy]

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I wrote a
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas
in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster
should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC)

OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system?

Yes. I'll add an issue to add a pre-built release for downloading, that's a good idea.
Building isn't that much work, install the free version of visual studio, enter the github url, click build. that should be it.
Same on linux, install development packages, checkout repository, run cmake to build.

This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...
I had been wondering about trying SIMH/VAX on one of these, iirc it's
already known to run on ARM given the right incantations, but AXPbox
sounds much more interesting, at least as a filler-in till the real
native OpenVMS-on-ARM comes along. Or doesn't, as the case may be.
I'd offer, but just at the moment I might struggle to find the free
time.

I know of no reason why it wouldn't compile on ARM, I have a small ARM dedicated server over at scaleway and there it compiles without problems:

uname -a

Linux d1 4.10.8-std-1 #1 SMP Wed Apr 5 16:01:12 UTC 2017 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

apt install libpcap-dev build-essential unzip libx11-dev libsdl-dev cmake libpoco-dev libxt-dev git

git clone https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/

cd axpbox

mkdir build

cd build

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" && make -j4


I'm unsure how the performance is, I have no openvms installation ready, but at least it compiles. Raspberry pi should not be much different if you can get Debian or Ubuntu (Raspbian) running.

[Wilm Boerhout]

Remy schreef op 9-11-2020 om 14:51:

[snip]

Post by Remy
git clone https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/
cd axpbox
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" && make -j4
I'm unsure how the performance is, I have no openvms installation ready, but at least it compiles. Raspberry pi should not be much different if you can get Debian or Ubuntu (Raspbian) running.

It compiled fine and the configure part ran nicely on my Raspberry Pi 4
with Raspbian and 8GB of memory. I am now going to read the docs :-) and
see where I can get the necessary ROM files.

Question: is libpcap really necessary or can the NIC just be on a host
tap device like all my simh VAX emulators?

/Wilm

[Remy]

Post by Wilm Boerhout
[snip]

Post by Remy
git clone https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/
cd axpbox
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" && make -j4
I'm unsure how the performance is, I have no openvms installation ready, but at least it compiles. Raspberry pi should not be much different if you can get Debian or Ubuntu (Raspbian) running.

It compiled fine and the configure part ran nicely on my Raspberry Pi 4
with Raspbian and 8GB of memory. I am now going to read the docs :-) and
see where I can get the necessary ROM files.
Question: is libpcap really necessary or can the NIC just be on a host
tap device like all my simh VAX emulators?

Yes you really need pcap. I'n working on precompiled binaries on the github page, and there is an enhancement issue to develop tap / vde Support. But for now you have to compile yourself with tap

Post by Wilm Boerhout
/Wilm

[Tomáš Glozar]

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.

Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.

[John H. Reinhardt]

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.

Over on the DEC Computer Users FaceBook group there is a fellow, Keith Halewood, that built it on his Pi4. He had problems with access violations (didn't specify if it were VMS or Linux) which ended up crashing the system. He wasn't specific on the build so I don't know if it was a 32-bit or 64-bit O/S on the Pi or which Linux he was running. So viability may be very implementation dependent. He also mentioned that it seemed fairly slow.

[Chris Townley]

Post by John H. Reinhardt

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on
a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that
could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too
(currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get
to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU),
so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt
instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host
system.

Over on the DEC Computer Users FaceBook group there is a fellow, Keith
Halewood, that built it on his Pi4.  He had problems with access
violations (didn't specify if it were VMS or Linux) which ended up
crashing the system.  He wasn't specific on the build so I don't know if
it was a 32-bit or 64-bit O/S on the Pi or which Linux he was running.
So viability may be very implementation dependent.  He also mentioned
that it seemed fairly slow.

Not too surprising on a Pi

Chris

[John H. Reinhardt]

Post by Chris Townley

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.

Over on the DEC Computer Users FaceBook group there is a fellow, Keith Halewood, that built it on his Pi4.  He had problems with access violations (didn't specify if it were VMS or Linux) which ended up crashing the system.  He wasn't specific on the build so I don't know if it was a 32-bit or 64-bit O/S on the Pi or which Linux he was running. So viability may be very implementation dependent.  He also mentioned that it seemed fairly slow.

Not too surprising on a Pi
Chris

Yeah. I wasn't surprised. I was working on setting up an Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine on my MacPro with 12 3.333Ghz cores to see if performance is acceptable if I gave it a couple virtual cores to run on.

[Dave Froble]

Post by John H. Reinhardt

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on
a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that
could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too
(currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get
to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU),
so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt
instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host
system.

Over on the DEC Computer Users FaceBook group there is a fellow, Keith
Halewood, that built it on his Pi4. He had problems with access
violations (didn't specify if it were VMS or Linux) which ended up
crashing the system. He wasn't specific on the build so I don't know if
it was a 32-bit or 64-bit O/S on the Pi or which Linux he was running.
So viability may be very implementation dependent. He also mentioned
that it seemed fairly slow.

I'm thinking "slow" is an inadequate description. Slow in comparison to
what? My VAXstation 4000 Model 90A? Shirley not slower than a MicroVax
2000.

[j***@yahoo.co.uk]

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.

Downloaded the prerequisites and attempted a build on a Pi 400 with
latest Raspberry Pi OS but may have mistryped a few bits along the way;
partial log follows, created, copied, and pasted on a Pi 400.

Raspberry Pi OS still has 4byte (32bit) pointers, fwiw. Apparently
it's not just VMS that cares about compatibility :)

I have a Pi 4 with a prerelease(?) of OpenSuSe Leap 15.2 on it. 64bit OS,
proper OpenSuse with a few rough edges needing attenton (e.g. boot time
stuff).

Both Pi 4 and Pi 400 very acceptable for my needs in price and performance
though

***@raspberrypi:~/axpbox $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.72-v7l+ #1356 SMP Thu Oct 22 13:57:51 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux


***@raspberrypi:~ $ git clone https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/
Cloning into 'axpbox'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 14, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done.
remote: Total 525 (delta 5), reused 7 (delta 2), pack-reused 511
Receiving objects: 100% (525/525), 656.00 KiB | 636.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (339/339), done.
***@raspberrypi:~ $ cd axpbox
...
***@raspberrypi:~/axpbox $ ./axpbox configure
We are now going to set up an initial configuration file for the Emulator.
This file will be saved as es40.cfg in the current directory.

For more detailed information to the current question, answer '?'.
Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: ?

EXPLANATION:
You need a GUI if you want to use an emulated graphics card. You don't need this for most OS'es. If you don't need this, we recomment that you answer 'none' to this question.

POSSIBLE VALUES:
none No GUI. Graphics cards are not supported.
SDL Simple Directmedia Layer. Preferred GUI mechanism.
X11 Unix X-Windows GUI support.

Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: SDL
How much RAM memory do you want to emulate? (32M,64M,128M,256M,512M,1G,2G,4G,8G) [256M]: 128M
Where can the SRM ROM image be found? [rom/cl67srmrom.exe]:
Where should the decompressed ROM image be saved? [rom/decompressed.rom]:
Where should the Flash ROM image be saved? [rom/flash.rom]:
Where should the DPR EEPROM image be saved? [rom/dpr.rom]:
How many CPU's do you want in the system? (1-4) [1]:
Do you want the ICACHE on the CPU's enabled? (yes,no) [no]:
Do you want to skip memtest on SRM start? (yes,no) [no]:
What should the reported speed of the CPU's be in MHz? (10-1250) [800]:
What telnet port should serial 0 listen? (1-65535) [21264]:
What program should be started automatically for serial 0? [putty]:
What arguments should the program use to connect to the serial port? [telnet://localhost:21264]:
What telnet port should serial 1 listen? (1-65535) [21265]:
What program should be started automatically for serial 1? [putty]:
What arguments should the program use to connect to the serial port? [telnet://localhost:21265]:
Do you want a floppy controller in your system? (yes,no) [no]:
Do you want to add any disks to the IDE controller? (none,0.0,0.1,1.0,1.1) [none]:
What (if any) VGA card do you wish to add to the system? (none,Cirrus,S3) [Cirrus]:
What PCI slot should the cirrus card be on? (0.1,0.2,0.3,0.4) [0.1]:
Where can the VGA BIOS ROM image be found? [rom/vgabios-0.6a.bin]:
Would you like to add another PCI card to the system? (none,nic,scsi,wide scsi) [none]:
Would you like to emulate the mouse? (no,yes) [no]:
Where would you like console output to go? (serial,graphics) [graphics]:
Where would you like printer output to go?:
***@raspberrypi:~/axpbox $ ./axpbox run
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 774
Stop threads:
Freeing memory in use by system...
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' has failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 779
Stop threads:
Freeing memory in use by system...
***@raspberrypi:~/axpbox $

putty wasn't installed by default, so I installed it, which leads
to this (plus a couple of putty windows elsewhere):

***@raspberrypi:~/axpbox $ ./axpbox run
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
serial0(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
serial1(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21265.
serial1(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
%IDE-I-INIT: New IDE emulator initialized.
Emulator Failure: File not found: cirrus rom file rom/vgabios-0.6a.bin not found.: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Cirrus.cpp, line 370
Stop threads:
Freeing memory in use by system...
***@raspberrypi:~/axpbox $


I'm thinking I ought to get a bit more familiar with AXPbox on
OpenSuSe/AMD64 before venturing into less familiar territory :)

I'm reluctant to invest much more of my own time into Windows stuff.

Many thanks to those who made this possible.

[Tomáš Glozar]

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.

Downloaded the prerequisites and attempted a build on a Pi 400 with
latest Raspberry Pi OS but may have mistryped a few bits along the way;
partial log follows, created, copied, and pasted on a Pi 400.
Raspberry Pi OS still has 4byte (32bit) pointers, fwiw. Apparently
it's not just VMS that cares about compatibility :)
I have a Pi 4 with a prerelease(?) of OpenSuSe Leap 15.2 on it. 64bit OS,
proper OpenSuse with a few rough edges needing attenton (e.g. boot time
stuff).
Both Pi 4 and Pi 400 very acceptable for my needs in price and performance
though
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.72-v7l+ #1356 SMP Thu Oct 22 13:57:51 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux
Cloning into 'axpbox'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 14, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done.
remote: Total 525 (delta 5), reused 7 (delta 2), pack-reused 511
Receiving objects: 100% (525/525), 656.00 KiB | 636.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (339/339), done.
...
We are now going to set up an initial configuration file for the Emulator.
This file will be saved as es40.cfg in the current directory.
For more detailed information to the current question, answer '?'.
Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: ?
You need a GUI if you want to use an emulated graphics card. You don't need this for most OS'es. If you don't need this, we recomment that you answer 'none' to this question.
none No GUI. Graphics cards are not supported.
SDL Simple Directmedia Layer. Preferred GUI mechanism.
X11 Unix X-Windows GUI support.
Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: SDL
How much RAM memory do you want to emulate? (32M,64M,128M,256M,512M,1G,2G,4G,8G) [256M]: 128M
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 774
Freeing memory in use by system...
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' has failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 779
Freeing memory in use by system...
putty wasn't installed by default, so I installed it, which leads
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
serial0(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
serial1(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21265.
serial1(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
%IDE-I-INIT: New IDE emulator initialized.
Emulator Failure: File not found: cirrus rom file rom/vgabios-0.6a.bin not found.: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Cirrus.cpp, line 370
Freeing memory in use by system...
I'm thinking I ought to get a bit more familiar with AXPbox on
OpenSuSe/AMD64 before venturing into less familiar territory :)
I'm reluctant to invest much more of my own time into Windows stuff.
Many thanks to those who made this possible.

Looks like you just lack VGAbios - see here: https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/wiki/VGA

[j***@yahoo.co.uk]

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.

Downloaded the prerequisites and attempted a build on a Pi 400 with
latest Raspberry Pi OS but may have mistryped a few bits along the way;
partial log follows, created, copied, and pasted on a Pi 400.
Raspberry Pi OS still has 4byte (32bit) pointers, fwiw. Apparently
it's not just VMS that cares about compatibility :)
I have a Pi 4 with a prerelease(?) of OpenSuSe Leap 15.2 on it. 64bit OS,
proper OpenSuse with a few rough edges needing attenton (e.g. boot time
stuff).
Both Pi 4 and Pi 400 very acceptable for my needs in price and performance
though
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.72-v7l+ #1356 SMP Thu Oct 22 13:57:51 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux
Cloning into 'axpbox'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 14, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done.
remote: Total 525 (delta 5), reused 7 (delta 2), pack-reused 511
Receiving objects: 100% (525/525), 656.00 KiB | 636.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (339/339), done.
...
We are now going to set up an initial configuration file for the Emulator.
This file will be saved as es40.cfg in the current directory.
For more detailed information to the current question, answer '?'.
Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: ?
You need a GUI if you want to use an emulated graphics card. You don't need this for most OS'es. If you don't need this, we recomment that you answer 'none' to this question.
none No GUI. Graphics cards are not supported.
SDL Simple Directmedia Layer. Preferred GUI mechanism.
X11 Unix X-Windows GUI support.
Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: SDL
How much RAM memory do you want to emulate? (32M,64M,128M,256M,512M,1G,2G,4G,8G) [256M]: 128M
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 774
Freeing memory in use by system...
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' has failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 779
Freeing memory in use by system...
putty wasn't installed by default, so I installed it, which leads
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
serial0(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
serial1(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21265.
serial1(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
%IDE-I-INIT: New IDE emulator initialized.
Emulator Failure: File not found: cirrus rom file rom/vgabios-0.6a.bin not found.: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Cirrus.cpp, line 370
Freeing memory in use by system...
I'm thinking I ought to get a bit more familiar with AXPbox on
OpenSuSe/AMD64 before venturing into less familiar territory :)
I'm reluctant to invest much more of my own time into Windows stuff.
Many thanks to those who made this possible.

Looks like you just lack VGAbios - see here: https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/wiki/VGA

Thank you, that sounds very plausible. If I don't ask for *any*
graphic console, maybe the need for VGA BIOS goes away? Or is it
built in "just in case"?

I'd presumably still need to know what to do with putty.

anyway I'm done for today, many thanks again. Not sure when I'll get
back on to it.

[Tomáš Glozar]

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk

Post by Tomáš Glozar

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
This may be a silly question, but does the Linux host in this
picture have to be Linux AMD64/x86? (Don't quite see why, but...).
And if a competent ARM Linux will do, has anybody thought about (or
succeeded with) doing this on the latest Raspberry-Pi-in-a-Keyboard,
either with Raspberry Pi OS or some other ARM-flavoured Linux?
$70/£70 for the base model with 4GB memory and ~2GHz quad core ARM
processor, just add HDMI monitor and sundries. See e.g.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-400-review
Probably not enterprise-c;ass stability yet, but for £70...

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too (currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU), so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on the host system.

Downloaded the prerequisites and attempted a build on a Pi 400 with
latest Raspberry Pi OS but may have mistryped a few bits along the way;
partial log follows, created, copied, and pasted on a Pi 400.
Raspberry Pi OS still has 4byte (32bit) pointers, fwiw. Apparently
it's not just VMS that cares about compatibility :)
I have a Pi 4 with a prerelease(?) of OpenSuSe Leap 15.2 on it. 64bit OS,
proper OpenSuse with a few rough edges needing attenton (e.g. boot time
stuff).
Both Pi 4 and Pi 400 very acceptable for my needs in price and performance
though
Linux raspberrypi 5.4.72-v7l+ #1356 SMP Thu Oct 22 13:57:51 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux
Cloning into 'axpbox'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 14, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (14/14), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (12/12), done.
remote: Total 525 (delta 5), reused 7 (delta 2), pack-reused 511
Receiving objects: 100% (525/525), 656.00 KiB | 636.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (339/339), done.
...
We are now going to set up an initial configuration file for the Emulator.
This file will be saved as es40.cfg in the current directory.
For more detailed information to the current question, answer '?'.
Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: ?
You need a GUI if you want to use an emulated graphics card. You don't need this for most OS'es. If you don't need this, we recomment that you answer 'none' to this question.
none No GUI. Graphics cards are not supported.
SDL Simple Directmedia Layer. Preferred GUI mechanism.
X11 Unix X-Windows GUI support.
Do you want to have a GUI? (none,SDL,X11) [none]: SDL
How much RAM memory do you want to emulate? (32M,64M,128M,256M,512M,1G,2G,4G,8G) [256M]: 128M
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 774
Freeing memory in use by system...
Emulator Failure: Runtime exception: Exec of 'putty' has failed.
: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Serial.cpp, line 779
Freeing memory in use by system...
putty wasn't installed by default, so I installed it, which leads
%GUI-I-INS: Installing sdl module as the ES40 GUI
sys0(tsunami): $Id: System.cpp,v 1.79 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
%FLS-F-NOREST: Flash could not be restored from rom/flash.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: Flash.cpp,v 1.19 2008/03/24 22:11:50 iamcamiel Exp $
dma: $Id: DMA.cpp,v 1.9 2008/04/29 09:24:52 iamcamiel Exp $
pci0.19(ali_usb): $Id: AliM1543C_usb.cpp,v 1.6 2008/03/14 15:30:50 iamcamiel Exp $
%DPR-F-NOREST: DPR could not be restored from rom/dpr.rom
sys0(tsunami): $Id: DPR.cpp,v 1.23 2008/06/12 07:29:44 iamcamiel Exp $
cpu0(ev68cb)(0): $Id: AlphaCPU.cpp,v 1.82 2009/03/16 01:33:27 iamcamiel Exp $
serial0(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21264.
serial0(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
serial1(serial): Waiting for connection on port 21265.
serial1(serial): $Id: Serial.cpp,v 1.51 2008/06/03 09:07:56 iamcamiel Exp $
%IDE-I-INIT: New IDE emulator initialized.
Emulator Failure: File not found: cirrus rom file rom/vgabios-0.6a.bin not found.: /home/pi/axpbox/src/Cirrus.cpp, line 370
Freeing memory in use by system...
I'm thinking I ought to get a bit more familiar with AXPbox on
OpenSuSe/AMD64 before venturing into less familiar territory :)
I'm reluctant to invest much more of my own time into Windows stuff.
Many thanks to those who made this possible.

Looks like you just lack VGAbios - see here: https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/wiki/VGA

Thank you, that sounds very plausible. If I don't ask for *any*
graphic console, maybe the need for VGA BIOS goes away? Or is it
built in "just in case"?
I'd presumably still need to know what to do with putty.
anyway I'm done for today, many thanks again. Not sure when I'll get
back on to it.

Yes, if you disable the graphics console (commenting out the Cirrus adapter using // is enough to do that), you won't require any VGA BIOS.

You don't have to use putty if you don't want to, you can just remove/comment the action field in the serial configuration and connect to the terminal via another Telnet client (I also recommend setting the bind IP address to localhost to prevent someone else connecting to it in case firewall fails for some reason by adding an address field there).

I don't know if you've already found the OpenVMS installation guide - in case you haven't, it's here: https://github.com/lenticularis39/axpbox/wiki/OpenVMS-installation-guide.

[John E. Malmberg]

Post by Tomáš Glozar
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and can confirm es40 works on it (at least on
a 64-bit OS; I had some problems at a 32-bit PowerPC system, but that
could be because of big endian), so AXPbox on 400 should work, too
(currently I don't have it up and running, but I'll try it once I get
to it). The performance isn't perfect, but it's bearable.
Also RPi 4 and 400 both support KVM/libvirt (they have the same CPU),
so you can replicate the network setup in Remy's guide with > libvirt instead of VirtualBox if networking doesn't work directly on
the host system.

Actually libvirt-LXC would work better than KVM/Libvirt, but the current
distro packages are totally broken if the application requires
privileges for network access like sim-h does.

It works great on Ubuntu 14.04 for running SimH emulators.

If it would work on newer systems it libvirt-LXC has significant disk
space savings over docker or kvm based virtualization if you just need
to make a single program look like a standalone system.

Also much easier to setup and manage.

Regards,
-John
***@qsl.net_work

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj
And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC)

OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system?

Yes. I'll add an issue to add a pre-built release for downloading, that's a good idea.
Building isn't that much work, install the free version of visual studio, enter the github url, click build. that should be it.

Download zip, unzip, cmake and msbuild resulted in a ton of compiler
errors ...

Arne

[Remy van Elst]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Remy van Elst

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj
And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper...

It runs on Windows, Mac OS and linux (anywhere you have a reasonable C++ 11 compiler, GCC, Clang or MSVC)

OK, fine! But you have to build/link it locally on your own Windows system?

Yes. I'll add an issue to add a pre-built release for downloading, that's a good idea.
Building isn't that much work, install the free version of visual studio, enter the github url, click build. that should be it.

Download zip, unzip, cmake and msbuild resulted in a ton of compiler
errors ...
Arne

If you could spare some time, reporting a bug on Github with more information (version of visual studio etc, command output) would put it on the list for us to work on eventually

[John E. Malmberg]

Post by Remy van Elst
If you could spare some time, reporting a bug on Github with more
information (version of visual studio etc, command output) would put
it on the list for us to work on eventually

I do not recall seeing any response to my replies to you on the
encompasserve.org notes forum.

I am curious to see if the axpbox will give usable performance on a
RPI-2B or RPI-3.

SimH/VAX will now support building an infoserver appliance. There are
some bugs in the Makefile that are easily worked around. I have not
had time to post an article of how to make it work.

LXC-libvirt being broken for privileged images was the only roadblock I
have to getting the infoserver fully functional on the network the way I
want it. I could fall back to qemu libvirt, but that is much more
overhead than I want to maintain.

The Infoserver appliance is an easy to setup network disk server. Not
sure if tape emulation works on the SimH implementation.

It takes up one core of a Rasperry Pi to run SimH/VAX infoserver as
there is no idle loop detection available.

Most OpenVMS hardware and emulator can network boot from an Inforserver,
which makes having one of these on the network ideally the first step
for setting up a new hobbyist network.

And there are no licensing restrictions from using SimH/VAX Infoserver
in a commercial environment. All the code is now Freeware.

Not only can the Infoserver serve the OpenVMS boot media as is, it can
also be used to serve re-mastered images with the hobbyist license keys
installed.

Link for running emulators in a libvirt-lxc container, which last worked
with Ubuntu 14.04.

https://sourceforge.net/p/vms-ports/wiki/SimH-VAX%20in%20a%20Container/

And what you need to know after you get the operating system installed
so that you can more easily maintain a collection of systems.

Introduction to the VMS Environment:
https://sourceforge.net/p/vms-ports/wiki/IntroVMSEnvironment

VMS System management:
https://sourceforge.net/p/vms-ports/wiki/VMSSystemManagement

Regards,
-John

[j***@yahoo.co.uk]

Post by John E. Malmberg

Post by Remy van Elst
If you could spare some time, reporting a bug on Github with more
information (version of visual studio etc, command output) would put
it on the list for us to work on eventually

I do not recall seeing any response to my replies to you on the
encompasserve.org notes forum.
I am curious to see if the axpbox will give usable performance on a
RPI-2B or RPI-3.
SimH/VAX will now support building an infoserver appliance. There are
some bugs in the Makefile that are easily worked around. I have not
had time to post an article of how to make it work.
LXC-libvirt being broken for privileged images was the only roadblock I
have to getting the infoserver fully functional on the network the way I
want it. I could fall back to qemu libvirt, but that is much more
overhead than I want to maintain.
The Infoserver appliance is an easy to setup network disk server. Not
sure if tape emulation works on the SimH implementation.
It takes up one core of a Rasperry Pi to run SimH/VAX infoserver as
there is no idle loop detection available.
Most OpenVMS hardware and emulator can network boot from an Inforserver,
which makes having one of these on the network ideally the first step
for setting up a new hobbyist network.
And there are no licensing restrictions from using SimH/VAX Infoserver
in a commercial environment. All the code is now Freeware.
Not only can the Infoserver serve the OpenVMS boot media as is, it can
also be used to serve re-mastered images with the hobbyist license keys
installed.
Link for running emulators in a libvirt-lxc container, which last worked
with Ubuntu 14.04.
https://sourceforge.net/p/vms-ports/wiki/SimH-VAX%20in%20a%20Container/
And what you need to know after you get the operating system installed
so that you can more easily maintain a collection of systems.
https://sourceforge.net/p/vms-ports/wiki/IntroVMSEnvironment
https://sourceforge.net/p/vms-ports/wiki/VMSSystemManagement
Regards,
-John

Infoserver on VAX on SIMH on ARM on Pi, via mostly Freeware, sounds
like an interesting concept, but is there a particular reason RPi 2
or 3 are of interest?

I have Pi 2 and 3 somewhere but probably would not generally recommend
them for new development where performance was important.

Raspberry Pi OS is still 32bit and still works on Pi 4 and Pi 400
(it's mostly Debian, as I understand it).

There is 64bit support in hardware in the newer Pi options, plus
other enhancements such as improved IO (e.g. USB and network) throughput.
64bit OS support exists, but not yet in Raspberry Pi OS as such.

Are you familiar with the Raspberry Pi 4 compute module? From $25.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-is-out-25-with-a-new-form-factor-and-new-connectors/
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/designing-the-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4/

Just wondering.

[John E. Malmberg]

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
Infoserver on VAX on SIMH on ARM on Pi, via mostly Freeware, sounds
like an interesting concept, but is there a particular reason RPi 2
or 3 are of interest?

It is actually all freeware, not mostly.

The RPi 2B and 3 are what I have on hand at the moment to experiment with.

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
Are you familiar with the Raspberry Pi 4 compute module? From $25.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-is-out-25-with-a-new-form-factor-and-new-connectors/
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/designing-the-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4/

I was not aware of it that variant. It looks like it needs an I/O
board to do any experimentation for. I do not see any cases for
systems with the I/O board either.

Regards,
-John

[Arne Vajhøj]

This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.

[Joukj]

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches
floating around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and
wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are
also located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource
quotas in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so
a cluster should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper.

Sorry I meant to say:
And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos only.

..

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Post by Joukj

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now  Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches
some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots  given, may I assume that you are also
located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource
quotas in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a
cluster should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos only.

What is Windhoos?

[Dave Froble]

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Jan-Erik Söderholm

Post by Joukj

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
and notified me about it, it installs OpenVMS without crashing. I
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches
floating around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and
wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html

Thanks very much for writing the tutorials, they were very helpfull.
BTW form the examples/screenshots given, may I assume that you are
also located in the Netherlansds?)

Post by Remy
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource
quotas in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer,
so a cluster should technically be possible.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos.

So this "axpbox" not run on Windows? That is a direct show stopper.

And that it runs on Linux and not on Windhoos only.

What is Windhoos?

Oops, someone else has irritated Jan-Erik ...

:-)

[John H. Reinhardt]

Post by Remy
Back in 2018 I was trying to run OpenVMS inside es40, but that
was quite unstable. Now Tomáš Glozar has forked es40 to axpbox
https://raymii.org/s/blog/Exciting_OpenVMS_Alpha_emulation_news_es40_has_been_forked_to_axpbox.html
I made a few contributions to the codebase, a few other patches floating
around es40 forks, for example to make netbsd boot, and wrote some wiki
pages on network setup.
For anyone that wants to give OpenVMS 8.4 on Alpha a spin, now that
https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Installing_OpenVMS_8.4_Alpha_in_AXPbox_with_networking.html
One advantage of this is that you are not limited by the resource quotas in FreeAXP and can run multiple instances on one computer, so a cluster should technically be possible.
But now that x86 OpenVMS is around the corner, this guide and emulator have a shorter lifetime, since I hope to just install OpenVMS 9 inside regular old virtualbox.
- license issues (required a reboot)

I saw this on your guide web page. It's because VSI did their PAK script differently than HPE did. HPE's script repeats a series of steps for each PAK which disables/unloads any current PAK, registers the new one and then loads and enables it. VSI's script just registers the new one leaving it for you to disable/unload any old PAKS and load/enable the new one. I wish VSI would have copied HPE's script, it was much nicer. I suppose to be fair, the VSI Alpha script only has two PAK entries as compared to HPE's 112 individual products. The VSI Integrity has a few more as they didn't do the blanket products of ALPHA-SYSTEM and ALPHA-LP

Here is the code which is repeated for each PAK issued (112 in the HPE set):

$! This PAK issued on 04-Mar-2020 11:46
$ Call CheckLicense "ACMS" "1-JAN-2022"
$ IF ($STATUS .EQS. "%X107880D3") .OR. ($STATUS .EQS. "%X107880CB")
$ THEN
$ LICENSE REGISTER ACMS -
/ISSUER=DEC -
/AUTHORIZATION=<redacted> -
/PRODUCER=DEC -
/UNITS=0 -
/TERMINATION_DATE=1-JAN-2022 -
/ACTIVITY=CONSTANT=100 -
/CHECKSUM=<redacted>
$!
$ LICENSE DISABLE ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC/ALL
$ LICENSE UNLOAD ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC
$ LICENSE ENABLE ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC/AUTH=<redacted>
$ LICENSE LOAD ACMS/LOG/PRODUCER=DEC
$ ENDIF

Formatting added by me for clarity. HPE's is all left justified.

Post by Remy
- add a user and privileges
- installation of unzip
- srm information
Most of what I wrote was after much trial and error (this article cost me about 6 days to figure out and write), and I'm not sure if it's correct. I noticed that there was an interactive procedure for user management next to UAF. Also, in the FTP part there was lots of rummaging around with line endings and corrupt files, (binary mode). So I'm not sure if what I documented are the "correct" ways (lots of info online is sparse or outdated), and would like to improve the guide a bit.