How do VMS Condists work?

From: Bob Lafleur <bob_lafleur_at_technologist.com>
Date: Wed May 29 10:33:19 2002

Andreas,

I know how to boot a CD-ROM in a VAX. I've got the VMS 7.2 hobbyist, VMS
7.2 regular distrib, and VMS 7.3 regular distrib, and when I boot them
all, I just go into standalone backup. I thought maybe there was some
"trick" I didn't know about to boot into a regular VMS system.

   - Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Andreas Freiherr
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 11:20 AM
To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: How do VMS Condists work?


Bob,

to PC users, this may sound like I am joking, but I am serious: to boot
VMS from CD, you do the same things you would do with any other disk
(isn't this what abstraction layers are good for?): assuming that your
CD ROM drive is DKA400 because you selected SCSI ID #4, you will insert
the disk and issue the command

>>> BOOT DKA400

at the console prompt. That's it! - No magic with a special BIOS that
would need to support SCSI or CD booting or other wizardry.

A VAX can even be booted directly from tape, but this will normally take
you into the standalone backup (S/A backup), a reduced functionality
operating system that is only made for restoring backups in cases where
no other operating system is available for use. Alphas do not have this
feature any more.

Regards,
Andreas

Bob Lafleur wrote:
>
> > I believe that the VAX V6.1 CDs were the
> first ones that could be booted directly
> into OpenVMS (rather than just being
> able to boot S/A BACKUP to restore
> the .B saveset).
>
> How does one go about booting the CD directly into OpenVMS?

--
Andreas Freiherr
Vishay Semiconductor GmbH, Heilbronn, Germany http://www.vishay.com
Received on Wed May 29 2002 - 10:33:19 BST

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