NetBSD/vax on SIMH

SIMH installation

Get WinPcap and install it : www.winpcap.org/install/default.htm

Get SMMH with ethernet support and install it : simh.trailing-edge.com/
Put the simh dir somewhere easyly accessible e.g. into C:\tp. And simply rename to e.g. "simh".

Also fetch NetBSD/vax ISO, put it into "c:\tp\simh" and rename it to vax.iso.

VAX startup

Start the VAX emulation,

Start > Execute > cmd

cd c:\tp\simh

vax

You get the "sim>" prompt. Setup those parameters. Note the virtual CDrom drive to install NetBSD,

#load c:\tp\simh\ka655x.bin -r

load ka655x.bin -r

set cpu 64m

set rq0 ra92

at rq0 netbsd.dsk

set rq1 cdrom

at rq1 vax.iso

set console telnet=<telnet port>

Start the VM,

boot cpu

Start a telnet client e.g. (recent version of) PuTTY and connect locally. And at the VMB prompt, boot from CD,

boot dua1:

Note dua1: is for the second drive, namely the CDrom.

NetBSD installation

During the installation, change the CDrom device from

cd0a --> ra1a

Note you could probably also use FTP, the qe0 should be configured.

During installation eventually choose your timezone, MD5 as password encryption and /bin/ksh as default shell.

VAX Network configuration

Get back to the sim> prompt and find out what physical network interface you could link to,

att xq ?

This last command will print the available network interfaces. Even on Windows, answer 'ethN' where N is the interface's number. Choose an unsused VMware interface or something (maybe create a loop device ?).

VAX autoboot

We will no configure auto-booting anyways. Get out of SIMH and create the boot file,