Installing Ultrix 4.5 on SIMH
This WORK-IN-PROGRESS guide will be a simple guide to installing ULTRIX 4.5 for VAX on SimH.
Requirements
The following is a list of things required for installation
- A recent version of the SIMH emulator
- Make sure the binary you're using includes Ethernet support
- I'm using a self-compiled version (git revision 0e8c0aea)
- An ISO image of ULTRIX 4.5 for VAX
- See the "Resources" section for a download link
- It's probably also possible to install it from tape, although I don't know if any installation tapes for ULTRIX 4.5 exist
- Optional stuff (might get added to the guide later):
- Starfish Ultrix Freeware CDs from here
SimH configuration
The machine I'm using to run ULTRIX has the following configuration
- DEC MicroVAX 3800
- 64mb memory
- DELQA network card (XQ0)
- Two RA90 disk drives (with 1.2gb each) attached to an RQDX3 controller (RQ0 and RQ1)
- CD ROM drive attached to the same RQDX3 controller as unit 2 (RQ2)
- TK50 tape attached as unit 0 on the first TQK50 controller (TQ0)
- DZV11 terminal multiplexer with 16 lines, attached to telnet port 1005 (DZ)
- LPT line printer attached to text file
printer_output.txt
Here's my config file (I called it simh.conf)
; ; SimH 4.0 Configuration file for MicroVAX 3800 ; ; Host System : DEC MicroVAX 3800 ; Operating System : DEC Ultrix v4.5 ; Memory : 64mb ; Network config : XQ: Ethernet, 08:00:2b:04:14:02 ; Disks : RQ0: RA90, 1.2gb ; RQ1: RA90, 1.2gb ; CDROMs : RQ2: iso file ; Tape config : TQ0: TK50, 94mb ; load -r ka655x.bin ; NVRAM attach NVR nvram.bin ; CPU config set CPU 64m set CPU conhalt set CPU idle=all ; configure console to 7-bit only set TTO 7b set TTI 7b ; Disk drives set RQ0 ra90 attach RQ0 rq0-ra90.dsk set RQ1 ra90 attach RQ1 rq1-ra90.dsk set RQ2 CDROM attach -r RQ2 ultrix-vax-os-v4.5.mode1.ufs.iso ; MD5 sum: 19df0753c27f195e9f1d2f139a3b4629 *ultrix-vax-os-v4.5.mode1.ufs.iso set RQ3 dis ; Tape set TQ tk50 ;attach tq0 filename-to-tape-file set TQ1 dis set TQ2 dis set TQ3 dis ; serial port, simulated by Telnet to port 1005 set DZ LINES=16 set DZ 8B attach DZ 1005 NoBuffer ; printer set LPT enable attach LPT printer_output.txt ; Disable unused peripherals set CR dis set RL dis set TS dis ; Network interface (08-00-2b is the DEC prefix, the 04-14-02 part is arbitrary) set XQ MAC=08-00-2b-04-14-02 attach XQ0 eth0 ; serial console (launch directly after booting CPU) set console telnet=1001 ; experimental ;set QVSS en ; boot the system ;boot CPU
Note that I'm using a telnet console (for easier copy/paste on Windows), which means that directly after running this config file (via do simh.conf from Simh) you will need to connect via telnet to localhost:1001 or the boot will abort. If you are on Linux, or just don't want that, remove the set console telnet=1001 line.
Also note that you might need to attach XQ0 to a different ethernet device. Use "show ether" in SimH to list all available devices on your system and modify the attach XQ0 eth0 line accordingly.
Running the Emulator
Either run vax.exe simh.conf from the Windows command line, or just double-click the VAX.EXE executable and type do simh.conf.
On the first launch it might take some time because SimH has to create the disk images (~2.5 gb total). It should look something like this
MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Beta git commit id: 0e8c0aea
NVR: buffering file in memory
RQ2: unit is read only
Listening on port 1005
WinPcap version 4.1.2 (packet.dll version 4.1.0.2001), based on libpcap version
1.0 branch 1_0_rel0b (20091008)
Eth: opened OS device \Device\NPF_{A41A1651-DD4D-4735-A4E0-88353165C2EC}
Listening on port 1001
sim>
Type the following to start the emulation (note: you can also uncomment that line from the end of the config file to have the emulation start right away)
sim> boot cpu Waiting for console Telnet connection
Now would be a good tiome to connect your telnet session (I use a batch file for this), otherwise the boot process will timeout.
Resources
Some of the resources I used for creating this guide:
