Installing 3 BSD on SIMH

These notes are 100% derived from the work http://zazie.tom-yam.or.jp/starunix/3bsd/3bsd.html

Requirements

• You'll need the vax 11/780 emulator out of SIMH.
• Next you will need the tape image. 3bsd.tap.bz2
• A copy of bzip2 to decompress the tape image.

Boot 1

Copy the following into tboot.ini

set tto 7b
set rq dis
set lpt dis
set rl dis
set hk dis
set rq dis
set rqb dis
set rqc dis
set rqd dis
set ry dis
set ts dis
set tq dis
set dz lines=8
set rp0 rp06
at rp0 rp06.disk
set tu0 te16
at tu0 3bsd.tape
D 50000 20009FDE
D 50004 D0512001
D 50008 3204A101
D 5000C C113C08F
D 50010 A1D40424
D 50014 008FD00C
D 50018 C1800000
D 5001C 8F320800
D 50020 10A1FE00
D 50024 00C139D0
D 50028 04c1d004
D 5002C 07e15004
D 50030 0000f750
go 50000
go 0

Then go ahead and run the emulator like this:

vax780 tboot.ini

VAX780 simulator V3.8-1
RP: creating new file
Overwrite last track? [N] y

You will be prompted to 'overwrite last track', type in 'y' and hit enter. Then you'll get the = prompt. Run the 'mkfs' program as follows:

=mkfs
file sys size: 7942
file system: hp(0,0)
isize = 5072
m/n = 3 500

The 'root' slice will now be formatted.

Now we can run the restor program as follows:

=restor
Tape? ht(1,1)
Disk? hp(0,0)
Last chance before scribbling on disk. y
End of tape

Now we can go ahead and boot the system. Run the boot command from the = prompt, then you'll have to specify where & what to boot with hp(0,0)vmunix.

=boot

Boot
: hp(0,0)vmunix
61856+61008+70120 start 0x4B4
VM/UNIX (Berkeley Version 2.7) 2/10/80
real mem  = 8323072
avail mem = 8062976
ERASE IS CONTROL-H!!!

Now we are going to format the /usr partition:

# /etc/mkfs /dev/rrp0g 145673
isize = 65488
m/n = 3 500