Talk:VAXstation 100 firmware notes

Source?

I assume the source for the firmware has been lost? Given that this is the bootstrap, I'm going to guess that it was originally in assembler? Do you have a dis-assembled version?

The results of dis-assembly can be quite tasteful; here and here are two RL11 bootstraps for which the source had been lost; I dis-assembled and commented (to make them readable/understandable; I checked that the assembler output matched the binary I started with) them, and I think they are pretty good. The first is commented a little better; I read through the code in the second in order to be able to turn the magic numbers in the disassembled code into named constants, but I didn't do much more than that to make it readable.

Do you have any of the code (in any form) which was down-loaded into them once they had booted? Jnc (talk) 23:48, 18 February 2023 (CET)

I'm adding comments to this as I go: https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/absolutely-not-a-vaxstation100-emulator/blob/stuff/firmware-5.00.txt

I haven't added labels etc, so it's not in any shape to be reassembled. I have done plenty of source code reconstructions for ITS binaries, but I'm not sure I'll make the effort for this one. My main priority will be to get old X versions running; Jim Gettys seems willing to let go of his old tape files which should be interesting.

X10 R3 and R4 have binary VS100 blobs. I know someone who has X10R4 running on a real VS100 and VAX, so I know it's in good shape. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 00:04, 19 February 2023 (CET)

Thanks for indulging my curiosity! Yes, that's too much code to be worth the effort to do a good job.

It will be interesting to see what's on Gettys' old tapes! Who's reading them, BTW? Jnc (talk) 00:45, 19 February 2023 (CET)

He says the tapes have already been read. I don't know in what form the data is stored now. Maybe untarred file trees, or something. Fingers crossed, we will see soon. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 06:30, 19 February 2023 (CET)