OpenBSD/vax on SIMH

It is very easy to install OpenBSD/vax on the SIMH VAX simulator. All you need is a reasonably fast machine, enough disk space for a 1.5GB disk image and the floppy36.fs from your CD-ROM set. Assuming you're going to run SIMH on an OpenBSD system, install the emulators/simh package from ports. Decide on an appropriate location for your OpenBSD/vax SIMH environment and at that location, create a file openbsd.simh with the following contents:


set cpu 64m
at nvr openbsd.nvram

deposit rq qtime 100

set rq0 ra92
at rq0 openbsd.ra0.disk

set rq1 cdrom
at rq1 /dev/rcd0c

set rq2 cdrom
at rq2 floppy36.fs

at xq0 bge0

boot cpu
exit

This configures SIMH to simulate a VAX with a whopping 64 MB of memory, a RA92 1.5GB disk, a CD-ROM unit to hold CD1 of your CD-ROM set, another CD-ROM unit to boot from, and a DELQA Qbus Ethernet controller. You'll need to replace bge0 with the name of the network interface in your machine. You also might need to replace /dev/rcd0c with the name of the raw device corresponding to your real CD-ROM unit. See the SIMH documentation for more details.

Copy CD1:3.6/vax/floppy36.fs to the location of your OpenBSD/vax SIMH environment. Unmount CD1, but leave it in the CD-ROM unit. Now fire up SIMH. At the boot prompt you should type boot dua2:, after which SIMH should boot into the normal OpenBSD installation program:

# simh-vax openbsd.simh

VAX simulator V3.0-2
NVR: buffering file in memory
Eth: opened bge0
Loading boot code from /usr/local/lib/simh/vax/ka655.bin


KA655-B V5.3, VMB 2.7
Performing normal system tests.
40..39..38..37..36..35..34..33..32..31..30..29..28..27..26..25..
24..23..22..21..20..19..18..17..16..15..14..13..12..11..10..09..
08..07..06..05..04..03..
Tests completed.
>>>boot dua2:
(BOOT/R5:0 DUA2



  2..
-DUA2
  1..0..


>> OpenBSD/vax boot [1.9] [Sep 10 2004] <<
>> Press enter to autoboot now, or any other key to abort: 0
> boot bsd

After you've finished the installation, restart SIMH, but now type:

>>>boot dua0:

to boot from your newly installed disk image. You'll need a little patience upon your first boot, since generating the SSH host keys can take quite a bit of time. But it will eventually boot through and present you with a friendly login prompt:

OpenBSD/vax (noname.my.domain) (console)

login:

When you are done installing any additional packages, you might want to remove the lines referring to your real CD-ROM unit and floppy36.fs from your openbsd.simh file.

Enjoy!

www@openbsd.org
$OpenBSD: vax-simh.html,v 1.1 2004/11/15 20:59:14 kettenis Exp $