On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Debee Norling wrote:

> The VAX-specific ISO images I download from
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/ do not appear to be bootable, even
> though the readme states:
>
> >The following architectures will boot directly from CD-ROM:
>
> Vax is included in this list. I also tried the i-386 ISO just to check and
> it also has no kernel image in its root directory. I tried both the 2.1, the
> 2.02 and the 1.62ISOS. Vaxes in my house which boot the VMS CD fine won't
> boot any ISO I build from the official NetBsd site. I've tried several
> Vaxstations, 3100s and 4000s. All have working SCSI CD-ROM drives.

  I just downloaded the 2.1 vaxcd.iso and mounted it on my laptop:

dhcp101$ sudo vnconfig -c vnd0d vaxcd.iso
dhcp101$ sudo mount -t cd9660 /dev/vnd0d /mnt
dhcp101$ ls -l /mnt
total 1969
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel    34840 Oct 25 09:18 CHANGES
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel   252043 Oct 25 09:18 CHANGES-2.0
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel   126337 Oct 25 09:18 CHANGES-2.1
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel   374432 Oct 25 09:18 CHANGES.prev
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel      274 Oct 25 09:18 LAST_MINUTE
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel     1471 Oct 27 10:04 README.files
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    62648 Oct 25 13:59 boot.vax
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  1161319 Oct 25 13:59 netbsd.vax
dr-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel     2048 Oct 27 10:21 shared
dr-xr-xr-x  4 root  wheel     2048 Oct 27 10:21 vax

  So the root directory does have the kernel image [netbsd.vax] and the
boot program [boot.vax], and the first 512 bytes of the image appear to
contain the VAX boot information

> I do know that I have to be able to write 512K sectors (blocks), and am not
> absolutely sure my CD writers are doing that. But I'd think that the root

  Uh, no - you do not write 512 byte blocks.  The CD is still written with
2K byte blocks.  It's the CDROM drive that translates to 512 byte blocks
(which is any random CDROM drive will not work on the VAX).

--
Michael L. Hitch			mhitch@montana.edu
Computer Consultant
Information Technology Center
Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA