RE: installboot is broken

[Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm <Mark%infocomm.com@localhost>]

On Sunday, March 24, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2013-03-24 19:25, Anders Magnusson wrote:
> > On 03/24/2013 05:48 PM, Martin Husemann wrote:
> >> On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 04:39:45PM +0100, Anders Magnusson wrote:
> >>> Vax only have one bootblock which is installed in the first 16
> >>> sectors on the disk.
> >>> The boot block is the same for all different disk types. Which is
> >>> nice :-)
> >> Yes, indeed - but Jonny claims the conversion to this sheme broke
> >> preparation of completely zeroed/new disks for 11/750 and others (but
> >> not for micro vaxen, which is the only hardware I have).
> > You mean the installboot usage, or something else?  Vax has had a
> > unified boot block on NetBSD ~forever.  It was installed by newfs
> > earlier but now it needs installboot.
> 
> I thought I remembered disklabel doing the installation of the boot block, but
> I might be misremembering.
> 
> > VAX have everything needed to read UFS installed in the first 8k of
> > disk with the important asm stuff in block 0 and 1 on the disk, depending on
> HW.
> 
> Yes. Except now we are not getting any of the important asm stuff in block 0,
> which is the problem. Block 0 does not contain anything meaningful except
> for a couple of magic numbers (and the disk label).

These 'magic numbers' are what sectors should be loaded and the offset into the 
data loaded to start execution.  The MicroVAX ROM VMB uses this.

> > All machines that have PROM-VMB + 11/750 and VAX8200 (with ROM
> > routines) works correctly.
> 
> I wonder. Does the 11/750 really work now? I have a feeling it will not.

It definitely will not.

- Mark Pizzolato