From: Fred Kleinsorge [kleinsorge@star.enet.dec_nospam.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 1999 12:23 PM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: WNT Only Alpha now running OpenVMS V7.1

alan fay wrote:
> 
 Fred,
> 
> This machine is not supposed to run VMS at all -- it was
> built to only run WNT. What I have done is copy
> SYS$CPU_ROUTINES_1B05 to ..._E505 (I think)
> anyway this get it to load VMS7.1 but it cannot
> autoconfigure (if I try it manually it finds nothing).
> Therefore, I have to IO CONNECT.
> 
> Everything works except ewa0?
> 

Note that the following isn't by any means supported, but if you are
hacking for Hobbyist use:

Dump V7.1, and upgrade to V7.1-2, this should get you SYS$ICBM.EXE. 
Prior to V7.1-2 (or it may have actually been in V7.1-1H2) in addition
to a per-platform CPU routines, there was a per-platform ICBM
(autoconfiguration module).  I changed this so that (with a couple
exceptions for old platforms I didn't want to deal with) all the current
and new hardware will use a common ICBM.

Of course you *may* not be able to BOOT from the LAN, since there is
some per-CPU cruft that is embedded in APB that determine which LAN boot
driver to use (disks use a common disk boot driver).  What you *reallY*
want is to make VMS think it's a supported system type.

A *simpler* way to do what you really want, is to at the console look at
location 2050, and replace it with the family type.  That is e -p 2050
which probably has a negative value in it of FFFFFFFF.FFFFFFE5, deposit
the positive equivalent 00000000.00001B .  Depending on the platform,
you may be able to automate the blasting of the location by editing the
NVRAM script from the console.

This is the hack that makes the Multia run V6.2 (we nuke it to think
it's a AlphaBook 1).  Try EDIT NVRAM at the console, and there is a
BASIC-like editor.  On some systems, the NVRAM is automatically invoked
at POST, but on most, you need to invoke it by simply typing "NVRAM" -
which can also include the boot.

So...

>>> e -p 2050
pmem:            2050 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFE5
>>>
>>> edit nvram
editing 'nvram'
* 10 d -p 2050 1B
* 20 boot
* exit
>>>
>>> cat nvram
10 d -p 2050 1B
20 boot
>>>
>>> nvram

yada yada -- jumping to bootstrap...


The editor commands of interest are LIST, EXIT, QUIT.  You edit like an
old RSTS basic program... line number, and any console command you want
to define.  The console "CAT" command will type the contents of the
nvram file.