Booting Standalone Backup tape from TZ88

[Steven Schweda]

> There are two connectors on the module. Each one goes to a tape drive
> with about a 6' cable and each drive is terminated. [...]

   I'd try it with only one tape drive, and only a terminator on the
other KZQSA port, but, based on my even uglier cable configuration here,
my expectations would be low.

> It could be I need a backup tape from a newer OS. [...]
> [...] I wonder if I could build a 7.3 kit somehow, such as
> through the hobbyist program, and boot that.

   Probably, or I could send you one on a (used-junk) DLT IV tape (which
works for me.  I assume that I'd need to press my "Select" button until
I got the density of my DLT7000 down to your level, but that should be
possible.


> [...] There is another KZQSA port on the far left by the DSSI
> connector, but that is unused and has an orange cap over it. [...]

   My 4000-200 is in a small box with no such connector (only a DSSI in
that neighborhood), so I know nothing (and I'm too lazy to do the
research), but I'd guess that that connector has nothing to do with the
KZQSA, unless you run a cable from the KZQSA to it.  I'd guess that its
job is to supply a SCSI path to the internal bay(s), which could be DSSI
(like the one in my box) or SCSI (in a newer/fancier system).  If you
have no internal SCSI devices, then the orange cap would be appropriate.

[Dan Mellem]

Steven Schweda:

> I'd guess that its job is to supply a SCSI path to the internal bay(s)

I think you're right. The manual calls it the "KZQSA In Connector."

> Probably, or I could send you one on a (used-junk) DLT IV tape (which works for me.

I'll try booting other tape drives (8mm or 9-track) or the drive by itself to see if any of those work. If they do, I may take you up on your offer. I can send you a new tape if so. I'll let you know.

[Bob Blunt]

There are two "in" connectors to/for the internal bays.  The one that you see that's "capped" and the other one is in the backplane itself and you connect directly from a KZQSA to it using a 50-pin internal cable (sometimes a "ribbon" cable with two or more low density 50-pin connectors, sometimes a cable with separate conductors with the same type connectors).  Since neither seems in use there's no "internal" SCSI available and leaving the cap on makes sense.

My personal preference for external cabling would be to terminate one KZQSA port and run the cables "daisy chained" to the TZ and then from the TZ to the MTI drive with a short cable (or if the 8mm drive isn't working just terminate at the TZ).  I *think* the max cable length for SE SCSI shouldn't exceed 9 feet so using two 6 foot cables to two drives, one on each port, could make the length too long (not including whatever the "internal" cable length from inside the tape boxes adds).  One of the terminators could also be a bit off...but I'd expect to see other PK errors (which I was surprised weren't evident in the output from your errorlog if you're running regular BACKUP to the TZ).

As far as building a S/A Backup kit with V7.3?  Because the S/A kit does tweak it's own SYSGEN parameters you might be able to get away with loading V7.3 to another disk without configuring all your software.  The V7.3 installation should, pretty much, configure itself with similar basic parameters that reflect your configuration so building the S/A kit from there shouldn't cause any problems...it just wouldn't, necessarily, have any "lingering" software tweaks or feedback data "included."  If you have valid licenses now it shouldn't be an issue to setup V7.3 for something like this.

Thanks

bob

[Bob Blunt]

Dan, sorry it took so long.  I put the giblets together and gave it a try.  Please understand that, at this time, I don't have V6.2 on VAX loaded and ready so I booted from V7.3 and wrote the tape.  The differences between the STABACKIT process for my system and yours are significant.  Everything booted like a champ.  From what I've been able to find the TZ88 should have been a supported tape drive for V6.2 as well.

Do you or does your system have an available CD drive?  I just found a distro CD for V7.1 that booted right into S/A.  I'm digging around for V6.2 but can't promise anything.  I no longer have any Q-Bus based VAXen so I used a "busless" system that has SCSI so the configuration doesn't match yours...but, based on my testing, it should work.

bob

[Steven Schweda]

> Do you or does your system have an available CD drive? [...]

   A quick scan of the Forum Web page. searching for "cd", should have
found:

> [...] However, we don't have a CD-ROM drive; [...]

   I believed him.

> [...] I just found a distro CD for V7.1 that booted right into S/A.
> [...]

   For a good time, try "boot/10000000 dkaXXX".

   I have a CD-R of unknown origin with VMS V6.2 on it ("VAXVMS062").
It also has the usual "Stand-alone BACKUP V6.2" in [SYS0] and more VMS
in [SYS1]:

>>>b/10000000 DKA600
(BOOT/R5:10000000 DKA600)

  2..
-DKA600
  1..0..


%SYSBOOT-I-SYSBOOT Mapping the SYSDUMP.DMP on the System Disk
%SYSBOOT-W-SYSBOOT Can not map SYSDUMP.DMP on the System Disk
%SYSBOOT-I-SYSBOOT Mapping PAGEFILE.SYS on the System Disk
   OpenVMS (TM) VAX Version XI06-67K Major version id = 1 Minor version id = 0

%SYSINIT-E, error opening page file, status = 0000025C
%SYSINIT-E, error opening swap file, status = 0000025C
%SYSINIT, primary PAGEFILE.SYS not found; system initialization continuing
%SYSINIT, no dump file - error log buffers not saved
%SYSINIT-E, error mounting system device, status = 007282EC
$!  Copyright (c) 1995 Digital Equipment Corporation.  All rights reserved.
$set noverify

    Installing required known files...

    Configuring devices...

    ********************************************************************

    You can execute DCL commands and procedures for various "standalone"
    tasks, such as backing up the system disk.

    Please choose one of the following:

        1)  Execute DCL commands and procedures
        2)  Shut down this system

Enter CHOICE or "?" to repeat menu: (1/2/?)
[...]


   To save you the effort, they're all read-only errors:

ALP $ exit %x0000025C
%SYSTEM-F-WRITLCK, write lock error

ALP $ exit %x007282EC
%MOUNT-F-BADSECSYS, failed to create or access SECURITY.SYS

   As I recall, newer VMS versions evade at least some of those.


   Interestingly (to me, at least), I could boot SAB ([SYS0]) using the
Yamaha CRW2100SX ("APRIL 2001") which I normally (but very seldom) use
on that system, but booting the fancier VMS environment failed
(repeatedly) with:

%SYSTEM-I-MOUNTVER, DKA600: is offline.  Mount verification in progress.
[After which, nothing happens for at least some minutes.]

   Another Yamaha CRW2100SX ("MARCH 2001") acted the same way, but a
Toshiba TXM3401E1 ("AUG 1994", caddy-load), with a shorter SCSI cable --
fewer adapters needed) did the job.  You just can't trust that modern
(-R/-RW), unsupported hardware.  (It's not even old enough to vote.)
So, if shopping for an old-junk CD-ROM drive, I'd advise against a fancy
write-capable drive for this purpose.

   It's not clear that any of this would be useful to the fellow with
the problem, however.  All kinds of things can (and do) work for others,
but why his tape drive fails for him remains a mystery, especially when
it seems to work for non-boot uses.


> Dan, sorry it took so long. [...]

   Having heard nothing for a while, I assumed that he'd given up.

[Dan Mellem]

Bob Blunt:

Thank you very much for your reply.

> Do you or does your system have an available CD drive?  I just found a distro CD for V7.1 that booted right into S/A.

No, unfortunately. However, I may be able to borrow an old Apple CD drive that was similiar to our old (dead) DEC CD drive. A coworker said he may still have one in a closet somewhere. I couldn't find newer original media (only 5.5.2H4) but found possible ISOs online for 6.2 and 7. If I can get to the point of booting 7.1 off of CD, could I create a SAB tape from there or would I need to install it?

Steven Schweda:

> Having heard nothing for a while, I assumed that he'd given up.

I'm still here. :) I just got hammered with a lot of projects recently and important but invisible things like being able to restore a backup tend to slip behind the more visible requests.

It does seem odd that the CDRW drives flaked but the old caddy-load drive worked. I guess I'll need to play musical drives for that as well if I can find some. I'm guessing a new drives with adapters may not be the best choice, then.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] If I can get to the point of booting 7.1 off of CD, could I
> create a SAB tape from there or would I need to install it?

   If you can boot into SAB, then you can run SAB.  Booting into the
read-only-VMS environment is nice for some things, but apparently not
for creating a SAB kit.  Looking at a V7.3 (official Hobbyist) disc (in
clever mode):

$$$ dire DKA600:[000000...]stabackit
%DIRECT-W-NOFILES, no files found

   Even if you had STABACKIT.COM, it would probably want to write stuff
to SYS$UPDATE, or some other place on the read-only system disk, so I'd
guess that it'd be doomed, and that's why it wasn't included in the
read-only-VMS kit.

   Given a free (read+write SCSI) disk, you could use the CD to install
real VMS onto that disk, and that'd give you a real VMS system disk,
with STABACKIT.COM, and everything else.  At that point, however, the
value of a SAB tape would fall again, because you'd now have a
better+faster real VMS system disk which could be used instead of SAB.

   On the bright side, that saves me the effort of trying to get a
big-50-narrow CD-ROM drive and a mini-68-wide tape drive onto the same
bus with a short enough cable to let them work.  (I tried with the stuff
at hand, but couldn't boot from the CD (hung) with the tape drive and
another couple of meters of cable and adapters attached.)

> It does seem odd that the CDRW drives flaked but the old caddy-load
> drive worked.

   Read+write drives are more complicated, and many things are possible.
Expecting old VAX HW/FW/SW to deal correctly with a drive which is newer
than the old VAX might be a little over-optimistic.  (Kind of you to
reserve "old" for a proper subset of that drive collection.)

> [...] I may be able to borrow an old Apple CD drive [...]

   With any unsupported drive, you might need to worry about block
sizes.  VAX and/or VMS may expect 512-byte blocks, and may or may not
tell the drive that, and the drive might not care if it's told.  On that
Toshiba drive, there are some very-low-budget cut+solder pseudo-jumpers
to select such characteristics:
      http://antinode.info/dec/toshiba_cd-rom.html

   I'm too lazy to open the box, but I'd bet a small sum that that
TXM3401E1 drive had its block-size trace cut to make it do 512-byte
blocks.

   As it says on that Web page, the (newer+faster) XM-6201 drive worked
without needing such jumpers.  I should have one somewhere in my museum,
but it's not near the top of the pile at the moment.  In any case, there
are abundant old comp.os.vms threads related to CD-ROM drives for old
VAX and/or Alpha junk.  Many worked, a few didn't.  As usual, running
the experiment can be expected to be more reliably informative than
relying on the literature (even if I wrote it).

> [...] I'm guessing a new drives with adapters may not be the best
> choice, then.

   With my old-junk supply, I've never felt the need to try such things.
I'd expect a literature search to find reports from others who have
tried them.

   Naturally, any reports of results of your experiments would be
interesting (if not actually amusing).