Showing posts with label Tru64. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tru64. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 June 2021

HP Tru64 UNIX on AlphaVM-Free - System Information

AlphaVM-Free

A commercial Alpha AXP system emulator from EmuVM, the AlphaVM family of system emulators provide a means to emulate members of the Tsunami family of Alpha based systems from Compaq and HP. Mainly targeted at providing a migration option for existing Alpha systems running OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX, allowing existing applications to be moved to newer, and potentially more efficient, hardware. A free version of AlphaVM (AlphaVM-Free) was offered as an evaluation and hobbyist product complementing the supported commercial offering (AlphaVM-Pro). Apparently due to licence abuse (see The sad state of Alpha emulators (for OpenVMS) - Raymii.org) the free version has been since replaced with a low cost option (AlphaVM-Basic).

To have a look at the emulator's capabilities and how well it manages to run HP Tru64 UNIX, I've setup a legacy AlphaVM-Free system in a Debian Linux 10 (buster) virtual machine and installed HP Tru64 UNIX 5.1B. Since all versions of AlphaVM are related the other versions will show similar behavior, although there is some additional flexibility with tuning the emulation available in the commercial product.

Note that AlphaVM requires the CMPXCHG16B instruction to be available on the host. In my case this meant I had to update the VirtualBox configuration for the Debian Linux 10 host virtual machine to allow access to this instruction (see virtualbox.org: View topic - hot to enable CMPXCHG16B instruction).

Monday, 14 June 2021

HP Tru64 on FreeAXP - System Information

FreeAXP

Migration Specialties International, Inc. provide a services for the maintenance and migration of OpenVMS and Tru64 operating system environments. Part of their offering uses system emulation to provide an option to migrate from aging hardware on to modern systems. As an evaluation and hobbyist tool, they also provide a free version of their system emulator system: FreeAXP which emulates a DEC Alpha (AXP) based AlphaServer 400 with the specification:

  • RAM: 32MB to 128MB
  • Up to 7 SCSI disks
  • Up to 2 network interfaces
  • 2 serial ports (used for system console)
  • Capable of running OpenVMS or Tru64

So having downloaded and installed the emulator, I've configured a emulated system for testing with Tru64:

  • CPU: a DECchip 21064 (EV4) Alpha processor
  • RAM: 128 MB
  • SCSI controller: KZPAA (53c810) - narrow SCSI, max. 7 devices
    • Id 0: RZ40L SCSI Hard disk - 8 GB
    • Id 6: RRD42 SCSI CD-ROM drive - mapped to system optical drive
  • Network interface: DE500 (21143)

FreeAXP uses a version of the SRM firmware from the AlphaServer 400, which can tell us a bit about the system before we install an operating system.

Wednesday, 12 May 2021