What QBUS machines support netboot?

[Teletech]

I'm thinking the 11/53+ would be a likely candidate. How about the uVAX-II, III, or 4? 11/73+ perhaps?
I guess the other question is what operating systems will that work for? Even if your CPU will netboot, that won't do you a lot of good if you are trying to run BSD 2.9!
While I'm asking silly questions, are there ANY unibus systems that netboot? I suppose one could write a boot ROM for a DEUNA, I mean, in theory, but has anyone done it?
I'm just trying to bootstrap some machines into some sort of operation where my main storage is RL02 packs and RA81/73 disks and would just as soon not have to mess with magtape just now.

 

[AK6DN]

UNIBUS machines with a DEUNA or DELUA support netboot with the appropriate M9312 XE boot prom.

I have an 11/44 with a DEUNA but I locally boot 2.11bsd from a SCSI disk on an emulex UC17 controller. Never tried to setup a netboot configuration.

DECnet/DDCMP booting is supported with an appropriate XM/XU/XW/XL M9312 prom and the corresponding physical hardware.

Ref: https://www.ak6dn.com/PDP-11/M9312/

I would think that a QBUS machine with a DELQA and the equivalent prom code as exists in the M9312 XE prom would work.

 

[Teletech]

UNIBUS machines with a DEUNA or DELUA support netboot with the appropriate M9312 XE boot prom.

I have an 11/44 with a DEUNA but I locally boot 2.11bsd from a SCSI disk on an emulex UC17 controller. Never tried to setup a netboot configuration.

DECnet/DDCMP booting is supported with an appropriate XM/XU/XW/XL M9312 prom and the corresponding physical hardware.

Ref: https://www.ak6dn.com/PDP-11/M9312/

I would think that a QBUS machine with a DELQA and the equivalent prom code as exists in the M9312 XE prom would work.

Oh, right... DECnet. I'd forgotten about that... Er, I'd rather hoped for more of a "use a linux laptop on a LAN" solution. I wonder if simh would make that work, but even so it's a big learning curve to set up DECnet ISTR? I'll have to check through my ROMs and burn at least one for my M9312, just in case.
Thanks,

 

[g4ugm]

I would say for many on the small admittedly non-q-bus VAX machines booting VMS over the network was a common way to load VMS. I am sure all the Q-Bus VAX machines with a built-in ethernet interface will net boot. I know at least one person who boots his lateish machines from VMS running on a raspberry pi.... But for non-VMS. no idea

 

[nadaveiron]

The "use a Linux laptop on a LAN" solution requires that you run a MOP server. You should look into the NetBSD mopd. I have never used it personally, but there's evidence that it'll boot Ultrix on a VAX. VMS will probably require another VMS system. The easiest way to netboot VMS is to set up your netbooted system as a satellite cluster node for the machine that you already have VMS on (and which you should configure to be a VAX Cluster). Assuming a reasonably modern version of VMS, of course.

 

[Ian Hammond]

After the system disks died on my 11/73 I used WinPcap to capture MOP bootstrap and online messages to boot the machine using the boot prom. It worked well until some unfortunate changes were made to WinPcap.

 

[Teletech]

After the system disks died on my 11/73 I used WinPcap to capture MOP bootstrap and online messages to boot the machine using the boot prom. It worked well until some unfortunate changes were made to WinPcap.

Indeed, I'm sort of resigned to using VTserver or PUTR at this point. It would be a cool project to netboot via DECnet and then use that OS to move an image over, I've got enough on my plate that letting a serial port shift the bits seems like a better use of limited time.