5810 installation report

[George Robbins]

Well, the my 5810 is now "installed" and seems to work.

A couple of problems/notes...

0) there's no real good overall "start-here-with-this-tape" map.  You starts
   with the tape marked "ULT-32 V3.1C (ISIS) TK50" and do the basic or advanced
   installation.  There are at least 2 read-me-first's and release notes for
   3.1C and 3.0.

1) If you let the system self-configure as part of the "basic installation",
   the software configures the console TK70 as device "tms6" in the config
   file and as /dev/*mt0? in /dev.  This can get pretty confusing when you
   go to load subsets and try to figure out "where" the tape drive is.

   If intend to have "real" tape drives on the system, it's probably best to
   delete the resulting entry for /dev/*mt0? and then MAKEDEV tms0 tms1...tms7
   so it will make some kind of sense.  Alternatively you can make entries for
   /dev/*mt70? using the appropriate major and minor numbers.

   Apparently you can also access the tape as a block device as /dev/tu1, but
   the utiltity of this is left to your imagination.

2) The software package includes distribution tapes for both Ultrix 3.0 (RISC)
   and Ultrix 3.1C, however there doesn't seem to be any point at which you
   actually use the 3.0 tape.

3) NONE of the traditional "unsupported" software is shipped, although some
   of the documnets suggest that there at least used to be a 3.x (RISC)
   unsupported products tape.

4) I ordered DECnet/Ultrix and DECserver 200, however there was a note on the
   packing slip indicating that these were "unsupported" on the 5810 and that
   they "weren't configured".  Actually, I recieved copies of the "VAX" 
   versions of these items.  Supposedly DECnet Ultrix 3.0A is the the "RISC"
   version and is supposed to be "in the mail".   The DS200 stuff won't load
   since the VAX 3.x base isn't present, however you can suck it off manually
   since it's only a server image, shell script and release notes...

5) The Ultrix Workstation Stuff, which I haven't braved yet, seems to consist
   of some 9 TK's half "VAX" and half "RISC".  Seems to be a "base" and an
   "update"...

My configuration, btw is a 5810, 32M-byte, 2 DMB-32, 2 RA70's in box and
and HSC50 with (currently) a couple of RA81's and a TA78 attached thereto.
It all seems to be working, including the HSC!  Be warned that you have to
manually configure the HSC attached drives and also that they don't seem to
show up in the boot-time config printout, rather they pop-up a little bit
later.  I'm not sure if they show up as soon as the system tries to get at
them or it's just coincidence.  If the latter, then it might be a problem
since fsck's and whatnot would blow of if the drives aren't there in time.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,	uucp: {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr at uunet.uu.net
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)