You have worked most of this out. I will post these notes for those that follow in your footsteps:
- It is important to remember when working with FreeAXP that the software emulates Alpha hardware. When FreeAXP is first started, it acts like a real Alpha system fresh out of the box with no O/S installed. From there you build your OpenVMS or Tru64 system by mounting a CD and installing the operating system, just like on real hardware.
- VMS documentation media has been available in ODS-2, Windows, and MAC compatible formats for some time. The VMS O/S and product CD's are ODS-2 only, which is to be expected. HP maintains a comprehensive collection of VMS documentation online for current versions of the O/S at
h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/os82_index.html
.
- If all you have available is the OpenVMS O/S installation CD, the Installation Guide and Release Notes are available on the CD. You would need to boot the CD under FreeAXP, select the "Execute DCL commands and procedures" option, then type or edit the text files in the documentation directory. On a VMS 8.3 O/S CD, they are located in [ALPHA083.DOCUMENTATION] as OVMS_V83_INSTALL.TXT and OVMS_V83_REL_NOTES.TXT. If you had defined your CD drive as DKA600, then you could issue the following command to view the installation guide:
< class='quote' style='width:400px;white-space:nowrap;overflow:auto'><code style='white-space:nowrap'>$$$ TYPE /PAGE DKA600: [ALPHA083.DOCUMENTATION]OVMS_V83_INSTALL.TXT<br><br><br></code>
Other versions of VMS will have similar file structures on the CD allowing access to the installation documentation.
- Disk container files are created as raw disk devices. They are not pre-formatted. They must be formatted for the O/S that will use them, just like a new disk on a physical CD.
