Error installing VMS from hobbyist CD

I thought that this problem sounded familiar when I posted it. I checked my old e-mail and saw that I did indeed run into a similar problem when using a different AXP emulator, although it failed at a different point much later during the installation.

I don't know whether something is wrong with my ISO file (and, thus, my CD), or if my installation techniques have some sort of glitch in them.

I've got a VMS V7.3 disc lying around. I'll try that and see how that behaves.

Installing OpenVMS from my V7.3-1 disc seems to have worked just fine... at least the installation part.

It finished installing, rebooted, asked about the cluster configuration, ran AUTOGEN, rebooted, and now it won't boot any longer, claiming:

%APB-F-MOUNT, failed to mount volume

halted CPU 0

halt code = 5
HALT instruction executed
PC = 200038c8
warning -- HWRPB is invalid
>>>

[i:]Edited to add...[/i:]

I just tried to reinstall VMS from the 7.3-1 disc, answering "No" to the cluster question, but the end result was the same. After the AUTOGEN step during the final installation steps, it reboots, and the resulting DKA0: disk is unbootable due to this same error.<hr>

I think I've identified the problem with both of these situations (both the hobbyist V8.3 and the older V7.3-1 distributions). It seems somehow related to the size of the disk onto which I was trying to do the installation.

When I first tried, I was using a freshly created RZ59 disk image, and that caused the failures listed above.

I tried using a much smaller RZ58 image, also freshly created, and things worked much better with both installation discs with both installations completing successfully.

I'm not sure what's wrong with the 9GB disk image, but there seems to be something going on.

In case it matters, these disk images are on an NTFS volume, so the magic 4 GB file size limitation should be an issue. This is on a Windows XP SP3 system.

[i:]Edited to add...[/i:]

As another small data point, the V8.3 disc installed just fine using an RZ29 disk.<hr>

I've been trying to recreate the problem with the RZ29 image without success. Are you using FreeAXP to create the image, or a different tool?

First, I see you say RZ29, but that's one that worked for me. It failed with the RZ59 disk volume.

I did allow FreeAXP to create the volume. I set it up in the configuration utility, and then when I started the virtual machine, it then paused while it set up the volume, and then continued giving me my new DKA0: device.<hr>

Sorry, will try the RZ59.