[cctalk] Re: WTB Any storage for a PDP 8/A

On 2/25/2023 10:46 PM, Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote: Ah, I seem to have misspoken. Inspecting the Makefile in .../installer, it still runs the executable "handler_installer", which is the older tool that more or less just hammers a new system handler and bootstrap into place. The script for the new installer is "sdsk". This sets up a path for the tools, copies the newest driver binaries into the exploded disk image (while padding them to an even block length), then imploding the exploded directory and making a new bootable RK05 image. Then "runbuild" is invokes, which in turn invokes SIMH and sends a series of commands to BUILD.SV to remove various other drivers and install the "SDSKSY" and "SDSKNS" drivers copied above. Finally, the "BOOT" command is given to write the new second stage (and third stage) bootstrap. The self-modified BOOT.SV is also saved as BUILT.SV. Sorry for the confusion. If you don't want to use diagpack2, SDSK.md is helpful, but basically you need to edit the line: image=diagpack2 in the sdsk script, and to have previously copied in your starting image, and run ../tools/os8xplode on it. SDSK.md also contains information about the need for "perl", "socat", and "expect" and to get them (on Linux, anyway). Oh, and the SIMH initialization file (pdp8.ini) is also firing up the server program, so you need to tweak that to make your "foo.new" available to the SIMH serial emulation. That script used to also require a functioning xterm, but it doesn't any more. If you have xterm and want to see the server log in real time, there are lines there to invoke ../server/server the other way, and you can un-comment that and comment out the bash line. Once you've done all the above, it suffices to just type "pdp8" in that directory and your new system should boot in SIMH. Hope that helps, Vince