25 Feb
2023
25 Feb
'23
10:34 a.m.
On 2/25/2023 9:52 AM, silvercreekvalley--- via cctalk wrote:
Thanks Vince - I knew about the RX emulators but not
the serial disk - that sounds interesting. Is there any documentation on that - I had a
look at the GitHub but seemed a bit sparse.
Suggestions on how to make it more accessible are welcome. (Kyle and I
are the maintainers, with some help from Doug and others.)
Basically, the idea is to take the great many existing (RK05) images,
and convert them to work over a serial port to a server running in a
generic POSIX environment. There are several parts to this:
There's some documentation (SerialDisk/docs)
There are system and non-system handlers for the new device (handler).
There are a couple of choices for short bootstrap programs to get things
rolling (bootloader).
There are a few provided RK05 images (disks).
There's the POSIX program to serve the disk images over the serial line
(server).
There are various conversion schemes to get your RK05 image converted to
the new drivers.
The one I use most uses the SIMH simulator to automate the ritual of
uninstalling RK05 drivers and replacing them with SerialDisk driver.
The Makefile there will actually convert a disk image, and you could
just swipe the default one once it's been made.
Once the disk image(s) are converted to the new drivers, they boot OS/8
in a simple way using one of the short bootstraps.
The other things you need (besides a PDP-8) are a PC/RasPi/whatever to
run the server on, and as fast a serial port as you can manage.
There are also example config files for running the whole thing under
SIMH on your POSIX box. If you're more concerned about getting software
developed than about the retro experience, that's also a great way to
speed things along.
TBH, when I'm in a hurry I often just use SIMH with the cross assembler,
and skip OS/8 altogether until I'm ready to verify that things work on
real hardware. You'll need more interaction with OS/8 to open files and
such, so that might not work for you.
It is a great relief to use a proper editor, rather than the one in
OS/8. You might also want to hunt down the emacs-like editor that was
done for OS/8 a couple of years ago, if you're going to be working
native a lot.
Vince