5 Mar
2023
5 Mar
'23
4:06 a.m.
Ok, after banging my head against the wall for awhile this evening it
looks like I have two flashfloppy drives working on my Pro/380. Well
enough to boot from and install 3.2 options.
The keys are these:
1) Use a flat 34 pin ribbon cable with three plugs in a straight line. I
tried using one with the traditional flip, got frustrated at the extra
complexity, and reterminated it as straight through all the way.
2) Set one drive to unit 0 (J2 installed) and the second to unit 1 (J3
installed)
3) This is the kicker: RX50's are Shugart drives. You have to go into
the configuration and set the drives to Shugart. IBMPC doesn't work
properly with the disk ready and disk swap signal, I stumbled on this
when I found that flipping the disk image while it was seeking produced
a brief access. Hah.
4) I set the ff.cfg also to read only to avoid stepping on the images by
accident.
So far it seems to be working, saw both drives in the file manager (I
had built a minimum system with the floppies I had) and now I'm
reformatting the RD53 drive and doing a full install. Should be as
simple as turning the knob and hitting resume.
Thanks to Bjoren for letting me know it kind of worked for him years ago
which gave me the knowledge that it could work. One issue I can see is
that since both "drives" use the same head, stupid software could assume
that since drive 0 was seeked to track 30 then drive 1 should be at
track 30 and thus no need to change tracks. So far I haven't seen this
happen, but we shall see.
Interesting.
CZ
5 Mar
5 Mar
5:07 a.m.
This is very cool! Glad to see you got it working...
On Sat, Mar 4, 2023 at 9:06 PM Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Ok, after banging my head against the wall for awhile
this evening it
looks like I have two flashfloppy drives working on my Pro/380. Well
enough to boot from and install 3.2 options.
The keys are these:
1) Use a flat 34 pin ribbon cable with three plugs in a straight line. I
tried using one with the traditional flip, got frustrated at the extra
complexity, and reterminated it as straight through all the way.
2) Set one drive to unit 0 (J2 installed) and the second to unit 1 (J3
installed)
Yea, that's how the two floppy setups on the DEC Rainbow were done.
Flipped cables only were a IBM-PC thing at first, though others started
using them later to emulate the PC... The few CP/M machines I've played
with were more like the Rainbow than the IBM-PC, but there were so
many CP/M machines I might have missed it...
3) This is the kicker: RX50's are Shugart drives.
You have to go into
the configuration and set the drives to Shugart. IBMPC doesn't work
properly with the disk ready and disk swap signal, I stumbled on this
when I found that flipping the disk image while it was seeking produced
a brief access. Hah.
Yes. Pin 34 is READY, not CHANGE, and it has to come ready for the
controller to like the drive. I managed to get the GoTek working with
this config, but I did this for a single drive on my Rainbow. Since I
have the MFM emulator, I've only dabbled with the GoTek.
4) I set the ff.cfg also to read only to avoid
stepping on the images by
accident.
So far it seems to be working, saw both drives in the file manager (I
had built a minimum system with the floppies I had) and now I'm
reformatting the RD53 drive and doing a full install. Should be as
simple as turning the knob and hitting resume.
Nice!
Thanks to Bjoren for letting me know it kind of worked
for him years ago
which gave me the knowledge that it could work. One issue I can see is
that since both "drives" use the same head, stupid software could assume
that since drive 0 was seeked to track 30 then drive 1 should be at
track 30 and thus no need to change tracks. So far I haven't seen this
happen, but we shall see.
I've not seen this assumption in practice. Part of the reason is that,
I was told years ago, was because many DEC Engineers had two separate
drives instead of the RX-50 in their systems, so errors like this would be
caught and fixed. I never encountered any when I ran my DEC Rainbow
with two TEAC FD-55F drives in either MS-DOS or CP/M. That doesn't
mean they don't exist, but it's been more of hypothetical than a common
thing. I'd love to see if you stumbled over this...
Warner
5:44 a.m.
Thank you Warner. Just takes time and staring at the thing for awhile.
I now have a full POS 3.2 install and Pro/Toolkit. Looks like it is M+
3.2 all right, over the next month I'll start poking around and see if I
can tease out the drivers and such for a better Gen. I want Split I/D
support. And if I do a snapshot of this real RD53 to Gesswin's emulator
and use that as my main disk I can try things, trash the system, then
revert to a snapshot in no time.
First though I need to get Pro/Decnet working. POS 3.2 does installs
differently than 2.0: It has the ability to have multiple "users" (nice)
and as a part of that you don't "Install" apps from disk anymore.
Instead you install them to a "System Library", then install them for
that user using the normal "Install" but from "Library" instead of
disk.
Weird, but makes sense: The library install puts in everything that's
privledged, and the menu install allows you to copy the additional files
for specific users. I wonder if you can install the libraries on a
DECNET mounted volume, that would be a *great* way to allow centralized
software distribution, update, patching, and cut down on local disk
space needs.
In the early 1980's. *sigh* DEC totally blew it, didn't they.
CZ
On 3/5/2023 12:07 AM, Warner Losh wrote:
This is very cool! Glad to see you got it working...
On Sat, Mar 4, 2023 at 9:06 PM Chris Zach via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
Ok, after banging my head against the wall for awhile this evening it
looks like I have two flashfloppy drives working on my Pro/380. Well
enough to boot from and install 3.2 options.
The keys are these:
1) Use a flat 34 pin ribbon cable with three plugs in a straight
line. I
tried using one with the traditional flip, got frustrated at the extra
complexity, and reterminated it as straight through all the way.
2) Set one drive to unit 0 (J2 installed) and the second to unit 1 (J3
installed)
Yea, that's how the two floppy setups on the DEC Rainbow were done.
Flipped cables only were a IBM-PC thing at first, though others started
using them later to emulate the PC... The few CP/M machines I've played
with were more like the Rainbow than the IBM-PC, but there were so
many CP/M machines I might have missed it...
3) This is the kicker: RX50's are Shugart drives. You have to go into
the configuration and set the drives to Shugart. IBMPC doesn't work
properly with the disk ready and disk swap signal, I stumbled on this
when I found that flipping the disk image while it was seeking produced
a brief access. Hah.
Yes. Pin 34 is READY, not CHANGE, and it has to come ready for the
controller to like the drive. I managed to get the GoTek working with
this config, but I did this for a single drive on my Rainbow. Since I
have the MFM emulator, I've only dabbled with the GoTek.
4) I set the ff.cfg also to read only to avoid stepping on the
images by
accident.
So far it seems to be working, saw both drives in the file manager (I
had built a minimum system with the floppies I had) and now I'm
reformatting the RD53 drive and doing a full install. Should be as
simple as turning the knob and hitting resume.
Nice!
Thanks to Bjoren for letting me know it kind of worked for him years
ago
which gave me the knowledge that it could work. One issue I can see is
that since both "drives" use the same head, stupid software could
assume
that since drive 0 was seeked to track 30 then drive 1 should be at
track 30 and thus no need to change tracks. So far I haven't seen this
happen, but we shall see.
I've not seen this assumption in practice. Part of the reason is that,
I was told years ago, was because many DEC Engineers had two separate
drives instead of the RX-50 in their systems, so errors like this would be
caught and fixed. I never encountered any when I ran my DEC Rainbow
with two TEAC FD-55F drives in either MS-DOS or CP/M. That doesn't
mean they don't exist, but it's been more of hypothetical than a common
thing. I'd love to see if you stumbled over this...
Warner
5:28 a.m.
Minor tangent:
decades ago, very briefly, several manufacturers, such as Canon,
introduced "dual" drives, that were the size of a regular floppy drive,
but with two slots, with two sets of heads, etc., for people who wanted
two floppy drives.
There were two variations, differentiated mostly, but not entirely by
price. One version had one head positioner, and the heads of both drives
would be on the same cylinder.
The other variation had independent head positioners.
Although MOST uses would prefer the independent positioners, the one that
shared a positioner, IFF the software understood, could copy disks much
faster. If the software did not understand, then it was extremely slow,
having to recalibrate for every track seek.
Before long, however, those drives were replaced by dual drives that
consisted of a 5.25" drive and a 3.5" drive, because, by that time people
were less interested in having a pair of drives than they were in haveing
both types.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
On Sat, 4 Mar 2023, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Ok, after banging my head against the wall for awhile
this evening it
looks like I have two flashfloppy drives working on my Pro/380. Well
enough to boot from and install 3.2 options.
The keys are these:
1) Use a flat 34 pin ribbon cable with three plugs in a straight line.
I tried using one with the traditional flip, got frustrated at the
extra complexity, and reterminated it as straight through all the way.
2) Set one drive to unit 0 (J2 installed) and the second to unit 1 (J3
installed)
3) This is the kicker: RX50's are Shugart drives. You have to go into
the configuration and set the drives to Shugart. IBMPC doesn't work
properly with the disk ready and disk swap signal, I stumbled on this
when I found that flipping the disk image while it was seeking
produced a brief access. Hah.
4) I set the ff.cfg also to read only to avoid stepping on the images
by accident.
So far it seems to be working, saw both drives in the file manager (I
had built a minimum system with the floppies I had) and now I'm
reformatting the RD53 drive and doing a full install. Should be as
simple as turning the knob and hitting resume.
Thanks to Bjoren for letting me know it kind of worked for him years
ago which gave me the knowledge that it could work. One issue I can
see is that since both "drives" use the same head, stupid software
could assume that since drive 0 was seeked to track 30 then drive 1
should be at track 30 and thus no need to change tracks. So far I
haven't seen this happen, but we shall see.
Interesting.
CZ
3:20 p.m.
On Mar 4, 2023, at 11:06 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
...One issue I can see is that since both "drives" use the same head, stupid
software could assume that since drive 0 was seeked to track 30 then drive 1 should be at
track 30 and thus no need to change tracks. So far I haven't seen this happen, but we
shall see.
On the Pro, the software sees a fairly traditional CSR set with disk address registers
(sector and track). So an assumption like the one you worry about would be in the
controller, not the OS. If it works at all then that would say the controller doesn't
make that assumption.
paul
3:24 p.m.
On the Pro, the software sees a fairly traditional CSR
set with disk address registers (sector and track). So an assumption like the one you
worry about would be in the controller, not the OS. If it works at all then that would
say the controller doesn't make that assumption.
Yup, things just seem to work. I even was able to boot the diagnostics
disk from virtual floppy, you just have to remember which Gotek is DZ1:
and which is DZ2: and wait a few seconds after switching for the Gotek's
to "settle down" when swapping images.
But it works, my DECNA passes all diagnostics, and it looks like it also
passes the loopback tests for DECNET 3.2.
Now to figure out how the TMS software works.... :-)
CZ
3:40 p.m.
Holy smokes. Poking around on these disk images it looks like these
system have a FULL DECNET FILE SERVER as well. I'm guessing it would
allow endpoints to get install files off a central Pro/350. Or maybe
allow users to share files, do what Netware did, that sort of thing.
Who know what else I can do with that.....
This thing could do a lot more with 3.2 than it could with 2.0 software.
Very interesting...
CZ
On 3/5/2023 10:24 AM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
On the Pro,
the software sees a fairly traditional CSR set with disk
address registers (sector and track). So an assumption like the one
you worry about would be in the controller, not the OS. If it works
at all then that would say the controller doesn't make that assumption.
Yup, things just seem to work. I even was able to boot the diagnostics
disk from virtual floppy, you just have to remember which Gotek is DZ1:
and which is DZ2: and wait a few seconds after switching for the Gotek's
to "settle down" when swapping images.
But it works, my DECNA passes all diagnostics, and it looks like it also
passes the loopback tests for DECNET 3.2.
Now to figure out how the TMS software works.... :-)
CZ 
8 Mar
8 Mar
6:42 p.m.
"Holy smokes. Poking around on these disk images it looks like these
system have a FULL DECNET FILE SERVER as well." Are you referring to
DECnet FAL on the PRO, or the little known PRO Cluster software? -- Lee
K. Gleason N5ZMR Control-G Consultants lee.gleason(a)comcast.net
9:26 p.m.
Not sure yet. Will see in a week or so
On March 8, 2023 1:42:58 PM EST, Lee Gleason via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
>"Holy smokes. Poking around on these disk images it looks like these system have
a FULL DECNET FILE SERVER as well." Are you referring to DECnet FAL on the PRO, or
the little known PRO Cluster software? -- Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR Control-G Consultants
lee.gleason(a)comcast.net
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8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Chris Zach -
Chris Zach -
Christopher Zach
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Fred Cisin -
Lee Gleason -
Paul Koning -
Warner Losh