>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com>
>
>On Thu, 6 Jan 2005, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
>
>> >And the programmers were not smart enough to figure a way around this
>> >because...why?
>>
>> It would have been trivial for them to adopt a simple
>> block transfer for serial binary at the begining. I suspect
>> that the reason they didn't do this was that they didn't
>> wan't people to transfer programs from machine to machine.
>> Can you imaging. 1 million people with computers and they
>> only sold one OS.
>
>Hi Dwight.
>
>Your theory would make sense in an alternate universe where the floppy
>disk was never invented ;)
>
Ok, then they had no excuse.
Dwight
>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com>
>
>On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
>
>> Vintage Computer Festival declared on Wednesday 05 January 2005 11:19 pm:
>> > On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Pete Turnbull wrote:
>> > > Dunno, I don't have quite such old versions :-) My old copy of "The
>> > > MS-DOS Bible" says "every version" -- it means 3.30 and older --
>> > > disallows binary reads from devices. The same message is at 5254 in
>> > > MS-DOS 3.30 (ditto in PC-DOS 3.30), at 4CA0 in 3.21, and 4CCC in
>> > > IBM-DOS 4.01 (from a Compaq). I can't read my MS-DOS 2.10 and 2.11
>> > > disks on the hardware I have here. "Binary reads from a device are
>> > > not allowed" is the message at 8753 in DR-DOS 3.41.
>> >
>> > The question I haven't seen answered yet is, "Well, why the hell
>> > not???"
>>
>> Well, my guess would be that it has no way to determine the EOF coming
>> over the line, as it can't just "check the file length", unless there's
>> a ^Z there to indicate it. Thus, ASCII mode is needed.
>
>And the programmers were not smart enough to figure a way around this
>because...why?
Hi
It would have been trivial for them to adopt a simple
block transfer for serial binary at the begining. I suspect
that the reason they didn't do this was that they didn't
wan't people to transfer programs from machine to machine.
Can you imaging. 1 million people with computers and they
only sold one OS.
Dwight
I'm in need of an IPI terminator. I am trying to make a Sun 690MP
usefull and this is the last component in my way.
I'm told this is *not* the same as the d-shell 3-pin-row SCSI
terminators.
Hi
I'm almost sure I'd done this in the past to
get something like laplink running on a remote machine.
I suspect that the code specifically had no ^Z
until the end of the file and it was just a minimum
bootstrap program to load the rest.
One could always edit the file by changing any ^Z to
something else. Once on the new machine, just change them
back.
I do remember that the name of the file couldn't be
.COM or .EXE. I think the copy from COM1: didn't
work for those files names.
Dwight
>From: "Pete Turnbull" <pete(a)dunnington.u-net.com>
>
>On Jan 3 2005, 13:01, John Foust wrote:
>> At 12:41 PM 1/3/2005, you wrote:
>> > It seems like I remember doing something
>> >like "copy COM1: FileName" or something.
>> > It seems like I remember there being an issue
>> >with the file name extention.
>>
>> And perhaps something else about setting the mode of the COM1:
>> port for bits and binary?
>
>You can't, in MS-DOS. COPY uses ASCII transfers for COM ports and
>complains if you try to force binary, because it needs to see a ctrl-Z
>to know where the end-of-file is.
>
>--
>Pete Peter Turnbull
> Network Manager
> University of York
>
I have a VS2000 memory board (the 2 meg upgrade, I think) doing nothing
here, and it needs to go. Anyone want it for a buck and shipping?
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
I've finished, and am debugging, a VAX-11/780 simulator, with the goal
of running VMS V1, early BSD releases, and other 'first VAX' code.
There are a couple of critical missing pieces. In particular, I need
1) 780 PROM bootstrap contents. This was the 4KB of PROM located in the
MS780 memory controllers. A binary dump would be sufficient, the
simulator can dissassemble VAX code.
2) LSI11 console PROM contents. The LSI11 console ran out of a boot
PROM. This is less critical but would help with understanding the fine
details of the console-CPU interaction. Again, a binary dump suffices.
3) VMS V1 floppy kit. While early tape distributions have been found,
the console floppies have not. The most critical ones are the tape
restore program and the system bootstrap (VMB). Getting a 780 online
required
- booting the console from its PROM
- loading the standalone tape restore program into the 780 from the
console
- running the standalone tape restore program to copy VMS from the
distribution tape to a hard disk
- loading VMB into the 780 from the console
- using VMB to boot VMS
Any help would be appreciated. The 780 simulator, in its current
incomplete state, is included in the SIMH source distribution,
http://simh.trailing-edge.com.
--
Bob Supnik bob.supnik(a)sicortex.com
VP Engineering Tel: 978.897.0214 x202
SiCortex Fax: 978.461.2444
One Clocktower Place Cell: 508.344.0398
Suite 100
Maynard, Ma 01754
On Jan 5 2005, 15:55, Tom Jennings wrote:
> Hmm. It's clearly obvious that when personal memory, and 30+ lbs.
> of documentation disagree, the printed manuals are all in error.
Absolutely! They change them, you know, when you're not looking. It's
often happened to me :-)
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York