test-drb February 2016

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

203 participants
239 discussions

by jacob.ritorto＠gmail.com

Does anyone still have a copy of the "Emulex LSI/PDP MSCP Formatter Program (SXMX8B) ? My QD32 emerged from storage in a foul mood and is giving me errors I don't understand when I use the manual entry methods for inputting geometry and issuing a format. From what I can tell, it's complaining that its onboard RAM is bad. Comments / suggestions welcome. thx jake

8 years, 10 months

Dumb terminals and many sessions (was Re: VAXen and minimal memory)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 12:11 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote: >> DEC VT100s >> were around $1,800 in the early-1980s, > > VT100s (and terminals in general) often were used as bargaining chips > to sweeten deals, so the price was quite "flexible". I have no doubts that was true when selling systems, but I remember seeing the paperwork from when we were growing, so 10 new employees meant 10 new terminals (and sometimes one more CS21)... Eventually, we stopped growing, then started shrinking, so it was feasible to log into two systems at once by having two terminals on your desk. We also had structured wiring from Nevada Western (DB25 modular adapters on each terminal, 6-pin silver satin cables to the wall, and several 3U "switchboard" panels with blocks of jacks and 25-pair telco cables back to the VAXen) so it was also easy to employ 2-line switch blocks at our desks. Eventually, we had "modern" terminals like the CiTOH 101e that supported a second session over the "serial printer" line (we never used the second line for hardcopy). Now, I use computers with bitmap screens to maintain multiple simultaneous character-based sessions. Same workflow, less wire and fewer large hunks of plastic and metal on my desk. -ethan

8 years, 10 months

11/73 into 11/03 chassis?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jacob Ritorto > Would you happen to have notes or references about how to do it? It's not too hard; basically, one has to wire pins BC1, BD1, BE1 and BF1 (BDAL 18-BDAL21, respectively) on all _QBUS_ slots together into a bus. So wire BC1 on slot 1 to BC1 on slot 2, slot 3, etc, etc. A couple of notes: First, I said '_QBUS_' because if you have a Q/CD backplane, clearly one doesn't run the extra BDAL lines to the CD slots, only the QBUS slots (which run down the left-hand side, when facing the backplane). Second, for optimal analog behaviour, the 'out' slot on the backplane should be the last slot you wire to, so that there are no branches in the transmission line for BDAL18-BDAL21 (which can produce reflections - aka noise - on the transmission lines). How to do this efficiently (in terms of the wiring) can be a bit tricky, depending on the backplane configuration. E.g. if one has the standard 'serpentine' backplane, i.e. one with the slots in the following kind of order (facing the backplane from the board side): 1-2 4-3 5-6 8-7 9-10 etc., one might naively think one has to run the extra bus lines back and forth to match. However, only the _grant_ lines have to follow this pattern (and they are already there); the added lines don't have to follow the same pattern, as long as there are no branches. So, for the example 5-slot backplane above, one could/would wire: 1-4-5-8-9--2-3-6-7-10 i.e. a single vertical run on the left hand side, a single diagonal from 9 back to 2 (shown with "--"), and then another vertical run on the right hand side. Much simpler than wiring back and forth in slot order; there are no branches; and the last slot is the 'out' slot. For backplane with an _even_ number of layers, e.g.: 1-2 4-3 5-6 8-7 it's a little more complicated: a single vertical run on each side cannot be connected in such a way as to have the 'out' slot (8) be the last slot. One has to do something a little more complex: 1-4-5--2-3-6-7--8 with a vertical run on the left side, stopping short of the last slot; then a vertical run on the right side, then a lateral back across on the last layer. Obviously one _could_ run the wires back and forth, in slot order, but that will take a lot more wire, which at the very least is more work (especially on backplanes which don't have full wire-wrap pins, just the little stubby pins that have to have the wires soldered to); whether it also increases the delay down those transmission lines enough to be noticeable is something I don't know the answer to. All the obvious caveats apply: make sure not to get confused by the mirror pin and slot numbers on the front and back sides (you'll be wiring on the back, whereas the diagrams above are on the front), etc. Noel

8 years, 10 months

Odd 11/23 (?) ROM carrier

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Anyone know what this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/251526917058 is? It has five chips, not six, so it's not the KEF11-BB CIS option. I've tried Web searches on "57-27889-01", but not turned up anything useful. Noel

8 years, 10 months

[long shot] Looking for a Sequent Symmetry...

by ian.finder＠gmail.com

Preferably one of the deskside SMP models. Proving a point about under what circumstances X86 machines can be considered cool... :^) Located in Seattle. -- Ian Finder (206) 395-MIPS ian.finder at gmail.com

8 years, 10 months

Good memory board for Heath H-11?

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

>Richard Cini wrote: >Jerome -- good point about the IOPAGE. Maybe I'll get an 8kw and 16kw board -- that gives me 28kw with the included 4kw. I have no specific software so I don't need to tinker with reducing IOPAGE. > >Rich > >>>On Feb 9, 2016, at 10:47 PM, Jerome H. Fine <jhfinedp3k at compsys.to> wrote: >> >>>Thanks guys. This is really helpful. I was getting confused between the M8044 and M7944 boards. Max memory for the LSI-11 is 32kw, right? >>> >>> >>Correct, the maximum memory on a board is 32kw. >> >>For an LSI-11 (aka PDP-11/03) without any MMU hardware, >>the actual maximum memory that can be accessed must also allow >>for the IOPAGE registers. Usually, the IOPAGE address range >>is 4 kw which leaves 28kw for everything else, including RT-11 >>(assuming that is what you are running). There is one option >>available with some hardware to reduce the address range >>set aside for the IOPAGE to just 2kw which then leaves >>30kw for everything else. Unless you are running a specific >>program which requires the extra 2kw, it is probably not >>worth the extra effort. >> I hope that my version of arithmetic is for 8kw + 16kw = 24kw, so somewhere I don't understand where the other 4kw comes from. Then, since you are missing only 4kw out of the maximum of 28kw (which is the normal maximum), you will not likely have a problem unless you have really memory rich programs. RT-11 runs fairly well in just 16kw (or 32 KB), so it should not be a problem. For my own work in which I need to run MACRO.SAV as fast as possible, I run the program in 64 KB of extended memory under a Mapped Monitor - which a PDP-11/03 (or an LSI-11) can't do since there is no MMU chip. Of course, my actual CPU is a Pentium III which I use to run Ersatz-11 so that RT-11 is running 15 times as fast as a PDP-11/93. And the disk I/O is also a bit faster. I can copy a 32 MB RT-11 partition to a second 32 MB RT-11 partition in under 2 seconds. Even with two ESDI hard drives on a PDP-11/93, that takes over 4 minutes. Jerome Fine

8 years, 10 months

Good memory board for Heath H-11?

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

I have not opened up ours yet but I always assumed they were all DEC boards. Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) In a message dated 2/9/2016 7:36:05 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, glen.slick at gmail.com writes: On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 6:08 PM, Richard Cini <rich.cini at verizon.net> wrote: > All ? > > I picked-up a Heath H-11 machine the other day and it has a single 4kw memory board. From my prior experiences with DEC (an 11/34a many years ago; now at the RI Computer Museum), I know my way around the field guide?but I? m having trouble trying to identify the correct module number suitable for the LSI-11 CPU. Even though it?s a Heath machine, I assume it?s module compatible with DEC. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! > > Rich Maybe an M8044 MSV11-D (no parity) or M8045 MSV11-E (parity) would be most appropriate. They came in 4KW, 8KW, 16KW, and 32KW flavors. http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/antonio/dec/msv1dop1.pdf Fairly common on eBay.

8 years, 10 months

AIX for IBM PS/2

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

>Good luck in finding media for AIX PS/2. As far as I know, it was never released on >CDROM and the last version I had was ~53 3.5? floppies (long gone now unfortunately) >and *only* worked on specific PS/2 hardware (no BIOS ? all drivers went straight >to the ?metal?). > >TTFN - Guy Nope, AIX 1.3 is readily available. It's over on http://ps-2.kev009.com if you know where to look along with a rather massive amount of documentation and (VERY HANDY) installation instructions. I can confirm that it will work on a stock IBM 8580 and you can get several different flavours of window system if you wanna roll that way. I put a video on Youtube a few years ago of a running machine when it was still rather badly configured. I briefly had it working on the model 55SX as well but because I was not labling the disks as I wrote them I went out-of-sequence somewhere and frustratingly couldn't find Disk 15. -John

8 years, 10 months

For HP fans: HP 85 + HP 7970 + HP 2631 demo

by curiousmarc3＠gmail.com

In case you had not seen it already. I finally managed to control my big HP 7970E 9-track tape and my HP 2631G dot matrix from the little HP 85 that could. Hey, they all talk the same HP-IB after all (well, not really but close enough). Here is the resulting demo of this odd 1970's trio: https://youtu.be/YS9dGYUbNd0 Marc

8 years, 10 months

Programming

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ian S. King > so much for running that on my PDP-11/20 If you have an actual 11/20, you should be ecstatic! ;-) Noel

8 years, 10 months

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test-drb February 2016