> From: Christian Corti
> 3710 Euro... someone with definitely too much money ... So no, we did
> not get the system, and it probably won't go into a museum.
Well, I did send you email offering to contribute, to help you all buy it.
Did my email not make it to you?
Noel
On 4/28/19 6:27 PM, Ray Jewhurst wrote:
> I already have a Hobbyist License.? I am just interested in
> experimenting with different OSes and different versions of OSes.
ACK
I don't know what VAX hardware VMS 1.5 supported, what VAX hardware that
Simh supports, or what the overlap is between the two.
There's a reasonable chance that someone will chime in with experience.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
Hello friends,
I recently acquired a NIB 9-track for use in my (someday to be operational) PDP-11/23+ or PDP-11/73 (I've lost track of the details). I got it on ebay for $150 but the shipping from CA to NY was not insubstantial :). The ebay ad showed a well-used unit but when it arrived it was clearly new in box! Nice when that happens :) Some pix:
http://w2hx.com/x/VintageComp/Fujitsu-2444AC/
It is VERY heavy! Took me and my 17 year old (and a lot of sweat and swearing) to get it up to the attic where my burgeoning little vintage computing lab is shaping up.
I should mention, I'd like this tape drive to be able to work in either the various DEC OS's available (RT-11/RSX/others?) and also Unix/BSD which I plan (hope) to get up and running.
Now for some questions.
1. I've been told the QT13 is a very good card to interface here. I've been looking for a while on ebay without luck. I do see a QT14 on ebay right now at a good price, but I am not familiar with the "S" card business and what that means for use in a PDP-11 backplane.
2. Anyone have a QT13 for sale? Or based on my dec and unix interests, is there a better/recommended card?
3. Anyone have the 50 pin cables/connectors available? If not I feel confident I could make these up. But I thought I'd ask in case someone has a set getting in their way
4. Anyone ever make a pertec to USB project? Might be interesting to get access to old tapes on more modern computers?
Thanks all!
73 Eugene W2HX
One of my few remaining Holy Grail items, I got a Hayes Transet 1000
this week. My three-part Hayes stack is now complete.
I've scanned the manual and quick-ref card. The scan is not up to the
quality of my usual work, as I tried a new technique using a DSLR
instead of a scanner so I wouldn't have to take the manual apart. The
results are good enough to read, but that's about it. I'll re-do it
again someday with the proper tools. Here's the link:
http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/index.php?dir=%2Fcomputing/Hayes
I have two manuals for the config software (alas only the Mac version
of the software itself), which I'll try to do soon. I'll image the
Mac disk as well. If anyone has the PC version of the software, I'd
love it have it.
-j
> From: Zane Healy
> How safe is it to put modern rack rails (HP) in a classic DEC Rack?
May I ask why you're doing that? Are you trying to mount modern units
in an old rack?
If you're trying to mount old units (RK05's, BA11's, etc) in an old rack,
I've been working on finding old slide-mounts; e.g. I know the thing
to order for RK05's.
Noel
> It occurs to me that the turbochannel slots have 4A each. It would be
> entirely possible to print a whole open source board like the raspberry
> Pi (or banana Pi, etc) on a turbochannel card and kill two birds with
> one stone.
I'n not quite sure why people are so interested in killing birds with
stones, but perhaps that's a discussion for another time :)
I've thought about doing something similar. I use my Raspberry Pis / small
computers to do more than just MOP boot, serve NFS, and perhaps NAT or
route to the Internet:
https://hackaday.io/project/218-speed-up-pkgsrc-on-retrocomputers
(it does need to be updated a little)
It's not entirely clear whether you're talking about making a board that a
Pi (whether Raspberry, Banana, or other compatible) can just plug in, or
if you're talking about making a full TURBOchannel board that has a Pi on
the board itself ("print a whole open source board"). If the full board,
then it would make a lot more sense if it was interfaced directly to
TURBOchannel and could present itself as various devices such as mass
storage, ethernet and GPIO. Otherwise, why bother with the complexity?
My VAXstation 4000/90 has a TURBOchannel adapter. It was not easy to find,
nor was it cheap. I'm currently using it for a TC-USB card:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170831062121/http://www.flxd.de/tc-usb/
So a Pi on a TURBOchannel card wouldn't be useful for any of my other
VAXstation 4000/60 machines (nor VLC).
Otherwise, it would make a lot more sense to instead mount a Pi in a 3.5"
drive's space and use a Molex drive power connector to power it. One can
even get fancy and get a 12 volt to 5 volt regulator to power the Pi.
I looked in to the idea of using an ESP8266 in place of the AUI to give
older machines wireless, but it seems this is hardly trivial:
https://hackaday.com/2015/06/12/retro-edition-the-lan-before-time/
That also dissuaded me from imagining something that could plug in to the
AUI port and interface with a Pi or other SBC. The same goes for a modern,
inexpenive, small way to interface an SBC with the 10BASE2 ports on older
machines.
So I can't picture any better way to get ethernet from the back of the
machine to a Pi / SBC, internal or otherwise, without an AUI and ethernet
cable. How were you thinking of doing that?
John
> The system is mostly idle, RAM is mostly free (there's 32mb),
> there is almost no paging, but the CPU is spending upwards of 70% of the
> time in the interrupt stack mode.
If I had to guess, I'd say the most likely culprit is ethernet. Try
disconnecting ethernet, perhaps the AUI, too, and see if it's any
different.
John
On 4/28/19 3:55 PM, Ray Jewhurst via cctalk wrote:
> I am new to the list and would like to introduce myself. I
> am a computer history buff who especially likes DEC machines.
> I unfortunately don't own any hardware but I use Simh on a daily
> basis. I would like to start off with a question. I see that Bitsavers
> has a copy of VMS 1.5 and wanted to know if anyone got it working
> with the Vax 780 simulator?
> I hope to learn a lot from this group.
Hi Ray, about 18 months ago, I did indeed install VMS 1.5 on a simulated
(with simh) VAX-11/780. It was not particularly difficult, but it did take
a bit more effort than I expected. Here is what I did and the problems that
I came across. I am typing this from memory, so I might have mis-remembered
the odd fact.
The instructions tell you to create a bootable disk from tape using the DSC
utility. However, DSC was something that ran in PDP-11 emulation mode on a
VAX and was discontinued early enough in the evolution of VMS that it was
not present on any of my simulated systems (VMS 4.x, 5.x and 7.3). I needed
to build a VMS 3.0 system in order to complete copying the VMS 1.5 tape to
disk. If you have a simulated PDP-11 system, you might be able to use that
instead.
Building the VMS 3.0 system gave me another problem in that I tried using a
simulated TE16 (Massbus) tape drive to read the VMS 3.0 installation tape.
This should have been fine, but actually I uncovered a bug in simh. Bob
Supnik fixed the bug, but you do need to use an up to date version of simh
to get the bug fix. If you need to use an old version of simh for some
reason, then use a TS (Unibus) tape drive and all should be well.
VMS 1.5 is primitive compared with later versions, but does have historical
interest. Do let me know if you want any further information about my
adventures with VMS 1.5.
Cheers
Peter Allan
Was given a tapedrive in rather bad condition, but it has no manufacturers name on it.
Pics on ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/Tapedrive
Anyone recognizes this ? The paddle PCB says "paddle board, 7/9 level tape handler."
Not even sure if it is a computer tape drive or an instrument / data logger...
Yours if you pick it up ( and be prepared to spend quit some time to clean this one up. Unit has seen more this its share of water over the years)
Location : CH
Jos
