test-drb September 2021

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

125 participants
76 discussions

by a.carlini＠ntlworld.com

I have three AlphaServer 2100 systems in storage in the UK (Oxfordshire). The storage, however, is due to be demolished (soon, but no fixed date). I won't have room to store these three systems, so if anyone would be interested in offering them a home, then please get in touch! I can probably get some pictures in the next day or two. These systems were SMP Alphas and could sport as many as 4 CPUs. I'm not sure of the configuration of these systems but I can probably find that out soon. They have not been run since ~2003 so they may be in need of some TLC. OTOH they are not rusted to death so you have a chance of getting them back to life. Just so you know what you might be dealing with these systems are about: 700mm H x 430mm W x 810mm L. I can't find the weight in any of my references right now but they are very heavy. Three people can move them up a slight slope with some effort but you would not successfully lift it into a car (assuming that it would fit). I'm planning to dismantle them to move them (i.e. remove PSU/PSUs etc. until they are light enough to move). A tail-lift would probably be the sane way to go (and is, indeed, how they got to their current location. I'm hoping that someone can step forward and offer one or more of these machines a new home. Please contact me off-list (once you're sure you understand what you are getting into :-)). Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio at acarlini.com

2 years

H7821 power supply in MicroVAX 3100, SCSI disk enclosures and others

by cctalk＠beyondthepale.ie

The recent discussion on BSC protocol prompted me to dig out my Microvax 3100 with DSH32 synchronous serial interface. It had been idle in storage for several years and it wouldn't power up, only giving a brief flash on the diagnostic LEDs and a quick twitch of the fans. There was a slight smell, like the stale air that comes out of a deflating tyre. I took out the H7821 power supply and found that five identical brown 1800uF 25V electrolytic capacitors on the output side had leaked. The SCSI disk enclosure where the machine's system disk lives required several power cycles to get it to run at all and it died as soon as the disk tried to spin up. It turned out to also contain a H7821 power supply which had a similar issue with the same five brown capacitors, although not as extensive as in the main unit. I found a second disk enclosure which had seen little use and grabbed the power supply out of that to put in the MicroVAX. It worked well enough to test with but there was a ring of goo around the bottom of one of the brown capacitors which was worst affected in the other units. Time to order a batch of replacement capacitors and figure out what else has been damaged. While it is not the worst I have seen, access to these power supplies for repairs is quite difficult and it is really difficult to debug them safely while they are running with the cover off :-( If anyone has anything with H7821 power supplies in them, I suggest checking on these capacitors. If anything with these power supplies is in storage, I suggest ensuring it is stored the normal way up as this should limit the ability of the goo to escape and spread around the power supply. And there I was thought I was being safe enough by removing the nicad battery packs some years ago... Regards, Peter Coghlan.

2 years, 3 months

Programming Bipolar PROMs (Tom Hunter)

by mark＠markesystems.com

From: Tom Hunter <ccth6600 at gmail.com> Subject: Programming Bipolar PROMs > The part is an Intersil IM5600CP, but these were also made by others, for > example Signetics and Philips made the 82S23 and TI and NTE made the > faster > SN74S188N. Some vendors still sell these parts and there are even a few on > Ebay. > > How do I program these PROMs? I found one somewhat obscure description of > the algorithm in the NTE datasheet, but I suspect that each manufacturer > had (somewhat) different algorithms. I built a project using Russian clones of the 74188, and ended up building a programmer for them. The programming process is slow (over a minute to program 32 bytes), draws quite a bit of power (the chip is uncomfortably warm afterwards), and it took a while to work out the programming algorithm. Also, as Tom Hunter mentioned, the programming process isn't perfect - about 5% don't program correctly; I don't know if this is my algorithm or the fact that the clones aren't so good. However, once programmed, they seem to work just fine. I bought the Russian devices off eBay for cheap - I think they were about $0.20 apiece, so I got a hundred of them, which I've been slowly nibbling away at as my little product sells. I still have several dozen left; if you'd like you could send me the hex file (or listing - it's only 32 bytes, which I could type in), and I could program a couple for you. I'm not sure I could recommend building your own programmer. It's obviously possible, and there are hand-operated versions floating around on the internet (really hand-operated: set a rotary switch for the bit and five address switches, turn on the power, and push a button for 1-1/2 seconds; repeat for every "1" bit in the PROM), but you'd need more than just the Arduino. You need eight high-side drivers that will handle an amp apiece, plus another driver to switch the power supply voltage between 5 and 13.5 volts, as well as writing a program to implement the algorithm. (actually, it's slow enough that you could get by using relays for all the higher voltage switching.) I don't believe that any modern programmer handles these - if the Data I/O does, then that's probably your only option. ~~ Mark Moulding

2 years, 6 months

Linux and the 'clssic' computing world

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

To my knowledge the Linux kernel was released to the public 30 years ago around this time. My dear friend swears by it and will never go back to Windows even though WIN 11 is much more secure than previous Windows versions. Prior to Linux there were other much-earlier operating systems for 8-bit and 16-bit machines we classic computer users could use. For emulators now we have a choice but do they work better in Linux or Windows? Happy computing. Murray ?

2 years, 6 months

Old HP-UX CD codewords

by me＠larbob.org

Hello, Is there a list of codewords for old HP-UX media anywhere? I'm messing with HP-UX 10.20 and OnlineJFS seems to be present on the first application CD but is locked behind a codeword, which I can't seem to find anywhere. I have the December '01 application disks handy but no codewords. Thanks.

2 years, 6 months

SIMH KL10 usage guide? Hints? and

by bobsmithofd＠gmail.com

I am hoping someone here knows Richard Cornwell, driving force behind KL10B SimH and associated forks. Not sure how to raise the issue of simulated RP07 drives size not matching RPO7 and looking like RPO6. Also trying to figure out how to set switches as in other KA/KL sims. I can't seem to find a means of doing that in RC's KL. Is there a usage template? I have found the docs that describe it and tte config but the questions above are not evident in my reading, does not mean the data is not there, just I have not found the clue path. thanks for any help or pointers! bad bob

2 years, 6 months

Found my favorite DOS editor

by van.snyder＠sbcglobal.net

I found files for my favorite DOS editor on an archive from my OS/2 machine, which replaced my DOS machine in about 1990. The editor was ETOOL, from Amerisoft. If anybody wants the files, I'm happy to send them. -rw-r--r-- 1 vsnyder staff 245248 Mar 8 1988 e/dos/etool.exe -rw-r--r-- 1 vsnyder staff 1024 Mar 8 1988 e/dos/etool.fig -rw-r--r-- 1 vsnyder staff 83968 Jul 9 1985 e/dos/etool.hlp I lost the manual decades ago. Van Snyder van.snyder at sbcglobal.net

2 years, 6 months

MD5 list of bitsavers files

by a.carlini＠ntlworld.com

I'm trying to list out the document scans I have and work out which are already on bitsavers and which are not (and, indeed, a fair few of these are originally from bitsavers anyway). This is probably several thousand files total, so searching manx by hand is not an option! I see that manx lists the MD5 checksum for many files, at least it does for those from bitsavers. Is there a publicly available list of URL and MD5 checksum? This would make it relatively easy for me to cross check my files against the list and whittle down to a subset that I should make available. Alternatively, is the current manx database available anywhere? I know the code is on github, but I didn't see the data there. (I do have an SQL dump from 2010 when manx changed hands, but that's not recent enough to save much). I could try to do some parsing of bitsavers-filename => DEC-part-number and eliminate files that way, but that seems inexact at best. Or I could just download the DEC subset of files (spread across the mirrors) but that seems a bit antisocial. Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio at acarlini.com

2 years, 6 months

SCSI2SD in a DEC 3000/300 - T-ERR-SCSI A

by jjacocks＠mac.com

I?ve got a DEC 3000/300 system that has some SCSI drives with aging bearings installed. I?d like to be able to start to migrate some of my systems, like this, to flash media, of some kind, as even my large repository of SCSI disks is starting to dry up. Here is my SRM level info: DEC 3000 - M300 Digital Equipment Corporation VPP PAL V5.56-80800101/OSF PAL V1.45-80800201 - Built on 30-SEP-1996 09:18:31.84 As far as I have read, the SCSI2SD v6 2020 should be compatible with several varieties of DEC hardware, from the VAXen to the Alphas. However, I can?t seem to get anywhere useful with mine. I have the virtual disks configured as follows: >>> sh dev BOOTDEV ADDR DEVTYPE NUMBYTES RM/FX WP DEVNAM REV ------- ---- ------- -------- ----- -- ------ --- ESA0 08-00-2B-3F-4C-9A , TENBT DKA100 A/1/0 DISK 9.54GB FX RZ40 6.0 DKA300 A/3/0 DISK 9.54GB FX RZ40 6.0 DKA400 A/4/0 RODISK 305.01MB RM WP RRD45 6.0 All three disks are from the SCSI2SD. I have attempted to make the inquiry strings match the originals, as closely as possible. In the SCSI2SD utility, I have the following config: General page: all defaults, termination off (I have tried parity, scsi2 mode, and setting SCSI speed to sync, with no improvement) Device 1: enabled, ID 1, device Hard Drive, start sector 0, sector size 512, sector count 18636800, vendor ?DEC ", product ?RZ40 ?, revision ? 6.0?, serial number <random string> Device 2: enabled, ID 3, device Hard Drive, start sector 18636800, sector size 512, sector count 18636800, vendor ?DEC ", product ?RZ40 ?, revision ? 6.0?, serial number <random string + 1> Device 3: enabled, ID 4, device CDROM, start sector 37273600, sector size 2048, sector count 148933, vendor ?DEC ", product ?RRD45 ?, revision ? 6.0?, serial number <random string + 2> I?ve also tried booting from a virtual CDROM, only, with no luck there, either. In all cases, I get the following from SRM: >>> test scsi T-STS-SCSI A - Data Trans test ? T-ERR-SCSI A - Data Trans test - nondma/sync inq size miscompare T-ERR-SCSI A - id = 1 lun = 0 ? T-ERR-SCSI A - Data Trans test - nondma/sync inq size miscompare T-ERR-SCSI A - id = 3 lun = 0 ? T-ERR-SCSI A - Data Trans test - nondma/sync inq size miscompare T-ERR-SCSI A - id = 4 lun = 0 ?? 002 SCSI 0x0008 84 FAIL Does anyone have an idea what might be causing this? Has anyone tried a v6 SCSI2SD in a DEC 3000? Thanks! - Alex

2 years, 6 months

PDP-11/05 Fault?

by matt＠9track.net

I've been restoring a PDP-11/05 recently and after replacing several faulty ICs I have it mostly working. I've run into a bit of a problem whilst running MAINDEC-11-D0NB (T14 TRAP TEST) though. The failing instruction sequence is: 7200:?? MOV #6340,R0 7204:?? MOV R0,(R0)+ 7206:?? CMP 6340,#6342 7214:?? BEQ 7220 7216:?? HALT This halts at 7216 with: ? R0 = 6342 ? 6340 = 6340 I tried this same set of instructions on a PDP-11/84 and also on Simh and the result is: ? R0 = 6342 ? 6340 = 6342 which is what the diagnostic seems to expect. I've carefully looked through the PDP-11/05 microprogram listing but I'm having difficulty seeing where this is going wrong. Here is a brief extract of the microprogram in the context of the MOV R0,(R0)+ instruction along with my interpretation of what I think is going on: LOC? NXT? * SOURCE MODE 0 (REGISTER), GET SOURCE DATA 201? 007? S0-1? B=R[S]; BUT BYTE 007? 001? S0-2? R[10]=B; BUT DESTINATION ????????? / IF IR<5:3> = 2 GOTO D2-1 ? B = R0 = 6340??? // B = source register ? R10 = B = 6340?? // Source data stored in sratch pad register R10 LOC? NXT? * DEST MODE 2 (AUTO-INC) GET DEST DATA, OP AND REPLACE 105? 331? D2-1? BA=R[D]; DATAIP; ALBYT 331? 341? D2-2? B=R[D]+1+BYTE.BAR 341? 200? D2-3? R[D]=B; BUT JSRMP; GOTO D1-2; CKOFF ????????? / IF INST NOT JMP OR JSR FALL THROUGH TO D1-2 ? BA = R0 = 6340??? // Bus address = destination register ? B = R0 + 2 = 6342 // Auto-increment and store in B ? R0 = B = 6342???? // Update destination register LOC? NXT? * DEST MODE 1 (REG,DEFERRED) GET DEST DATA, OP AND REPLACE 200? 210? D1-2? B=UNIBUS DATA; BUT BYTE 210? 143? D1-3? R[11]=B; BUT UNARY 163? 334? D1-4? B=R[10] OP B; BUT NOMOD 334? 065? D1-5? DATO; ALBYT; CKOFF 065? 305? D1-5? DRIVERS=B; GOTO S2-2 (BUT SERVICE) ? B = (6340) = 0??? // B = value at location pointed to by bus address ? R11 = B = 0?????? // R11 is only used for unary instructions ? B = R10 = 6340??? // B = source data stored previously in R10 ? (6340) = B = 6340 // B is written to the address pointed to by bus address Where have I gone wrong with this? I can't see from the above how the value at 6340 can possibly be 6342 Matt

2 years, 7 months

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test-drb September 2021