test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by wcn440＠gmail.com

I have a vintage apollo question... In the late 1980's when HP acquired Apollo Computer Inc, I recall there was an HP root account, that shipped with every new machine. In many cases this account was not removed. I recently acquired a DN3000 and to my amazement it was clean, and booted to an SR10.4 login prompt. Does anybody remember that HP account and password? Alternative cracks would be welcomed as well. Bill Newman

10 years, 10 months

Classic programming

by echristopherson＠gmail.com

Is there a subset of this group for people who like to program in languages or language implementations or libraries that are no longer in common mainstream use? Or other groups for such a thing? -- Eric Christopherson

10 years, 10 months

Classic programming

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Johnny Billquist > And one should not forget Algol. IIRC, Algol is mentioned in the paper I linked to. Of course, Algol's DNA is in pretty much every procedural language ever created since it was. > From: Andy Holt > (and, for that matter, PL/1 should probably be considered an unsung > inspiration for C as it was the implementation language for Multics > in which Bell labs was a partner and must have inspired at least > the name for Unix) The paper also mentions PL/I - IIRC, they (Ken, Dennis et al) had used it on Multics, and didn't like it. (Which I can understand!) I'm not sure there are any ideas from PL/I (specifically) which influenced C. Multics' influence on Unix is a very sizeable topic, which I won't derail into - it's an interest of mine, and I've been doing research on that; my hope is to do a paper on it at some point. The executive abstract is that the two extremes one hears ('Unix is derived from Multics'/'Unix is in fact a counter-reaction to Multics') aren't really accurate - the truth is in the middle. Noel

10 years, 10 months

Booting an IBM MP 3000 S/390 Syste

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2015 18:43:53 +0100 > From: "Dave G4UGM" <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> > Subject: RE: Booting an IBM MP 3000 S/390 System > > Actually I remember booting an IBM4381 from cold after we shut it down > over Christmas. Just pressing the Power button powered it up eventually, > but I am pretty sure it took nearly an hour to get to the IPL prompt. So it > did disk drives, then tape drives, then other bits and bobs. But when it > spun up the disks it brought them up one at a time so the startup surges > didn't trip the main breaker. The same with the tape drives. Then it > loaded the microcode into all the controllers. Then it booted the OS. As we > were running VM this last bit took a few seconds (I think). I do know if VM > crashed you screen logo frequently re-appeared before you had time to think. > > Dave Wade > G4UGM > I have done the same on a Honeywell mainframe. After powering up everything manually the only the mag tape and card reader I/O controllers had boot capability. Push the INIT and BOOT buttons and it would read and load tape controller microcode from mag tape, then read and load the disk controller microcode, then the processor's boot code, and then boot from disk. It took just seconds for the mag tape part. Getting the front end processors bootloaded, and getting online communications, timesharing, and batch processing up took a while. This system was capable of booting from binary punched cards. We used to try it periodically just to make sure that this capability worked. -- Michael Thompson

10 years, 10 months

Guy Steele and Emacs - was Re: Classic programming

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Toby Thain > Peter Siebel's "Coders at Work" features a chapter/interview with > Steele: Ah, thanks for pointing that out; I do have that volume, but I guess I didn't read Steele's chapter. > "So I worked seriously on the implementation of Emacs probably for only > about four or six weeks." That's probably why I didn't know of it - blink and you missed it! :-) Noel

10 years, 10 months

PDP-12 Restoration at the RICM

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

When we first powered up the PDP-12 the main fuse for the VR12 display blew. A replacement fuse did the same. We thought that the brown goo in the bottom of the chassis had leaked from the high-voltage power supply, and the high-voltage power supply is directly connected to the input, so that was the first suspect. We bench tested the high-voltage power supply using a Variac on the input. With a 10VAC input there was no output at all. Increasing the input voltage did not change the missing output voltage. I hate to mention this but... The two capacitors in the voltage-doubler circuit are connected in series between the output lead and ground. We connected a current limited lab power supply to the output lead and ground and slowly increased the voltage while watching the current draw. With the voltage stable the current draw was a few microamps. We increased the output voltage of the power supply to the 64VDC max, disconnected the power supply, and measured the voltage across the caps. It very slowly decreased, so maybe the caps were OK. We reconnected the Variac to the input and with 10VAC the high-voltage power supply had a 1000VDC output. We put 10x 500kOhm resistors in series across the output and increased the Variac voltage. By measuring the voltage across one resistor we could see that the output was more than 10,000VDC. The resistors started smoking so we knew that we had a lot of high-voltage available. So, once again the magic of reforming capacitors saves another piece of equipment. -- Michael Thompson

10 years, 10 months

Qbus split I&D?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Johnny Billquist > All I can say is that I did a number of RSX SYSGENs on that 11/34, and > it truly looked just like an 11/24 from a software point of view. The thing that I wonder about it, for that to be true, is something that someone (sorry, to lazy to look in the archive to give proper credit) pointed out, which is that that CPU is only two boards, and the memory management, including the PARs, is built into one of them. So how could one extend a PAR >from 12 bits to 16, when there's already 12 bits buried deep inside the CPU? That's the part that I can't work out... > I'm hoping that Update ... still have the documentation around. You and me both! :-) I have this dream of one day having an 11/45, with the Enable and the optional cache. Now that would be a sweeet machine: most of the capability of an 11/70, but a lot less power draw. But I'd need the documentation to see how to connect it up! :-) > Every time this comes up I really want to go searching for manuals... > :-) Please do! :-) Noel

10 years, 10 months

Qbus split I&D?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Johnny Billquist > One more thing to check this summer... OK, if you can, that would really be great; if either i) it's still together, or ii) there are pictures, it would fill some of the key knowledge gaps. In particular, i) what kind of backplane is it plugged into, and ii) what is the UNIBUS edge connector on the card connected to... Noel

10 years, 10 months

Classic programming

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Kip Koon > I have often wondered what the inspiration for the C Language was. BCPL > -> MCPL -> B -> c, quite an interesting list of languages. I don't think MCPL is in there; B was directly inspired by BCPL. See Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Development of the C Language": http://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html I got the impression from the previous discussion that MCPL was a later branch. Noel

10 years, 10 months

VAX4000/300 MNS7.3 isntallation from CDROM

by holm＠freibergnet.de

Hi, I've got an VAX4000/300 eqipped with an TK70, 2x RF31, 1xRF71 disks, and an CQD-200/TM. I've connected an toshiba Xm5701 drive to the SCSI Bus and the machine sses it as DUA3. I have a VMS7.3 CDROM and want to install it on one of the disks. I've read some documents on HPs website but it isn't clear to me how to boot the cdrom correctly, there is root 1 mentioned. What bootflag must entered, B/R5:10000000? ..in the case w/o the R5:10000000 I get a $ Promt finally (here I habe to read further). With the bootflag the System is complaining that dua3 is write protected (it is the cdrom)... What's the correct way to install VMS on that machine? Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583 www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741

10 years, 10 months

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