test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by john＠ziaspace.com

> 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

7 years, 3 months

Excessive amount of time in interrupt stack mode

by john＠ziaspace.com

> 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

7 years, 3 months

Greetings

by petermallan＠gmail.com

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

7 years, 3 months

Unknown 1970 Tapedrive

by jos.dreesen＠greenmail.ch

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

7 years, 3 months

Newest Batch of Items from Sellam's VWoCW Just Posted

by sellam.ismail＠gmail.com

Good Monday Evening (or Tuesday Morning if you are beyond the International Dateline)! Here is the latest batch of computers and boards and peripherals and things that I've carefully curated for your consideration and consumption from my collection: Homebrew Small Form Factor S-100 System Indus GT 5.25" Floppy Drive (Atari) ADPI Easi-Disk 5.25" External Serial Disk Drive Camwil Printwheel - Pica 10 Camwil Printwheel - Elite 12 Diablo Black Cloth Ribbon Diablo HiType-I FIlm Ribbon (6 pack) GP Technologies Printwheel - Titan Legal 10 Xerox Metal Printwheel - Titan Legal 10 Xerox Metal Printwheel - Vintage 12 Toshiba T1950CT Laptop Toshiba T4900CT Laptop Commodore 1311 Joystick (boxed) Microsoft InPort Mouse w/Mouse Interface Articulate Systems Voice Impact Pro Dysan 100 MD2HD 5.25" Floppy Diskettes (10-pack) Curtis Electro Devices PR5200B 32x8 Memory Programmer Asante FriendlyNet Adapter Perkin-Elmer PC AT Single T4 4 Meg Transputer CompuPro CPU 8085/88 CompuPro CPU 8085/88 (incomplete) CompuPro RAM16 CompuPro RAM21 Comrex The S100 TimePiece JVB Electronics Spool-Z-Q 100 MATCO Data Products EPROM Emulator/Programmer Morrow Designs MM256K CompuPro/Viasyn SPUZ 64K Viasyn Interfacer 3A (bare board) Viasyn Interfacer 4 (bare board) Atari XG-1 Light Gun Atari XE Keyboard IBM PCjr Internal Modem IBM PCjr RF Modulator MOS Technology KIM-1 (Rev. A) Commodore KIM-1 (Rev. G) Radio Shack TRS-80 64K Color Computer DEC Celebris FP 590 PC Links to information on these items and more can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I53wxarLHlNmlPVf_HJ5oMKuab4zrApI_hi… Photos are linked in the descriptions. I will be going back and adding photos for the last couple batches in the near future and will post an update when they are up. As ever, please contact me directly by e-mail via <sellam.ismail at gmail.com> to inquire or make an offer on a particular item. Thank you! Sellam

7 years, 3 months

Anyone ever attempt repairs on CTI boards for DEC Professionals?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, In preparing for my VCF-East exhibit, I went through my stack of DEC Pro gear. The good news is I had enough working hardware to get a Pro350 running Venix fully operational. The bad news is that I don't have enough working hardware to have even a second functional Pro. One of my RX50 controllers has a mechanically bunged up CTI ZIF socket. It doesn't look repairable so I'm probably going to have to replace it with a transplant from another board. One of my standard (mono) video cards displays bit garbage on power-up. I haven't found schematics for it yet (bitsavers has schematics for the Pro380 CPU, the RX50 controller, the RX50, the RD50). I could probably pull the RAM and test it outside the board, but beyond that, I'm stabbing at things. I did a lot of googling around and I haven't seen a lot of repair details on these. Not really surprised about that, but I figure it was worth asking if anyone has attempted component-level repair on DEC Professionals. I'm sure there's lots of experience with board swapping - that will definitely solve my problems. Oh... and I happen to be one video controller short anyway. I suppose a partial machine made its way to me at some point. I know my Pro380 used to be a console for our 8530. I was able to rescue the console at least. I probably got the Pro350s sometime in the mid-1990s when people were dumping them. I'm still a bit puzzled why I have *5* 256K memory cards. There's only 6 slots and once you put in the RX50 controller, the RD controller, the video card, and possibly the color bitplane extension card, you've got 2 slots left. One fun bit - I was able to break into the Venix box using the 'guest' account (I guessed there was one) and run John the Ripper on an i7 Linux laptop to crack all the hashes. 10/12 took literally seconds. One password was '82', another was 'Bob'. The root password took a few hours because it was two dictionary words. In the end, though, they all fell. The default root password for Venix is in the manuals ('gnomes'). They at least changed it on this box, but 1984 crypto is no match for 21st Century cracking. I don't see DEC Pro systems talked about much - they were kinda slow and definitely limited in their expansion. For a time, they were a cute packaged PDP-11 system but that CTI bus connector is a royal PITA. I am not shocked there weren't that many peripherals for it, but for a "desktop computer", how many different kinds of interfaces does the average office user need? If anyone happens to be coming to VCF East this weekend and has dead Pro gear, I could use a card to pull a CTI connector from. At least I should be able to get the one RX50 controller going. -ethan

7 years, 3 months

What do to with an Internet-connected PDP-11?

by rich.cini＠verizon.net

All ? ??????????????? Over the last few months, I?ve built myself a nice little PDP-11/23 with a SCSI interface/drive, extra SLUs and Ethernet. With the help of a few people, I was able to get an Ethernet configuration running, which is kind of cool. It?s been a great learning process getting this up and running. It?s a Q18 system, so memory is limited and I don?t think able to run BSD (I?m running RT-11 right now). So, for playing around, what can I practically do with this? Is it even possible to access any Web sites (unconventional browsing for sure; I?ve read about telnetting to port 80)? I?m sure email is possible, as is FTP/Telnet (I?ve used that inside my lab setup), but I don?t really know where to start with that. ??????????????? If anyone has any pointers/suggestions, I?d appreciate it. ??????????????? Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

7 years, 3 months

What do to with an Internet-connected PDP-11?

by rich.cini＠gmail.com

Thanks. That?s how I was able to get on-line (with lots of help from JerryW). Great resource and highly recommended. Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef> ________________________________ From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Brian Roth via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 9:51 AM To: Paul Koning via cctalk; Grant Taylor; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: What do to with an Internet-connected PDP-11? I apologize if this has been mentioned. http://shop-pdp.net/rthtml/tcpip.php Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 9:25 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Apr 29, 2019, at 9:05 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > > On 4/29/19 6:47 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote: >> I want to say that the OSU webserver for VMS supports running over DECnet, but my memory could be faulty. I?ve only used WASD on VMS. > > I think this sounds like a neat ~> fun thing to do. > > But how does a web server run over DECnet? > > I guess conceptually you can serve web pages across any protocol that can carry HTTP. > > But I guess you could also have a client that ran over DECnet or need a gateway to TCP/IP. Yes. What I meant is that one could take an existing HTTP client and server, or create one, substituting DECnet sockets for the TCP sockets. The protocol would work just fine that way. You'd need to decide how to deal with DECnet packet boundaries, something TCP doesn't have (a major omission). The simplest is to pay no attention to them, which is what I understand Ultrix "streaming DECnet" sockets to do. An alternative would be to make use of them, for example by saying that the entire HTTP header is in one packet and the payload (if any) follows in separate packets. paul

7 years, 3 months

Excessive amount of time in interrupt stack mode

by ce.murillosanchez＠gmail.com

Dear ccmp'ers: For a while now, I noticed that my vaxstation 4000/60 with OpenVMS 7.2 had become sluggish, but I had not had the time to investigate the problem.?? 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.? Currently, I am running it headless because I have not had the time to fix the monitor (it still has the framebuffer inside, but this sluggishness issue was present before with the monitor attached).? I have read that this can be caused by "faulty i/o devices that interrupt the cpu continuously".? What else can be done to locate the source of the problem? Regards, Carlos.

7 years, 3 months

Nat Semi 16032 info discovered

by elson＠pico-systems.com

Back in 1984 I had cloned a Logical Microcomputer Co. Genix system based on the Nat. Semi. 16032 chip set. I had a dd dump of the distribution on floppies, but that was unreadable. I just found a binder with about an inch of fanfold printouts of all the device drivers, low-level system routines, boot loaders, etc in c source format. These were printed on my Honeywell "big iron" drum printer with a funny character set, so many of the ASCII 96 characters are printed using overprints. Like, { shows as a < overprinted with (. So, it might be tricky to scan and OCR it without training the OCR. Not sure anybody would be interested in it, anyway. Jon

7 years, 3 months

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test-drb