test-drb

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101090 discussions

by icardona＠gmail.com

Hi, some weeks ago I've purchased a System 37 in ebay. This unit was ebay in the year 2020 and the owner was made this video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1CZKQtaoSo When I power up the displays shows a 1. Sometimes if I stop and start fast the display shows a 2, but in all the cases all the leds stills lighted. The voltages on the power supply are OK, and in general I the unit have a good look, I don't see corrosion or leakages from capacitors. Looking the SPU training PDF of Bitsavers/HPMuseum , looks that maybe is related with a ROM or the WCS. Somebody have more info about this error, or know if is possible get some schematics / service manual? Thanks a lot Iban

4 years, 6 months

Archiving otrona attache disks

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Is there a simh for the otrona attache? I have some.disk images created with Dunfield's utility..if not I will try to read them by using the Zorba portable, which is pretty good with varied formats. Bill

4 years, 6 months

unknown rack PSU ("PPI 1247-000-91 ADDS")

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

I found a vintage rackable linear PSU at a sale over the weekend, appears to be late '70s vintage going by date codes on some of the high-power components inside. Front panel is plain black with just a power switch and telltale lamp. Back has a ratings sticker which says "PPI 1247-000-91 ADDS". Outputs are +24V at 3A, +12V at 2A, +5V at 30A, -12V at 4A. Ring a bell with anyone? I'm familiar with ADDS in a terminal context, of course, but this lump is obviously for something larger - perhaps a "washing machine size" fixed/removable drive unit or similar, but I'm surprised there's not obvious branding on it if so. cheers Jules

4 years, 6 months

HP-UX on 9000/200 series

by plamenspam＠afterpeople.com

Hello, Does anyone have HP 9000/200 series running HP-UX instead of HP Basic ? The 5.1 image from hpmuseum.net can be booted only on 300 series with 68010. Best regards, Plamen

4 years, 6 months

IBM 1620 Simulation

by raywjewhurst＠gmail.com

Hello all, Long time lurker, extremely rare poster, I was reading the Wikipedia article on the IBM 1620 and became quite intrigued. I know that there is a simulator for it on SimH but I have never ran or simulated any card-driven machines before. I have all the documentation and the ibm1620.zip file >from bitsavers but I am not sure what to do next. I know I would like to try Monitor, Fortran-II and possibly GOTRAN but I have so many questions. I read the SimH documentation which gave me some understanding but I don't know exactly how the card decks work, how to install Monitor or how to boot Monitor once it is installed since I know you have to boot off a deck. My final question is, is there an easy to use card-driven machine to cut my teeth on? Also, any anecdotes on any of the old IBM computers would be both welcome and greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance Ray

4 years, 6 months

Ultrix-11 Networking

by dj.taylor4＠comcast.net

Its been fun? working with Ultrix-11 and have had success with the help of the list.? Thanks.? The tape file from Bill Gunshannon will create a working system.? Yay! I'm at the point of trying to network the SIMH pdp11 Ultrix-11 system. I have a few observations: 1. The youtube video 'Ultrix-11' shows connecting to sunOS systems. OK, he did this by simply issuing a single ifconfig command.? That didn't work for me. 2. Instead, I used the netsetup script supplied with the system, and had to reboot to get networking up.? I did seem to come up OK. 3. The SIMH FAQ suggests using a 2nd ethernet port, I was able to do this.? The linux computer I am running SIMH on has 2 ports. 4. The Ultrix-11 telnet ftp are old, unsecure versions, how do you connect to a modern Linux machine?? The Linux machines refuse the connections. 5. I also looked at the tuhs archive.? The Fred build script that generates a tk50 bootable tape image didn't work for me.? I substituted a file for the tape device and it caused SIMH to Halt. Doug

4 years, 6 months

Speaking of emulators... I have a userland Venix/86 executive...

by imp＠bsdimp.com

I've written a Venix/86 userland emulator. It uses FreeBSD's vm86 to run binaries natively and intercepts traps for things like system calls. I finally have it to the point where it can run the compiler via cc (which forks and execs c0, copt, cpp, as, ld, etc). My plans to try to recreate the sources for the binaries for Venix/86 from V7 and other extant sources have taken a step forward. Don't know if I'll ever get there, but at least I don't need a working Rainbow and can run the compiler at ~4GHz rather than ~4MHz.... http://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-new-path-vm86-based-venix-emulator.html has my latest blog entry on it. The code lives in tools/vm86venix in my https://github.com/bsdimp/venix repo for those that want to take a look. It uses vm86 mode of 32-bit intel processors and traps all INT xx and other privileged instructions and provides appropriate emulation... And the compiled binary is smaller than the venix kernel (but it does less). Warner

4 years, 6 months

CWVG

by mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us

Back in the 2007 time frame, Andrew Lynch had written a utility to read Vector Graphic hard-sectored diskettes on a Catweasel board. Called "CWVG", does anyone have a copy of the program? Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

4 years, 6 months

RQDX3 firmware sources

by chd＠chdickman.com

Has anyone tried to compile the sources? succeeded? I'm not even going to try, but I think the actual low-level formatter code is missing. Was curious if anyone else noticed that too. -chuck

4 years, 6 months

Call for manuals and maybe floppies: IBM 8100

by cube1＠charter.net

My next project once I finish my IBM 1410 FPGA implementation (so, a couple of years out, probably) would be to write an emulator for the boat anchor known as the IBM 8100. I had exposure to these things back in the 1980s. The project was not really a success: the DPPX operating system was way overkill for the underpowered machine, and wasn't reliable enough or capable enough to run them at remote locations with central administration. The machine had some fairly sophisticated features: Two groups of 64 sets of registers with 8 32 bit registers each Auto increment and auto decrement indexed addressing Address translation - but not paging A primitive form of I/O channel I have a set of install floppies for the DPPX operating system and some of the associated software (but, sadly, not COBOL or Assembler), imaged, and verified to contain what the labels say (via dd conv=ascii), but am short on information. (Of course, if someone else has floppies, all the better. I can image them - they are 8" DSDD, with the first track single density, kinda like an RX02). I do have the Principles of Operation GA23-0031 and the DASD devices (including floppy) Description GA23-0053 But in order to manage an emulator and actually install DPPX I would need just a bit more hardware info - or I would be flying blind to some degree as far as the operator panel I/O interaction.) Hardware Manuals: 8130 Processor Description GA27-3196 and/or 8140 Processor Description GA27-2880 (There was also an 8150, but I doubt the releases I have would run on it.) 8140 Processor Operators Guide GA27-3197 and GA27-2879 (Expanded front panel) 8101/8102 Storage / I/O Unit GA27-2882 Communications: Loop, Display, Printer: GA27-2883 (The "Loop" was a LAN like thing - kind of akin to the Apollo Domain ring, off of which one hung local terminals, such as the IBM 8775). Distributed Processing Programming Executive (DPPX) Manuals Installation Primer: G320-6048 Installation Guide: SC27-0401 IPO Planning Guide: GC20-1883 Assembler: SC27-0412 Assembler Messages: SC27-0416 (The machine also supported APL, PL/I, COBOL (which we used), FORTRAN... But I don't have floppies for those - heck, if the assembler wasn't standard (I doubt it was), I don't even have that, even though we had it at our installation, along with COBOL) DTMS (database, transaction mgmt.) Messages: SC26-3918 Customization Guide (SC26-3937) Application Development Guide (SC26-3938) Administration Guide (SC26-3939) Operation Guide (SC26-3940) Reference (SC26-3941) True story: The early releases of DPPX were just awful buggy. We ended up dedicating 3 conference rooms (with the dividers open) for a "warm room" for something like 3 months, housing our personnel and IBM personnel up from Texas. At one point one of the IBM'ers was overheard on a public phone in the hallway of our public building telling someone he was there "to help the hicks from Wisconsin". That got reported to our management and to IBM's management, and he was on the next flight back to Texas. ;) On the flip side, I was testing database recovery (it was my thing, back in the day - though we did not end up using the database / transaction manager). I found some bugs in the database log journal recovery process. I mentioned it to one of the IBM'ers in passing, also pointing out it wasn't urgent since we were not going to use DTMS anyway, at least not soon. He pretty much begged me to report it - and anything else I found wrong. Completely polar opposite attitude of the guy in the previous paragraph. JRJ

4 years, 6 months

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