test-drb

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101090 discussions

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, 1 month

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, 1 month

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, 1 month

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, 1 month

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, 1 month

Sun SS2 SBus memory expansion parts

by cmhanson＠eschatologist.net

I have the 32MB memory expansion card for my SPARCstation 2 (P/N 501-1823) but not the accompanying cable (501-1814) or 32MB mezzanine card (501-1824). Does anyone have either the cable or mezzanine card that they?d be willing to part with for a reasonable price? I?ve only found sellers carrying them for hundreds of dollars recently; I managed to snag the ?1823 from someone who was selling it far more reasonably, probably because they didn?t know what they could get for it. -- Chris

7 years, 1 month

Greetings

by raywjewhurst＠gmail.com

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. Thanks Ray

7 years, 1 month

Tandem 6526 information?

by cmhanson＠eschatologist.net

A friend not on the list obtained a Tandem 6526 terminal. In the process of trying to refurbish it, the first 80 bytes of its ROM got trashed. Does anyone happen to have one so she could recover from this? Also, she has no keyboard, and no information about Tandem?s block mode or other protocols (much less the keyboard interface), does anyone know where to find such details or have a manual handy? ? Chris Sent from my iPad

7 years, 1 month

Modern Rack Rails in Classic Racks?

by healyzh＠avanthar.com

How safe is it to put modern rack rails (HP) in a classic DEC Rack? The DEC racks have small holes, while the new HP racks, IIRC, have big square holes. It looks like the rails will work, they just won?t clip flush. Zane

7 years, 1 month

Ultrix 3.0 VAX

by dennis.grevenstein＠gmail.com

Hi John, thank you for the idea. I finally managed to boot and install Ultrix 3.0. I prepared a new harddisk image under Ultrix 4.0. I could find /usr/sys/SAS.net/vmunix in the Ultrix 3.0 distribution tapes. This is a standalone kernel that will start the installation process. It can be booted like a normal kernel and can use the 3.0 tape images available from bitsavers. Dennis

7 years, 1 month

H960 rack on eBay

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

H960 (rack only, really, although it looks like there are two NA11-N/S sheaths as well): https://www.ebay.com/itm/123729450695 Not a bad price; pick-up only though (just as well, considering how much it costs to ship the blasted things). Noel

7 years, 1 month

NOS HP 7906 disk heads

by aek＠bitsavers.org

If someone needs top heads, this seems to be a decent price https://www.ebay.com/itm/303136246855

7 years, 1 month

No subject

by couryhouse＠aol.com

Tom -? ?Thanks much for? ?filling in? some of the blanks on the history!? ?Ed# In a message dated 4/23/2019 2:36:37 PM US Mountain Standard Time, t.gardner at computer.org writes: ISS was an independent company in the era (late 60s) of the 714 (IBM 2314 compatible).? It was later acquired by Itel (a leasing company) and then by Univac and sort of disappeared in the 80s. Depending upon your application almost any plug compatible 2314 might work or could be made to work.? The interfaces were very much 2314 like except the PCMs and OEMs didn't use IBMs +/- 1.5v signaling levels on the interface but instead used DTL driver/receiver signaling.? There was also some weirdness in the power sequencing all of which can be worked around if u are up to it. Tom -----Original Message----- From: ED SHARPE [mailto:couryhouse at aol.com] Sent: Monday, April 22, 2019 11:37 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org; aek at bitsavers.org Subject: Re: Telex 20 Meg 10 platter very heavy monster drive needed drop line off list..r Thanks? Al? yes, that? is? the? one. and? as? I? recall? ISS? was a? offshoot? on? univac Do? you? have? any? Thanks Ed# In a message dated 4/22/2019 11:34:58 AM US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes: Thanks? Al? yes, that? is? the? one. and? as? I? recall? ISS? was a? offshoot? on? univac?In a message dated 4/22/2019 11:21:50 AM US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes: On 4/22/19 11:05 AM, ED SHARPE wrote:> Al,? the? drive? you mention at? its? largest? was? 7.5 meg? and? 6? platters... not? ? the? one Telex bought their drives from ISS.You're looking for a ISS 714 (ca. 1970) 2314 compat.https://ia800608.us.archive.org/15/items/TNM_Information_Storage_Sys… aek at bitsavers.org;cctalk

7 years, 1 month

Elliott 5-level code: just in case you have some oddball 5-level paper tapes

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

Immensely happy this morning to have finally tracked this down. This is a 5-level code by Elliott used on many of their computers. It seems to have used standard looking 5-level teletype I/O devices but with custom typewheel and keyboard/function bar encoding. It has 3 things in common with other 5-level codes: 1: Letter shift and Number/Figure shift 2: Null is all zeroes 3: Letter shift is all ones and also works as delete just like the other codes But some interesting properties, different than other 5 level codes: 1: Letter shift has the letters in alphabetic A-Z sequence. 2: In number shift, the lower 4 bits are the digit 0-9, and the upper bit is a parity 3: Figure shift, space, carriage return, and line feed are at the extreme top end of the code space right under letter shift. The code is documented in Figure B.2 of this wonderful document: http://rabbit.eng.miami.edu/oldcomputers/Elliott-400-series.pdf I'm a little surprised that my standard character code references don't mention this. This is a super elegant layout that any of the 1960's character code standard guys must've known about, but somehow it never made it into any of my usual reference books. Maybe MacKenzie was just too dismissive of all 5-bit codes. He mentions ITA2 for a couple pages and then never talks about 5-level codes again, but he never stops talking about BCDIC and he goes on and on about hypothetical 12-row punchcard ASCII. Tim N3QE

7 years, 1 month

Televideo 925 character rom dump

by guykd＠optusnet.com.au

When I saw this thread I thought 'Oh, I have a 925!' Which was working last time (years ago.) But wouldn't you know. When I checked, it's a Televideo 924. Off by one. But perhaps the character ROM content is the same? Anyway I will see if it still works, and secure all the ROM images. Today. I have the user manuals, but does anyone have schematics for the 925 & 924? Guy At 09:38 AM 23/04/2019 -0700, you wrote: >On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 8:25 AM Patrick Finnegan <pat at vax11.net> wrote: > >> On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 11:02 AM Jon Elson via cctalk < >> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: >> >>> Is the ROM totally bad, or just losing a few bits here and >>> there? If the latter, you could probably read it out, figure >>> out how the rows, columns and characters are mapped, and fix it. >>> >> >> Considering that 925s are really common, and a replacement EPROM should be >> easy to source and program, this sounds like an overly difficult approach >> that will yield something different than what he wants. >> > >The thought had crossed my mind, but only as a last resort. I'm not >entirely sure what the internal fault is, but the end result is two rows of >every character have all bits stuck "on." I've verified that the ROM >addressing is correct and that there's nothing on the output side causing >this behavior. Patrick, thanks very much for offering to read the ROM! > >- Josh > > > >> Pat >> >

7 years, 1 month

TSX-Plus help needed!

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

OK, I have figured out how to modify TSGEN.MAC, use PUTR to make a disk image, load it in SIMH, reassemble, relink, and *finally* send it to an RL02 pack via vtserver! TIme-consuming but doable. I've been wrestling with this all day. BUT - TSX+ 6.50 just will not run. At all. Using RT-11SJ (5.01), after typing "R TSX" I can hear the disc access for a few seconds, a pause, a few more accesses... then nothing. It just hangs. Nothing on the console either., no response to <CR>. When starting it in SIMH (the same disk image), I get the error message ?TSX-F-Computer line clock is not working. Figured that was just a SIMH thing. But the address/vector is correct in TSGEN.MAC... and when checking TIME in RT-11, the seconds advance in real-time like it should. On the real hardware, the error message doesn't display, and the clock is running... My old version of TSX+ is 6.16 and it runs fine on console and SLU 2, just needs rebuilt to use different serial cards than the original system. So where should I start looking first? RT-11 version incompatibility? Any TSX+ experts online? Thanks for any help. This is driving me nuts!

7 years, 1 month

VTserver problem (bug?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

And even more bizarrely... it crawled its way up to the 7400K block, and now it's going at normal speed again! 10MB should be done soon. I have no idea what could be causing this major slowdown from 6.6-7.4 MB. It's not the drive because two different ones do the same thing (and they work perfectly otherwise)... Hopefully I won't have to go through the (edit, reassemble, relink, PUTR transfer to an image, vtserver to the disk) loop too many times, attempting to get my DHV11/16D to function with TSX+ 6.50... I had somehow inserted a couple of characters that didn't belong there while editing (bumped the keyboard maybe?) so I'm on the second pass. Also I found what looks like a typo in the TSGEN.MAC file if anyone's interested.

7 years, 1 month

VTserver problem (bug?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

-----Original Message----- >But there is some kind of bug that always appears at the same point, in the >middle of the next 100K block after "6600K written". >The data transfer stops (no more head motion/ready light flicker on the >RL02), and the character that vtserver uses to indicate a write operation >just repeats endlessly and rapidly until I kill it. More information and a correction: I let it run on, and it is still reading and writing, but at a much slower and intermittent rate than the first 6.6 MB. The filler character is just a time marker of some kind, since I can still see the "r" indicating a read from the .dsk image, and the light on the RL02 flickers after a few of those. So it's slowed way down, but not stopped! Even more mysterious. Anyway, this disk has 13800 blocks out of 20800 used. If RT-11 stores data (including the directory structure) starting from block 0, I may be able to kill the writes after 7 MB. (Unfortunately I think I neglected to squeeze the image before sending it to the RL - and naturally the important TSX files are near the end - which means I have to wait for most of it). If I have to do it again, I'll squeeze and then kill it after 7 MB and see what I got!

7 years, 1 month

(no subject)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

>But there is some kind of bug that always appears at the same point, in the >middle of the next 100K block after "6600K written". >The data transfer stops (no more head motion/ready light flicker on the >RL02), and the character that vtserver uses to indicate a write operation >just repeats endlessly and rapidly until I kill it. More information and a correction: I let it run on, and it is still reading and writing, but at a much slower and intermittent rate than the first 6.6 MB. The filler character is just a time marker of some kind, since I can still see the "r" indicating a read from the .dsk image, and the light on the RL02 flickers after a few of those. So it's slowed way down, but not stopped! Even more mysterious. Anyway, this disk has 13800 blocks out of 20800 used. If RT-11 stores data (including the directory structure) starting from block 0, I may be able to kill the writes after 7 MB. (Unfortunately I think I neglected to squeeze the image before sending it to the RL - and naturally the important TSX files are near the end - which means I have to wait for most of it). If I have to do it again, I'll squeeze and then kill it after 7 MB and see what I got!

7 years, 1 month

VTserver problem (bug?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

I sometimes use vtserver to download disk images to the RL02's on my PDP-11/23+. Takes quite a while at 9600 baud, too :) But there is some kind of bug that always appears at the same point, in the middle of the next 100K block after "6600K written". The data transfer stops (no more head motion/ready light flicker on the RL02), and the character that vtserver uses to indicate a write operation just repeats endlessly and rapidly until I kill it. Does anyone else encounter this limitation, and if so, how did you fix it? Fortunately I haven't wanted to image a disk that's more than 2/3 full so far... I make sure to squeeze the disk in SIMH before transferring the image. But it'd be nice to be able to image a full (10 MB) RL02 and not have to worry about it failing. Any ideas? thanks Charles

7 years, 1 month

Ultrix 3.0 VAX

by johnforecast＠comcast.net

Dennis, It sounds like you are looking for an Ultrix 3.0 standalone boot tape. While I found a number of people who claim to have a physical tape, with some claiming to have imaged the tape, I was unable to find an image on-line. That being said, it?s possible to use the Ultrix 2.0 standalone bootable tape (AQ-JU00C, available from bitsavers.org) with a couple of edits at the end - I did this to get 2.2 up and running. Since Ultrix 2.0 only supports a limited number VAX processors, the first stage has to be run on one of those processors, I always use microvax2. Subsequent stages may be run on any processor supported by Ultrix 3.0. Stage 1: I use the following .ini file: # Boot from standalone tape. This MUST be performed on a microvax2 instance. set rl dis set ts dis set rq0 ra81 att rq0 system.dsk att tq0 AQ-JU00C-BE_ULTRIX-32_2.0_SA_87.tap set tti 7b set tto 7b boo Attach the Ultrix 3.0 supported tape to tq0 when it asks. This stage will create the root partition and restore from the tape. No special handling at this point, just answer the questions as for a normal install. Stage 2: Use the VAX simulator for the target system (I used vax780) and boot rq0. After answering some questions it will fail trying to create a file system on /dev/rra0 which doesn?t exist - you need to edit /.minidevice as follows: # ed .minidevice 22 1 RA81 ra 0 TK50 tms 0 s/0/0g RA81 ra 0g TK50 tms 0 w 23 q Reboot the system and it will create a file system on /dev/ra0g, copy the base packages along with any you have selected and build a custom kernel. After all this reboot again and it will drop you into single user mode after complaining about "Can't stat /dev/ra0ga?. Edit /etc/fstab: # ed /etc/fstab 54 1 /dev/ra0ga:/:rw:1:1:ufs:: s/0g/0 /dev/ra0a:/:rw:1:1:ufs:: w 53 q Reboot again and you should have a functioning system. John.

7 years, 1 month

SIMH question

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

This may be a silly question... but how can I transfer a text file from my PC into SIMH for PDP-11? Is it even possible to create a disk or tape image from source code? Attaching files requires them to be images... I have significant changes to make to TSGEN.MAC (TSX-Plus definitions file) and it will be MUCH easier to edit it on my laptop with a screen editor, than in SIMH (or on the real hardware) using the line editors! The only method that comes to mind is to start the actual 11/23+, open the text editor for input, then use a terminal program like Teraterm to "play" the file as though I were typing it in. But I don't have the rest of the TSX-Plus source files, linker, etc. so I would have to transfer them using VTserver anyway... thoughts? thanks Charles

7 years, 1 month

SIMH question

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Glen Slick > when I wanted to assemble some code with the RT-11 assembler but wanted > to edit the source code elsewhere and then transfer the code into a > SIMH disk image. Someone should write the SIMH equivalent of Ersatz-11's 'DOS device' (which allows the -11 access to the file system on the host - and also the ability to send arbitrary commands to the emulator). I find it mind-bogglingly useful for going round the edit-compile loop, while using a good editor (Epsilon for me) on the host OS. Having written a Unix driver for the device, I have a sack of Unix commands that use it, e.g. to retrieve the file foo.c from the host, I just say 'hrd foo.c' to the PDP-11 Unix's shell, and it's there. Super-painless, and does't add any noticeable amount of time/work to going around the loop. I don't need to give the full file name since there's also 'hcd <dir>'. To change the switch register contents, 'sc <value>'. Etc, etc. How all you SIMH users manage without it is beyond me. Luckily I only need -11 emulation, so I don't have to put up with life without it - and would refuse to. If anyone is seriously interested in adding it to SIMH, there's an -11 device spec available; I strongly suggest using the same spec; then for Unix, at least, all the -11 code (driver, user commands) is already done. Noel

7 years, 1 month

RK611 Technical Manual needed

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Anyone have a copy of the RK611 Technical Manual (EK-RK611-TM-001 is the version that's attested)? It's not online. (I have a copy in my fiche set, but my fiche reader died - no, it's not the bulb, already changed that! :-) Noel

7 years, 1 month

Infocom mystery binary

by dave＠661.org

In one of the repositories of Infocom game source code recently uploaded to Github, there's an executable that appears to have come from an m68k Unix machine of some sort. It's at https://github.com/historicalsource/zork-german/blob/master/zap. Over at intfiction.org[1], it was initially claimed to be from a Macintosh. Then I suggested it was from a pre-Sparc Sun machine. Then someone else suggested it was from A/UX. Does anyone know anything more conclusive? I based my idea on what I got from running strings(1) on the file. Copyright (c) 1987 Apple Computer, Inc., 1985 Adobe Systems Incorporated, 1983-87 AT&T-IS, 1985-87 Motorola Inc., 1980-87 Sun Microsystems Inc., 1980-87 The Regents of the University of California, 1985-87 Unisoft Corporation, All Rights Reserved. [1] https://intfiction.org/t/infocom-source-code-posted/41156/23 -- David Griffith dave at 661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

7 years, 1 month

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test-drb