Well, I managed to accquire more hardware... This time
in the form of a couple CDC hard drives - one 9775
(Fixed media, 650mb) and one 9766 (300mb removeable).
I also wound up with an 11/84 and a couple RL02's and
one and a half RA80's. (my first Unibus 11, and my
first removable pack drives - yay!) I'm very excited -
this hardware is all new to me, and very different
>from what I already have. The 11/84 is much "beefier"
physically than my wimpy little 11/73, and I've never
owned freestanding hard drives. But - I digress.
I had to drive about 950 miles round trip to pick
these up. Truck rental is very expensive. I drive a
Toyota Camry. So, I borrowed my father's minivan, a
Chevy Venture. I've moved all manner of heavy
hardware, racks, printers, etc in it, and figured that
it would be fine for the task. Getting the stuff in
was pretty easy. The CDC drives were slightly bigger
than I had envisioned, but they fit. We loaded it with
a ramp and a loading dock, and I had two people
helping me, so I didn't fully appreciate just how
heavy the CDC drives were. The PDP-11 rack was a 5
foot rack that was a simple "tip and slide", and some
loose rack mountable stuffs stacked easily next to it.
At this point, I had the van completely crammed - the
passenger seat was pushed forward and angled forward
as far as it would go, with the two CDC drives behind
the seats, then the PDP rack on the passsenger side in
the back, and stuff stacked behind the other drive on
the drivers side. Some disk packs were seat belted
into the passenger seat.
The van rode really low, but was still driveable,
albiet more "sluggish", and I had to top up one of the
tires before driving back. I drove the route back in
one shot - no stops for anything. I didn't get home
until late, and only brought in the disk packs.
It took me the better part of a week to figure out how
to get the CDC drives *out* of the van. I was able to
get the PDP-11 out with little difficulty. It's just a
rack and some loose stuff. No problems there. But
those CDC drives were so heavy that I couldn't even
tilt them much in the van, and they's sunken into the
carpet and weren't able to roll, not to mention the
holes in the floor where the seats normally latch
into. I found the operators manual for the CDC 9775
(BZ7Ex) on bitsavers - it lists the specs for the
drive - weight 639 pounds! Oh, good. At least I think
the 9766 is lighter. A little.
It took a few days to get friends with time to help
me, but we managed to get the drives out of the van
yesterday night. I'll spare you the gory details, but
I removed the power supplies from both drives first,
as well as the doors and panels. When moving these,
heavy is an understatement. Now I just need to get
them into the basement.
So... now does anyone have a scan of the service or
installation manual for a 9775?
I'm sure others have stories about loading hardware in
and out of vehicles... I'll post pictures later...
-Ian
I've got a PDP-11/23+ with 4 Mb RAM, but only one RL02 and no software
except an XXDP pack. Henk Gooijen helpfully made for me a (RT-11)
bootable pack that is on the way (if the post offices between Europe
and the US don't lose or destroy it). So I definitely want to make a
backup copy.
Is this possible to do with only one drive? Apparently you can't swap
disks back and forth like the old DOS or CP/M systems. Henk thinks
creating a RAM disk would work, and copy files but I don't know
anything about RT-11.
The alternative is to take the RL02 from my PDP-8/A and connect it,
but then I don't have a "1" key, they are both unit "0".
Any thoughts?
thanks
Charles
Looooooooooooooooooong gone.
One of the founders was Saul Denman, creator of the PDP8/S
John Bordynuik contacted him years ago while researching
the history of the 8/S
great.. I see he has let pdp8.com croak.
Info may be saved at archive.org
I have an email address at the bottom of every page of Manx, my
catalogue of computer manuals, and an invitation to people to send me
questions or comments. I expect people to ask questions about the
catalogue, but instead I usually receive requests from far-flung
countries to quote for supplying spare parts for their ancient hardware.
Ho hum.
But today I received a question from someone who believes that my humble
catalogue is the online presence of the mighty Manx Corporation. The
email is reproduced below. Google has been no assistance in providing
any answers.
Surely someone here knows what became of GRI Computer Corporation? I'll
pass on any responses.
--quote--
I have some stocks (100 shares) that were purchased in 1972 for G.R.I.
Computer Corp. When searching for information regarding this company and
whether or not it still exists - I end up being redirected to this page
for the Manx Corporation. Do you happen to know if G.R.I was purchased
by Manx or how I might go about researching the value for these stocks?
Any help is appreciated.
--endquote--
--
Paul
for the mighty Manx Corporation
Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 15:28:01 -0500
From: Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com>
Subject: Re: Unix disk copy using dd
Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> M H Stein wrote:
>
>> Assuming you have a third disk or a spare partition on the larger drive,
>> can't you tar the small disk > to a file there and then untar to the
>> final
>> disk/partition?
>
>
> You're assuming that the small disk the data is coming from contains a
> file system.
> And, if it does, it's more efficient to use a pipe instead of a tarfile.
>Peace... Sridhar
--------------
Mike:
I did indeed assume a filesystem; under what circumstances would a Unix
hard disk not have a file system?
And what do you mean specifically by "use a pipe"? Example?
If you don't need an archive copy couldn't you just copy the boot file and
cp the root?
My experience with Unix is pretty limited, but this is how I archive and
copy systems with Cromix; the tar file is copied to a PC and zipped, and
unzipped and restored if/when needed. If there's a more efficient way, I'm
definitely interested.
=========
Doc wrote:
> Enering pedant mode, even if the source disk has a filesystem, tar
can't grab boot blocks, partition tables, extended attributes, etc. And
various tar implementations have other nasty little warts.
-------------
Mike:
Granted, you'd have to create the boot block on the new drive, but I
thought the whole point was to _not_ copy the partition table since you're
moving to a larger drive? In my Cromix experience at least, which
attributes are retained seems to be a function of the version of tar
(or ftar) and the options selected.
=======
> dd is about the dumbest** command on the planet, which is why I love it.
>
> Doc
-------------
Mike:
Ditto, but how would you use it in this case?
m
More disk copy questions..
Can you copy an entire disk using the UNIX dd command from a smaller disc to
a larger one and retain the capacity of the larger drive?
i.e. maybe create a partition on the larger drive which matches the smaller
drive?
Thanks,
Andy.
>Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 16:58:11 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com>
>> I have BasiliskII installed via apt on Ubuntu. I've sucessfully read and
>> installed the 6.0.8 system disks as downloaded from Apple's archive. The
>> rom images I have and have tried are for a Quadra650 and a Performa.
>> BasiliskII doesn't like the Mac Plus rom. On boot, I get a complaint that
>> this Mac is set for 32-bit addressing and that I should switch to 24-bit
>> addressing (since os6 doesn't do 32-bitness). Clicking "24-bit" doesn't
>> work. Does anyone here know how to get this working?
>
>Which Performa? Those ROMs may be too new for System 6.
To elaborate a bit on Cameron's point...
System 6 requires 24 bit addressing on the host machine. The first
Macs were based on the 68000 which only has 24 address bits. When
they added the Mac II and SE/30 to the line-up they switched to the
68020 and 68030 which have 32 address bits, but the OS was still
operating in a 24 bit address space.
So, in order to run System 6 you need hardware which can translate to
24 bit addresses.
Apple included the feature of a choice of 24 bit or 32 bit addressing
modes in early Macs, but abandoned it somewhere in the middle of the
Quadra (68040) line-up. So, for example, the Quadra 605 can do both
24 bit and 32 bit addressing, but the Quadra 63x family cannot.
My guess is that the Quadra 650 does not include support for 24 bit
addressing and neither does the performa you used. This would
definitely be true of any Performa 63x, or later PowerPC Performas.
So, you most likely need a ROM image from an older machine.
Also, even if 24 bit addressing is supported in the emulated, ROM
imaged machine, Apple dropped support for OS 6 somewhere along the
way in their hardware/firmware. I suspect that regardless of the 24
bit/32 bit issue, the Q650 will not run anything earlier than some
flavor of OS 7. I may be misremembering, but that's how I would
bet. You may want to check a website such as everymac.com, because
I believe it lists the OS's supported by each Mac model.
Jeff Walther
----------Original Message:
Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 09:39:48 +0100
From: "Andy Piercy" <andy.piercy at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Unix disk copy using dd ?
So basically you can only use dd to copy to a disk of the same size.
OK so here is the real issue:
I have a faulty Unis system disk that is 142 Mb, it had the sticky bumpers
issue, now repaired but I want to copy the OS and apps to a second
replacement disk, this is a 442 Mb drive.
----------Reply:
Perhaps I misunderstood the problem earlier; when you say faulty but
repaired, do you mean that you can read the disk but the file system
is corrupted, or is the disk in fact bootable & runnable?
mike
Al Kossow wrote:
> It sounds like Zane (maybe Tim Shoppa) have been in
> contact with them recently, so there is no need for yet
> another set of people to be involved.
If "Recently" is "2000", then yes, I worked extensively with
Mentec to make three sets of hobbyist CD's (RT-11, RSX-11,
RSTS/E) using my archives and their archives to get bootable
kits for emulators.
> As I understand it, they have no interest in offering a
> low cost license no matter how many people ask about it.
Internally, there was interest, and I discussed it with several
at Mentec in the 1996-2001 timeframe as I worked with them
on other projects, and it got as far
as them having a web page with pictures of the CD's I made
for them. But no, not all the legal barriers were jumped, so
it never really happened.
I don't think anyone truly understands the legal barriers
that Mentec faces. They do not own all the stuff free and
clear to do with as they wish. In the late 90's, they could
not sell a copy of any PDP-11 OS unless they also sold
DEC's printed manuals with it, and they were having extreme
troubles getting DEC's printed manuals from DEC's print
shop.
The folks in Mentec who were most enthusiastic about it
were really nice, energetic people.
I don't have any sore feelings about the work I did back
then (I had a blast) but I don't have as much interest in
the subject as I did ten years ago. Being out at the CHM
last year rekindled it a little... but there's no shortage of
truly redistributable and very-few-condition other stuff
that I'm worrying about now.
Tim.
> But if you want to give a try, why not a formal
> letter bringing the stuff up to the knowledge of mentec's owners/directors
Read the discussions on this subject in alt.sys.pdp11
It sounds like Zane (maybe Tim Shoppa) have been in contact with them recently,
so there is no need for yet another set of people to be involved.
As I understand it, they have no interest in offering a low cost license no
matter how many people ask about it.
Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 21:33:54 -0700
From: "Rick Bensene" <rickb at bensene.com>
Subject: Re: Micropolis Disk Drives (Was TNIX)
>Tony wrote:
>> There are 2 possible interfaces for the Micropolis 1203.
>> The bare drive has a 50 pin connector, which is somewhat similar in
>> concept to the SMD interface. There's an 8 bit parallel data bus with
>> strobe lines, etc, to do things like head postiioning, and a raw data
>> stream.
-----------
Speaking of unusual HD I/Fs, did anyone other than IMI ever use their
34-pin interface?
mike
Hi,
A few of you have probably heard about my little project - the portable
floppy disc raw-reader/writer. Through a bit of spare-time coding I've got all
the basic elements of the reading side of the interface done. That is to say,
according to the simulator, my hardware design can detect MFM sync markers,
index pulses and track index sequences on hard-sectored floppies.
Unfortunately I'm not going to have time to do the PCB layouts and such for
another few weeks at the least, which leads me to my next problem...
Rather than halt all development due to lack of time, I'd like to take a
look at some of the software side of things. What I need are some raw data
dumps i.e. if you're using a Catweasel, the data in the CW's RAM after the
track read command completed. The 'testhist' utility from Tim Mann's CW2DMK
pack can do this, with the command:
testhist port drive track side clock [file]
The documentation for testhist explains how to use it - port is the I/O port
for ISA Catweasels or card ID number (starting at 0) for PCI Catweasels. Drive
is the drive number (starting at 0), track and side are equally obvious, clock
is the clock rate (0 for SD/DD, 1 for HD). The 'file' parameter is the name of
the output file that
What I'm after are the raw files (and testhist output if possible) for:
- FM encoding, IBM format (PC or similar)
- MFM encoding, uPD765 (PC format), 3.5" DD
- MFM encoding, uPD765 (PC format), 3.5" HD
- MFM encoding, Amiga format, 3.5"
What I'm wanting to do is try out a neat little read-compensation algorithm I
found that seems to make it easier to decode discs where the FM/MFM timing
thresholds are a little ambiguous (the histogram shows a lot of bleed/smear
along the bottom).
An image of the whole disc would be useful, else a few random tracks would be
just as good (and probably easier to FTP/email).
Are there any kind souls out there with a Catweasel card and CW2DMK (or a
similar tool) that can provide this data?
Thanks,
--
Phil. | (\_/) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk | (='.'=) into your signature to help him gain
http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | (")_(") world domination.
> The 8" Micropolis drive was also used in the Tektronix Magnolia...a very
> early prototype workstation-class machine that used a bitmap display,
> and was based on Smalltalk as the native operating system. Tek (to my
> knowledge) never sold any of these machines, but quite a few of them
> were built as prototypes, and used in various areas of Tek as
> engineering workstations. The Magnolia was way ahead of its time. Had
> Tek had the marketing and sales skills to sell this thing as a computer,
> they could have grabbed the engineering computing workstation market
> before it even really existed. This was long before Sun or PERQ. It
> was more in the timeframe of the early Xerox PARC machines. In fact,
> some of the software engineers that developed the working environment
> for the Magnolia came from Xerox PARC.
I had my hands on a Tek Magnolia once and even recognized it for what
it was. Unfortunitely long before I knew of the list. And long before
I realized that you wanted to save the very first models. I didn't get
to play with it very long.
We got it in with a mother load of Intel (from Intel) about 1992 at
911 NW Hoyt in PDX. the Magnolia looked like an engineering prototype,
ugly box with no covers, cables all over.... A little squater than the
Xerox 8010s it came in with.
What I didn't recognise was the Alto that came in with the group. It
was several years later that I saw a picture. It was such a funny
Xerox.
>From Intel were many of every early development systems, 800, 8000,
II, III, & IV. What I would give for that mother load now......
> ago, I had occasion to run into the 6130 while unpacking stuff from a
> storage unit, and I brought it home, hooked it up to a trusty Heathkit
> H19 terminal, and powered it up. It booted up right away. Not even a
> fsck required. I even remembered the root password! Did a full "dd" of
> the disk to /dev/null, and no read errors at all. I think I still have
> a couple of these drives stored away.
One of the few Tek computers I never got my hands on, the 6130.
Is there a museum or timeline of Tektronix Computers / test equiipment
/ video equipment in physical space or on the Web? I don't think Paul
Pierce is collecting much Tektronix?
Paxton
--
Paxton Hoag
Astoria, OR
USA
Bakersfield, the armpit of California! Also, the location where about
1000 square feet of computer floor tiles are available from this guy:
Greg Williams
Barry Petroleum
ggw at bry.com
Concrete filled(!) tiles and support structure.
If anyone's interested, contact him directly.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
[excuse this second copy of my reply; worried that my first went into the Great Bit Bucket In The Sky]
Charles said:
>I've got a PDP-11/23+ with 4 Mb RAM, but only one RL02 and no software
>except an XXDP pack. Henk Gooijen helpfully made for me a (RT-11)
>bootable pack that is on the way (if the post offices between Europe
>and the US don't lose or destroy it). So I definitely want to make a
>backup copy.
>
>Is this possible to do with only one drive? Apparently you can't swap
>disks back and forth like the old DOS or CP/M systems. Henk thinks
>creating a RAM disk would work, and copy files but I don't know
>anything about RT-11.
>
You will have very good success using Will Kranz' TU58 emulation on a PC as an intermediate store:
http://www.fpns.net/willy/pdp11/tu58-emu.htm
He has a MSDOS flavor and a Linux flavor. I've used the MSDOS flavor as a way to image RL01s and RL02s for archival on other media (CDROM).
Be sure to read his documentation about patching the DD.SYS driver (renaming it to DW.SYS) to allow the emulated TU58 to have the same capacity as your RL02 cartridge. Don't worry, it's not difficult and when I first did this myself I had sub-zero DEC / PDP-11 / RT-11 experience.
While fairly slow (it is RS-232 serial, after all), the extra benefit your will enjoy using this method, is that you automatically will have a backup of the installation that Henk made for you and that you no doubt suffered some small expense to get.
If you have any more questions about using Will's TU58 emulator, feel free to contact me directly.
- Jared
--------Original Messages:
From: Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com>
Subject: Re: Unix disk copy using dd ?
To: General at mdrconsult.com, "Discussion at mdrconsult.com":On-Topic and
Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Message-ID: <463A0C40.6020707 at mdrconsult.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Andy Piercy wrote:
> More disk copy questions..
>
> Can you copy an entire disk using the UNIX dd command from a smaller
> disc to
> a larger one and retain the capacity of the larger drive?
>
> i.e. maybe create a partition on the larger drive which matches the smaller
> drive?
Not without other tools, at least on any OS I work with. dd
overwrites the filesystem's index, superblock, etc, so even if the
partition is bigger than the filesystem, you can't use it.
Doc
------------Reply:
Assuming you have a third disk or a spare partition on the larger drive,
can't you tar the small disk > to a file there and then untar to the final
disk/partition?
m
We could use such a floor in the UK at Bletchley should anyone have a line on
one [1] that might become available. The ICL mainframe's going to have to sit
on *something* and we're not quite sure what yet!
[1] needs to be vaguely around 4m by 12m, but there's a bit of flexibility
either way. I think 30cm high is about the max we can cope with though as we'd
like to leave the suspended ceiling in place (and the ICL's I/O cabinets are
full height racks)
Have asked over on uk.comp.vintage, but I'm not sure how much readership
overlap there is between there and here...
cheers
Jules
Rich, nice job with the Hawthorne SBC page.
I have one request: please provide not just disk images,
but a ZIP archive containing the files from the disks.
I also encourage you to scan and post any Hawthorne
articles from The Computer Journal.
In return, I have an issue (or issues) of the 68-KNEWS
newsletter. I won't be back home for a few weeks, but
when I find them they are yours.
--
Paul Santa-Maria
> So we need at least the programmer's
> guides for the TT and DI
I thought they were the same boards as used in the 980B
I'll check to see if I've put scans for the 980 versions
on line. At least some of the 980 documentation refers
to 960/980
> Yes, check the licensing info for SIMh and a few others. While PDP-11
> OSs (RT, RSX and RSTS [it may not include all of those]) are made
> available
> for SIMs it is not for commercial use or operation on real hardware.
> The
> copyrights are still valid and some of the products are active.
>
>
> Allison
>
One of my concerns was that the SIMH license seems a bit ambiguous as
to whether or not it covers SIMH (and there was no authoritative or
semi-authoritative opinions on the SIMH or Mentec websites). I've been
e-mailing with someone and they have clarified that, yes, Mentec's
correspondance/actions indicate that SIMH is still covered by the
"Supnik license"
even though it isn't a DEC product).
Pity that there isn't an explanation on the SIMH website, but I suppose
that Mentec doesn't want to throw money at explanations, and nobody
else wants to pontificate in an "official" manner given the current
state of the USA.
Scott
Al Kossow wrote:
> <http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/photos2/1k/selectric_term1.jpg>
Found one in the CHM collection today.
It is a "Datel 30". There are a few mentions of it on the web,
mostly saying it was a light-duty device that broke a lot.
-------------------------------
Billy asks:
Wasn't Datel one of the first to offer timeshare services? Sort of a
precursor to the Internet? I remember Datel advertising on TV about making
stock market transactions in your office.
The model 33 was not the most popular device for that environment.
Billy
> It's still commercial software, and it's still possible to buy
> licenses.
>
> I assume you're looking at mentec.com, that hasn't been the place to
> look for several years.
>
> Zane
mentec-inc used to be the place for the commercial stuff, but it seems
to be no longer around.
My question, however, was regarding the non-commercial PDP-11 stuff. At
this point, I'm not interested in the commercial stuff- it just isn't
worth it. (before you grab the torches and pitchforks I don't find
Windows "worth it" enough to walk across campus and pick up the
all-but-free disks either). I was looking into emulators (never touched
the VAX's little brother or O/S SW yet), and came across some disk
images with the following licensing:
"Whereas, MENTEC owns the rights to the following PDP-11 Operating
Systems and associated layered products (RT-11 V5.3 or prior, RSTS/E
V9.6 or prior, RSX-11M V4.3 or prior, RSX-11M PLUS V3.0 or prior)
(SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY) and is prepared to grant a non-exclusive license
to use such
SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY for personal, non-commercial purposes;"
and
"SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY shall mean the binary versions of the PDP-11
Operating Systems (RT-11 V5.3 or prior, RSTS/E V9.6 or prior, RSX-11M
V4.3 or prior, RSX-11M PLUS V3.0 or prior), and associated utilities
and layered products that run on PDP-11 computers.
"
but somewhat cryptically also
"EMULATOR shall mean software owned by Digital Equipment Corporation
that emulates the operation of a PDP-11 processor and allows PDP-11
programs and operating systems to run on non-PDP-11 systems.
2 LICENSE GRANT
MENTEC grants to CUSTOMER a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free
license under MENTEC's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS to use and copy the
SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY solely for personal, non-commercial uses in
conjunction with the EMULATOR."
So, in short, is this only valid for emulators in which DEC or it's
successors in interest (HP?) own the copyright, or is it only valid for
systems where DEC or (...) hold RTU licenses for a PDP-11 emulator on?
If the prior, what is the connection to SIMH? If it is valid for
currently obtainable emulators and (as it seems to at face value)
include RSX-11, why no RSX-11 images? I suppose RSTS/E is the easy way
out, (provided licensing is good), but RSX-11 has the advantages of
some commonality with VMS (DCL).
I got the following email earlier today:
---
Hi,
I'm a writer from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel working on a story about
people who collect vintage computers. I'm looking to interview people from
the South Florida area (Broward County especially, which includes Fort
Lauderdale) and was wondering if you had any such people are your members
and if you could ask them to contact me ASAP. [...]
Thanks,
Jamie Malernee
Staff Writer
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
954-356-4849
---
Jamie is looking specifically for collectors in the South Florida area to
"localize" the story. Others have already been interviewed.
Please give a call if you're interested!
Erik Klein
www.vintage-computer.comwww.vintage-computer.com/vcforum
The Vintage Computer Forums