19 Jun
2005
19 Jun
'05
10:16 a.m.
Hi,
Great!
TK50...???
Hm.... But I'm a paper tape
enthusiast..... I just think about giving
the 11 away again - perhaps it's too modern for me.....
Ok. that's the point where I try to start. I
will make a floppy. Need an
image and then I'll try to put the image to onto a floppy.
People around here are perhaps a bit paranoid on
cleaning. :-)
I have no clean room and no cleanroom.....
Computer says:
Yes, that is something that is read from the disk. **THIS VOLUME DOES NOT CONTAIN A HARDWARE
BOOTABLE SYSTEM ***
000034
@
I would be glad if that is a message read from the disk partitions (like
the bootsector message on non-system disks in my pc). RSX (don't know if the other OSes do the same)
write a special boot block
on non-bootable disks. This boot block basically just prints the above
message, and halts. All that fits fine into 512 bytes.
Aha. I also have an RSX-11M
license..... But no media or a clue how to
get it into my machine.
What is the
"modern way" to get software into the PDP11?
Phew. Tape normally. Small,
modern PDP11s usually have TK50, and software
is distributed on TK50. Is there
anything like a RIM or BIN loader?
Yes, but that is very old technology. People
don't have paper tape on
PDP-11, and haven't for a very long time. If you're on a bare system, with only disk drives
to play with, then your
options are limited.
I have a RX02 double diskette drive and a lot of disks....
The best might actually be to pretend you have a
TU58, which speaks through a normal serial line, but is a block device,
which most PDP11 can boot from.
May the original bootstrap code boot from a serial
port directly??
Yes. The TU58 is a cheap block device, for which the
hardware on the
PDP-11 side actually is just a serial interface. Most boot roms know how
to boot from one, and an emulator for the actual TU58 exist.
The standard ROM in my 11/23+ does not boot from tu58?
Can I boot RT11
or RSX11 from floppy???
Yes.
Oh, and I would probably try to align the drive correctly if I fooled
around with it. You never know when another pack shows up which you might
want to read.
I can't realign the drive because I don't have the alignment tools,
control panel for the drive and an alignment pack. But I did not change
the head alignment when I removed the heads. Left them together without
moving relatively to each other..
Does anyone have experience with that "vtserver" program?
It puts it's bootcode into the pdp (via odt) and then the CPU stops.
Sometimes a single 'r' character shows up. And sometimes I see an error
message (non-existent record 13)....
I start to think about a problem with my serial port.... Are there known
issues with the console port? I have tried 300,2400,9600 and 19200.
Always errors. But NEVER while vtserver puts its startup code. Always
after vtserver has started the pdp.
And a simple question: How does the addressing in pdp11 work? R7 seems
to be only 16 bit wide. And when I boot up the system, the MMU should be
off and the memory mapping should be direct. How do I access the upper
bits of my PC (i.e. "changing the segment")?
Regards,
Philipp :-)