27 Feb
2017
27 Feb
'17
7:33 p.m.
Hello everyone,
It's been about a year since I last asked around, so I figure it's
time for me to put out another call for help.
My AT&T 3B2 emulator sits unfinished due to lack of internals
documentation. If you or anyone you know might have access to
internals documents -- schematics, timing diagrams, etc. -- please let
me know.
These docs are very hard to find, and may never have been released by
AT&T. Maybe you know a former AT&T engineer who managed to squirrel
some away?
I have many resources already, so I'm NOT looking for user manuals,
SVR3 source code, or the IO Bus specification. These are pretty
easily available online, and they've given me their all.
Many thanks in advance,
-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
web at loomcom.com
1 Mar
1 Mar
7:07 a.m.
New subject: Maillist Logistics - question
All,
am I just being paranoid, or does this seem like a bad idea?
Passwords for mtapley at swri.edu:
List Password // URL
---- --------
cctalk at classiccmp.org ?..
<content edited> . Presumably that email went only to me, but I just have the idea
that a plain-text email with my account and password both in the same place isn?t wise.
I?m not sure the information is terribly abusable - presumably if my list membership were
hijacked I could work it out without much fiancial risk or anything, but still, if we need
passwords, this is a pretty cavalier way to treat them.
Is there a mailman setting that can be used to delete this information from the monthly
mailing?
- Mark
5 Mar
5 Mar
1:50 a.m.
Hello Seth,
Fingers crossed that you already have what you need.
Given the possibility that you don't, my comment here is that your request for
internal documents are somewhat vague. Can you be somewhat more specifics?
The reason specifically I'm asking, is I was reviewing an old Unix book/document
earlier, "Life with Unix" by Don Libes & Sandy Ressler. The document makes
a
lot of comments about both Berkeley/BSD and AT&T, and how AT&T was using Unix
internally all over the place.
It is of no direct value here, but the book is available to the public in pdf
format here in case you are interested:
<ftp://www.tuhs.org/UnixArchive/Documentation/Books/Life_with_Unix.pdf>
During my time in the military, I spent most of the early 1990's in the Pacific
theatre, and although at the time I was not wearing a Unix admin hat, I was
reminded by the book that I observed AT&T 3b2 systems in Japan on base that were
part of the telco system, and had no IT usage.
And to be more specific, I'm wondering out loud here if possibly, the
documentation you might need may not be directly accessible, but that
information might be available in a round about way, possibly thru the telco
side of things.
If nothing else, food for thought.
Wishing you luck,
Jerry
On 02/27/17 09:33 PM, Seth Morabito wrote:
Hello everyone,
It's been about a year since I last asked around, so I figure it's
time for me to put out another call for help.
My AT&T 3B2 emulator sits unfinished due to lack of internals
documentation. If you or anyone you know might have access to
internals documents -- schematics, timing diagrams, etc. -- please let
me know.
These docs are very hard to find, and may never have been released by
AT&T. Maybe you know a former AT&T engineer who managed to squirrel
some away?
I have many resources already, so I'm NOT looking for user manuals,
SVR3 source code, or the IO Bus specification. These are pretty
easily available online, and they've given me their all.
Many thanks in advance,
-Seth
6 Mar
6 Mar
11:06 a.m.
* On Sun, Mar 05, 2017 at 03:50:36AM -0600, Jerry Kemp via cctalk <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hello Seth,
Fingers crossed that you already have what you need.
Given the possibility that you don't, my comment here is that your request
for internal documents are somewhat vague. Can you be somewhat more
specifics?
I have done some additional digging, so I think I can be much more
specific now about what documents would be helpful to me. None of
these seem to be online, and I've done some exhaustive searching of
library archives and the used book market to see if I can find them,
but they haven't turned up any hits yet.
Anyway, the documents that I think would be most useful are all listed
in the 1987 and 1993 editions of the Bell Labs catalog "The AT&T
Documentation Guide", both of which are posted online.
1. "3B2 Computer Technical Reference Manual" (305-490)
2. "3B2/3B5 Computer Driver Design Guide" (305-495)
3. "Unix System V/VME OEM Porting Manual" (307-780)
4. "AT&T 3B2 Computer Feature Card Interface Design Manual" (305-492)
5. "AT&T 3B2 Computer Debug Monitor Guide" (305-442)
The numbers in parentheses are document numbers used by AT&T.
The reason specifically I'm asking, is I was
reviewing an old Unix
book/document earlier, "Life with Unix" by Don Libes & Sandy Ressler. The
document makes a lot of comments about both Berkeley/BSD and AT&T, and how
AT&T was using Unix internally all over the place.
It definitely pays to look at outside resources. One of the most
useful books for this project has been Maurice Bach's "The Design of
the UNIX Operating System", which describes System V Release 3 in
great detail. This, combined with the SVR3 source code, have been
invaluable to me. The 3B2 was the main porting platform for SVR3, so
there are lots of tidbits and details about the hardware in it. In
fact, without the SVR3 source code, I would be absolutely nowhere in
this project.
And to be more specific, I'm wondering out loud
here if possibly, the
documentation you might need may not be directly accessible, but that
information might be available in a round about way, possibly thru the telco
side of things.
Indeed, there's a lot of documentation about the 3B20 thanks to the
telco side of things. I haven't found any 3B2 documentation down that
path, but it remains interesting to me.
Wishing you luck,
Many thanks and best wishes!
Jerry
-Seth
1:54 p.m.
Very interesting. I didn't start wearing a Unix hat till 1989-1990 time period.
Aside from the ATT 3B2, my only other exposure to SysVR3 Unix was thru Banyan
Vines.
Banyan Vines sat on top of SysVR3 Unix, and we used a lot of Banyan Vines. When
(Banyan) boxes went down, typically due to poor power/power outages and no
UPS's, I typically got a call to recover them, which entailed interacting with
the Unix underneath, until it was recovered enough that file systems were
repaired and the full Banyan NOS stack could come up.
Back on topic, I guess I had not understood your request enough, I had though
you were needing specific hardware and CPU information. Did not realize that
there were software/SysVR3 questions you were still asking.
Again, wishing you good luck in acquiring the data that you need to move forward.
Jerry Kemp
On 03/ 6/17 01:06 PM, Seth Morabito via cctalk wrote:
lots of stuff deleted here
It definitely pays to look at outside resources. One of the most
useful books for this project has been Maurice Bach's "The Design of
the UNIX Operating System", which describes System V Release 3 in
great detail. This, combined with the SVR3 source code, have been
invaluable to me. The 3B2 was the main porting platform for SVR3, so
there are lots of tidbits and details about the hardware in it. In
fact, without the SVR3 source code, I would be absolutely nowhere in
this project.
-Seth
3:24 p.m.
* On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 03:54:17PM -0600, Jerry Kemp via cctalk <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
Very interesting. I didn't start wearing a Unix
hat till 1989-1990 time
period. Aside from the ATT 3B2, my only other exposure to SysVR3 Unix was
thru Banyan Vines.
Banyan Vines sat on top of SysVR3 Unix, and we used a lot of Banyan Vines.
...
Very interesting, I wonder if I could learn anything from Banyan Vines?
I recall it on the PC, but I didn't realize it was on SVR3 as well.
Back on topic, I guess I had not understood your
request enough, I had
though you were needing specific hardware and CPU information. Did not
realize that there were software/SysVR3 questions you were still asking.
Oh, I definitely do still need specific hardware information. The "big"
chips (the CPU, MMU, DMA controller, floppy & disk controllers, UART,
etc.) are thankfully very well documented! But the rest of what makes up
the 3B2/400 system board is not documented anywhere but inside the SVR3
source code.
Also, if I ever hope to emulate the cartridge tape controller or the
extended serial ports, SCSI, or Ethernet cards, I'll need yet more
information. I don't have the source for those drivers, so I have
absolutely no idea how they operate.
Jerry Kemp
-Seth
4:09 p.m.
On 03/ 6/17 05:24 PM, Seth Morabito via cctalk wrote:
* On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 03:54:17PM -0600, Jerry Kemp
via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
To the best of my knowledge, Banyan Vines was deemed an NOS, or network
operating system. A term common, at least in my circles in the early to mid
1990's. Banyan Vines sat on top of SysV release 3 Unix and, to the best of my
knowledge, only ever ran on top of 32 bit x86 systems. Much in relationship,
to, at least at one time, the Novell Netware system sat on top of DOS.
OTOH, towards the later part of Banyan's existence, Banyan had decoupled their
X.500 based directory product, StreetTalk. I understand that the StreetTalk was
available for most common Unix's on RISC processors of the day, but my only
actual, hands on experience with the directory product was on Solaris on SPARC
processors.
Although it has been since the mid 1990's since having any personal hands on
experience with any Banyan product, I do know that they are out there floating
around on the Internet. A couple of years back, I was able to obtain a copy of
(as I understand) the last release of Banyan Vines, version 8.5, on 3.5" floppy
disk images.
Not sure if there is anything of value to you in the above rant, or if I am just
reminiscing out loud to the group over decades gone-by.
Feel free to reach out to me back channel if you believe I might have anything
that may further your ATT 3B2 emulation effort.
Jerry
Very interesting. I didn't start wearing a
Unix hat till 1989-1990 time
period. Aside from the ATT 3B2, my only other exposure to SysVR3 Unix was
thru Banyan Vines.
Banyan Vines sat on top of SysVR3 Unix, and we used a lot of Banyan Vines.
...
Very interesting, I wonder if I could learn anything from Banyan Vines?
I recall it on the PC, but I didn't realize it was on SVR3 as well.
7 Mar
7 Mar
7:55 a.m.
On 7 March 2017 at 01:09, Jerry Kemp via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Much in relationship, to, at least at one time, the
Novell Netware system
sat on top of DOS.
Very very kinda sortof.
Netware 2 could cold-boot itself.
Netware 3 & 4 needed DOS as a bootloader. If you wanted, you could
issue a command:
REMOVE DOS
... and then the memory was reclaimed and added to the disk cache.
But if you wanted to load stuff from floppy or from a FAT C: drive, or
from a CD that didn't have Netware drivers, you
needed DOS present.
But Netware wasn't really running on it, as demonstrated by the
ability to remove it after booting.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
5 Mar
5 Mar
9:08 a.m.
One i've had luck with is posting on Craigslist and putting ads in local
newspapers to where the manufacturing was done. Use to work better when
people read newspapers, but even last year I got an e-mail back from an
advertisement in a paper with an offer of just pay the media mail rate for
a full bankers box of docs.
-pete
On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Seth Morabito <lists at loomcom.com> wrote:
Hello everyone,
It's been about a year since I last asked around, so I figure it's
time for me to put out another call for help.
My AT&T 3B2 emulator sits unfinished due to lack of internals
documentation. If you or anyone you know might have access to
internals documents -- schematics, timing diagrams, etc. -- please let
me know.
These docs are very hard to find, and may never have been released by
AT&T. Maybe you know a former AT&T engineer who managed to squirrel
some away?
I have many resources already, so I'm NOT looking for user manuals,
SVR3 source code, or the IO Bus specification. These are pretty
easily available online, and they've given me their all.
Many thanks in advance,
-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
web at loomcom.com
12:23 p.m.
Somewhere, probably in a box in the attic, I have a xerox of a preliminary
document on the WE32000. I really liked that processor.
bill
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Pete Lancashire via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Sunday, March 5, 2017 12:08 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Still Looking For AT&T 3B2 Internals Docs
One i've had luck with is posting on Craigslist and putting ads in local
newspapers to where the manufacturing was done. Use to work better when
people read newspapers, but even last year I got an e-mail back from an
advertisement in a paper with an offer of just pay the media mail rate for
a full bankers box of docs.
-pete
On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Seth Morabito <lists at loomcom.com> wrote:
Hello everyone,
It's been about a year since I last asked around, so I figure it's
time for me to put out another call for help.
My AT&T 3B2 emulator sits unfinished due to lack of internals
documentation. If you or anyone you know might have access to
internals documents -- schematics, timing diagrams, etc. -- please let
me know.
These docs are very hard to find, and may never have been released by
AT&T. Maybe you know a former AT&T engineer who managed to squirrel
some away?
I have many resources already, so I'm NOT looking for user manuals,
SVR3 source code, or the IO Bus specification. These are pretty
easily available online, and they've given me their all.
Many thanks in advance,
-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
web at loomcom.com
2614
days inactive
2621
days old
9 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com -
lists＠loomcom.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
mtapley＠swri.edu -
other＠oryx.us -
pete＠petelancashire.com