At 01:25 AM 7/24/05 +0100, you wrote: The "System Disk" should be but it will not include any language extensions so none of the peripherals or internal options (clock, error messages, DMA, etc) will work. It's a dammed minimal system and about the only thing that will work is the ALPHA display and the default disk drive. However once you get a system running you can load the .BIN files (device drivers) located on the "Drivers + Language Ext" disk using the LOAD BIN filename command. When you get all the drivers loaded that you want you can save the entire operating system as one file (if your drive is large enough. It won't fit on a floppy disk). Use the LIST BIN command to show what BIN files are currently loaded. You can also use SCRATCH BIN to unload all the BIN files but that's not particularly usefull since you won't be able to do much with just the minimum OS. >IIRC< the command to save the OS file that is currently in memory is SAVE SYSTEM filename.* The interesting thing is that you can create many different operating system files, each with different BIN files included and save each OS file using a different name. Then when you boot the system you can press the space bar and it will stop the system from automaticly booting the first OS file that it finds and instead it will display a list of all the OS files (and ROM cards with OSs) and you can boot any OS file by pressing the one or two letter code displayed next to the desired OS. See <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/hp-boot.htm> for more information about this. *There are some oddities about naming the OS files but I don't recall all the details off the top of my head. One of the things that I found was that the LETTER displayed with the OS file depends on the one the first letter of the second half of the OS filename. If you name the OS file SYSTEM_BAS then the letter will be B but if you saved the exact same file as SYSTEM_RAS then the letter will be R. Also, if the Boot ROM will display the first B file with the code 1B. The next B file will be 2B, etc etc. So if you created a system and saved it as SYSTEM_BAS and then saved it again as SYSTEM_RAS and then rebooted and viewed the OS files you would see 1B and 1R. If you then saved another OS file as SYS_BAS and then rebooted and viewed the OS files you'd see 1B, 1R and 2B. IIRC you don't have to use the name SYSTEM although that's what the manual says to use. You can end up with some real screwy codes depending on what file names you use! For example you can save HPL, Pascal and BASIC OS files all using a Bxx suffix and all the files will be displayed as 1B, 2B, 3B etc even though they're different languages! However the system will always know that the files are OS files since you used the SAVE SYSTEM command to save them. I haved played with this in a long time but I can look up the details if you need them. or does it run under I believe they are. However BASIC 5.1 itself supported the Hirectical File System (HFS). In other words directories, sub-directories etc. I'm not sure of the specific meaning in this case but usually it just indicates the type disk that's included in the set (5 1/4" vs 3 1/2", etc). Joe

Tony, You are correct on all counts. I wrote that a long time ago and it was based on what little I could figure out at the time without any documentation so it's not exactly correct. (You can't believe how long it took just to sort those few details out!) I also knowingly left out some details to keep it simple and understandable. For one thing, you do not have to press the space bar to halt the boot process. You can press any key and it will abort the process. BUT if you press a key such as B and it happens to corrospond to one of the boot codes then it will boot that system. Rather than explain the incatricies I just tell people to press the space bar since it should never be assigned as a boot code. Regarding the serial number, IIRC it is stored in an EEPROM in the later machines but in the early ones it is in the BootROM. At least that's what I seem to recall. I've never hacked the hardware on these machines so I'm just going on what I've heard or read. At 07:37 PM 7/24/05 +0100, you wrote: You're welcome. Good luck getting the OS up and running. I've had a lot of people ask me for copies of the OS so they could get their machines running but I couldn't help them since as I mentioned, a built and useable OS system is all in one file and it's too big to copy to a floppy disk so the only way to distribute it would be to find another hard drive and install the OS there and ship the entire HD to them. Not too practicle. However if you have the individual files (as you do) then you can copy them to a number of floppy disks and simply mail those to potential users. I've only recently gotten a set of installation disks myself so I haven't gotten to play with distributing the stuff yet. I guess you don't have the manuals for this. AFIK I have the full set of manuals for BASIC 5.1 along with a bunch of other useful related HP manuals such as the HP 9826/9836 and HP 9000/300 Series Computer Installation manuals, various peripheral configuration manuals, BASIC 2.1 and 3.0 manuals, HPL manual, Pascal manuals, Self-Study Guide to Instrument Interfacing using HP Basic, FSD Customer Engineering Manual and more. This stuff needs to be made available to the everyone. Al has asked about borrowing the stuff and scanning it and I've told him that he can but we haven't done anythng to make it happen yet. But it's about time that we did. How about it Al? Do you have time to do this stuff yet? If not, is anyone else interested in working on it? BUT I do have to warn you, I went through HELL to get these books and I DO want them back!!!! DON'T MAKE ME HAVE TO COME GET THEM! YOU WON'T LIKE IT! PS I just counted and found 24 manuals and that does not include the BASIC 2.1, BASIC 3.0 and Pascal manuals so I'm guessing that the total will be something like 36 manuals. PSS I also have some useful HP-UX manuals that need to be scanned and posted. Joe

Tony Duell wrote: Even the programmers found HP software manuals to be that way. Copied from <http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/manual.html>: How to Read a Manual By Alfredo Rego Adager Sun Valley, Idaho March 1, 1982 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- What follows is Alfredo's answer to a question from the audience at a RUG meeting. The question was: "Do you have the IMAGE hashing algorithm?" Alfredo detected the question behind the question and made this reply. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You should read manuals like you read love letters. In a love letter, everything counts. You read between the lines, above the lines, below the lines, and in the margins. You read between the individual letters (is that "i" dotted in an angry way?) You wonder what significance the stamp has. You smell the envelope for any special fragrance. You study the salutation (why "dearest" and not "darling" this time?) You even try to take the sheets of paper apart! In a manual, everything counts as well. Your heart may not pound as strongly when you read a manual. But you will certainly have more time for love if you do not have to spend endless hours at the computer doing things that you would not have to do at all had you read the manual lovingly to begin with! A sample from the IMAGE/3000 manual will warm up you heart: The manual mentions that DBGET "provides eight different methods for reading the data items of a specified entry". It then specifies these reading methods according to the Mode parameter. Everybody seems to register the first seven modes and everybody seems to ignore the eighth mode, whose action the manual casually describes thus: "Read the entry occupying the primary address of a synonym chain using the search item value specified in ARGUMENT to locate the entry. If the entry is not a primary entry in a master data set specified by DSET, it is not read." This apparently innocent paragraph actually says a lot! For instance, it says that you can use a Read-Before-Write approach that can help you minimize the load time of a master data set. Specifically, if you have to load a large quantity of entries to a master data set, you can do a DBGET mode 8 on the search-item value corresponding to the entry you are about to DBPUT. If DBGET returns a No Entry error code, then you know that the entry will be a primary entry and will never have to be migrated; therefore, you can do its DBPUT with a clear sense of righteousness. If, however, DBGET returns a code that means that it found an entry in the spot where your proposed entry belongs, then you know that it would become a secondary somewhere and -- even worse -- you know that it would become a candidate for migration if some primary later on happens to belong in the temporary spot "lent" to it. With this knowledge, you are then free to choose not to DBPUT this entry on this pass but wait until you have loaded all the primaries. You can then do a second pass loading all the secondaries -- none of which will migrate at all! The savings in time can be measured in the order of days. Well worth your while during your manual-reading, even though it was not your personfriend who wrote it. Alfredo Rego (end quote)

Hello, there is a PDP11/34a on ebay Germany. Maybe of interest for the European readers of this list. Andreas

Oops, I forgot to say.... Not for the moment :-)... Doubless I'll have more questions when I try to boot the 9836, but I'll probably not have time to work on that machine for a few months. When I do get it out and start fiddling, of course I'll mention it here. -tony