Puzzling error message - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

5 Nov 2011

At 01:38 PM 11/4/2011, THOM RESTIVO wrote:
...
 When running OS8 on a PDP8/a system I get an error
message that reads 
"ahain
error". Has anyone ever seen or heard of this. I cannot find info anywhere
on this. One thought we have is that maybe the message should read "chain
error" and was mis-spelled in the program that generates it. Any thoughts? 
The OS/8 USR (User Service Routine) has a CHAIN function that allows a 
program to exit and start up another program. For example, the FORTRAN 
compiler has multiple phases and chains from one phase to the next. 
CHAIN requires that the program being chained to be on the system boot 
device (SYS:), otherwise you'll get a CHAIN ERROR message from USR.

What program are you using when you see this error? Are you running 
that from the SYS device? If not, that's the fix.

As far as the "AHAIN" versus "CHAIN" - I don't know why it's
spelled 
incorrectly, but it wouldn't surprise me that it's someone's idea for 
bumming a bit for some reason from an infrequent error message.
         -Rick