29 Jan
2004
29 Jan
'04
8:13 a.m.
Brad Parker <brad(a)heeltoe.com> wrote:
Excellent. I didn't realize that. I think I got
confused looking at
NetBSD (which says it won't boot on a 730).
Please don't confuse BSD and NetBSD. It may help to realise that "net" is
Russian for "no", so NetBSD really means "not BSD". I strongly
encourage you to
run 4.3BSD on your VAX. A Classic Computer should run a Classic OS!
It looks like it has an RL02, an "R80" and
some sort
of 9-track. It's two racks wide. We'll see :-)
Standard 730 config. But the good part is that you have a tape drive, that's
the most important and most often overlooked part.
I understand there were microcode issues on the 730
which made booting
painful.
Yup.
I didn't realize there was a "fix" to
the microcode.
Yes, I'm pretty sure it was fixed, although since I have never actually had a
730 in my hacky hands I have never been able to see and verify it for myself.
Ultrix V2.00 source contains the following comment (in /sys/stand/Makefile):
# 9 Dec 83 --jmcg
# Deleted special references to old 730 bug. There is no longer a
# distinction between versions for 780, 750, and 730. Distribution
# media, however, contain `boot_justask' as `boot' to avoid attempts
# to boot prematurely.
This comment makes me fairly assured that this bug was indeed fixed, and from
the comment date apparently quite early.
I have a copy of VAX-11/730 console and microcode cassette with microcode
version 58, which almost certainly has this bug fixed. Unfortunately it is not
a virgin copy but a mutilated one. It was copied under Vampirist Mediocre
System (VMS) which did not do a true block-for-block copy like UNIX dd, but
parsed the original RT-11 filesystem and copied only the files, constructing a
new RT-11 filesystem on the copy, so the files are not necessarily in their
original locations, the dates on the files are wrong (the date of VMS copying,
not the original date), etc. Since this cassette image is mutilated, it is not
on my FTP site, but I can send it to you if you need it. I am still looking for
a virgin block-for-block 730 TU58 image.
MS
29 Jan
29 Jan
8:44 a.m.
Excellent. I
didn't realize that. I think I got confused looking at
NetBSD (which says it won't boot on a 730).
Please don't confuse BSD and NetBSD. It may help to realise that "net" is
Russian for "no", so NetBSD really means "not BSD". I strongly
encourage you to
run 4.3BSD on your VAX. A Classic Computer should run a Classic OS!
1 Feb
1 Feb
11:59 a.m.
On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 02:44:39PM -0500, J.C. Wren wrote:
Wha? 'nyet' is Russian for 'no' last time I checked a dictionary.
But in Russian, it's three letters... written like "net", *pronounced*
like "nyet".
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 01-Feb-2004 22:50 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -29.7 F (-34.3 C) Windchill -59.3 F (-50.7 C)
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Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
29 Jan
29 Jan
8:58 a.m.
From http://netbsd.org/Misc/history.html: "NetBSD took its roots
from the original UCB 4.3BSD via the Networking/2
release and 386BSD."
Talking to the guys in #netbsd on efnet, the
'net' portion of the name
shows part of it's heritage, from the Metworking/2 release. They claim
you're on crack.
--jc
Michael Sokolov wrote:
Excellent. I
didn't realize that. I think I got confused looking at
NetBSD (which says it won't boot on a 730).
Please don't confuse BSD and NetBSD. It may help to realise that "net" is
Russian for "no", so NetBSD really means "not BSD". I strongly
encourage you to
run 4.3BSD on your VAX. A Classic Computer should run a Classic OS!
9:06 a.m.
Excellent. I
didn't realize that. I think I got confused looking
at NetBSD (which says it won't boot on a 730).
Please don't confuse BSD
and NetBSD. It may help to realise that "net" is Russian
for "no", so NetBSD
really means "not BSD".
Well, the leading N sound needs to be palatalized, as I understand it;
the sound _is_ better transcribed into English spelling rules as "nyet"
than "net". (Not that _you_ need to be told this; this is more to the
list than to msokolov.)
Your "meaning" for NetBSD is amusing, but (like most dogmatic positions
taken for political reasons) rather incorrect factually, as someone
else already pointed out.
NetBSD is not BSD in the strict sense of having come from the CSRG at
Berkeley - but then, nothing is that is today simultaneously (a)
bootable, (b) open source, and (c) legal to run for those without
licenses that are expensive (if obtainable at all).
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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10:15 a.m.
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:06:00 -0500 (EST)
der Mouse <mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:
NetBSD is not BSD in the strict sense of having come
from the CSRG at
Berkeley - but then, nothing is that is today simultaneously (a)
bootable, (b) open source, and (c) legal to run for those without
licenses that are expensive (if obtainable at all).
Old BSD releases can be
downloaded for free from the TUHS archive since
Caldera released the old UNIX stuff under a BSD licence. At least the
4.3BSD-Quasijarus stuff (an extended 4.3BSD-Tahoe from M. Sokolov) is
bootable on cold hardware. 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD-Reno seem to be complete
too.
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
1:04 p.m.
and (c) legal
to run for those without licenses that are expensive
(if obtainable at all).
Old BSD releases can be downloaded for free from the TUHS
archive
since Caldera released the old UNIX stuff under a BSD licence. 
3 Feb
3 Feb
10:55 a.m.
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Jochen Kunz wrote:
Old BSD releases can be downloaded for free from the
TUHS archive since
Caldera released the old UNIX stuff under a BSD licence. At least the
4.3BSD-Quasijarus stuff (an extended 4.3BSD-Tahoe from M. Sokolov) is
bootable on cold hardware. 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD-Reno seem to be complete
too.
Although Mike's "Q" is not *technically* BSD because it was not
released
by CSRG, he does fully comply with their entire history of decision-
making, and therefore can be considered "more BSD" than most, if not
all, of the current freeware stuff.
--f
10:53 a.m.
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, der Mouse wrote:
> It may help to realise that "net" is
Russian for "no", so NetBSD
> really means "not BSD".
Although I disagree with Mike's
explanation, he is right in the
sense that netBSD (like openBSD, freeBSD et al) is "not really
UNIX". They are not.
BSD (as in, BSD 2.X, 3.X, 4.X UNIX) and its specialty trees (Reno,
Tahoe, Net/1 and Net/2) are "real UNIX" code systems, which required
a full AT&T/Western Electric source code license, and which were
derived directly from V7 by the folks of CSRG at UC Berkeley.
BSD/386, BSDI, {net|free|open}BSD all are BSD 4.X code derivatives
which had been rewritten in such a way (see the whole BSD 4.4 UNIX
vs. AT&T lawsuit minutes) that allowed them to be freely distributed
to people without a written license from AT&T (the famous "seven files"
were re-implemented.)
As such, these systems are no longer considered "real UNIX", but,
rather, "free UNIX-like" systems.
License-technically speaking, one needs their code to pass a full
suite of qualification tests ran by X/Open (formerly OSF, USL et al)
before one can call that code "UNIX".
NetBSD is not BSD in the strict sense of having come
from the CSRG at
Berkeley - but then, nothing is that is today simultaneously (a)
bootable, (b) open source, and (c) legal to run for those without
licenses that are expensive (if obtainable at all).
Almost correct. It is not BSD
(obviously, as they were never released
by CSRG) but not even UNIX. It being freely available, expensive and
whatnot is totally irrelevant.
--f
12:19 p.m.
[...] netBSD (like openBSD, freeBSD et al) is
"not really UNIX".
They are not.
[...legalisms...]
This depends on what "really UNIX" is.
There are many plausible meanings for it, and I see no particular
reason to prefer yours over the far more common one, which is difficult
to define but amounts to, more or less, "anything philosophically and
APIly close to the V7 core". Eric Raymond wrote a piece about the
SCO-vs-IBM flap, which is mostly neither here nor there, but it does
have a worthwhile discussion of just what "Unix" means.
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html#id2791292 should take you
straight to it.
In his terms, you seem to want the word to mean some ill-defined cross
between a genetic Unix and a trademark Unix. However, that is not how
the word is normally used; in the usual sense of the term,
{Net,Open,Free}BSD are Unix, as are Linux and a large variety of
closed-source operating systems (some of which are genetic and/or
trademark Unices as well).
In any case, the whole debate is of little value. The remark which
started it all off was more a political statement than a practical
statement; while I both disagree with his political views on this
matter and defend his right to hold them, I see no real point in
discussing them further on-list. Thus, I'm shutting up unless someone
can actually come up with something new to say on the subject.
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1:58 p.m.
This depends
on what "really UNIX" is.
That is defined by law, these days, since the
name [is trademarked]. 
29 Jan
29 Jan
10:46 a.m.
Excellent. I
didn't realize that. I think I got confused looking at
NetBSD (which says it won't boot on a 730).
Please don't confuse BSD and NetBSD. It may help to realise that "net" is
Russian for "no", so NetBSD really means "not BSD". From the console of a Mac OS X box next to two Macs
running NetBSD,
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- Greek tailor shop: "Euripedes?" "Yes -- Eumenides?"
------------------------
30 Jan
30 Jan
8:27 a.m.
I have a copy of VAX-11/730 console and microcode
cassette
with microcode version 58, which almost certainly has this
bug fixed. Unfortunately it is not a virgin copy but a
mutilated one. It was copied under Vampirist Mediocre System
(VMS) which did not do a true block-for-block copy like UNIX
dd, but parsed the original RT-11 filesystem and copied only
the files, constructing a new RT-11 filesystem on the copy,
It's true that EXHANGE has no way of performing an image
copy, but I would have thought that BACKUP/PHYSICAL would
have done that, if the original copier had wanted to
achieve that effect. (I don't have a VAX-11/730 to
hand, so I'm not able to check that BACKUP would
handle a TU58 properly, but in principle it should).
However, I do know that the TU58 on the VAX-11/750 was
the slowest boot device I've ever come across. This
was not made any better by the fact that the files on
the TU58 were probably in a non-optimal order for the
specific config I was running. (The optimal order
depended IIRC on exactly how you chose to boot). In fact,
the CSC must have had one complaint too many about this as,
at one time, there was a procedure available which would
write a new tape in the optimal order for your requirements.
If the same was true for the VAX-11/730, perhaps what
you have is such an "optimised" tape.
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org
8:47 a.m.
"Antonio Carlini" wrote:
However, I do know that the TU58 on the VAX-11/750 was
the slowest boot device I've ever come across.
Has anyone tried either of the tu58 "emulators"? I found one software
tar and another hardware device.
The software version was written by Dan Ts'o. It implies that one could
connect a pc with a serial port in place of the tu58 and boot using the
pc. (and intriguing idea, I must say...)
is the tu58 basically a serial device?
-brad
11:21 a.m.
is the tu58 basically a serial device?
Generally, yes. The serial port can be configured to be RS232 or RS422
IIRC by some jumpers on the board. There's another jumper to set the baud
rate. At the bit level it uses the normal asynchronous protocol (like
most common serial ports), the format of the command packets, etc is
given in the manual
The reason I say 'gnerally serial' is that the printset I have for the
TU58 also gives schematics for a parallel version. I've never seen this
one, though. The TU58 in my 11/730 CPU is certainly the standard serial
version (even though the 2 drives and the controller card are physically
arranged somewhat strangely)
-tony
7475
days inactive
7480
days old
15 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
arcarlini＠iee.org -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
brad＠heeltoe.com -
dickset＠amanda.spole.gov -
jcwren＠jcwren.com -
jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
waltje＠pdp11.nl