12 Aug
1998
12 Aug
'98
9:52 p.m.
Yes, I typoed. It's "The HACTRN".
I noticed just after sending a ^Z. My phone line sucks.
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12 Aug
12 Aug
10:41 p.m.
Yes, I typoed. It's "The HACTRN".
I noticed just after sending a ^Z. My phone line sucks.
There's not much room for error with these six-character one-case names.
On the other hand, I read it as "HACTRN" the first time. And I even know
what a HACTRN is. (top-level DDT, right? DDT being the shell which is a
glorified debugger).
You'll be happy to know that you missed the tyop in your message subject...
it says "tyop" instead of "typo". (Yes, the "tyop" above is
intentional.)
What baud rate are you using? Can the host handle 110 baud? Maybe you should
step down to that rate for more reliability. :)
-- Derek
13 Aug
13 Aug
10:42 a.m.
[Tyop?]
That was an intentional joke.
[HACTRN]
HACTRN was the top-level DDT when ITS was under timesharing.
The TOP-TOP leved DDT could be considered the NTSDDT, which was what
the person at the console got when ITS went belly up. Or it could be
DSKDMP. The source doesn't say explicitly, and I've heard both stories.
Some people elected to use a disk-enabled NTSDDT as the bootloader, and
some used DSKDMP. (I think, I could be wrong).
[What baud rate?]
It's the telephone company. The line "disappears" for gaps of 1-30 seconds
at random. The carrier isn't dropped, but no data gets across. They're having
trouble with the COs around here. I'm in Peoria, IL, and I was told by a
lineman whos my stepdad's friend that the problem is that when Bell System
was split up years ago, the documents saying how the COs in the are talked
to each other were lost. So, stuff that was considered minor were way overloaded,
and stuff that was thought to be major was actually unplugged, and the like.
They're trying to re-route things to establish some order, but having
little/no luck.
Lowering the baud rate wouldn't help. But I do have an accoustic coupler
and a printing terminal... (I think the coupler's dead though...)
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11:02 a.m.
[HACTRN]
HACTRN was the top-level DDT when ITS was under timesharing.
The TOP-TOP leved DDT could be considered the NTSDDT, which was what
the person at the console got when ITS went belly up. Or it could be
DSKDMP. The source doesn't say explicitly, and I've heard both stories.
Some people elected to use a disk-enabled NTSDDT as the bootloader, and
some used DSKDMP. (I think, I could be wrong).
Whoa, you're over my head here.
I guess that when timesharing is not enabled, you get a DDT at the console
only? Perhaps a single process only? (A bit like single-user mode in UNIX?)
And what does NTS stand for?
I assume that DSKDMP does different things than DDT. Right?
What's a non-disk-enabled NTSDDT like?
ITS is such an idiomatic system. Is your machine actually running iTS? Can I
get an account? I know of XKLETEN but that runs TOPS-10 (which is nice, but
more conventional -- it even shares a few features with VMS. I think the
syntax for file names and extensions is the same.) I got the MACSYMA manual
through Interlibrary Loan... I enjoyed the description of using ITS. IIRC the
process monitor will say your programs are running, but also crawling, walking,
or flying, depending on system speed.
[What baud rate?]
It's the telephone company. The line "disappears" for gaps of 1-30 seconds
That's horrible. Do voice calls do the same thing? I'd think people would
scream at them to fix this problem.
I guess our phone service is pretty good by comparison. Most of the
complaints about US West seem to be about prices and lack of customer service.
-- Derek
11:37 a.m.
[NTS?]
Non-Timesharing.
When the system was booted (As far I can know..) you loaded the bootstrap
from a paper tape (KA10, maybe KL?) or from the disk
(KS10). Then you got
either NTSDDT or DSKDMP, depending on how you were set up.
Then you told DSKDMP or NTSDDT to load .;@ ITS and start it.
This brought the system to timesharing.
NTSDDT was completely different from the HACTRN, and it's not documented.
A few of the commands were the same.
[Do I run ITS?]
I wish :) bony is actually a Linux box, with a creatively abused copy of
telnetd. It's a PWORD clone and doesn't work correctly, I'm writing a new
version of it using the original source that should behave like the real one.
I am trying to mutilate ITS so as to make an x86 clone of it, but I don't
know what I'm doing. So it's going nowhere.
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12:13 p.m.
When the system was booted (As far I can know..) you
loaded the bootstrap
from a paper tape (KA10, maybe KL?) or from the disk (KS10). Then you got
either NTSDDT or DSKDMP, depending on how you were set up.
Then you told DSKDMP or NTSDDT to load .;@ ITS and start it.
This brought the system to timesharing.
NTSDDT was completely different from the HACTRN, and it's not documented.
A few of the commands were the same.
Oh. That clarifies things. (Though God knows what maneuvers are going on in
memory while all this is happening.) So there really is no comparison between
a non-timesharing system and a timesharing system, I guess. (That is, the
"single-user mode" analogy is wrong.)
Does .;@ have any meaning or is it just a bunch of rarely-typed characters?
[Do I run ITS?]
I wish :) bony is actually a Linux box, with a creatively abused copy of
telnetd. It's a PWORD clone and doesn't work correctly, I'm writing a new
version of it using the original source that should behave like the real one.
I thought you had an account on a -10 or a -10 clone. What about that?
I am trying to mutilate ITS so as to make an x86 clone
of it, but I don't
know what I'm doing. So it's going nowhere.
Aren't the sources available? (I forget the FTP site.)
-- Derek
12:20 p.m.
[.;@ have any meaning?]
Yeah, it's in the . directory (; is a directory seperator, like /)
and the file is called "@ ITS". ITS filenames has 2 parts, 6 characters long.
[Had an account on a 10?]
Yeah. Toad.xkl.com is XKL's PDP-10 clone. I also have an account on
xkleten.paulallen.com, which is a similar machine. Both run TOPS-20.
I don't have an account into a real PDP-10, but I've telnnetted to a TOPS-20
KL-10 and asked for the SYSTAT once... (Was bootstrap.org).
[Are the ITS sources available?]
Not anymore. The AI and MC dumps had all the turist homedirs in it, and
that's a whole lot of private stuff. I just got really lucky.
It used to be available, but the turists set up a loud wailing and they
were taken offline.
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dpeschel＠u.washington.edu -
DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com