Lyle wrote... So, then I could dig into the section of the manuals that talks about changing a RT11 device driver to run under TSX... and maybe hack up BA to work ... :) Thanks for the ideas! Jay West

Jerome Fine replies: In my reply, I was attempting to emphasize for those who were not aware just how different the TSX-PLUS code is from RT-11. And while I agree that the SETSIZ.SAV program helps TSX-PLUS to know a bit more information than is supplied by the RT-11 linker (LINK.SAV - or at least I presume that is the case) and that the utility binary, or any other application SAV file for that matter, has a word or two added for that purpose. I never was interested enough to do a BINCOM comparison before and after to see exactly what was done. I tend to remember that there is an OBJ module (part of one of the large OBJ (non-library) TSX-PLUS files for the SL code. Running LIBR provides the names of all of the modules in each OBJ file. I did that once when I had to transfer an actual patch from V3.1 of TSX-PLUS to V6.5 of TSX-PLUS as part of a Y2K upgrade. I find it very annoying when a company used the same description to apply to software components that had been tested and seem to work and others that were known to completely fail. That seems to be what was normal in the 1980s - now I guess it is even worse since now even components written by the actual manufacturer also completely fail, under often normal conditions. Of course, RT-11 still does that as well, just not as often since most of the bugs are gone. What about TSX-PLUS bugs. I don't know of any right now. Looking at the code might turn up a few! That is how I found one of the fatal bugs in RT-11, although I admit I was looking at that code which causes the crash because a device driver written by DEC caused the same crash to occur when certain similar conditions were present. I had been aware for some time that the listings were still around. The comments on the code should be priceless for individuals who are still running TSX-PLUS. However, I very much doubt that the code contains ALL of the "internals". Surely there must have been internal manuals as well, just as there must have been with RT-11. However, because a TSX-PLUS SYSGEN was done using the OBJ files, a great deal of information is still available in what are essentially machine readable source files - BUT WITHOUT COMMENTS. The trick is to convert those OBJ files into MAC files without comments. The only application from DECUS which ever came close was UNMAC. The DECUS version was reasonable as far as the code was concerned, it just can't handle the normal TSX-PLUS OBJ modules due to the HUGE number of GLOBALs - at last count I seem to remember over 1600 when I attempted to UNMAC the module TSUSR.OBJ in TSX2.OBJ again if my memory has not failed. If anyone is ever interested in reproducing the MAC files and scanning the listings could use extra help in the form of uncommented source, let me know. I also am VERY impressed. BUT, looking at the code for TSUSR.OBJ leads me to consider that the code was produced subject to rules which only TSX-PLUS programmers knew about. Certainly, this one example uses a lot of extra words that are not needed for normal coding. There must have been very good reasons why so many extra words were used. By the way, the reason I looked at the code for TSUSR was that I wanted to add the extra hooks that I had added to the RT-11 USR. names in the same manner as RT-11. So where it is possible to tell RT-11 to override: ASSIGN DL3: DX0: and use the actual physical DX0: drive instead, I don't know how to do that under TSX-PLUS when there is an actual physical RX01 drive on the hardware and there is a reason to use the physical RX01 drive in addition to the ASSIGN symbol of DL3: during the course of executing a specific program. RT-11 probably had internal manuals which were never released (and might now have been lost) that might still be available via the development team members who with RT-11 in 1992 when V05.06 of RT-11 was finally released on August 31st, 1992 after which DEC placed RT-11 on life support - or lack of life support depending on which side of the fence you are on. Likewise I would assume that TSX-PLUS had internal manuals as well. Did any NEVER published manuals turn up in addition to the source listings and the standard published manual set from S&H for TSX-PLUS of about 4" of paper? I have several original sets for versions of TSX-PLUS prior to V6.5 of TSX-PLUS in addition to the manual set for the last V6.5 of TSX-PLUS. What I don't have is any of the applications or manuals. In a few cases, a LOT of modifications to the batch file. In most cases, likely very little and quite easy to do! I never bothered much with batch files, so I can't really comment. The really big advantage with TSX-PLUS is that running a command file in even a normal job will not interfere much, if at all, with an interactive job when the job priority is set up for that situation. I can't remember right now how it is done, but I seem to remember that any privileged job could set the priority of any job, including its own priority. Does a BATCH file under RT-11 run in the background job? I don't have the manuals in my lap, so asking for help is faster. By the way, I again doubt if anyone is interested, but I can now calculate the natural logarithm of 16 bit integers when done in sequence with a precision of about 150 decimal places. The next goal is to calculate li(10**n) for n up to 100. The basic requirement for li(x) is log(x) and log(log(x)) in addition to the inverse of n (i.e. 1/n) up to about n = 5000, I do not anticipate any further technical difficulties. The only likely problems are roundoff and / or truncation errors which could be larger than anticipated. If there is any interest, please ask a question. Very quickly, for those who don't remember: log(10**n) = n * log (10) log(log(10**n) = log(n) + log(log(10)) I expect that very soon I will find out at what value of k the expression: [log(10**n)]**k/k! becomes less than 1/2**512. As an estimate, I know that 34! > 2**128 since that value overflows with REAL * 8 floating point values. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.