VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

[Noel Chiappa]

    > I'll start with getting VTServer to run under V6 (my only Unix, don't
    > have anything later :-)

So, I just got VTServer runnin under V6: it successfully loaded a memory
diagnostic from the 'server', into the 'client', using 'vtboot' on the
latter. (Both running on emulated machines, for the moment - I thought I'd
take all the hardware-related variables out of the equation, until I have the
software all running OK.)

It didn't require as much work on VTServer as I thought it might: I had to
convert the C to the V6 dialect (no '+=', etc), and some other small things
(e.g. convert the TTY setup code), but in general, it was pretty smooth and
painless.


Note that it won't run under vanilla V6, which does not provide 8-bit input
and output on serial lines. I had previously added 'LITIN' and 'LITOUT' modes
(8-bit input and output) to my V6; since the mode word in stty/gtty was
already full, I had to extend the device interface to support them. I didn't
add ioctl() or anything later, I did an upward-compatible extension to
stty/gtty. (I'm a real NIH guy. :-)

My only real problem in getting VTServer running was with LITIN; I did it
some while back, but had never actually tested it (I was only using LITOUT,
for my custom program to talk to PDP-11 consoles, which also did downloads,
so needed 8-bit output). So when I went to use it, it didn't work, and it was
a real stumper! But I did eventually figure out what the problem was (after
writing a custom program to reach into the kernel and dump the entire state
of a serial line), and get it working.

(I had taken the shortcut of not fully understanding how the kernel serial
line code worked, just tried to install point fixes. This turned out not to
work, because of a side-effect elsewhere in the code. Moral of the story: you
can't change the operation of a piece of software without complete
understanding of how it works...)


Is there any interest in all this? If so, I can put together a web page with
the V6-verion VTServer source, along with the modified V6 serial line stuff
(including a short description of the extended stty/gtty interface), etc.


    > so if you turn up whatever you used to boot V6, it would probably still
    > be useful.

So I guess my next step, if I don't hear shortly from someone who has
previously used VTServer to install V6, is to start on actually getting
a V6 file system created.

I'm still vacillating over whether it would be better to go V6-style (and
just transfer a complete, small existing V6 filesystem), or V7-style (and
get stand-alone 'mkfs', etc running with V6-format file systems). Anyone
have an opinion?

	Noel