test-drb April 2016

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

203 participants
299 discussions

Plan9 and Inferno (was Re: strangest systems I've sent email from)

by blstuart＠bellsouth.net

On Thu, 4/28/16, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote: >>> The efforts to fix and improve Unix -- Plan 9, Inferno -- forgotten. > > It is, true, but it's a sideline now. And the steps made by Inferno > seem to have had even less impact. I'd like to see the 2 merged back > into 1. Actually, it's best not to think of Inferno as a successor to Plan 9, but as an offshoot. The real story has more to do with Lucent internal dynamics than to do with attempting to develop a better research platform. Plan 9 has always been a good platform for research, and the fact that it's the most pleasant development environment I've ever used is a nice plus. However, Inferno was created to be a platform for products. The Inferno kernel was basically forked from the 2nd Edition Plan9 kernel, and naturally there are some places that differ from the current 4th Edition Plan 9 kernel. However, a number of the differences have been resolved over the years, and the same guy does most of the maintenance of the compiler suite that's used for native Inferno builds and for Plan 9. Although you usually can't just drop driver code from one kernel into the other, the differences are not so great as to make the port difficult. So both still exist and both still get some development as people who care decide to make changes, but they've never really been in a position to merge. And BTW, if you like the objectives of the Limbo language in Inferno, you'll find a lot of the ideas and lessons learned from it in Go. After all, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson were two of the main people behind Go and, of course, they had been at the labs, primarily working on Plan 9, before moving to Google. BLS

9 years

MEM11A status update

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

Just to let folks know that I just received the prototype boards for the MEM11A (FedEx just left). The boards look great! The parts from Digikey arrived late last week, so once I get my soldering station set up (new microscope and new Metcal soldering iron) I?ll start to build a couple of boards to test out. Once I have a couple working *and* I get firm orders for at least 25 boards (hint, hint) I?ll do a production run. TTFN - Guy

9 years

MEM11 update

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Guy Sotomayor > The reality is that an SPC board will be more expensive because of the > gold edge fingers. Oh, right, forgot about that. Yeah, six of one... > I was originally thinking that if I do have to split the board up, that > I'd make them completely independent. But that has the issue of > requiring 2x the number of UNIBUS transceiver parts (which are all but > unobtainium as of now). Actually, 8641's (at least) are still around for not much. See below. > some of the signals I'm running are pretty fast between the FPGA and > some of the other components ... I wouldn't want to run those signals > very far and certainly not across any sort of cabling. For sure. We've been having issues (although we think we have it licked now) with signals running across a flat cable between the prototype QSIC's mother-card (a QBUS wire-wrap card) and its daughter-card (an bought-in FPGA devel card), and that's for much slower signals (the only thing on the mother-card are QBUS transceivers and level converters). Of course, the fact that the interface doesn't put a ground wire between each pair signals wires doesn't help! :-) > From: Ethan Dicks > I'm starting to get sorry I sold off my surplus NS8641s from Software > Results 20 years ago. To be fair, I did get over $4 each for them, so at the > time, it was a good deal for me (ISTR retail was $7.50 even then, so I > got a good spread on the price). > I do have some left, but handfuls, not armloads. NS8641's are still available. I got a bunch from a guy in Hong Kong for US$1.50 each - considering the source, I built a test card to make sure they met specs, and they do, so I'm pretty sure they aren't counterfeits. :-) When I was worried he couldn't find enough, I checked with a supplier (4 Star Electronics, I think) and they had like 50K available, and quoted me a price in about the same region, so I don't think UNIBUS transceivers actually are a problem, at least, not at the moment. Noel

9 years

Reviving a VAX-11/750

by mattislind＠gmail.com

The revival process of the 11/750 continues. The power supplies is working good and then I started testing the actual machine. But that was not a very smooth journey to success. I have in total at least three complete CPU board sets and just after quite a lot of board swapping it got running (I think). I had error like: * Bright red error light * No response at all on the console * %C microverify error * %O microverify error * An hexdump prompt which non like above bot still not correct. * etc Finally I had the %% which meant that it passed microverify. Then I used the (second) RDM module (the first one had RAM error) to run the DPM and MIC test which passed. The I ran the "Hardcore VAX instruction test" / TU58#7 which also passed fine. BUT the Cache / TB diag, TU58#5, give me this: %% 00000000 16 >>>B %% @?ECKAL -- VAX 11/750 Cache/TB Diagnostic 00003488 06 >>> I am running a BE-S198Q-DE tape image. Anyone has a listing or description for the ECKAL diagnostic? Is there any know incompatibilities with certain revisions of boards? Or known bugs? The machine manage to boot the console tape so I get the BOOT58> prompt. But I am not sure if that indicate that it is indeed working or not. So, some help with the Cache/TB diagnostic would be very much appreciated. /Mattis

9 years

File systems expert for a news article (urgent)

by cctalk＠snarc.net

Anyone here on cctalk consider themselves a file systems expert and have the credentials or job title to vouch for it? If so, then I need to interview you ASAP today (in the next hour-ish) for a TechRepublic.com article. Contact me offline: news at snarc.net. Not going to discuss the story itself here in public.

9 years

OFF TOPIC!!! Any alumni of NYU here?

by useddec＠gmail.com

If so, can you please contact me off list? Thanks, Paul

9 years

Calling all typographers

by rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com

Hi Guys DEC did some interesting things when it came to fonts on front panels. Take an 8/e front panel for example. the address is kind of a chalet font. But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do. Then they bunch up the characters until they touch or nearly touch. (kerning?) I'd like to recover the DEC fonts and have looked at several font creator/editors. Frankly they are dung. Every fancy curve there is but not a straight forward line and circle method of creating lower case characters as DEC did it. I do need the ability to enter (or import) the lower case characters using just circles and lines. I then need to do the usual font type things like different font sizes, bold, and character spacing from zero (touching) to miles apart. Suggestions please Rod (Panelman) Smallwood

9 years

Photorealistic PDP-11/20 panel for SimH

by j_hoppe＠t-online.de

Another Java panel simulation for BlinkenBone is there, the classic PDP-11/20. In function and style it fills the gap between the PDP-8 and the later PDP-11's. The GitHub distribution starts the 1970 Paper-tape BASIC, download here: https://github.com/j-hoppe/BlinkenBone/releases Info http://retrocmp.com/projects/blinkenbone/simulated-panels/253-blinkenbone-s… and next page. Now we have PDP-8/I, PDP-11/20, PDP-11/40, PDP-11/70 and PDP-10/KI10. Not to mention the PiDP8 replica and soon the PiDP11. Joerg

9 years

AlphaStation 200 NVRAM Problem

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I tried starting up my AlphaStation 200 today. All I get is some beeps and an LED diagnostic code that suggests the NVRAM test failed. I swapped the battery, as the old one was dead, but it still refused to work. I have tried connecting to the serial port and got nothing (although I could have a problem with using the correct cable etc). I even tried flipping the jumper that takes you to the mini console, to no avail. Does anyone have any suggestions for reviving this machine? Thanks Rob

9 years

Vaisala SPT11A reader (was Data General Nova Star Trek)

by erik＠baigar.de

Dear Paul, thanks for your email - I acquired the reader several years ago and did quite a lot of experiments to figure out how to use it with the original firmware SPTS11, 2.02, 5289 but I never got an answer from the reader. So the project of Jim to read in the DG tapes was the reason I needed to address this issue. For your (and the communities) convenience I placed the original firmware (27C256 type EPROM)... http://www.baigar.de/electronics/PTR-SPTS11-2.02-5289.bin ...and my new one (also 27C256)... http://www.baigar.de/electronics/PTR-SPTS11-EB1.01.hex ...onto my server. My new firmware just sends out the data read via the serial port at 9600, 8N1. A welcome messages tests the serial communication on starting and during this time the red LED is on. On getting ready the green LED takes over and the yellow one shows the state of the sprocket input: For each byte read this LED flashes. At 9600 the serial port is always faster than you can pull the tape through the reader, so I do not expect the red LED (indicate a buffer overflow, byte lost) come on during normal operation... The pinout of the Sub-D9 male plug is as usual on serial ports: 5: GND, 2: Data from reader to PC, 3: Data from PC to reader (not used in my firmware, but original expects some start/config command here) additionally 7: DC input to reader (in my case 9V). Hope this helps, best regards, Erik. On Tue, 26 Apr 2016, Paul Birkel wrote: > Eric; > > Would you please share your firmware updates, and any other information that > you've gleaned regarding the Vaisala SPT11A reader? I recently acquired one > of these as well but haven't yet started on reverse-engineering it into > something useful Would prefer to leverage your experience, if you please > :->. > > Good health to You and Yours! > > paul > (from Maryland, USA) > > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Erik Baigar > Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 11:42 AM > To: jim s; cctalk at classiccmp.org > Cc: Sherman Foy > Subject: Re: Data General Nova Star Trek > > > Hi Jim, > > regarding reading the StarTrek paper tapes I spent some time on the weekend > to rework my SPT11A manual reader - I got this from an eBay auction and it > was an accessory for some military receiver (probalby to read in some > codes). It had a fimrwaere which refused to communicate with a simple > terminal program, so I reverse en- gineered the hardware and replaced the > original ROM it by an own firmware which simply sends the contents read from > PPT to the PC via its RS232C... > > http://www.baigar.de/vintage/SPT11A-mod-Internal.jpg > > So I'd offer sending this to you as an item on loan to read in your tapes > and you return it afterwards? I tested it with some data and it works well > (just slowly pull the paper tape through the reader and use e.g. putty to > log the binary serial output). After turning on the reader there is a short > welcome message to verify the serial connection (9600,8N1). > > The only question is, whether you can handle the EU style power supply shown > in the picture... > > http://www.baigar.de/vintage/SPT11A-mod.jpg > > I ordered USB->RS232C converters and if you have some more time, I'd attach > one of them to the reader not only doing conversion but also supplying the > converter with power from the PC. > Addidionally you should send me your physical address via PM so I can > prepare for shipping... > > Best regards from Germany, > > Erik. > > ----- >

9 years

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test-drb April 2016