[cctalk] Re: FWIW CD & DVD demagnitizitation [was: Double Density 3.5" Floppy Disks]

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 09/05/2024 14:28, Alexander Schreiber via cctalk wrote:

German snake oil wizards to the rescue! The "Atomstromfilter" (nuclear
power filter) joke product has been making the rounds in Germany for
at _least_ 20+y now:https://traumshop.net/produkt/atomstromfilter/

It claims to filter power generated by nuclear power plants out of
your power flow at the wall socket ;-)



Sorry, but that's clearly rubbish: it's way, way too cheap. Mind you, 
there are none on eBay UK, so maybe I could put some up at a bargain 
price ... £3500 too much?



(I was going to add  a tin foil hat too, to save on postage, but those 
are already on eBay :-()



Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: FWIW CD & DVD demagnetization [was: Double Density 3.5" Floppy Disks]

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 09/05/2024 03:41, D. Resor via cctalk wrote:

Next they'll want silver oxygen free plated plumbing and sewage pipes in their 
homes.  Silver plated toilet seats?

Walls insulated with Palladium coated corn silk threads?

Seems the subject has really gone astray? Lions, Tigers and Bears oh my! )

Don Resor

-Original Message-
From: Sellam Abraham via cctalk 
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2024 7:01 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Cc: Sellam Abraham 
Subject: [cctalk] Re: FWIW CD & DVD demagnitizitation [was: Double Density 3.5" 
Floppy Disks]

Why stop there?  A truly dedicated audiophile would run new pure silver 
electrical wire through the walls directly to the breaker box.

Then you gotta upgrade to the breaker box that was disinfected from transient 
spirits through an exorcism, and then special 24K solid gold-contact breakers 
in inert nylon housings.


Surely you have to get the cables upgraded all the way back to the 
original generator? Then you have secondary effects, for example, with 
hydro power, the purity of the water makes a *huge* difference.



I also think it's just as important to have your ears, and the gap 
between them syringed too.



Antonio



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Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: WAS: Amoeba OS, Now: VAX/VMS Licensing?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 01/04/2024 00:45, W2HX wrote:

Hi all, I am completely ignorant when it comes to VMS licensing and how it 
works (or worked).
I purchased a MicroVAX that is running VMS V5.3. Do I need to worry about it 
ceasing to work at some point?
I don’t have any paperwork for the license, just a running machine.

What should I know about this?


You should know how to take a standalone backup and make sure you have 
done that. I'd suggest restoring it on a SIMH instance to check that it 
is bootable and works as expected.



You could use the LMF commands to dump the PAKs with checksums but that 
(iirc) disables them so you have to re-enable them afterwards. That 
would allow you to rebuild your system, assuming you have install media 
for VMS and all the layered products. A standalone backup would be 
better  though.



Your VMS installation will certainly keep running for as long as you are 
likely to want to run it, but the hardware may fail at any time.



Antonio



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Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: Amoeba OS

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 28/03/2024 23:29, Alexander Schreiber via cctalk wrote:

The only legal[0] workaround for VMS on VAX is to go back all the way
before LMF was introduced which IIRC means running VMS 4.4 and nothing
newer.


It's no more legal than running VMS V6.1 without a valid PAK (that was 
legally transferred to you).


The only difference is that you didn't have to subvert the LMF.



Sad and mildly irritating, but nothing we can do about it.


This bit is true.


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Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: Cleanup time again

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 23/03/2024 15:56, Henry Bent via cctalk wrote

You have to look at sold listings to get an idea of what they are actually
selling for.  There are many, shall we say, overly ambitious sellers when
it comes to vintage hardware.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?kw=210ts+transciever=20004_Sold=1_Complete=1

Looks like $20 is about the going rate.

-Henry



The first hit on ebay.co.uk is £399, so I sense an arbitrage opportunity 
:-) It may take a while to sell, but I'm patient !



Antonio

--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: VAX 4000 console SLU in need of some TLC

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/03/2024 21:51, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:

Assuming you find a solution for the console port issue, can't you just
try netbooting it and see what mac address the load requests have?

You could either use some ethernet monitoring software such as tcpdump,
ethermon, wireshark or whatever or your MOP server may even report
load requests it sees on the network to OPCOM.



I have a W7 system running SIMH that I was going to configure as the 
cluster master ... I completely forgot that I could just turn on the 
OPER console replies and look for a message. I can even boot the 
VS400-60 over the ethernet to prove that I have SIMH configured properly.



Of course, I don't know that the console ethernet works, but this would 
tell me pretty clearly one way or the other.



Thanks for that: I blame the 5 hours of driving for me missing the 
obvious, but it might be the 20+ years of not fiddling with OpenVMS on a 
daily basis :-)



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: VAX 4000 console SLU in need of some TLC

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/03/2024 22:03, Jonathan Stone wrote:
What kind of VAX 4000? One with DSSI connectors on the "S:U", or the 
/VAX 4000-200/KA660, which has serial and Ethernet? IIRC you can 
klludge up the latter using a KA630 SLU, and either re-using the 
AUI/10base-2 part of the SLU,
or kludging one from a DEQNA/DELQA to act like the AUI-select switch 
setting and AUI of the original
Those come off the KA660 in a single IDC connector, 50 pin if memory 
serves.


I have no idea about substituting for DSSI.



It's a VAX 4000-300 (KA670) in a BA440, so it has two DSSI, ethernet, 
the usual switches and LED display.  I can switch ethernet between AUI 
and BNC (the green LEDs change) and I have known working DETPM 
AUI<->RJ45 interfaces, so ethernet may be OK. I have found one panel for 
a KA650 (uV 3500/3600) that has an OK connector but is otherwise a bit 
toasty, so I'll try carefully removing that tomorrow. If that goes OK, 
then I'll remove the MMJ socket from the VAX 4000 console SLU: it's dead 
so there's not really much risk here as long as I'm careful with the 
PCB. At least I could then tack on 6 wires and find a way of 
interfacing. I do have at least one H8584-AC, which is an MMJ socket and 
an RJ45 plug. So with a bit of measuring I could probably find an RJ45 
socket and rig up some temporary franken-console. Or, if the KA650 donor 
is really too far gone, and its socket survives half a dozen cable 
insertion-removals with no harm, then I could just fit that in place.



If the console ethernet doesn't work, I think I can drop in the DELQA 
with appropriate handles from the KA650 system ... I think that the 
BA440 Q-bus metalwork and the BA213 metalwork are compatible. If not I 
have one Q-bus DELQA panel and I'm sure that neither the VAX nor 
anything else in there with it care too much about RF interference these 
days!



I can find new MMJ plugs all over the place (admittedly I'm assuming 
that Mouser and Farnell could actually supply them!!) but the 
corresponding sockets seem to be lost to time. Or at least they remain 
beyond my goolge-fu.



Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] VAX 4000 console SLU in need of some TLC

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I have a VAX 4000 with a console SLU that has been host to a battery for 
far too long. I removed the battery some time ago and cleaned things up 
with vinegar and IPA.


Then I had PSU issues, which I've resolved by swapping for a NOS one 
(thanks Witchy!).



Last Wednesday (13-MAR-2024) it booted to the dead sergeant prompt for 
the first time in a decade or two (I would guess). It was set to 19200 
baud and the console 7-segment LED was a bit the worse for wear, but it 
responded to the VT420 quite happily.
But tonight, although it seemed to power up OK, the console was 
unresponsive. Shining a light into the MMJ socket showed pin 2 is 
missing (2nd from the left looking into the socket 
(https://allpinouts.org/pinouts/connectors/serial/dec-mmj-serial/). The 
rest show patches of the sort of green you would expect from something 
that has been near a leaky battery for some time.




Now I have some console SLUs for the KA650 (uVAX 3600) which have also 
generously hosted batteries for longer than they should, but I suppose 
if one of those has an OK looking socket I can try a swap. Otherwise, 
does anyone have any ideas for a source? I know I could solder to the 
six pins at the back and make an adapter, but that is I think would be a 
stop gap 9or a last resort if no parts are available.




Pin 2 is TXD+ so I suppose that the RX side still works. I have no 
suitable storage for this system (well, I have some RF71 drives but not 
the carriers that would be needed to connect to the backplane properly), 
so I was planning to netboot from a SIMH instance on a PC. However, to 
configure that I would need the ethernet MAC address, and I can't think 
of a simple way to get that. unless someone knows whether the ethernet 
ID prom is readable in something like a TL866II Plus?




Anyway, thanks in advance for any suggestions or ideas.



Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: Current SOA scsi disk emulators for DEC

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 03/12/2023 16:27, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

That is my question.

I have used a couple of versions of the SCSI2SD boards in the past 
with Viking, Emulex QC07, DEC RQXZ1 controllers in the past, and also 
direct connections to MicroVax SCSI buss's.


There are other manufacturers of these SD to SCSI emulators now. What 
is the current SOA?  What works, what doesn't work with DEC hardware?


Doug

I've never used any of these boards but if you leaf through "digital 
diggings" back catalogue on Youtube (e.g. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKBDY9lluRo) you can find that he's been 
working on getting BlueSCSI working with a VAXstation 3100. I thought 
he'd also done the same for DEC Alpha systems but I can't find that 
video, so I may have imagined it! But the BlueSCSI compatibility page 
does list a few Alpha systems: https://bluescsi.com/docs/Compatibility.



There are reports of ZuluSCSI working with some Alpha systems too.


Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Intel 4004

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/11/2023 23:14, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote:

More information is here:
https://firstmicroprocessor.com/?doing_wp_cron=1700608229.8666059970855712890625

I think that is the designers (Rod Holt?) website.  Apparently he won a legal battle to 
use the term "first microprocessor" for whatever that is worth.


Details were published in 1998 and the chip was available approximately 
never (I presume, unless you were building a Tomcat) so I'm not sure you 
should count it. Perhaps "first microprocessor, until someone else 
claims another secret design that was even earlier" would be a more 
accurate claim?


Antonio


--
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[cctalk] Re: Any RSX-11 fans able to identify file types?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 27/06/2023 21:17, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:

> Different thing, I believe.

Gotcha. I'd find it funny and perfectly fitting if DEC had two 
departments working on the same concept and coming up with completely 
different, but equally oddball solution


Like the VAX 6000 and the VAX 9000 :-) Having competing teams wasn't 
unusual in DEC, at least for a portion of its history.



Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Gb Ethernet and 10Mb links

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 29/05/2023 00:30, Jonathan Chapman via cctalk wrote

Along those lines, 10gig copper interfaces often don't want to talk to 100mbit 
ports! Found that out when we had a switch fail and stuck an older 10/100 
switch in just to get back up and running.



I believe the 10Gb standard specifically prohibits autonegotiation, so 
10G should not drop down to 1G or 100Mb/s.



Antonio


--
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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: Getting floppy images to/from real floppy disks.

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 25/05/2023 19:47, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

Not only that, but all correctly implemented GigE devices will fall back not 
just to 100 but also to 10 Mb/s.  That's part of standards conformance, and 
from what I can tell even low cost devices like D-Link or Netgear do this.  
Yes, including half duplex mode.



In ~1997 my ISP provided a Terajet 410 and that was very fussy about 
what it would talk to; I couldn't get it to talk to my PC or laptop at 
the time at 100MB/s ... in the end I just connected to it via a small 
DEChub at 10MB/s and it worked perfectly.



Right now my motherboard has a 2.5GB/s ethernet port and it needed 
poking with ethtool to autonegotiate at 1Gbps with a TP-LINK TL-SG116. 
No idea why yet and I probably won't know until I have a chance to power 
both off and prod.



So your statement about "correctly implemented GigE devices" is 
technically correct (the best kind of 'correct'!) but I have yet to be 
convinced that it's not describing the null set :-)



Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: ST-251 Data Recovery for Glenside Color Computer Club (GCCC)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 18/05/2023 05:16, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:

Now what are the options. Greaseweazle or ? What are the
advantages and disadvantates of each?

For the Greaseweazle it looks like I can get one and it seems to be
open source with schematics of the hardware. I'd prefer more buffering
of the disk drive signals, but anyway. Will it do what I want?


Both Greaseweazle and FluxEngine are open source software and based on 
(different) standard hardware.



A ready built Greaseweazle is less than £25 and the PSoC? dev board the 
FluxEngine uses was about £20 but you get to solder on a connector.



I picked the FluxEngine because I could get hold of the parts at the 
time, and I still think that's probably your main consideration. 
Software wise they seem to have similar capabilities.


If you have a specific list of formats you care about you could check:

Geaseweazel formats: 
https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki/Supported-Image-Types


FluxEngine formats: http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html


There are other flux readers out there but they either don't seem to 
have much momentum behind them (so you might be stuck if you need a new 
format added) or they're closed like KyroFlux.



At ~£25 you're unlikely to lose much with either of the two front 
runners :-)



Antonio


--
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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: ST-251 Data Recovery for Glenside Color Computer Club (GCCC)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 17/05/2023 04:56, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:

EXACTLY! I was told that was the best solution for this sort of thing.
Are there any downsides to doing it that way?

If I do go that route, what are the options? I have no knowledge of
them and thus no preference for one over another

As I said at the start I am clueless about this. I really need
somebody to talk me through it, what to get, what to build, what to
download etc.


As I suspect that you have IBM PC compatible systems with 5.25" (high 
and normal density) and 3.5" (ditto) then I would think the easiest 
solution for you is to run DOS on such a machine and use Dave Dunfield's 
ImageDisk: http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/img/index.htm. This assumes 
you have some way to get files (specifically IMD files) onto and off 
that system ... perhaps through a network connection? My preferred 
solution is to boot to DOS using a CF adapter and then - when finished 
imaging - to connect that CF card to a USB card reader that supports CF 
and is connected to a more modern machine for archiving, storage of the 
image or whatever.


This all depends on the FDC on whatever motherboard you have being 
capable of reading/writing all the modes that you myriad collection 
requires (or at least the subset you want to use in this manner). 
TESTFDC (part of the ImageDisk package) will tell you exactly which 
modes work and don't work with your hardware.



I do also have a FluxEngine that I want to get around to using - see 
http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html for a list of formats it 
supports natively. The advantage would be that you are not limited by 
the PC FDC as the FluxEngine will read flux transitions directly from 
the connected floppy disk. FluxEngine connects via USB to whatever 
modern system you choose to use. However, getting the  Cypress PSoC5LP 
dev board might be a challenge right now given the continuing global 
supply shortage. FluxEngine supports IMD.


If you want to put a random file on a floppy for something obscure then 
you need to find software (or a chain of software) that will build an 
IMD file. DOS will be easy, CP/M is probably simple enough, but after 
that I expect that you'll potentially need to do some digging for each 
new format.


Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: mainframe vs mini

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 17/03/2023 16:34, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

This goes by way of what RT11 originally called a "fork queue" but was told to rename to 
"fork list" :-)


The story was that Dave Cutler had a T-shirt made with "fork queue" on 
it, but I don't know if that's actually true.



Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Computer of Thesus (was: Re: Re: Computer Museum uses GreaseWeazle to help exonerate Maryland Man)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 23/01/2023 20:38, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

Are you referring to Jeri Ellsworth?  As far as I know she only fabricated
an IC with simple logic gates on them, but it's possible she may have gone
on to do more complex stuff, like a CPU.


I think the reference was to Sam Zeloof: 
https://www.youtube.com/@SamZeloof/videos.



I don't think he's done a CPU but he was up to ~100 transistors on a 
chip when last I looked.



Maybe one day he'll be able to fabricate working Qbus transceiver chips ...


Antonio


--
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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: AI applied to vintage interests

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 19/01/2023 20:25, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:

At least the machines care ;)

Sellam


That's possibly the best epitaph any of us will ever get :-)


Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: AI applied to vintage interests

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 19/01/2023 15:25, Chris via cctalk wrote:

Never been in an accident that wasn't TOTALLY AND ENTIRELY the fault of the 
other driver. And in both instances they hit me. So after 38 years of driving, 
I need a computer to do it for me. Sorry I'll pass.


Maybe 10(+?) years from now, assuming L5 driving is a thing (rather than 
marketing hype), the other drivers will stop hitting you. Always 
assuming they don't pass too :-)



If ChatGPT gets good enough to help me diagnose my non-functioning L400X 
motherboards, then I'll be happy. Until then, I'm not too interested.



Antonio

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[cctalk] Re: Identifying a Failed Diode in a Rainbow H7842 Power Supply

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/11/2022 21:45, Antonio Carlini wrote:


I have two more I can open up and look at, but I cannot get to them 
tonight and I'm probably out tomorrow too. But I think I can get to 
those other two supplies on Wednesday. Hopefully at least one of them 
will be readable! Otherwise I can desolder the diode from one of the 
other two and hopefully find a useful marking.



Turns out I have three more PSUs ... and the diode markings are 
unfortunately invisible on all but one. That one is this one:


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TeGTcBBv7KecMJ2CmNcR0O-tb3jZigy6/view?usp=share_link


It's not really visible there either but with the PSU out and one end 
desoldered I can see that it is marked H9501. I can also see that it 
doesn't conduct either way, which might mean that this PSU is the 
non-working one I know I have. Obviously the capacitor (820uF 250V 
electrolytic) is going to need replacing (might as well do both). But 
first I need to remove them and see what (if anything has happened) 
underneath.



This now goes back into my queue (behind the MicroVAXes and the H7868B 
PSU modules) so if you fix yours before I get to mine, please let me 
know what you did :-)



Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Identifying a Failed Diode in a Rainbow H7842 Power Supply

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 20/11/2022 21:03, Rob Jarratt wrote:

Thanks Antonio,

The location of the diode is arrowed on this picture: 
https://rjarratt.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/img_20221120_205802-arrowed.jpg

You can also see the heatsink where the transistor used to be.



This is mine: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1igM9AqrICX93t-KHH3N4gRCr1Z8H6tAY/view?usp=share_link, 
so as you can see, the pick-and-place machine decided to rotate the 
diode for almost maximum inconvenience!



I have two more I can open up and look at, but I cannot get to them 
tonight and I'm probably out tomorrow too. But I think I can get to 
those other two supplies on Wednesday. Hopefully at least one of them 
will be readable! Otherwise I can desolder the diode from one of the 
other two and hopefully find a useful marking.



Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: Identifying a Failed Diode in a Rainbow H7842 Power Supply

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 20/11/2022 17:40, Rob Jarratt via cctalk wrote:

The H7842 PSU in my Rainbow failed yesterday. At first the machine just
powered down and there was a slight burning smell, I wasn't next to the
machine when this happened, so I didn't see or hear anything to tell me
where the problem might be. Not being sure if there was a short in the
machine or a problem in the PSU, I disconnected the fans, FDD and HDD and,
probably foolishly, I applied power again to see if the machine would work.
At this point there was a bang and a flash in the PSU.

  




I blogged this here (it repeats most of that I have said above):
https://robs-old-computers.com/2022/11/20/dec-rainbow-h7842-power-supply-fai
lure/



I have Rainbow PSUs H7842A, H78420 (which I suspect I may have misread! 
...) and H7842D available. I can look tomorrow; if you can supply an 
overview picture and maybe circle the location of the offending parts 
that might help me identify them more quickly (always assuming that they 
are marked at all, of course).



Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: Is this a RIFA (uV3100-10 PSU)?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 15/11/2022 23:22, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:

My experience with a H7822 is that when all the diagnostic LEDs stay lit,
DC OK is probably not getting asserted so the power supply might still
not be working 100% correctly.  In the H7822, DC OK seems to be the
purple lead and high (something around 4V-5V) means asserted.



Thanks, but sadly in this case it's not such a simple diagnosis. I had a 
spare 15 mins tonight so I powered it up and checked (DC OK is indeed 
the purple lead). DC OK is sitting at 5.13V so the problem lies elsewhere.


I do have another H7822 in a MicroVAX 3100-80 (iirc, could be -40) and 
that one doesn't start either. I've done nothing with that one at all 
since it has a Dallas chip and so didn't need any remedial work. At some 
point I'll get back to these and spend some time trying to get them 
going. But I need to do some work on a Rainbow and some uV3600 PSUs 
first before I get back to working through uVAX/VS 3100 PSUs (I also 
have 5 H7821 PSUs there, so I expect that I'll be back ...).



Antonio


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anto...@acarlini.com

[cctalk] Re: Is this a RIFA (uV3100-10 PSU)?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 24/10/2022 21:07, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:
the bitsbox one may be a teensy bit to large but the ebay one should 
fit nicely. Neither is too expensive even with postage so I'll buy a 
few, given that I do have a fair few PSUs knocking around.



Just a quick follow-up in case it helps someone else down the line. I've 
put the system back together and the H7822 PSU seems to work: with the 
mainboard connected the green LED lights (and the fans spin). So that's 
good.


The mainboard stays in the reset state (all diagnostic LEDs lit) so that 
might still be an issue with the PSU DC OK signal or the mainboard 
itself. However, at this stage the PSU is behaving as expected.



Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Inline Serial Device?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 12/11/2022 10:28, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:

I thought it was well-known that nothing can be designed without at
least one microcontroller.

The other day I saw a product with a flashing LED, the flash rate was
set with a knob. Yes, a microcontroller with a pot connected to an
analogue input and LED hung off an output port. This is the sort of
thing I'd do with a couple of transistors or an NE555 depending on
which turned up in the junk box first.

$deity I hate modern electronics.


Surely a microcontroller is just a 555 with a few extra transistors? 
Another tool in the box, just that it happens to be very cheap.



You should check out Usagi Electric on youtube: 
https://www.youtube.com/c/Nakazoto/videos, he's putting together a 
valve-based recreation  of 1-bit processor (the MC14500B). He makes his 
own PCBs too :-)



Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Is this a RIFA (uV3100-10 PSU)?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 01/11/2022 23:10, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:

I've taken the boards out of a whole bunch of H7821 and H7822 PSUs to
replace the electrolytics without removing the fans.  It was difficult at
first but the more I did, the easier it got.  I did come across one 
seized

fan along the way but I haven't a replacement yet so I haven't got around
to removing the bad one.  I should look into it.


I think I have a second  H7822 and a pair of H7821 supplies to look  at, 
so I may well end up getting some practice in!


Did you have to replace the power LED at all? I've just bench-tested the 
PSU I've swapped the X2 cap in (luckily it powers up without a load, so 
all I did was hook up a DVM and check out the voltages), and I noticed 
that the LED didn't light. I'm pretty sure I connected it back (and it 
is keyed!) so I think I may be looking for a replacement. Something in 
the back of my mind says that there is something that makes the 
replacement slightly non-trivial (funny LED, odd housing it fits in, 
some trick to getting it out ... I can't remember unfortunately).



BTW was it just the 1800uF 25V 105degC caps (mine are brown) that you 
had to replace? Mine look fine but there are some other large 
electrolytics in there (two large brown 470uF voltage unclear, and one 
large black cap by the mains input on which I cannot see any of the 
markings).



Thanks


Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Is this a RIFA (uV3100-10 PSU)?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 24/10/2022 21:07, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:
the bitsbox one may be a teensy bit to large but the ebay one should 
fit nicely. Neither is too expensive even with postage so I'll buy a 
few, given that I do have a fair few PSUs knocking around.


Turns out both sets of X2 caps I bought were identical and they fit 
perfectly.



As I was putting the PSU back together I thought I could hear something 
loose rattling inside. So I decided to dismantle it completely.


I managed to get the bottom board out, with some fiddling, but it would 
be much easier if I could get the fans off. However, they seem to be 
held on with some fasteners that I've not seen before. On the inside 
they are some sort of trilobe fastener that seems to yield under any 
sort of pressure (so I stopped) and on the outside they have a small 
hole with three thin slots, but my tri-wing bits only seem to turn them 
in the "tighten" direction, almost as though the whole thing is supposed 
to be "fit and forget". I suppose if I had to get the fans out of the 
way I could destroy those fittings and replace with some suitable M 
bolts. I'm just wondering now whether I'm missing a trick for removing 
the fans?


As I write this I realise that a photo or two wouldn't go amiss, so I'll 
try to take a few close ups tomorrow in daylight.


Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Is this a RIFA (uV3100-10 PSU)?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 23/10/2022 20:19, John H. Reinhardt via cctalk wrote:


It looks like the RIFA caps I've removed from my DEC H7864 P/S. Though 
mine were colored more toward the amber you find dead flies fossilized 
in and had visible cracks in the case.  The RIFA logo/name was on one 
side with other markings on the other side, on the top was only the X2 
and the value.


You might have to remove it just to be certain that it is a RIFA, but 
the top lettering and the overall look point in that direction.


On 23/10/2022 22:18, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:


It does look rather like the troublesome RIFA capacitors that come in
transparent / slightly yellow cases.  However, it seems to be lacking the
usual tell tale cracks.



You are both right: I desoldered it tonight and it is indeed a RIFA: 
https://photos.app.goo.gl/smYWrNeuFeo6Ragw7.


I measured it as: 28mm W x 16mm D x 13mm H. There are a couple of 
matches so I'll probably buy a few from each of these:


https://www.bitsboxuk.com/index.php?main_page=product_info=65_81_id=409

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124149363651


the bitsbox one may be a teensy bit to large but the ebay one should fit 
nicely. Neither is too expensive even with postage so I'll buy a few, 
given that I do have a fair few PSUs knocking around.





This is not a big deal compared to the six/ten 1800uF 25V
electrolytics in H7821/H7822 power supplies.  If these are not already
leaking (look for a ring of brown goo around the base, sometimes only
visible after unsoldering them), they are very likely to start leaking
soon, even more likely if the power supply has not been stored in it's
natural orientation.  These can do a lot of damage to the power supply
and anything else the goo gets on.


I have four H7868-B modules (two per BA213) that don't work and two of 
them have leaking caps, and I mean *seriously* leaking!. This PSU though 
(the H7822-00) is currently OK: None of the caps show any sign of 
leaking or bulging. Given how easily the RIFA popped out, I might 
speculatively try removing one of the 1800uF ones just to see what it 
looks like underneath, and maybe measure its value too. Mouser wants 
£1.10 each (for 10+) and also charges £12 minimum shipping, digikey 
seems similar; eBay does have a UK seller doing 10 for £6, which might 
be a better option if I need to go that way.



Antonio


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[cctalk] Is this a RIFA (uV3100-10 PSU)?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I'm working on cleaning up a bit of battery leakage in a MicroVAX 3100 
Model 10 and while it's apart I decided to look inside the PSU (an 
H7822-00).


It's nice and clean inside with no bulging caps. What it does have is an 
X2 capacitor, as shown here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dpdqJ3tuGfsRDR3Y6.



It doesn't appear to be damaged and I can't see the word "RIFA" on it 
anywhere but I can't see two of the sides because of other components 
that get in the way.


So does anyone know for sure whether it is a RIFA brand or not, or do I 
have to desolder it to be sure?



Thanks

Antonio


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[cctalk] Re: Soviet PDP clones

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 18/10/2022 14:18, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

I assume the story about the message is accurate (I heard it from a senior guy 
at DEC who should know) but that doesn't mean it was actually cloned.  It seems 
to be an engineer reaction to hearing about their earlier work being stolen.

paul


Unless someone has gone to a good deal of trouble, then the story is 
true: https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html



Given what has been done for the Z80 and 6502, it should be possible to 
recreate an exact clone of a CVAX with just a little effort (:-)). I 
wonder if anyone has considered a MiSTer core for it?



Antonio



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[cctalk] Re: DEC H7868 Power Supplies

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 29/08/2022 21:40, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
While cleaning up I found a box with 3 H7868 power supplies. Once upon 
a time I had a BA213 and BA215 Vax.


One of them has a cable coming out the top of it and probably went to 
the BA213 box which had only one power supply.


The other two are plain and likely are from a BA215 box.

I assume they are not working and if you want one or all I will ship 
if you pay postage.


I am located in Zip 20640, shipping out of the US seems not worth the 
trouble.


It's worth noting that I think that the H7868-*A* is 115/120V and the 
H7868-*B* is 220/240V and they are not auto-ranging. So shipping outside 
the US (at least to the UK, but probably other places too) is not worth 
the trouble for another reason too.



Antonio


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Re: IBM PC Connecting to DECNET

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 03/06/2022 03:09, Rick Murphy via cctalk wrote:

On 6/1/2022 12:49 AM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:

No one ever called it a "Digital Ethernet Personal Computer Bus
Adapter", just a DEPCA. I never previously knew that there was any
meaning behind the DEPCA name.


Yes, that's what it meant. "DELNI" - Digital Ethernet Local Network 
Interface. "DESTA" - Digital Ethernet Station Termination Adapter. 
DELQA - Digital  Ethernet Local Q-Bus Adapter (this one probably means 
something else. Working?). DEMPR - Multi Port Repeater. DEREP - 
Repeater.  And so forth. Yeah, nobody spelled it out, but those DExxx 
names usually meant what the device was. DEBNT, DEUNA, DEQNA. Same 
naming convention. I'm probably missing several.

    -Rick

The DEPCA manual 
(http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/ethernet/depca/EK-DEPCA-PR-001_Apr89.pdf) 
says "DIGITAL Ethernet Personal Computer Adapter", without "Bus".


DELQA was "DIGITAL Ethernet Local-Area-Network to Q-bus Adapter" 
according to its user guide.


It's predecessor, the DEQNA, was "Digital ETHERNET Q-Bus Network 
Adapter", according to its user guide, or "broken", according to most 
people :-)



Antonio


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Re: HP9825 internal ROM?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 04/05/2022 21:40, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Question for the group: I'm working on a HP9825B here. First thing I 
did was take it apart, clean it, unplug all the power connections to 
the board and test the power supply. Supply is good (values below) so 
after checking the boards I put it together and powered it on.


Note: I can see the lack of a crowbar circuit on the +5 line and would 
be happy to install a crowbar circuit. Does anyone have a spare PCB 
board as otherwise I'd need to order at least three of them to build one.


Voltages are still good, however I get nothing on the display. The 
CAPS LOCK does light up the caps lock light and it's cleared by 
pressing Shift but that's about it.


Question: Is there supposed to be a ROM board or cartridge inside the 
unit by default? This one does not have one (the space between the 
front of the CPU board and the 4 card edges on the front). Perhaps 
that's the problem.


If so is it possible to build a board that can contain a more modern 
ROM with the system code on it?



CuriousMarc did a crowbar on youtube: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIfJ30fPAOw.


The circuit is available on his website: 
https://www.curiousmarc.com/computing/hp-9825-scientific-computer#h.xrov16yr03br


The whole series was fun to watch (even though I don't have an HP9825)


Antonio


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Re: Advice on Desoldering an IC

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 15/04/2022 18:49, Rob Jarratt via cctalk wrote:

I am using a fairly cheap desoldering station (this one
https://cpc.farnell.com/duratool/d00672/desoldering-station-uk-eu-plug/dp/SD
01384?st=duratool%20desoldering). Its spec in terms of vacuum pressure is
equivalent to that of the professional Hakko ones though. I am also trying a
hand desoldering pump. None of these are able to clear many of the holes of
solder, although some are doing better than others. Nevertheless, the IC
remains stubbornly unmoving.


I have that one too and I've found it to be reasonably good (compared to 
a manual pump - I've never had access to an expensive desoldering station.).



I've not tried it on anything Qbus related, only relatively modern 
motherboards and the like, but it has been quite good at getting the 
solder out. Sometimes I need to wiggle the end of the pins to break 
contact with the via. Removing a 20-pin IC can take a good 15 minutes 
but when the IC legs don't stick then it can be very quick. I have 
sometimes resorted to using a hot air gun with the fine nozzle to warm 
things up first and then use the Duratool.



When I first got the desolder gun I played around with scrap 
motherboards to get the hang of it.



There are a fair few YT videos about that Duratool (it seems to be a 
variant of the ZD-915) and there are various modifications that people 
have made. Those videos often have examples of it in action along with 
hints and tips that people have found useful. As usual, take with a 
hefty grain of salt. (The ones that modify the tool to try and increase 
the vacuum pressure seem particularly sketchy ... YMMV).



Antonio


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Re: AlphaServer 2100s available

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 14/04/2022 22:36, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:


(OFFLIST, I think)



I will learn to get this right eventually :-)


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Re: AlphaServer 2100s available

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 12/04/2022 16:34, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk wrote:

Folks,
Does no one fancy a go at this. Had zero interest...
Dave


(OFFLIST, I think)

I'm assuming the machine is safe, at least for the moment?

I've actually got less room now than when I had to let it go, so 
hopefully it can just sit in a corner and be a useful table end or 
something for a while?


I'm currently struggling with a uVAX 3600 PSu and a VAX 4000 PSU, so if 
I ever fix those, maybe I can help with the AS2100 ...



Antonio


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Re: Quantum ATL-7100 DLT Changer in SLC

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 09/04/2022 16:58, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

You wouldn’t be able to put TK-70 drives in this, wrong interface.  I don’t 
know if DEC DLT drives capable of reading TK50’s and TK70’s will work in one.


I have two TZ877 units, each of which contains a TZ87, and those will 
read TK50 and TK70 tapes. Whether a TZ87 will work in this drive or not, 
I don't know.


The internal interface board in the TZ877 presents a SCSI interface to 
the outside world.



I realise no-one is going to put a TZ-anything inside a Quantum tape 
library, but just in case ...




Antonio



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Re: PDP 11/24 - A Step Backwards

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 28/03/2022 04:57, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:


Very little of the stuff I've bought new has had such seals (with some
things, like my audio equipment, you are _expected_ to remove the
covers, the user manuals tell you how. They also include the full
schematics). Ditto test gear (if there is a seal it voids the
calibration only), computer stuff, etc.

I don't think DEC ever put such seals on their machines when new.
Certainly not on things like power supplies,]

-tony


The RZ28 I have right here has the usual "Warranty Void If Broken" seal 
on the side.


In this case the PSU was recently sent off for repair: I'm not surprised 
it came back with a similar sticker.


They're not trying to stop you looking inside, they're trying not to 
have to fix it again for free after you've fiddled.


What surprises me (a little) is that there is a commercial outfit 
willing to work on something so old.



Antonio


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Re: Installing an operating system on an 11/83

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 22/02/2022 14:19, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:

That didn't stop me being massively nervy installing a VMS v5.0 upgrade from 
RX50s to a customer's VAX 11/50... I think it was the first one that I'd done 
so no pressure.


I remember doing the V5 upgrade on a VAX-11/750 but via tape. You still 
needed to boot from TU58, which seemed to take roughly forever.



I imagine it was possible to hook up RX50s to a VAX-11/750 but I never 
saw one configured that way. Why not use tape :-)




Antonio



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Re: Installing an operating system on an 11/83

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 22/02/2022 03:27, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

Are RX50 drives less robust than what was used to install Windoze 95?



I never installed it this way myself, but MicroVMS on the MicroVAX II 
was distributed on RX50 floppies: lost of them.



Of course, that was then and the floppy drives were younger and less 
temperamental (and perhaps the same could be said about the people 
feeding the drives floppies ...)



Antonio


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Re: VAX9000 unearthed

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 18/02/2022 17:16, Lee Courtney via cctalk wrote:

Paul,

What was the timeframe for the MPP?

Lee



The earliest DECmpp reference I can find is from 1991:

https://eisner.decus.org/anon/htnotes/note?f1=INDUSTRY_NEWS=551.1

You can peruse the service manual here:

http://manx-docs.org/collections/mds-199909/cd2/decmpp/decacsmc.pdf


There are other docs that you can most easily find by searching for 
"DECmpp" on manx.



Antonio


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Re: VAX9000 unearthed

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 18/02/2022 20:35, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:


There also was an effort at one point to adopt FutureBus in DEC systems.  We 
did a pile of design in the network architecture group to figure out how to 
handle interrupts and bus cycles efficiently; I don't remember if anything 
actually shipped with that stuff.

paul


The DEC 4000 systems (COBRA and the follow-on upgrade, FANG) use FB as 
an I/O bus. DECnis also used FB as its backplane. They couldn't share 
cards though.



Antonio


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Re: Origin of "partition" in storage devices

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 01/02/2022 16:17, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:

Covering more distance in the same time means increased speed to me!



Not if you stretch the bits, as older drives did. You are still covering 
more linear distance per unit time but the magnetic data is smeared out 
just enough to counteract this. This is the disk equivalent of the 
Lorentz contraction. :-)



So the relative speed of your head over the platter is faster but the 
observable effect (data transfer rate) is the same as it is on the inner 
tracks.



Antonio



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Re: Women of Computing

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On Sat, Dec 4, 2021 at 10:20 AM Chris Long via cctalk 
 wrote:

Great.not.

Why do we need woke Lego?

Excellent use of compression on the list: a question that contains its 
own answer :-)



Antonio


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Re: The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 20/11/2021 18:46, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
Is there an archive.org mirror? 


How many of us could afford the disk space? 30PB in 2016 apparently. I 
know that 10 years from now we'll all have PB drives, but right now it 
would be hard. That's 8 years of downloading @ 1Gbps. So I suspect that 
none of us has an archive.org mirror.



What about Wikipedia? There's Infogalactic, but that's a fork, not a 
mirror.


You can download a copy of Wikipedia and set up a local copy - it's 
probably bigger now but when I tried it, it was about 3GB.



Antonio


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Re: The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 8:34 PM Steve Malikoff via cctalk



Michael asked

What are we, as a community, to do to fix this and make sure that our
history stays peserved and isn't one bad day away from vanishing.

Whenever some new vintage computing page appears I go to archive.org and
submit the
URL to them for the wayback machine. Often they've crawled it already, but
not always
so I think it does help.



One of the DtCyber pages was archived, but when you drill down to the 
sources, those pages are not there.



So you have to watch out for missing bits when you archive a website.


Antonio


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Re: DEQNA cab kit wiring

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 03/11/2021 16:15, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:

Thanks for the outstandingly-quick response!  I had already buttoned up
the cab and put it aside for another day.

Thanks also for the link to a site I did not know about, I'll bookmark
it for later browsing.

Soldering iron on!

The DEQNA cable details are (I think) here: 
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/qbus/MP01811_CKDEQNA_Qbus_Ethernet_Cable.pdf



The DELQA may well be subtly different. I think I have a DELQA cab kit 
left and maybe I can take a photo tomorrow. I'll look for a DEQNA one 
too, but they may all be long gone now.



(I also looked at the DEQNA UG but I couldn't find wiring details in 
there ... but it was a very quick look).



Antonio

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Re: Sun-2 and Sun-3 mice (eBay)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 26/10/2021 07:43, r.stricklin via cctech wrote

Hadn't realized before that there were Sun-2 mice which weren't black (were 
white/beige). I know some folks are looking.


"Unable to test. Some yellowing"


That needs some serious cleaning ... although that would then expose 
even more yellowing :-)



Antonio


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Re: MD5 list of bitsavers files

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 01/10/2021 08:36, Paul Flo Williams wrote:


https://vt100.net/manx/assets/2021-10-01-bitsavers-dec.md5

Paul


Thanks for that. It turns out that some of the bitsavers files have 
changed since I picked them up (perhaps to add OCR of similar). (I also 
got further data from Richard via email, which showed the same issue).


So I've had to do some other surgery to hone down the list of files.


The total number of files that seem to be unique and unpublished is just 
under 2000. About 950 of those are original PDFs of 
manuals/specs/whatever (not scans) that I picked up while working at DEC.


The rest either I've scanned, or I've found lying around on the internet 
somewhere.



That's rather a large amount to dump on Al without providing some 
metadata. I think for most of them I can dig up a title. So I could 
provide an index file to link the filepath and title, something like:


0002/MANUALS/EK/XMIADHB.PDF: "XMI Adapters Handbook"

Would that help, or is there more that I might be able to provide?



Antonio




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MD5 list of bitsavers files

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I'm trying to list out the document scans I have and work out which are 
already on bitsavers and which are not (and, indeed, a fair few of these 
are originally from bitsavers anyway). This is probably several thousand 
files total, so searching manx by hand is not an option!


I see that manx lists the MD5 checksum for many files, at least it does 
for those from bitsavers. Is there a publicly available list of URL and 
MD5 checksum? This would make it relatively easy for me to cross check 
my files against the list and whittle down to a subset that I should 
make available.



Alternatively, is the current manx database available anywhere? I know 
the code is on github, but I didn't see the data there. (I do have an 
SQL dump from 2010 when manx changed hands, but that's not recent enough 
to save much).


I could try to do some parsing of bitsavers-filename => DEC-part-number 
and eliminate files that way, but that seems inexact at best. Or I could 
just download the DEC subset of files (spread across the mirrors) but 
that seems a bit antisocial.



Antonio


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Re: Setting up a VMS system

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 22/09/2021 17:05, Zane Healy wrote:


Interesting, I have 3 34GB drives in my cluster, and haven’t had any issue.



I think I was running OpenVMS VAX V7.2 on SIMH. IIRC it was fixed in 
V7.3 (someone sent me the DECUS Hobbyist V7.3 release and that was OK).



Antonio


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Re: Setting up a VMS system

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 22/09/2021 13:21, Philip Pemberton via cctalk wrote:

Hopefully a few of the DEC/VMS fans here might be able to help!

I'm on a bit of a quest. I've been given some old VAX/VMS software -- 
a cross compiler and some source code -- that I'd like to get running. 
My goal is to get the source code building and experiment with the 
compiler a bit.


Problem is that I've never used VMS before, and don't have a clue how 
to install or use it.


One of the other replies supplies a "how to install from scratch in 
SIMH" link, so that would be a good starting point.


Might be faster to install on a speedy machine though (I've never tried 
on any Pi but I doubt that any of them will match a Ryzen ...)



Can any point me to an idiot's guide to VMS, how to set it up and make 
it possible to send files to it from my Linux box?


The easiest way to transfer that I can think of would be to set up 
TCP/IP on OpenVMS and then just FTP (or NFS if you you set that up).


There is (or at least, was) a version of SAMBA for OpenVMS, so that's 
another way if you like Windows.




I'm thinking of using SIMH, unless there's a better emulator available.


SIMH works really well. Well enough that if you give OpenVMS (VAX) a 
sufficiently large disk (30GB should do), it will crash when trying to 
mount it :-)





I'm still waiting on a reply from HP with a hobbyist licence PAK (I've 
filled out the form), but I figure I can get started on the learning 
while I wait.


You'll be a wizard before you stop waiting. Hobbyist PAKs are no longer 
available. I forget whether the existing PAKs run out at the end of 2021 
or 2022.


VSI are not allowed to issue PAKs for VAX (I'm not sure whether they 
simply cannot do it or are not allowed to do it, but either way, they 
won't).



Antonio


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Re: Burnable, patched Microvax-2000 SCSI-boot EPROM images?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/09/2021 18:38, Jonathan Stone via cctalk wrote:
  
  (At least for Qbus. At eBay prices, even RQDX3 plus distribution panel plus emulator, is cheaper than bootable SCSI controller plus SCSI emulator). SCSI performance will still be better.
   


My recollection is that the MicroVAX 2000 SCSI isn't complete and was 
only intended for the tape unit. Whether its performance beats an RD54 
will be interesting to see.



Antonio


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Re: Anyone Have the H9642 Enclosure Maintenance Manual EK-187AA-MG

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 04/09/2021 14:26, Rob Jarratt via cctalk wrote:

I have looked on Manx and on Bitsavers and I don't see it there.



Do you need the H9642 specifically or is it just the embedded MicroVAX  
3600 that you want to know about? If so then EK-189AA-MG-001 will 
possibly do. It's really for the BA213 but does mention the H9644.


Except that's not quite what you want, I misremembered the number. The 
appendix does list the manual you want, so I presume it must be 
mentioned somewhere, just I didn't see it.


There are a bunch of enclosure manuals on Tim Shoppa's site: 
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/scandocs.trailing-edge.com/ (they've 
presumably moved at some point as Manx currently points to the wrong place).



Antonio


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Re: VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 04/09/2021 02:42, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:

On 7/14/2021 12:32 PM, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:
VT100 to the rescue, the VLC is fine talking to it so now I'm 
wondering why
my old faithful hardware UART in this PC I'm typing on now has let me 
down.


The BlueSCSI appears as 7 devices though, which is usually a 
termination or

ID problem so I now need to dig out an external terminator for the box
since it's never had one. The hard drive in there has been good at
providing its own TERMPWR which the BlueSCSI should too but I'll play by
the rules to test things properly.

Cheers,



I think BlueSCSI will only appear as the devices you have image files 
named for on its SD card.


JRJ


"Digital Diggings" couldn't get BlueSCSI to work on either VAX or Alpha: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFEh7owqHxU=36s.



That's a pity as it's much cheaper than SCSI2SD.


Antonio


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Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 02/09/2021 20:51, Paul Flo Williams via cctalk wrote:

With apologies for breaking the threading, as I've just rejoined and I'm
responding to something I've just spotted in the archive ...



Welcome back!



I haven't finished writing this up, but my workflow tends to be to
produce a Group4 TIFF from the colour scan by simple thresholding (or
first dropping the other colours to white, if they are quite dark), and
then produce all the other separations by dropping black out,
converting your spot colour to black and then thresholding. This way
you get two or more images:

1) PNG(s) containing pixels that are all either white or your spot
colour,
2) a G4 TIFF for the black and white layer.


As I'm in the process of scanning manuals right now, and I'd like to 
preserve the colour, I'm looking forward to the write up.


The ones I'm working on right now are mostly RSX-11 or VMS V4 and 
earlier, so they tend to highlight typed input by presenting that text 
in red.


They also have blocks of grey as background on which text is printed 
(this looks OK even with a bilevel TIFF) and also blocks of red/pink as 
background


for black text (and maybe red text too). I'm sure there's at least one 
manual that has blue text thrown into the mix too.




I've just scanned another document with some blue diagrams and table
backgrounds, if you'd like to see an example:

https://vt100.net/dec/ek-0la75-ug-002.pdf

That looks really good. It copes very well with black text on blue 
background, so I imagine it would work well for the black text on 
red/pink shading case.



What's the input to the process? G4 bilevel TIFF @ 600 dpi from the 
looks of your example, but how do you scan the colour pages? 600dpi to 
PNG? Or something else?



Thanks


Antonio


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Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 28/08/2021 12:44, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote:


I always fail to understand this ...
With prices for hard drives like they are, and comparing to the amount
of work, it really is to scan a manual, I would recommend to scan with
the best resolution you have, and have those files as you "original scans"
Than, you apply whatever tricks you have in your bin, to "publish" those
scans.


Well the scanner claims 4800 dpi optical, so that's 1.6GiB per page.

(Actually the scanner claims 4800 x 9600 dpi optical  but I can't see 
how to ask it to do that).


So there's a question of what's practical. I only have about 4Tib of 
free space, so that's 2500 colour pages at most.


It's also incredibly inefficient: that same information, if it had been 
born digital, would take 100kB per page or so.


I've not tried opening a 100GiB document lately but I assume that any 
PDF reader will some issues.




Probably, one day there will be a nice tool, to do whatever you
expected, and you have the scan already on your drive, and the original
manual is digitized and preserved already.

Neatly solved in the document's future (but our past and present) by 
having documents that are born digital.



That just leaves a few hundred years of printed matter to deal with. 
Luckily noteshrink seems to do a good job.



Antonio

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Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 28/08/2021 09:21, æstrid smith via cctalk wrote:

i've achieved satisfactory results paletteizing scans of low-color-depth 
material using a tool called 'noteshrink':

https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html

Well as a guide the 66 page AA-CJ39A-TE (VAX-11 RSX Installation Guide 
and Release Notes) is 8.8MB. That's with the front and rear cover 
scanned as 300 dpi JPG and also 12 colour pages as 300 dpi JPG.


Each of the 600dpi PNG pages comes out at 26MB.

I tried optipng first. Even "-o 7" (which I ran overnight but I forgot 
to time ...) only dropped a page down to 19MB. So completely impractical 
for even this small number of pages.



Noteshrink (which I've seen before but never bothered to try!) knocked a 
26MB PNG down to 700kB. The only issue is that the red looks quite a bit 
more brown than it should. I'll look into it a bit more as it looks 
good. Thanks



Antonio


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Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 27/08/2021 22:10, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 8/27/21 2:05 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

For material such as the RSX manuals you mentioned, the tool needed 
is a compression algorithm that handles color with hard edges 
faithfully.  Basically that means a lossless compression scheme.  
That should be fine, since pages like that should compress very well, 
at least if the scan has been touched up just a bit to make the page 
background reasonably pure white.


Ethan worked on a filter a long time ago for DEC manuals. J David 
Bryan's work was mentioned recently.


I did see it, but it didn't look like a cookie-cutter recipe. I'd be 
happy to be proved wrong though. What I don't want to have to do is 
manually process each page (beyond having to decide which to scan in 
colour). I would be looking for an algorithm or process that I can just 
point at scanner data for a page and have it spit out the optimised PDF 
page. I'm sure that will appear at some stage, but I don't think it 
exists yet. The RSX-11M/M-PLUS Error Logging Manual, for example, has 
somewhere between 20 and 50 pages with colour present. I can pick those 
out and re-scan them and I can relatively easily merge those pages with 
the original B scan, but if I have to manually examine each page, I'll 
never make it to whatever manual is in my list after that one :-)




It is trivial to add page bookmarks with Eric Smith's tumble with the 
-b %F option



Thanks, I'll look into tumble.


Antonio

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Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 27/08/2021 22:05, Paul Koning wrote:
JPG is the wrong tool for pages with color text or color line art. As 
I've mentioned before, JPG is fit ONLY for photos, not for any image 
with hard edges. Text compressed with JPG will suffer badly. 



Yes, true. I thought that for colour, all I could get was JPEG. It 
certainly seems to be the case that the HP PhotoSmart I have scans 
everything as JPEG 300 dpi when you use the front panel to scan to a 
memory stick. Post processing wouldn't make that any better, which is 
why I thought I was stuck with JPEG.



It turns out though that if you drive it with a computer then you also 
get the choice of TIFF or PNG as additional choices. TIFF is likely to 
be quite a bit too big. I'll try PNG and see how big the files it 
generates are. I've no idea what the default compression is straight out 
of the software but as long as it's lossless I can hopefully 
post-process to squeeze things down if possible.



If this turns out to work without ballooning file sizes, then I can just 
not bother preserving the B pages, as lossless colour PNG should OCR 
as well as B (I would think).



I have a few pages in the scanner now at 600dpi PNG so I'll soon know 
how that compares to JPG or B



Thanks


Antonio


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Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I have a few manuals to scan and I'm looking for suggestions, about how 
to add bookmarks and how to handle colour.


Bookmarks should be easier, so lets start with that. I want to add 
bookmarks (or whatever they are called) so that it is easy to navigate 
to page "2-48" or "C-17" in a document. Many of the PDFs on bitsavers 
have that and I've found it very useful so I'd like to do that for my 
future scans. I've tried with pdftk (the Java port as the original is no 
longer available on my distro) but that failed. So I tried GhostScript 
and that also failed, while also rewriting the PDF to be considerably 
larger. Is there simple way to achieve this (ideally from the CLI)?



Now for the scanning itself.

For manuals that are simple monochrome, I plan to scan at 600dpi bilevel 
G4 encoded, wrapped in PDF.
For photographs or shaded areas that don't necessarily come out well 
under those settings, I plan to use 8-bit greyscale. I'd prefer to use 
600dpi but I may have to fall back to 300dpi if the per-page fiile size 
shoots up too much.


The real issue is colour. I know that various people have looked at the 
issue of how to efficiently scan pages that are mostly black and white 
but have some coloured text (RSX-11 manuals and early VMS manuals did 
this to highlight terminal input, for example). I don't think this is a 
solved problem and I'm not expecting a solution, what I'm really looking 
for is to check that what I'm about to produce will have all the 
information that a future efficient algorithm is likely to need.


I'm going to start by scanning the whole manual as though it had no 
colour (so 600 dpi bilevel G4 encoded, except for pages with photos and 
shading and so on). Then I'm going to go back and rescan the pages that 
have colour and scan those at 600 dpi and save as a JPG. Then I'll 
produce a final PDF with the colour pages inserted. I'll also produce a 
PDF with the B pages that were replaced by colour pages (I assume OCR 
will be better served by non-jaggy scans).


So the final outputs will be:
manual.pdf  - the whole manual, including whole pages scanned as colour 
if any colour is present on them
manual_BW.pdf  - the G4-encoded bilevel pages that were replaced by 
colour pages


Thanks


Antonio


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Re: Extremely CISC instructions

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 26/08/2021 04:41, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:


And yes there were CRTs set up at the factory for the northern and
southern hemispheres. I remember Bang and Olufsen made a TV where the
CRT was effectively mounted upside-down (so that the EHT connector was
far enough from the cabinet to meet safety requirements) and the CRT
had to be the one for the 'wrong' hemisphere as a result.



DEC too had different part numbers for various monitors for different 
hemispheres.



Antonio


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Re: Ultrix-11

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 17/08/2021 19:39, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

I thought V7M and Ultrix were entirely diferent and unrelated things.

At least on the Pro, DEC released a betal version of the one (which I tried when it came 
out) and then canceled it and replaced it by a release of the other.  I forgot which came 
first, other than that the beta was really clunky.  As in, a "vi" that didn't 
do real screen updates...

paul


http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/ultrix-11/2.0/AA-X342B-TC_ULTRIX-11_SoftwTechDescr_1984.pdf 
says on p1-1 that


"ULTRIX-11 V2.0 software is the second version of DIGITAL's 16-bit UNIX 
product. The first version was V7M-11 V1.0 software."



Antonio


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H7868 Power Supply Schematics

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I have a non-functioning H7868 PSU. This is one of the two PSUs used in 
a BA214 chassis (and probably elsewhere).


This one seems to be dead: the green LED doesn't come on at all, there 
is no sign of life and no +5V appears on the BA214 Qbus.


(I did use a load board when testing, so that's not the issue).


Does anyone have a set of schematics? I did try poking around in the 
various MicroVAX 3600/3800 schematics that I could find on bitsavers but 
nothing obvious leapt out at me. Of course, I could easily have missed 
something.



Alternatively, does anyone have any experience of working on these PSUs? 
Any pointers for common failure modes would be helpful.



Thanks


Antonio


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Re: VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 14/07/2021 18:32, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:

VT100 to the rescue, the VLC is fine talking to it so now I'm wondering why
my old faithful hardware UART in this PC I'm typing on now has let me down.


Given the possible issues (dead VLC line drivers, iffy cable, iffy PC 
UART) you've probably bee lucky (although maybe DECconnect cables aren't 
too tricky to make up these days).



Funnily enough I have a very similar issue on my MicroVAX 3600: the CPU 
bulkhead LED cycles through the right stuff but nothing appears on the 
VT420. Take the lead out of the uV3600 and plug it in to the VS400-60 
and it's fine. The leaky battery on the console bulkhead probably didn't 
help :-( At least you don't have *that* issue on the VLC!



It would be nice to know if Bluepill works on the VS4000 range: I wonder 
if my VS4000-90 would then become silent enough to run more often!



Antonio



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Re: VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 13/07/2021 22:34, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 7/13/2021 3:30 PM, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:

Hi folks,

Powering up with nothing attached apart from an MMJ/H8571 cable I get
nothing on the console, I'm using PuTTY via a genuine COM1 port on a PC
which is one level above what I used last time I powered the machine up
(FTDI USB adapter to a laptop). Diagnostic LEDs cycle through the 
tests and

end up at ' 0011' which according to the manual is 'entering the
console program'.

There are 2 ways to have a console on the VAX4000/VLC.  A switch on 
the back selects either; (1) graphics console mode, or (2) terminal 
attached to the serial port.  It sounds like you have the switch set 
to graphics console mode, in that case you get nothing from the serial 
port.


I can't remember where the switch is on the back, bitsavers or someone 
who remembers can help.


Doug

If you look from the front it's on the right hand side and marked "S3", 
between the grey reset switch and the keyboard connector. I think that 
S3 needs to be UP otherwise it would expect a monitor and keyboard to be 
attached.


The MMJ connector is on the back (but obviously Adrian has found that 
... or he's pushed really, really hard into either the keyboard 
connector or the phone connector :-))



Antonio

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Re: VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 13/07/2021 20:30, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:

Clearly the DALLAS has passed the TOY tests, but if it's not happy would
that stop the console displaying? It doesn't matter how I set S3, next step
I guess is to hook it up to a 'proper' VT.

My VS4000-60 has a DALLAS chip that is either dead or not working very 
well: it will not remember settings at all. It boots fine using a VT420 
and it also boots fine with a monitor/keyboard connected.


Do you get *any* output on the console at all?

The easiest thing to try would be a known good VT terminal, then you 
don't have to worry about the H8571-? being the correct "-?" for your 
config (ISTR that there are a number of variants, each subtly different).



Antonio



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Re: First new vax in ...30 years? :-)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 05/07/2021 21:48, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:

On 7/4/21 1:52 PM, David Brownlee via cctalk wrote:

In case anyone was interested in an FPGA VAX implementation
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-vax/2021/07/03/msg003899.html

And/or thoughts on 64bit/FP & multiprocessor enhancements :-p
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-vax/2021/07/03/msg003903.html


WOW,very impressive!

Indeed. If only someone could get him a copy of DEC's AXE suite so he 
can test it properly. Anyone have that available?


Antonio

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Re: VT100 colors

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 22/06/2021 08:16, Matt Burke via cctalk wrote:

The VT640 had a green phosphor. This was a 3rd party upgrade for the
VT100 from Digital Engineering which gives the VT100 graphical
capabilities. Part of the upgrade involved changing the picture tube. I
suspect this was to reduce flicker as the phosphor has a high persistence.

Here is an original advert for the upgrade:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rO0QAcSJpQUC=PA27

Matt


The ones I used had a VT640 (although the only used for the graphics 
side that I remember was a labyrinth game and some ALGOL code I wrote to 
plot some coursework). I would never have guessed that the tube got 
changed as part of the process, but it looks like you probably bought 
the modified VT100 from Digital Engineering rather than installing a kit 
yourself.



Antonio


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Re: VT100 colors

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/06/2021 17:10, Antonio Carlini wrote:

On 21/06/2021 15:39, Paul Koning wrote:


You're thinking of the VT200, which came in three colors, although at 
DEC fortunately they never inflicted green on us :-).  But all the 
earlier DEC video terminals (VT05, VT50/52/61t/62, VT20, VT71) were 
white.  The only exception I can think of is the GT40, probably 
because that one benefits from having fairly long persistence which 
was available in green phosphor but not in white.



The User Guide doesn't say and I don't have an IPB I can find. I do 
remember the VT100s in the computer room at Uni being green and the 
VT52 clones (Dataram?) being white. But that's a while ago so maybe my 
wetware is wrong. If and when I can get to where I think my VT100 is I 
can look at powering it up. Powering it up may take much longer than 
getting to it though :-)



My VT220 is (or was, it's been a while ...) green phosphor and my 
VT420 is amber ... I like both.



I found the IPB on bitsavers and that lists the P4 phosphor and a later 
CRT with the P40 phosphor. I think both of those are white.



I did find one seemingly untouched image of a VT100 with green text: 
https://vistapointe.net/cliparts/getsecond. That does appear to be a 
VT100 (not a VT102/VT103 etc) and is green.


I did find many more white phosphor pictures than green (and no amber at 
all).



Antonio


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Re: VT100 colors

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/06/2021 15:39, Paul Koning wrote:


You're thinking of the VT200, which came in three colors, although at DEC 
fortunately they never inflicted green on us :-).  But all the earlier DEC 
video terminals (VT05, VT50/52/61t/62, VT20, VT71) were white.  The only 
exception I can think of is the GT40, probably because that one benefits from 
having fairly long persistence which was available in green phosphor but not in 
white.



The User Guide doesn't say and I don't have an IPB I can find. I do 
remember the VT100s in the computer room at Uni being green and the VT52 
clones (Dataram?) being white. But that's a while ago so maybe my 
wetware is wrong. If and when I can get to where I think my VT100 is I 
can look at powering it up. Powering it up may take much longer than 
getting to it though :-)



My VT220 is (or was, it's been a while ...) green phosphor and my VT420 
is amber ... I like both.



Antonio


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Re: VT100 colors

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/06/2021 07:51, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

I want to say that it’s white.  Though I can’t get to mine right now.

Zane


Sent from my iPod


On Jun 20, 2021, at 10:50 PM, Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk  
wrote:

Hello,

Does anyone know what colors a VT100 is?  Most photos online has it
looking yellowish, but I expect that's from aging.  Some people I have
asked claim it was a light cream color.  This bitsavers picture has it
looking neutral grey:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/terminal/vt100/vt100_wps-8.jpg

And the black parts are claimed to be dark brown.

I haven't found any color codes in the manuals.



I can't get t mine either but I think they were originally light cream, 
but not bright white.


I suspect that most photos have it as yellowish because that's what they 
are now :-)


The black bits I remember as black.


I remember the tube colour being green, I think I remember seeing amber 
and I believe that white was an available option.



Antonio


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Re: VAXstation 4000/vlc mouse issue

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 01/06/2021 17:41, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:


It would be interesting to attach a UART to the comm link (4800 bps, RS-232 
signal levels) and capture what happens.  It's quite strange to see a system 
failure caused by pressing a button.  I suppose it could be a bug in the system 
software mishandling a protocol error on the mouse to system link.  Or perhaps 
the mouse embedded controller has failed so that pressing the button in 
question crashes the controller and makes it stop talking to the host.  In that 
case you'd think that unplugging and replugging the mouse would cure the issue, 
though.

Years ago I had a VSXXX-AA mouse that stopped a VS3100-76 from powering 
up. Removed the mouse and it was fine. Tried another mouse and it was fine.



I recently re-tested my DEC mice and none exhibited that behaviour, so 
I've no idea where that one has ended up. I couldn't remember whether 
you could hot-swap mice or keyboards (I *think* you could, but I wasn't 
*sure*) so I tested the slow way, with reboots and power-cycles (and a 
long gap to give the VS4000-60 a breather in between!)



Antonio


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Re: Writings on AI from 17 years ago....

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 31/05/2021 23:55, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Sure, Library of Alexadria, lots of examples through history. Oddly 
enough people like to find this stuff, centralize it somewhere, then 
burn it to the ground.


Go figure. And make sure all of your stuff is backed up all over the 
place, it's amazing how it can all wind up on one guy's FTP server 
that vanishes


True. I was looking for a document [1] from www.miim.com just the other  
day. I know it used to be available because I had previously saved a few 
other docs from there, just not this one. But it's gone and archive.org 
won't serve it up (I did find the site owner's account of his battle 
with archive.org to sto pserving copies of his stuff ... ironically on 
another archive site!)


[1] The RSX FAQ, in case anyone else was more diligent than I was!


Antonio



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Re: RSTS/E version numbers

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 31/05/2021 15:04, Paul Koning wrote:


The earlier rule was that the first number is the major version, the letter is 
the minor version.  As of V7 it changed to major number dot minor number.  In 
either case, the dash number suffix is the baselevel number (development build 
cycle number).  Those typically restart at 0 or 1 for each release, so V5C-01 
indicates only one baselevel was done for that minor release.  That may not be 
true in all cases; I doubt that V4B had 17 baselevels so that number probably 
wasn't reset between V4A and V4B.
Looking at them I guess RT-11 does something similar: V2, V02B, V02C. I 
can (just about :-)) cope with the seemingly optional leading 0, but 
would there have been a V2A? There was for IAS. Actually IAS had V3, 
V3.1, V3.2, V3.2A, V3.2B and V3.2C. So IAS went major.minor in a sort of 
half-hearted way :-)



Sometimes version numbers seem to be missing.  I don't know if anyone ever saw 
V1, and I also never saw V3B though I have seen V3A and V3C.

The "80th Birthday Memo" 
(http://www.silverware.co.uk/rsts_80th_birthday.htm) says that V1 never 
made it out of the door. V2A-19 was the first to ship.


The "DEC 1957 to he Present" book 
(http://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/digital/dec%201957%20to%20present%201978.pdf) 
confirms the FY in which RSTS-11 shipped but not the version number.


The earliest manuals online seem to be the V4.x ones available on bitsavers.


Antonio


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RSTS/E version numbers

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

Can someone explain RSTS/E version numbers to me?

They seem to be all over the place: V2A-19, V4A-12, V4B-17, V5A-21, 
V5B-24, V5C-01, V6A-02, V6B-02, V6C-03.


Then it seems to have switched scheme but the "-number" suffix 
reappears: V7.0, V7.2, V8.0-06.



Any clarification would be helpful.


Antonio


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Re: MicroVAX 3300/3400

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 25/05/2021 18:53, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

I’m still not 100% sure if this is a 3300 or a 3400.  It’s in a BA400X chassis, 
and after looking at the manuals last night, it seems like it’s closer to the 
3400. My familarity with Q-Bus MicroVAXen is limited to MicroVAX/VAXstation 
II’s, and a MicroVAX 3.

After getting a power cable (the only one at PCH Cables was a 3’ one, and I 
didn’t want to wait for more to come in), it powered right up, but is failing 4 
tests.

I quickly learned last night that “TEST 9E” prints all the tests out to screen. 
 This effort is making me wish I had a DEC LA50 plugged into the terminal. :-)

It starts counting down diagnostics at “41”.

27..
?57 2 17 FF 00 

22..
?C2 2 01 FF 00 0001

07..
?5C 2 01 FF 00 0002

06..
?5D 2 0B FF 00 0003

57 = SI_memory  incr test_matter *
C2 = SSC RAM ALL*
5C = SII_initiator  **
5D = SII target ***

I think this is indicating issues with the DSSI interface.  The system has two 
RF73 DSSI drives, which sound like they spin up.  It also has a TK70 tape 
drive.  It says it has 4MB and 16MB RAM, all good.

One odd thing is that the KA640-A seems to plug into another board, before the 
DSSI drives. I’m getting ready to dig into that, and find out what that board 
is.

Zane



SII is the built-in DSSI interface. Is it terminated properly?

SSC is (iirc) the System Support Chip ... that may be more serious.


FWIW I think the distinction between the 3300/3400 is the size of the 
box: the innards are the same. (So same as the 3500/3600 and 3800/3900 
and the uV3100-30/40 etc.).


Both the uV3300 and the uV3400 use the KA640 board.


If you plug KA640 into manx you'll find two useful manuals online.


Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Mounting ULTRIX CDROMs on Linux

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 20/05/2021 21:11, John-Paul Stewart via cctalk wrote:


Setting ufstype=sun will indeed work for loopback mounting Ultrix CD images.

With physical CDs, the Linux CD-ROM driver expects the filesystem to use
2048 byte blocks but the UFS CDs have 512 byte blocks.  So you'll also
have to add "loop" to the options:

sudo mount -t ufs -o ro,ufstype=sun,loop /dev/sr1 /tmp/mount

That will mount the physical CD using a loopback device so you can
access the 512 byte per block filesystem.  (FWIW, I learned that trick
with IRIX EFS CDs, which have the same problem.)


We have a winner:

$ ls /tmp/mount/decw_book/
bookbrowser  d3b0aa70.decw_book d3knaa23.decw_book   
d3s1aa97.decw_book d5e5aaa8.decw_book   dh87zaa1.decw_bookshelf 
dt59aaa8.decw_book
BRM410   d3b0aa71.decw_book d3knaa24.decw_book   
d3s1aaa1.decw_book d5e5aaa9.decw_book   dhqdaa11.decw_book 
dt59aaa9.decw_book
BRV410   d3b0aa72.decw_book d3knaa25.decw_book   
d3s1aaa2.decw_book d5e5zaa2.decw_bookshelf  dhu3aaa3.decw_book 
dt59zaa1.decw_bookshelf
d296aaa1.decw_book   d3b0aa73.decw_book d3knaa26.decw_book   
d3s1aaa3.decw_book d8dlaaa1.decw_book   dhu3aaa4.decw_book 
dt59zaa2.decw_bookshelf
d296aaa2.decw_book   d3b0aaa1.decw_book d3knaa27.decw_book   
d3s1aaa4.decw_book d8dlaaa6.decw_book   dhu3zaa2.decw_bookshelf 
dt59zaa3.decw_bookshelf

...


Great, thanks for that. I would probably have never guessed that I 
needed loop.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Mounting ULTRIX CDROMs on Linux

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I'm running Linux Mint (an ubuntu derivative) and I want to mount ULTRIX 
CDROM discs to see what I can see.


(I'm eventually going to image these, but I presume that will "just 
work" with dd or ddrescue).


They are supposed to be UFS format (according to the net) and that 
usually means you have to tell mount exactly which option to use (as not 
all UFS implementations are compatible).



I've tried (all the options I can find) and failed:


$ sudo mount -t ufs  -o ufstype=44bsd /dev/sr1 /tmp/mount
mount: /tmp/mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 
/dev/sr1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.



The CDROM would appear to be readable 9and I've tried a few anyway):

$ sudo file -s /dev/sr1
/dev/sr1: Unix Fast File system [v1] (little-endian), last mounted on 
/UPS_MOUNT_TAR_SOURCE, last written at Wed Sep 28 16:27:45 1994, clean 
flag 30, number of blocks 243648, number of data blocks 233295, number 
of cylinder groups 38, block size 8192, fragment size 1024, minimum 
percentage of free blocks 10, rotational delay 0ms, disk rotational 
speed 60rps, TIME optimization



A later Digital Unix CDROM behaves the same way with mount and reports 
this with file:


$ sudo file -s /dev/sr1
/dev/sr1: Unix Fast File system [v1] (little-endian), last mounted on 
/kits/tmp/gendisk17665/mnt, last written at Wed Nov 20 13:38:02 1996, 
clean flag 3, number of blocks 151168, number of data blocks 150383, 
number of cylinder groups 24, block size 8192, fragment size 1024, 
minimum percentage of free blocks 0, rotational delay 0ms, disk 
rotational speed 60rps, SPACE optimization



I also have a few OSF/1 CDROMs, which I assume are also the same format.


Any ideas? I can't be the first person to try to do this ...


Antonio



--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: DEC DUP

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 20/05/2021 20:28, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

posting this over here, if anyone has any clues for this guy
i could dig in the DEC archive but it won't be any fun to find

https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/genres/dec/1209678-documentation-for-dec-dup-protocol-as-used-by-dec-diagnostics-such-as-xxdp-on-rqdx3#post1209697 



The OpenVMS driver is FYDRIVER. I can look for the listings if nobody 
finds any better docs. Those listings might be 
censored/incomplete/missing so I wouldn't hold out too much hope.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: VAXstation 4000 Mice?

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 20/05/2021 18:22, Jonathan Stone via cctalk wrote:
It does indeed need a VSXXX-AA mouse (the round puck) or a VSXXX-AB 
tablet (or compatible). \

I recently checked both installation guide and service guide, whilst looking at 
eBay offerings.


I recently went through my DEC mice to test them (so I can create eBay 
offerings for the spares!) and all the -AA, -GA (and one other that 
escapes me right now) tested OK on a VS4000-60. At least one of those 
was originally used on my VAXstation 3100-M76.


If it looks like "that" sort of connector and it is a VSXXX-xx then I do 
suspect that it will work in any VAXstation up to and including the 
VAXstation 4000-96. In fact I recently sold one (privately) for use on a 
VAXstation II.


I think those mice will also work on the DECstation 2100/3100/5000 range 
, except for the Personal versions. You may need an adapter though.


They (I think) even work in the early Alpha workstations (the DEC 3000 
stuff); I don't think DEC switched to PS/2 mice until the AlphaStation 
name came out.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 18/05/2021 10:17, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:
The content of your posting which I was replying to and the error 
message you

quoted suggested to me that your concern was that the bookreader files you are
attempting to read are "corrupt".


I think Zane was reading the files from an ISO image I made of a 1989 
CONOLD CDROM.


That CDROM had previously been used as a toboggan by one or more members 
the DEC Reading Engineering Team and so was somewhat heavily scuffed 
when I got it.


I eventually recovered it through a process of manual polishing 
involving sandpaper and elbow grease. I think ddrescue reported 2048 bad 
bytes in the end (one sector).


It is entirely possible that one or more of the files is corrupt, 
although the text files (the BOOKSHEFLF files, for example) seem OK.


The filesystem structures do seem OK, so maybe I was lucky.


My suggestion was intended to help you discover whether the bookreader files are
"corrupt" or the tools you are using to read them are mishandling them.

(In my experience "corrupt" files on VMS are usually due to file attributes
being lost when the files were transferred via some other system.  On early
version of VMS, this can usually be fixed using Joe Meadows' "FILE" utility.)


In this case any corruption will be down to over-enthusiastic handling 
20+ years ago.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 16/05/2021 21:53, Zane Healy wrote:


What exactly is VAX/VMS V5.5-2H4?  I’ve never been too clear on that.  It’s 
just V5.5-2 with added hardware support, isn’t it?


Yes, that would seem to be the case:

|---|-|--||9| 
|---|
|   |V5.5-2HW |Limited HW Release||3|2|  OpenVMS 
VAX V5.5-2HW was a special hardware release that |
|   | |  | FRS=9/4/92 | | |  supported 
the following new VAX systems and peripherals: |
|   | |  || | |  VAX 7000 Model 
600 & VAX 1 Model 600 (Neon)  |
|   | |  || | |  VAX 4000 
Model 400 (Omega-slow)/ VAX 4000 Model 100  |
|   | |  || | |  
(Cheetah-Q) MicroVAX 3100 Model 90 (Cheetah-W) / VAXstation  |
|   | |  || | |  4000 Model 
90 (Cougar) / RZ26 / TZ86 / ESE50 |
|---|-|--|| | 
|---|


https://web.archive.org/web/20170824234825/http://h41379.www4.hpe.com/openvms/os/openvms-release-history.txt


(and also 
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vms/openvms-release-history.txt).



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 16/05/2021 21:00, Zane Healy wrote:

Does anyone know if a 5.5-2 era CONOLD is available?  These that have just been 
made available are beyond awesome, as I gave my paper set of 5.x doc’s to Paul 
Allen’s computer museum, only keeping the basic 6 paperbacks, since I have a 
complete 6.x set, and the base 7.2 set

I’m going to see about putting them on PDXVAX (which is on HECnet), and making 
them available for viewing with VTBOOK.  I need to hunt up copies of that and a 
couple other things.  I should have them in my archives.

I want to say that there is a WASD package that will handle bookreader format 
doc’s.


V5.5-2 would be 1991-NOV or so. There's a CONDIST 1991-MAY on 
https://vaxstuff.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/.  and I have a CONDIST 
1991-NOV.


The next CONOLD I have is 1992-JUL (3 discs) (I can image that one next 
if it will help).


There's a V5.5-2H4 OS CD on VaxHaven at 
http://vaxhaven.com/cd-image/AG-PXL1A-RE.iso.zip.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 16/05/2021 13:51, Malte Dehling wrote:

I have now generated a contents listing for the CONOLD CDs:

https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-03
https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-07

That looks interesting: the fundamental VMS documentation is there, but 
very little of the layered product info is present.


The MAR-1989 CONOLD has FORTRAN and DBMS and the JUL-1989 CONOLD has C, 
FORTRAN, PASCAL, GKS, DBMS, VDE and DECforms.


So I would speculate that these would be amongst the earliest CONOLD 
distributions. I read elsewhere (comp.os.vms) that the first CONDIST


went out in the VMS V5.0 timeframe and the 1989-05 CONDIST contains both 
VMS V5.0 and V5.1. VMS V5.0 was announced


in APR-1998 
(https://eisner.decus.org/anon/htnotes/note?f1=INDUSTRY_NEWS=64.0), 
so it is possible that some earlier CONDIST


may yet appear.


I've put the CD_CONTENTS.DAT that I have up on github: 
https://github.com/AntonioCarlini/dec-cdrom-distros. (I just realised 
that I've mis-named the 1989-05 release as 1989-03 ... I'll fix that rsn).


I guess that I should do something similar for the CONOLD CDROMs. Did 
you find DECW$SHELF to be enough to build up an accurate list of contents?



Antonio

--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 14/05/2021 13:45, John Foust via cctalk wrote:

In the USA, it is not uncommon that a public library would have
such a CD/DVD rescue machine, too.  Ask a librarian.


It's moot now (until I come across the next one, I guess). But given the 
cost and the fact that I have a 100% hit rate right now, I have to say 
IBM (It's Better Manually) :-)


Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 14/05/2021 13:40, Zane Healy wrote:

Much to my surprise, I think I’m actually more interested in the Online Doc 
Library from ‘89 than in the CONDIST’s.  It immediately made me think of 
VTBOOK.  As of tomorrow, I’ll be on an 8-week Sabbatical, and I’m going to have 
to see about putting that Doc Library on PDXVAX, when taking a break from other 
projects.

Zane


I don't know how to programmatically check that the data blocks in that 
ISO are valid (by which I mean "match the original"). For backup 
savesets then BACKUP/ANALYZE is at least a starting point and the 
default is to write savesets with /CRC and to check the CRC on read. For 
DECW$BOOK stuff, I have no idea how you can be confident that it is 100% 
correct. Then again, it's just text you're going to read (line the 
[.LINE_DOCS] stuff) so I guess it's not hugely critical.



Plus all the stuff I've recovered so far has at most 4096 missing bytes 
I think, which is 8 blocks at most. So the odds that you'd hit something 
bad are quite small.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 14/05/2021 10:47, Malte Dehling wrote:


Perfect!  Thanks so much :-)  The first two are now also on archive, the
InfoServer CD will follow soon:


Excellent.

I plan on updating the description for the CONOLD CDs with a list of the
books included.  That probably means writing a script to extract that
information from the DECW$BOOKSHELF files.


I did look at the CONOLD and there didn't seem to be anything that would 
help (other than the bookshelf files).


There was the VTBOOK software on a DECUS release many years ago. It got 
stomped on for a while and then DEC gave up the fight against PDF and (I 
think) VTBOOK made it to the Freeware CD. That might help in working out 
the format.




Wow, thanks a lot!  You are putting in some serious effort here!  I'm
glad this worked so well :-)


I rather suspect that if I'd stopped the initial ddrescue when it was at 
99% and just gone straight to the 1500 grit sandpaper, then I could have 
saved my DVD-RW a few days of work.



I've just catalogued the VAX CONDIST/CONOLD sets I have and it comes in 
at 14 or so. I'm hoping that someone tells me that they're already 
archived before I start on those :-)



Antonio



--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 14/05/2021 00:19, Matt Burke via cctalk wrote:

You might want to have a look at http://de.openvms.org/spl.php 


Thanks, that looks really useful. I'll have to work out which updates to 
send him.




Some time ago I made a copy of this data in an SQLite database which
I've added some more entries to. You can download it here:

http://www.9track.net/bits/dec/vms/spl.db.bz2


Thanks.



You can see the entries I've added with

SELECT * FROM spl WHERE rowid > 41236;


Now I just need to read up on SQLite :)


Antonio



--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 12/05/2021 13:58, Malte Dehling wrote:


Here are the links to the relevant archive.org uploads:

https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-07
https://archive.org/details/vms-ad-condist-1989-07
https://archive.org/details/vms-condist-1989-07
https://archive.org/details/vms-condist-1989-11
https://archive.org/details/digital-standards-1993-03

Let me know what you think!


Thanks. Nice work, particularly grouping them together, pulling out the 
JPEGs and seemingly mounting them to suck out the CD_CONTENTS.DAT!



As a reward for your hard work here are a few more for you :-)


I've now uploaded ag-nc67a-re.tar.xz, ag-mn36d-re.tar.xz and 
ag-pcy4c-xe.tar.xz.


These are:

AG-NC67A-RE - VMS Online Documentation Library    1989-03 Disc 1 of 1
AG-MN36D-RE - VMS Consolidated Software Distribution  1989-05 Disc 1 of 1
AG-PCY4C-XE - InfoServer V2.0 Software Base Level 10  1991-11 Disc 1 of 1

AG-MN36D-RE in particular took over 5 days to rescue. In the end it 
managed 99.41% and couldn't get any more data off the CDROM when run 
with -R. So, despite the internet saying use 2000 and 3000 grit 
sandpaper, I went against all the advice and recklessly tried a seven 
minute does of 1500 frit sandpaper, followed by the usual vigorous 
polishing. I've included a "before" image of the rear (non-label) side 
of the CDROM and a triangular "blemish" is clearly visible near the 
centre and extending out into the data region. 2000 grit didn't touch 
it, I could still feel it afterwards with my fingernail. 1500 grit wiped 
it away completely and ddrescue got to work immediately and took just 10 
minutes or so to recover the missing data (apart from 4096 bytes).


I had previously tried the image out using SIMH back when it was at a 
mere 99% and it mounted happily (although it complained that it could 
not find the alternate home block). I copied all the files to NLA0: and 
there were no errors. I don't think that means that all the data blocks 
were good (since VMS would have no way to tell) but there were no errors 
noted in the filesystem structures, so that's at least some comfort. I 
haven't tried BACKUP/ANALYZE on all the savesets but that might be one 
way to test the integrity of those files.


The InfoServer CDROM I included because it has some nice cover art with 
(I presume) the faces of five of the develpment team. Anyone know who 
they are? I suspect that if you really want to use an Infoserver you 
might be better off with the most up to date version on the most recent 
OpenVMS Freeware release.


Incidentally, I'm currently working through my OpenVMS VAX (and a few 
Alpha) CONDIST CDROMs and pulling out all the CD_CONTENTS.DAT so I can 
put together a script to build a list of which sets hold any given 
version of a product. So if anyone has any missing sets, and wants to 
supply some, please do. This will all end up on github eventually. To 
save you some time, for versions sometime before MAR-1992, you need the 
CD_CONTENTS.DAT from every disc in the set as they each contain details 
of only the products on that disc. Beyond that data the format changed 
and the contents are identical on each disc. The old style looks like this:


LABEL CD_BIN_92932
%TYPE CONDIST
!
! NOVEMBER CONDIST: DISC 2 OF 2
!
!PRODUCT NAME UPI INST VERSION KIT CH DIS ROOT SAVESET(S)

and the new style looks like this:

%DISC_PRODUCT_NAME1 VMS Consolidated
%DISC_PRODUCT_NAME2 Software Distribution
%KIT_PART_NUMBER QA-VWJ8A-A8. U01
%SPINE_PART_NUMBER AV-MN37Y-RE
!
%DISC_PART_NUMBER 
AG-MN36Y-RE,AG-PASMS-RE,AG-PCXXM-RE,AG-PFXCJ-RE,AG-PJ4YD-RE,AG-PNTPA-RE

%DFARS Y

I already have 1989-05/07/11, 1992-03/05/07/09/11, 1994-11, 1995-01, 
1996-03/06/09/12, 1997-03/06/09/12 and 1998-03, so anything else (or 
anything from any Alpha CONDIST release) would be cool.




Antonio



--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: LK201 emulator for PS-2 keyboard

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 12/05/2021 17:53, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

I remember those.  I thought Jonathan was talking about the round ones, but I 
suppose the protocol is identical.  There was also a tablet, same interface I 
believe.  I used one of those to trace some topo maps.

Does anyone know of protocol documentation for these devices?

paul


The normal mouse specs are in VCB02 Video Subsystem Technical Manual, 
EK-104AA-TM-001 (appendix C).


The LK201 is in there too.


I think I have one of those mice with the non-round connector, but I 
also have a MIPS DECstation that I now suspect needs it :-)



Antonio



--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 10/05/2021 10:05, Malte Dehling wrote:
Thanks a lot, Antonio, these are very valuable to have! 
I've only checked a couple of them under SIMH, so it would be helpful to 
know if I need to check my workflow or not.

I think uploading them to archive.org would be a good long-term
solution.  I can take care of it if you don't have an account.


Please do. Thanks.


In other news, I polished the MAR-1989 CONOLD, which looked very bad, to 
start with. Amazingly it buffed up quite nicely and then read 
surprisingly well:


[

$ ddrescue -r5 -v /dev/sr1 CDROM-AG-NC67A-RE-1989-03-VMS-CONOLD.iso 
CDROM-AG-NC67A-RE-1989-03-VMS-CONOLD.map

GNU ddrescue 1.23
About to copy 205199 kBytes from '/dev/sr1' to 
'CDROM-AG-NC67A-RE-1989-03-VMS-CONOLD.iso'

    Starting positions: infile = 0 B,  outfile = 0 B
    Copy block size: 128 sectors   Initial skip size: 128 sectors
Sector size: 512 Bytes

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
 ipos:  205198 kB, non-trimmed:    0 B,  current rate:   0 B/s
 opos:  205198 kB, non-scraped:    0 B,  average rate: 637 kB/s
non-tried:    0 B,  bad-sector: 2048 B,    error rate: 170 B/s
  rescued:  205197 kB,   bad areas:    1,    run time:  5m 22s
pct rescued:   99.99%, read errors:   25,  remaining time: n/a
  time since last successful read:  2m  1s
Finished
]


So I went ahead and tried the CONDIST from MAY-1989. That too now can be 
read, although it is proving a somewhat tougher nut to crack:


[

$ ddrescue -r5 -v /dev/sr1 CDROM-AG-MN36D-RE-1989-05-VMS-CONDIST.iso 
CDROM-AG-MN36D-RE-1989-05-VMS-CONDIST.map

GNU ddrescue 1.23
About to copy 623247 kBytes from '/dev/sr1' to 
'CDROM-AG-MN36D-RE-1989-05-VMS-CONDIST.iso'

    Starting positions: infile = 0 B,  outfile = 0 B
    Copy block size: 128 sectors   Initial skip size: 128 sectors
Sector size: 512 Bytes

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
 ipos:    5919 kB, non-trimmed:    0 B,  current rate:   0 B/s
 opos:    5919 kB, non-scraped:   11127 kB,  average rate: 14694 B/s
non-tried:    0 B,  bad-sector:    2843 kB,    error rate:  85 B/s
  rescued:  609276 kB,   bad areas:  445,    run time: 11h 31m  2s
pct rescued:   97.75%, read errors: 5884,  remaining time:  5d 23h 43m
  time since last successful read:  2m 45s
Scraping failed blocks... (forwards)    ]


On the plus side, that's 97.75% more data than I had before :-) but the 
"remaining time" looks like it could be the rest of the week (it varies 
quite a bit).



I think, from reading the manual, that I can use CTRL-C and restart this 
again later and it will pick up where it left off using the map file. Is 
this right?


Are there any other options I should consider trying?


Another thought is that perhaps a shade more polishing might help. If I 
polish the CDROM a little more and then resume the ddrescue, I think I 
won't be any worse off than I am now, i.e. all existing data will still 
be there and all I'll be risking is data that maybe would have 
eventually read before but now may not read at all. Is that right? 
Successful reads are now ~20m apart, so I suspect that the remaining 
data will be quite difficult to recover.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I've now uploaded: ag-mn36e-re.tar.xz, ag-nh37b-re.tar.xz and 
el-cdrom-01-rev-L.tar.xz.


The full set now available are:

AG-MN36E-RE - VMS Consolidated Software Distribution  1989-07 Disc 1 of 1
AG-NC67C-RE - VMS Online Documentation Library    1989-07 Disc 1 of 1
AG-NH36B-RE - VMS AD Software Consolidation   1989-07 Disc 1 of 2
AG-NH37B-RE - VMS AD Software Consolidation   1989-07 Disc 2 of 2
AG-MN36G-RE - VMS Consolidated Software Distribution  1989-11 Disc 1 of 2
AG-PASMA-RE - VMS Consolidated Software Distribution  1989-11 Disc 2 of 2
EL-CDROM-01 - Digital Standards and Related Documents 1993-03-19 Rev L



I think that a fair bit (if not even all) of the Standards CDROM is 
actually already available on bitsavers, but just in case, I've uploaded 
it anyway.



If anyone wants to offer them a permanent home, that's fine by my (I 
don't need the space on the google drive just yet, but I will have to 
remove some images if I start to image a lot more (and I do seem to have 
a fair few more).



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Terminals wiki

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 09/05/2021 16:05, Dave via cctalk wrote:

Does anyone have a mirror of the terminals wiki at https://terminals-wiki.org?  
It seems to have gone dark over a year ago, and it would be a shame to lose the 
resource.

If there is no mirror, does anyone know of a way to contact the 
owner/maintainer?  I'd like to see if there's anything I can do to help get it 
back online.
Thanks,
Dave


https://web.archive.org/web/20181103180649/http://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/User:Legalize


I think Richard also handles manx too (which is still around, luckily!).


Antonio

--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 18/04/2021 18:00, Antonio Carlini wrote:



I'm using a seven year old DVD-RW drive and a similarly aged DVD-ROM 
drive. The results are the same in either case.



Life got in the way, as usual, but here are a few CDROMs to start with: 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1c1ttR83wt5Y4z4O9DsFWtJgV-PdpHarS?usp=sharing.


Hopefully those will be accessible to whoever wants them.

AG-MN36G-RE and AG-PASMA-RE are discs 1 and 2 of NOV-1989 CONDIST.

AG-NC67C-RE is the JUL-1987 CONOLD.

AG-NH36B-RE is Disc 1 of 2 of the JUL-1989 "VMS AD Software 
Consolidation", which I think was some sort of experiment.



Two of them may well be completely unrecoverable. The others that I've 
tried with 1989 date codes are 99+% recoverable so I'm hoping that the 
missing sector or so doesn't upset ODS-2 too much. If I get the time, 
I'll try them out tonight. The May 1989 CONDIST (and the Mar 1989 
CONOLD) are both currently completely unreadable. I'll try one of them 
in the GAME polishing machine, assuming they actually have a polishing 
machine nearby. If there is no such machine nearby then I'll try the 
3000 grit sandpaper as there's not really much to lose.


I've no idea whether the nearby GAME store has a polisher, as they've 
not replied to my queries and I've given up waiting. I'm going to try 
2000/3000 grit sandpaper on the MAR-1989 CONOLD soon, so we'll see how 
that goes (I picked up some rubbing compound today, which is needed for 
the final stage).



I do have a few more early ones imaged, I just haven't scanned the CDROM 
themselves, so as soon as I get that done (hopefully less than a month 
this time!) I'll upload those and make a note here.



These are tar images compressed with xz. "-J" should expand them. There 
is a sha256sum.txt file inside and a readme with details of the 
extraction and the results of the ddrescue command. I think AG-PASMA-RE 
read without error using dd.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: That VAXStation4000vlc 3W3 video connector

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 04/05/2021 02:29, Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk wrote:


  Failing either solution you can make your own adapter cable:





(you'll also need a case for the connector, the other connector and a
length of suitable cable of course).  They have a US site too.



Wow: £2.47 for the housing but £5.02 for each of the coaxial inserts ... 
not cheap at all!



Mind you, I suspect that an original cable won't be much cheaper either.


Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 21/04/2021 22:13, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:

I've just tried ANALYZE/DISK on VAXBINMAY931 which is the oldest I can
put a hand on right now and it gives exactly the same output as you got.



Thanks ... that's reassuring. Individual savesets can be tested with 
BACKUP/LIST or (more extensively) by extracting each BACKUP - that would 
show up any errors.




ZIP is probably most commonly used for compressed archives on VMS.  The
version of ZIP that runs on VMS can save VMS file attributes when told 
to so
that it doesn't lose important attributes for the installation kits 
like tar
would. (I only came across xz anywhere for the first time about a week 
ago...) 


It's true that ZIP is probably the most common archiver on VMS (and I'm 
sure it's on the various OpenVMS FREEWARE disks). That said, I expect 
that most people making such images available for distribution (e.g. 
bitsavers) are not running VMS. I'm planning to distribute an ISO plus 
some extra bits, not the individual backup savesets, so attributes 
shouldn't be a problem. I'd expect that anyone who wants to use this 
stuff will run up SIMH and mount an ISO or possibly burn a CD-R and use 
it that way. I might try zip (under Unix, so gzip) for fun, but I expect 
that xz will beat it hands down for space. I guess an ISO could also be 
accessed using LDDRIVER, although my main constraint back in the day was 
always disk space.



I'm not going to try zip on OpenVMS because ... much as I love VMS, SIMH 
on my laptop just isn't as fast as Linux on a Ryzen!



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

I've managed to reconstitute my SIMH config and I've checked out a few 
of the ISO files I managed to generate using ddrescue.


The Mar 89 CONOLD and May 89 CONDIST do not even show up as media under 
Linux. If I get the chance I'll try out the Oxford GAME store polisher 
for one at least of them. As a backup I'll dig out my 3000 grit 
sandpaper and try that out.


I've only looked at a few CONDIST volumes and none of the corresponding 
CONOLD volumes.


The oldest working one is the 1989 July CONDIST, which read 99.99% with 
ddrescue. It mounts quite happily and I can see the directory. ANA/DISK 
complains slightly:

[
$ ana/disk dua3:

Analyze/Disk_Structure for _VAX072$DUA3: started on 21-APR-2021 21:11:34.25

%ANALDISK-I-SHORTBITMAP, storage bitmap on RVN 1 does not cover the 
entire device

%ANALDISK-I-OPENQUOTA, error opening QUOTA.SYS
-SYSTEM-W-NOSUCHFILE, no such file
]

There's never a QUOTA.SYS on a CDROM, so that's probably OK. Not sure 
about the SHORTBITMAP (it's been a long time since I used VMS as my 
daily driver and I've not had the chance to try an ISO that was read 
with no errors, nor a real CDROM in a real CDROM drive on a real VAX).


Anyway, it looks like it is all there. However (and there's always a 
"however") the VAXSET kit that started this all off is VAXSET*080* and 
not the hoped for *070*. Interestingly the [.LINE] subdirectory does 
contain some doc files but the [.KIT] directory is empty. I've included 
the CD_CONTENTS.DAT below. From that you can see:


"VAXSET"  N V8.0 SUB N Y VAXSET080 NO_BINARIES

which would suggest that the kit didn't ship although the SPD and so on 
did. No idea why. Until I saw that I assumed that this was the one set 
of files to get whacked, but that seems very unlikely. Especially since 
the 1989 JUL AD CONDIST is the same.



I also ran up the MENU.EXE that is included and VAXSET is listed under 
"New Products" and not "Updated Products". My interpretation would be 
that it is not on any earlier CONDIST CDROMs. But it would be nice for 
earlier ones to get flushed out and published!



Anyway, over the next few days I'll package up these early CDROMs and 
put them up on either google drive or dropbox. I'll post a link here and 
whoever wants them can grab them. If Al wants them for bitsavers that's 
OK by me.


I plan to include the ISO, a README.TXT that explains that these are all 
incomplete and I'll attach the ddrescue output, a scan of the CD, a 
SHA256 of the files. I'll tar it up and compress with xz.


If anyone would prefer some other format or compression or whatever, I'm 
open to suggestions.



Antonio





The list of kits on the 1989-07 CONDIST is:

[
$ type cd_contanets ents.dat

%LABEL CD_BIN_90403
%TYPE CONDIST
!
!JULY CONDIST
!--
!PRODUCT NAME UPI INST VERSION KIT CH DIS ROOT SAVESET(S)
!
"AAF01/VMS SUBROUTINE LIBRARY" GEFR Y V2.0 SUB1 A Y AAF01020 AAF01020
"ADF01/VMS SUBROUTINE LIBRARY" 375 Y V4.0 SUB1 A Y ADF01040 ADF01040
"DEC GKS FOR VMS" 810A Y V4.0 SUB N Y DECGKS040 DECGKS040,DECGKSRTO040
"DEC GKS-3D FOR VMS" VFXE Y V1.0 SUB1 N Y DECGKS3D010 DECGKS3D010,DECGKS3DRT
"DECFORMS" VCH Y V1.0 SUB N Y FORMS010 FORMS010,FORMSTR010
"DECNET-VAX"  N V5.1 SUB A Y NETVAX051 NO_BINARIES
"DECNET/SNA DATA TRANSFER FACILITY" VEBA Y V2.0 SUB1 A Y SNADTF020 
SNADTFS020,SNADTFU020
"DECNET/SNA GATEWAY FOR CHANNEL TRANSPORT" VC9 Y V1.0 SUB2 A Y SNACSA010 
SNACSA010
"DECNET/SNA GATEWAY FOR SYNCHRONOUS TRANSPORT" S01A Y V1.0 SUB2 A Y 
SNACST010 SNACST010
"DECNET/SNA VMS 3270 DATA STREAM PROGRAMMING INTERFACE"  Y V1.4 SUB 
N Y SNA3270014 SNA3270014
"DECNET/SNA VMS 3270 TERMINAL EMULATOR" 454A Y V1.5 SUB N Y SNATE015 
SNATE015
"DECNET/SNA VMS APPC/LU6.2 PROGRAMMING INTERFACE" 022A Y V2.1 SUB A Y 
SNALU62021 SNALU62021
"DECNET/SNA VMS APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE" 455A Y V2.3 SUB N Y 
SNALU0023 SNALU0023
"DECNET/SNA VMS DISOSS DOCUMENT EXCHANGE FACILITY" 042A Y V1.4 SUB1 A Y 
SNADDXF014 SNADDXF014
"DECNET/SNA VMS DISTRIBUTED HOST COMMAND FACILITY" 043A Y V1.2 SUB N Y 
SNADHCF012 SNADHCF012

"DECNET/SNA VMS GATEWAY MANAGEMENT" 452A Y V2.0 SUB2 A Y SNAGM020 SNAGM020
"DECROUTER 2000" S03 Y V1.1 SUB1 A Y ROU011 ROU011
"DECSERVER 200 FOR VAX/VMS AND MICROVMS" Z06A Y V2.0 SUB A Y DS2020 DS2020
"DECSERVER 500/VMS" Z46 Y V1.1 SUB1 A Y DS5011 DS5011
"DECVOICE SOFTWARE" VFU Y V1.0 SUB A Y VOX010 VOX010
"DRX11-C/VMS DRIVER" S36 Y V6.0 SUB1 A Y DRX11C060 DRX11C060
"EXTERNAL DOCUMENT EXCHANGE WITH IBM DISOSS"  Y V2.1 SUB1 N Y 
EDEDIS021 EDEDIS021

"IEX-VMS-DRIVER" 519A Y V4.0 SUB1 A Y IEX040 IEX040
"IXV/VAXELN DRIVER" VG3A Y V2.0 SUB A Y IXVELN020 IXVELN020
"IXV11/VMS DRIVER" VHZA Y V2.0 SUB A Y IXV11020 IXV11020
"KMV1A MICROVAX DRIVER AND X.25 LINK LEVEL SOFTWARE" VCQA Y V2.0 SUB A Y 
UWX25020 UWX25020

"KMV1A MICROVAX DRIVER" VCPA Y V2.0 SUB A Y UWDRV020 UWDRV020
"MICROVAX MIRA SWITCH CONTROL"  Y V2.1 SUB N Y MRA021 

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 17/04/2021 23:37, Jon Elson wrote:

On 04/17/2021 11:24 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:



If anyone has any suggestions for how to clean CDs to recover data, 
I'm all ears.


If by the "data side" you mean the clear side the CD is read from, 
those can be polished with toothpaste or plastic polish.  Modern 
CD/DVD drives are much better at reading poor quality disks.



I'm using a seven year old DVD-RW drive and a similarly aged DVD-ROM 
drive. The results are the same in either case.




If the data layer is scratched, they are likely unrecoverable. That is 
the side with the label on it, and the data layer is only a few 
thousandths below the label.


Two of them may well be completely unrecoverable. The others that I've 
tried with 1989 date codes are 99+% recoverable so I'm hoping that the 
missing sector or so doesn't upset ODS-2 too much. If I get the time, 
I'll try them out tonight. The May 1989 CONDIST (and the Mar 1989 
CONOLD) are both currently completely unreadable. I'll try one of them 
in the GAME polishing machine, assuming they actually have a polishing 
machine nearby. If there is no such machine nearby then I'll try the 
3000 grit sandpaper as there's not really much to lose.



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 17/04/2021 19:35, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 4/17/21 11:30 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:

So far I've just tried using dd to recover the data but perhaps I 
should try to find something that won't give up when the OS reports 
an unreadable sector. Anyone have any suggestions?



ddrescue



I guess I should've remembered that one, thanks!


So has this just lost ~3KiB? "pct rescued" suggests that it did quite 
well. Does "bad areas" mean one bad sector (2048 bytes)?



$ ddrescue -r5 -v /dev/sr1 JUL89DIST.iso JUL89DIST.map
GNU ddrescue 1.23
About to copy 623247 kBytes from '/dev/sr1' to 'JUL89DIST.iso'
    Starting positions: infile = 0 B,  outfile = 0 B
    Copy block size: 128 sectors   Initial skip size: 128 sectors
Sector size: 512 Bytes

Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
 ipos:  623246 kB, non-trimmed:    0 B, current rate:   0 B/s
 opos:  623246 kB, non-scraped:    0 B, average rate:   1303 kB/s
non-tried:    0 B,  bad-sector: 4096 B, error rate:  73 B/s
  rescued:  623243 kB,   bad areas:    1, run time:  7m 58s
pct rescued:   99.99%, read errors:   49, remaining time: n/a
  time since last successful read:  5m 11s
Finished

This is what ls sees (I renamed the ISO to match what it actually is):


-rw-rw-r-- 1 antonioc antonioc 623243264 Apr 17 20:14 
CDROM-AG-MN36E-RE-1989-07-VMS-CONDIST.iso


(That happens to be exactly the same result as dd).


Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com