[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

In the 1980's I attended a US Gov't auction for a Vax 780.  It was being 
exported to South Africa and the State Dept stopped the transfer because 
it was ultimately going to a banned country.  Don't know which one, but 
I do remember the system was configured for 50Hz power.  50Hz power, 
disks, cpu, everything.  Wow.

Doug

On 5/3/2024 8:41 PM, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
I wonder if some intermediary is buying it for a country that cannot 
legally purchase something like that from the USA.


I'm not normally a conspiracy guy but why would any normal company pay 
half a million dollars for something that could be produced with 
today's technology for considerably less?


On 5/3/2024 6:57 PM, Gavin Scott via cctalk wrote:

Sold at $480,085.00.

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM Gavin Scott  wrote:

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
 wrote:


Bad news...

But does he have 8,000 of them haha.

Auction is at $435K now (past the end time) with multiple active
bidders extending it.

[cctalk] Re: What to take to a vintage computer show

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I learned at VCF East this year that I should have brought an UPS to 
make sure that my vintage equipment had good, clean AC power.  My PDP11 
kept on resetting during the show.

Doug

On 5/1/2024 9:53 PM, Brad H via cctalk wrote:

Just reaching out to anyone who has exhibited at a vintage computing
festival before.  After years of only being able to watch others attend the
ones that happen in the US, we are finally getting one in BC here.  Super
excited.  I was invited both to speak and to exhibit, and they even got me
two tables which is awesome.

  


Like, how do you prepare for these things?  What things that you didn't
think of going into your first show do you wish you had?

  


I have a pretty eclectic collection, and some really rare stuff (like my
Mark-8s) that I'd love to bring but am hesitant about due to the risks of
transportation damage and theft (from the car mostly, not the convention
itself).  Just trying to decide what to bring and how focused to be in terms
of theme.

  


Brad

[cctalk] Re: Drum memory on pdp11's? Wikipedia thinks so....

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

At the VFC East just a few days ago a young man came up to me, I had a 
PDP11/53 on display, and showed me pictures of his 11/45 and PDP-8 that 
he had just acquired and needed to learn about.  It was impressive, he 
said the 11/45 was missing the memory boards.  If he shows up here on 
the list please help him.  To me, it look like he had stumbled into a 
Unicorn.

Doug

On 4/13/2024 5:26 PM, Christopher Zach via cctalk wrote:

Was reading the Wikipedia article on Drum memories:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory#External_links

And came across this tidbit.

 As late as 1980, PDP-11/45 machines using magnetic core main memory 
and drums for swapping were still in use at many of the original UNIX 
sites.


Any thoughts on what they are talking about? I could see running the 
RS03/RS04 on a 11/45 with the dual Unibus configured so the RS03's 
talk to memory directly instead of the Unibus, but that's not quite 
the same as true drum memory.


Closest thing I remember was the DF32 on a pdp8 which could be 
addressed by word as opposed to track/sector.


Thoughts?
C

[cctalk] Re: DEC VT340/330 ROM Cartridge

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 4/6/2024 11:14 AM, Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:

On Sat, Apr 6, 2024 at 3:54 PM Douglas Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:

The DEC VT340 has a slot in the back of the terminal to insert a ROM
cartridge.  I can't find any description of what this DEC labeled ROM
cartridge would do for you.  I've seen them with V1.1 and V2.1 markings,
does anyone remember what additional capabilities these ROM cartridge
provide?

Will the terminal work at all without that cartridge fitted?. I've had
a quick look at the VT330 and VT340 printsets and I can't obviously
spot any firmware ROMs on the main board schematics. So my first guess
is that said cartridge is the terminal firmware.

-tony


Hmm, I have a VT340 that seems to pass POST but no video.  It does have 
a cartridge inserted into the slot, you may be exactly correct.


Doug

[cctalk] DEC VT340/330 ROM Cartridge

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

The DEC VT340 has a slot in the back of the terminal to insert a ROM 
cartridge.  I can't find any description of what this DEC labeled ROM 
cartridge would do for you.  I've seen them with V1.1 and V2.1 markings, 
does anyone remember what additional capabilities these ROM cartridge 
provide?


Doug

[cctalk] Re: DEC Processor Books

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

That matches what a DEC FE told me, at least about the VAX version: the
people were just DEC employees that caught somebody's eye when they were
planning the shots. Don't think they got extra modeling fees..

I wouldn't expect modeling fees, given the wording of the standard employee 
agreement.

paul

I can't imagine a company using staff for photo ops.  Young people now a 
days have tattoos, piercings and wear tee-shirts and flip-flops to work.

[cctalk] Re: Keyboard Blockers?

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I took a second look and here are the keys that were 'locked':
Set Up
Break
Del
Line INS Char
Line DEL Char
Scrn CLR Line
INS Repl
Escape
Home
All the Arrow keys, up, down, right, left

It's a standard ASCII Wyse Keyboard

Doug

On 3/10/2024 6:10 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:

  > I thought, at first, some dirt or debris had gotten stuck there, but
  > on closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be
  > stuck.  I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black
  > plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing
  > the key.

  > The question came to mind; "What sort of application would be so
  > crude that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain
  > keys?"

I saw this in at least two applications:

1. The Service Merchandise chain
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) used serial
terminals for their in-showroom catalog ordering.  Some keys were
blocked somehow, though I never peeled up key caps to see how. :)
I want to say that backspace was one of the blocked keys, the
aggravation of which is probably why I remember this.

2. CLSI library systems (LIBS100 on PDP-11).  Ours here had ADM-3A
(iirc) terminals with the break key blocked, iirc, though there were
plenty of other ways to discombobulate the thing inadvertently.  It was
also available via dialup from keyboards that were not so modified.

I once heated up a paper clip to read hot and shoved it through the stem
of a TVI-925's SEND key, which was used for block mode functions, and
caused the terminal to vomit screen contents back to the host.  Unwanted
presses of course produced a heck of a mess.  (Older versions of our
application ran in block mode, but you could always hit ESC-S to send
the screen, and it was unfortunately easy, at least for me, to thwack
SEND by mistake.)

De

[cctalk] Keyboard Blockers?

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I picked up a keyboard for a Wyse terminal at a flea market the other 
day.  When I tried some of the keys, they couldn't be depressed.


I thought, at first, some dirt or debris had gotten stuck there, but on 
closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be 
stuck.  I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black 
plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing the 
key.


The question came to mind; "What sort of application would be so crude 
that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain keys?"


One of the keys was a Break key, which sort of made sense to me, because 
it would halt a PDP-11 if that was the host machine.


This was the first time I had ever seen this kind of thing, was this 
common long ago?

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

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 12/3/2023 2:19 PM, John H. Reinhardt via cctalk wrote:

On 12/3/2023 10:27 AM, 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



State of the Art SCSI replacement is the ZuluSCSI RP2040 which is from 
the same people as SCSI2HD (I think - at least the same US Store).  In 
any case the SCSI2HD is generally out of stock unless there is some 
NOS left.  The ZuluSCSI is what is in production now.


It's under continual development with fixes and new features are being 
added (for better or worse).  I have two in a MicroVAX3100-95.  One is 
the main file systems - I have a 256GB SD card where there are 4 
drives allocated.  There are two 50GB main drives and 2 9GB system 
drives. I have them mirrored under VMS Volume Shadowing.  I aim to use 
about 50% of the capacity of the SD card to allow plenty of space for 
the card's firmware to do wear leveling.  They are SAMSUNG PRO 
Endurance cards with an estimated endurance of 140k hours.  The other 
ZuluSCSI RP2040 card is mounted for external access and is the backup 
device.  This gets rotated regularly.


All that said, in the MV3100 they are still slower by a touch than 
rotating disks.  But after having several Ebay SCSI disks have 
controller issues (shorting and burnt out controllers) I am hoping 
these are more trouble free.


I also have 2 older SCSI2HD in my AlphaServer DS10 systems for 
removable storage.  When I get a chance I am swapping them out for the 
ZuluSCSI RP2040 models because they are slightly faster and much 
easier to manage.


The ZuluSCSI is a hybrid of the SCSI2HD hardware and SCSI firmware and 
the BlueSCSI management firmware.  With the SCSI2HD you needed a 
utility (mostly) to mange the settings of the SCSI2HD card. COpying 
the data to the card usually meant using a utility like dd or 
something that could write to specific places on the card. With the 
ZuluSCI you format the SD card in FAT or EX-FAT (if your disks are 
bigger than 4GB) and put them on the card with a specific name 
format.  The documentation explains it all pretty clearly.


www.zuluscsi.com - US Store and some documentation
https://github.com/ZuluSCSI/ZuluSCSI-firmware/wiki/ZuluSCSI-Manual - 
Documentation

https://github.com/ZuluSCSI/ZuluSCSI-firmware - firmware

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09WB3D5GQ - Samsung PRO Endurance
https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/memory-card/micro-sd-pro-endurance/ 
- marketing info



Thanks, now I know what to ask for for Christmas!

The only conflict I ever ran into was a Viking QDO would work in a 
MicroVax II, but not in a PDP-11.


The other problem I ran into was when I removed the SCSI bus termination 
resistor pack from a V5 SCSI2SD and forgot the orientation on how to 
re-install it.

[cctalk] Current SOA scsi disk emulators for DEC

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

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

[cctalk] Re: PDP11 Dilog SQ706a SCSI Controller

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/18/2023 2:26 PM, hupfadekroua via cctalk wrote:

I think you have to look at how the ZULU SCSI emulator is setup.  There 
you will be able to map the RSX image to unit #0, which would appear as 
DU0.


It maybe that the RSX image is meant to boot from some other unit, say 
DU4.  Its possible you can't boot it from DU0.


There is a manual for the Dilog controller in bitsavers, it appears you 
can attach a terminal to the board to configure it.

What native DEC SCSI controller? RQZX1?


Hello all,

are there some experiences to install as well as to configure a Dilog
SQ706a QBus SCSI controller in a PDP11/73 successfully?

The controller in question is working properly, that's executing the self
as well as the host DMA connection tests successfully.

The format procedure of a physical and of an emulated SCSI drive will be
executed with success also.

But how to configure the Dilog SQ706a as well as the 11/73 properly, so
that the SCSI drive can be accessed as DU0.

I'm using an SCSI RSX image on a ZULU SCSI emulator inherited from an 11/73
running successfully using a native DEC SCSI controller.

I don't find any successful procedure on the web beside the manuals on
bitsavers, which only can be seen as examples.

A.

[cctalk] Re: Good Inventory Program for keeping track of my DEC boards, parts, computers, etc?

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

How many items do you need to keep track of?  Is it less than 100, a 
thousand?


I tried using LibreOffice Calc to keep track of what I had so I wouldn't 
go and buy something I already had.  Alas, you know the rest of the story.


In order to help organize things at the physical level, I use a number 
of identical size boxes to keep parts in.  Then I label them CPU, 
Memory, Serial, etc, to organize them to that level.  These boxes fit 
nicely into one book case and the labels are easy to read.


I would say I have ~300 items to keep track of.

Doug

On 8/14/2023 6:47 PM, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
I'm looking for a good inventory program to help me keep track of all 
of my PDP-8 stuff.


I would like to keep track of physical location, board etch revision, 
board modification revision, bus type, where used, etc.


If you have any good ideas, please let me know.

I'm using a simple spreadsheet for now and it's not what I'm looking for.

Thank you.

[cctalk] Re: VCF and System Source Computer Museum swap meet this weekend

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 7/19/2023 12:33 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:


On 7/19/2023 11:23 AM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote:

Hi,
I am curious if anyone here might be planning on attending.
https://museum.syssrc.com/artifact/events/3000/


I am heading up there with friends Friday night so we can get there 
early Saturday.


Bringing some stuff to sell, nothing too crazy just odds and ends. 
PICMG Pentium rackmount machine and odds and ends for micros.


Only system on my "to get" list is Acorn Archemedies.

Looking forward to it, and I think System Source might be the #1 
collection in the world. Very cool place.


Say hi if you see me and are on this list.


All this chatter has made me interested in maybe making the drive (a 
bit over 3 hours).


What time does it start on Saturday?  How would we know each other? :-)


bill


Starts at 8AM, I think name tags would be a good idea so we can match a 
name we know only from the list to a face.


Doug

[cctalk] Re: VCF and System Source Computer Museum swap meet this weekend

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I plan on being there, for me it is a lot closer that the Swap Meet in 
Wall NJ on the same day.


Doug

On 7/18/2023 7:56 PM, Mark G Thomas via cctalk wrote:

Hi,

I am curious if anyone here might be planning on attending.

https://museum.syssrc.com/artifact/events/3000/

The Vintage Computer Federation and the System Source Computer Museum are
hosting a vintage computer repair workshop on Saturday July 22nd and
Sunday July 23rd 2023
...

Mark

[cctalk] Re: Talking PDP11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Funny you mention that, I've got a Data Translation DT2766 and it is 
identical to the AAV11-C.  I mean identical!  In the day DT must have 
sold them based on 2 selling points: (1) Cheaper than DEC and (2) Exact 
drop in replacement for the DEC AAV11-C.


Doug

On 7/11/2023 12:33 PM, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:

You might try looking for Data Translation products. I know some of the later 
ad and da modules were made by them for DEC

On July 11, 2023 12:28:43 p.m. EDT, Douglas Taylor via cctalk 
 wrote:

The DACs on the AAV11-C board are not marked in any revealing way.  I think 
they are Burr Brown DAC80, 24 pin, but I'm not sure.  I wasn't sure if they 
were working and was looking for a replacement.

Looking at the spec sheets DAC's seem to come in Voltage or Current versions.  
Life got more complicated.

This started out as a simple exercise into verifying the AAV11-C operation 
using PDP11GUI to program up a basic program to run all the codes thru the DAC. 
 It worked, got a ramp out.  Now, I'm starting to look at the KWV11-C and how 
to use that to send values to the DAC at a controllable rate.

Doug

--

On 7/11/2023 11:41 AM, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:

I originally used R-2R DACs but I was lucky enough to be able to buy a couple 
of DAC08 chips at Radio Shack and built a circuit using 74LS244 latching 
buffers so that I could drive both channels of a single 8-bit parallel port and 
2 extra control lines (Select and Strobe).

On 7/11/2023 6:43 AM, ste...@malikoff.com steven--- via cctalk wrote:

On 07/10/2023 11:31 PM AEST Mike Katz via cctalk  wrote:
Way back in the 80's I was able to do stereo 4 part harmony on a 2 MHZ
6809 using two 8-bit D/A converters.

Much the same here. I recounted this on VCFed a few months ago about building a 
simple 2-chip 8-bit ladder DAC with one-transistor amplifier for my Applied 
Technology DG680 S100 machine back in the early 80s from this absolutely 
excellent BYTE article on how to do polyphonic synthesis on a microcomputer 
(KIM-1):

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-09/page/n63/mode/2up

A schoolfriend who had an Apple ][ and had not done any Z80 machine code before 
asked for me to hand him my Zaks book, upon which he wrote out one attempt in 
Z80, crossed it out and wrote a second version. Which worked perfectly. For the 
music piece I got it to play four-voice polyphony after painstakingly encoding 
Bach's Praeludium in C Major from my mothers' collection of piano music scores.

A few years ago I had thoughts about porting the 6502 code to the PDP-11 and 
use the same sort of ladder DAC. Not sure if the slimline 11/05 would be fast 
enough for anything too high frequency, but if it was, the slimline 05's power 
supply could then temporarily come out and be perhaps be powered off some beefy 
batteries in that space, along with a small 1970s transistor amp and 1970s 
headphones topped off with a leather shoulder strap to lug it around like a 
giant Walkman.

[cctalk] Re: Talking PDP11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

The DACs on the AAV11-C board are not marked in any revealing way.  I 
think they are Burr Brown DAC80, 24 pin, but I'm not sure.  I wasn't 
sure if they were working and was looking for a replacement.


Looking at the spec sheets DAC's seem to come in Voltage or Current 
versions.  Life got more complicated.


This started out as a simple exercise into verifying the AAV11-C 
operation using PDP11GUI to program up a basic program to run all the 
codes thru the DAC.  It worked, got a ramp out.  Now, I'm starting to 
look at the KWV11-C and how to use that to send values to the DAC at a 
controllable rate.


Doug

--

On 7/11/2023 11:41 AM, Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
I originally used R-2R DACs but I was lucky enough to be able to buy a 
couple of DAC08 chips at Radio Shack and built a circuit using 74LS244 
latching buffers so that I could drive both channels of a single 8-bit 
parallel port and 2 extra control lines (Select and Strobe).


On 7/11/2023 6:43 AM, ste...@malikoff.com steven--- via cctalk wrote:
On 07/10/2023 11:31 PM AEST Mike Katz via cctalk 
 wrote:

Way back in the 80's I was able to do stereo 4 part harmony on a 2 MHZ
6809 using two 8-bit D/A converters.
Much the same here. I recounted this on VCFed a few months ago about 
building a simple 2-chip 8-bit ladder DAC with one-transistor 
amplifier for my Applied Technology DG680 S100 machine back in the 
early 80s from this absolutely excellent BYTE article on how to do 
polyphonic synthesis on a microcomputer (KIM-1):


https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-09/page/n63/mode/2up

A schoolfriend who had an Apple ][ and had not done any Z80 machine 
code before asked for me to hand him my Zaks book, upon which he 
wrote out one attempt in Z80, crossed it out and wrote a second 
version. Which worked perfectly. For the music piece I got it to play 
four-voice polyphony after painstakingly encoding Bach's Praeludium 
in C Major from my mothers' collection of piano music scores.


A few years ago I had thoughts about porting the 6502 code to the 
PDP-11 and use the same sort of ladder DAC. Not sure if the slimline 
11/05 would be fast enough for anything too high frequency, but if it 
was, the slimline 05's power supply could then temporarily come out 
and be perhaps be powered off some beefy batteries in that space, 
along with a small 1970s transistor amp and 1970s headphones topped 
off with a leather shoulder strap to lug it around like a giant Walkman.

[cctalk] Re: Talking PDP11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I'm looking to see if it possible to do something similar.  Just 
blasting raw 12bit samples from memory out the D/A board.
A fine point would be to use the KWV11-C realtime clock board for the 
sample rate control.  No interrupts, just polling.


Harder is taking an existing MPG or WAV audio clip and converting it 
into raw 12bit integers.
I wouldn't try this on the PDP11, I would do this in Linux, offline, 
using python or octave to take a wide band audio file convert it into a 
narrowband audio file, then resample down to the rate I would use on the 
PDP11 and finally convert the numbers into 12bit integers.


Then just deposit those 12bit numbers into the PDP11 memory and blast away!

Will it work?  I don't know.

Anyway, it's July and too hot to go outside.  This is an inside project, 
with air conditioning.


Doug

On 7/10/2023 9:41 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:



On Jul 9, 2023, at 9:19 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk  
wrote:

Wow! Actual engineers responding...

It looks like I could only do the most rudimentary audio.

1. Sample Rate: You got maybe 20K samples to store in lower memory.  At 7KHz 
sample rate that would allow 3 seconds of audio.  Voice only.
2. Samples: They must be 12 bits. Converting a modern audio clip requires, band 
filtering, resampling and mapping to 12 bit integers.  Could be done in python, 
they have libraries.
3. Clocking output:  I have a KMV11, but never programmed  around it.
4. Amplify output: AAV11-C produces -10 to +10 volts, have to divide this down 
for input to an audio amp.

In the end I will have undone all the advances made in digital audio in the 
last 30 to 40 years.

I'm reminded of a project I did in college in 1974, when I made a primitive 
graphics display using an X/Y oscilloscope driven by an AA-11.  Since the 
machine was a PDP-11/20 with 8 kW of memory, I decided to use the RC-11 disk as 
the refresh memory, doing DMA directly from disk to the D/A data CSR.

So on the scenario here: the sample rate is clearly more than adequate.  12 
bits is not CD grade audio but not bad; for ears used to the distorions of 
compressed audio files it's probably good enough.

The PDP-11 certainly won't be able to decompress modern lossy compression 
files.  It should be fine with raw or nearly-raw files, which means you can 
convert externally and feed the resulting files to the PDP-11.  You could 
convert to 16 bit raw mono with standard tools and then drop the bottom 4 bits. 
 Band filtering?  Resampling?  I don't know why you would want to do that, 
unless there isn't a reasonable way to drive the device at the source file's 
data rate.  For example, if you have a KW-11/P that's clearly doable.  (Come to 
think of it, that 11/20 had a KW-11/P and I created BASIC extensions for it 
that would allow sampling to be driven by that clock, at a rate of your 
choosing.)

You can't fit a whole lot of data in 64 kW of memory, but that isn't needed.  
That rate isn't all that high; it isn't hard to write a program that does 
double buffering from a disk file to memory to the D/A.  That makes a really 
nice real time programming exercise.

paul

[cctalk] Re: Talking PDP11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Wow! Actual engineers responding...

It looks like I could only do the most rudimentary audio.

1. Sample Rate: You got maybe 20K samples to store in lower memory.  At 
7KHz sample rate that would allow 3 seconds of audio.  Voice only.
2. Samples: They must be 12 bits. Converting a modern audio clip 
requires, band filtering, resampling and mapping to 12 bit integers.  
Could be done in python, they have libraries.

3. Clocking output:  I have a KMV11, but never programmed  around it.
4. Amplify output: AAV11-C produces -10 to +10 volts, have to divide 
this down for input to an audio amp.


In the end I will have undone all the advances made in digital audio in 
the last 30 to 40 years.


Doug

On 7/9/2023 4:09 PM, Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote:

You just did use it to play "audio" :<)

The 6 us settling time corresponds to a sampling rate of ~167 kHz, not that you 
will ever get there or would wish to.

The theoretical (real) sampling rate required for a given bandwith is Fs = 2 
Bw.  That requires brick wall filters and it is a lot of work to get close 
without significant distortion.  These old DACs are all but certain to use 
ladder circuits [see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistor_ladder] the 
settlng time will mostly come from the output buffer [see e.g. 
https://www.analog.com/en/technical-articles/ltc1668-dac-lt1807-opamp-achieve-90ns-settling-to-16bits-83db-sfdr-small-footprint.html
 for bleeding edge examples].  To see something other than ringing on a scope 
you want at least 10 samples per cycle, e.g. for 3 kHz bandwidth (i.e. 0 - 3 
kHz frequency coverage) output at 30 kHz or greater.  A low pass 
(reconstruction in the argot) filter will round off the corners - set the 
corner just above the passband

DMA, a local FIFO or at least double buffering are the minimum to avoid sample 
jitter.  On basic hardware you will probably have to do what you can with a 
sampling clock derived from the RTC card, from 10 MHz you could get an interupt at 
40 kHz or 25 kHz but maybe not 30 kHz.  The interupt then controls the play out 
from a table or disk ;<)

For testing you can do quite a lot with a single cycle sine wave table in 
memory.  Say you are playing out at Fs = 30 kHz, and you have a 30 k sample 
table.  By varying the step through the table from 15k to 1 you can alter the 
output frequency from 15 kHz to 1 Hz in 1 Hz increments; i.e. output frequency 
= Fs * stride / table length.

 From a VQ look at the AAV11 docs it uses the bottom 12 bits, doubtless <11> is 
ms, hopefully it will like 2's complement numbers and the analog offset voltage will 
be trimmed for bipolar signals.

Have fun and good luck

Martin

-Original Message-
From: Douglas Taylor via cctalk [mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org]
Sent: 09 July 2023 19:46
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Cc: Douglas Taylor 
Subject: [cctalk] Talking PDP11

I have a PDP-11/53 and have just started playing with an AAV11-C D/A board.  It 
is a 4 channel D/A convertor with 12 bit resolution.

Can it be used to play an audio bit stream?

Here is simple code used to see if the thing was actually working:

      .title AAV11 D/A test
      ;
      .asect

      dbr0 = 170440

      .=1000
start:
      mov #,r0     4096 value to R0
      mov #dbr0,r1     first D/A buffer out

loop:    mov r0,(r1)    transfer value in r0 to D/A out
      dec r0        subtract 1 from D/A value
      bne loop

      br start        loop back to start

I was surprised to see that it took ~34 ms to run through all the numbers from 
0-, that is about 34 Hz.  The manual says the 'settling time' is 6 
microseconds.  Is this fast enough for audio?

How would you convert a modern audio file into 12 bit integers?

Doug

[cctalk] Talking PDP11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I have a PDP-11/53 and have just started playing with an AAV11-C D/A 
board.  It is a 4 channel D/A convertor with 12 bit resolution.


Can it be used to play an audio bit stream?

Here is simple code used to see if the thing was actually working:

    .title AAV11 D/A test
    ;
    .asect

    dbr0 = 170440

    .=1000
start:
    mov #,r0     4096 value to R0
    mov #dbr0,r1     first D/A buffer out

loop:    mov r0,(r1)    transfer value in r0 to D/A out
    dec r0        subtract 1 from D/A value
    bne loop

    br start        loop back to start

I was surprised to see that it took ~34 ms to run through all the 
numbers from 0-, that is about 34 Hz.  The manual says the 'settling 
time' is 6 microseconds.  Is this fast enough for audio?


How would you convert a modern audio file into 12 bit integers?

Doug

[cctalk] Re: 1974 No Name Terminal

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

At first glance it reminded me of the Hazeltine 1000, I owned one in the 
early 1980's.  Brutally simple terminals, I remember getting a ROM from 
Jameco which allowed the terminal to display lowercase letters.  Pure 
luxury.

Doug

On 7/4/2023 6:57 PM, Brad H via cctalk wrote:

Hi there - not sure how much overlap there is with vcfed's forum, but
thought I would reach out here in case.  I have a terminal from 1974 (based
on date codes I've found on the motherboard).  I'm unable to determine
manufacturer and that would be handy for diagnostic purposes.  The terminal
casing is made out of foam, and although there are some serial numbers
stamped around, nothing really lines up.  The fans inside have zero dust or
dirt, so I'm thinking this may not have seen much use, or may be a prototype
or pilot for something.  It does have RS232 capability.  Interestingly the
screen is set down below the keyboard so that only half of it is visible.

  


My main issue right now is the PSU - I am trying to determine if I'm safe to
attempt powering up the board (the PSU so far seems to be ok, although some
voltages on a couple of pins are mysterious).

  


Anyway, on the extremely off chance anyone has ever seen one of these or
something like it.. any tips would be appreciated. If I can find a manual
I'll feel a lot safer about turning it on.

  


Some pics here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-2uEFbi3OKBYr06y6yHnygDiLMtw2Qkj?usp
=sharing

  


Brad

b...@techtimetraveller.com

  

[cctalk] Re: Need AUI cable

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I have a real DEC AUI cable and live in MD.  I think it is 10 feet long.
Doug

On 6/27/2023 9:16 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Anyone in MD got an AUI cable (few feet long) I can steal so I don't 
have to remove the bolts from the Pro/380's Ethernet socket or the 
pins on my 10bt ethernet MAU?


Friendly note: If you try to boot a Pro/380 running POS 3.2 with 
Decnet installed and don't have the loopback plug the system will 
crash hard with a numeric error on the display. Noted.


CZ

[cctalk] DEC Prom MRV11-C and MXV11-B2 ROMS

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Is it possible to use the MXV11-B2 Roms in an 18 bit MRV11-C Prom 
board?  Clearly they work in the 22 bit version, MRV11-D, but I don't 
have one of those.


The intention is to put together a small PDP-11 in an H9281-AB backplane 
(18 bit) with an 11/23 or 11/73 CPU, Ram, disk controller, etc.

[cctalk] Re: Computer Museum uses GreaseWeazle to help exonerate Maryland Man

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

This would make a great talk at one of the Vintage Computer Festivals.

At VCF East I see many parents bringing children (teenagers especially) 
that would get an important lesson from this showing how adults from 
vastly different walks of life interact and produce positive results.



Museum Staff Helps Exonerate David Veney

The System Source Computer Museum:

Bob Roswell
https://museum.syssrc.com/

[cctalk] Re: Saturn-Calc

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 12/30/2022 7:23 AM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:

Hi all,

My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from 
RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would 
like to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone!


I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks 
appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be.


Does anybody know of a source?

cheers,

Nigel


I have some DEC format 8 inch floppies from the mid 1980's that may have 
Saturn WP on it.  It rings a bell, I think I had a copy at one time.  
Long, long time ago.  I can't read the floppies (got no drive), anyone 
in the Wash DC area that can read them would help.


Doug

[cctalk] Re: Manual for MDB MLSI-LP11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 12/29/2022 9:33 AM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:
My re-build of a BA23 11/73 system continues.  I have one of these MDB 
printer controllers but cannot make it do anything more that home page 
on the laser using RT-11


Does anybody have a manual or know where I can download one.

An extensive search using google just brings up a data sheet.

Happy New Year to all,

Nigel


I remember having a 11/03 system at work back in 1984 that had an 
attached printer with what looked like an ordinary parallel printer 
connector.  However, the signal protocols for the printer interface were 
different than the standard parallel interface everyone was using on 
their PC's.  I think they were close but you needed a printer that 
understood the DEC protocols.  Shouldn't be surprising to anyone from 
that era.


Doug

[cctalk] Re: Bubble Memory

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/19/2022 5:49 PM, Anders Nelson via cctalk wrote:

On eBay, 10pcs for $75: https://www.ebay.com/itm/394216367144

=]
--
Anders Nelson


This reminded me that I have a qbus Bubble Tek (or something) board in 
my collection.  It emulates an RX01 device, however it uses the Intel 
7110 bubble memory and contains 1M bit of data. That is 128 KB!


Formatted you get a 128KB RX01, and you thought the 256KB RX01 was a 
small space to work in.


Doug

[cctalk] Re: Soviet PDP clones

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/17/2022 2:57 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

On 10/17/22 14:47, Joshua Rice via cctalk wrote:

Hi all,

After some discussion on reddit about russian PDP-11 clones, i made 
the (perhaps erronous) claim that the PDP series in general was 
cloned by the Soviets.


I’m aware that there was a lot of QBUS/LSI PDP-11 clones, and depite 
poor documentation, there is significant evidence of PDP-8 clones. 
Also, depite not strictly a “PDP”, the VAX series was also cloned.


I am not aware of any VAX clones but during the height of the
cold war real VAX were frequently illegally moved to the USSR
via India who had no problems with violating their agreements
with their allies.

Just like someone in the US bought a copy of BSD Unix for the
VAX and it was known to have been smuggled out of the country
in a diplomatic pouch via the Russian Embassy in DC.

bill

In the mid 1980's I went to inspect a complete VAX 780 that had been 
confiscated by the US Gov't and was to be auctioned off. This was in the 
Wash DC area and the computer was configured for 50Hz power and was 
destined for  South Africa.  Its true destination was somewhere else, 
probably Russia.  It didn't make sense that the auction was open to the 
public, but the equipment was export restricted.

[cctalk] Re: DEC H7868 Power Supplies

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/29/2022 5:11 PM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:

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



The details are :

H7868-A Rev E03 - this one has the power leads for disk drives coming 
out of it.  Those DEC 5 pin types, 3 in all.  Plus one 8 pin connector.


H7868-A Rev D01

H7868-A Rev F04

All are listed as 120V

[cctalk] DEC H7868 Power Supplies

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

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.


Doug

[cctalk] Re: Odd Unix computer Bio-Rad SRC 3200

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 7/30/2022 10:04 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 7/30/2022 8:01 PM, Jonathan Chapman via cctalk wrote:

Doug,


A few years ago I got it to power on and it runs Unix variant, their
product name was Idris. I have 16 floppies (dated 1992) that came with
the system, but the hard disk has died.
Interesting! I have a Multibus system that runs Idris, very little 
information seems to be around on it. Mine's a straight 68K.



What are the minimum requirements for BSD?
With an '030 you should be able to run NetBSD-CURRENT, slowly :P You 
would of course have to write drivers for any unsupported hardware 
you need.


Thanks,
Jonathan


What an odd OS.  Glad to see that someone else recognized it. Looked 
it up on the internet and found a Wiki page giving a brief history.  
Now I know more than before.


In my case I have something where the hardware is unique, the OS is 
unique.  A real honest to goodness dinosaur.


Bio-Rad built and labeled the CPU board, not cheaply either! Looks 
like it used standard components for scsi control, floppy i/f.  No 
graphics, simple line drawing.


Doug

Decided to sell it, can't keep it any longer.  See pictures on ebay item 
325288272428.  There were manuals for Idris.


Doug

[cctalk] Re: Connecting a physical terminal via LAN to Serial Port

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 7/31/2022 1:23 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote:

I am looking for some advice and recommendations on how to best go about
accomplishing the following:

I have recently come into possession of an actual physical terminal that can
be connected to a device via a standard RS232 (serial) port, so far so good.


I have a number of devices that can be connected to for maintenance (e.g. FW
updates, configuration, etc.) via a serial port. Currently I have been using
an old laptop with a terminal program (Procomm Plus) whenever I want to
connected to one of these devices. This involves crawling around connecting
the serial cable, doing what needs to be done, crawling back disconnecting,
rinse and repeat.

I can connect the physical terminal to one device at a time and have a
permanent connection to that one device, great for one device but not so
useful.

So I was thinking if it would be possible to do this over the LAN.

I know about console servers where I could connect multiple serial devices
to the server and then access each device over LAN via a telnet client on a
modern system using an IP:port schema. This works great except I don't get
to play with my shiny, new to me, authentic experience terminal device.

So I am wondering if there is a box that provides a telnet CLIENT to a
serial port device? I.E. a box smart enough that handles the telnet client,
LAN functions, and terminal emulations internally and then provides a text
based interface through a serial port that is compatible with my physical
terminal? That way my physical terminal would be connected to the RS232/LAN
bridge all the time and I could connected to not only the serial ports
connected to the console server but other telnet accessible services as all
the heavy lifting would be done on the bridge. I am ideally looking for a
ready to go, low power device, I can hide away as opposed to setting up a PC
of my own running some *nix flavor that I know can do this but is way over
kill. Oh yeah and if it is super cheap even better. Thanks!

-Ali



I got a Lantroix SCS 400 off of ebay for cheap.  4 Serial DB-9 ports, 
one RJ45 LAN port.  Has built in Telnet , SSH.  I think you can go back 
the other way, i.e. Computer -> LAN -> into one of the RS232 ports.  
Never used it that way.


Used it to connect actual terminals to Vax computers, very easy. 
Connecting to Linux was hard, Linux doesn't like old style TELNET by 
default.


Doug

[cctalk] Re: Odd Unix computer Bio-Rad SRC 3200

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 7/30/2022 8:01 PM, Jonathan Chapman via cctalk wrote:

Doug,


A few years ago I got it to power on and it runs Unix variant, their
product name was Idris. I have 16 floppies (dated 1992) that came with
the system, but the hard disk has died.

Interesting! I have a Multibus system that runs Idris, very little information 
seems to be around on it. Mine's a straight 68K.


What are the minimum requirements for BSD?

With an '030 you should be able to run NetBSD-CURRENT, slowly :P You would of 
course have to write drivers for any unsupported hardware you need.

Thanks,
Jonathan


What an odd OS.  Glad to see that someone else recognized it. Looked it 
up on the internet and found a Wiki page giving a brief history.  Now I 
know more than before.


In my case I have something where the hardware is unique, the OS is 
unique.  A real honest to goodness dinosaur.


Bio-Rad built and labeled the CPU board, not cheaply either! Looks like 
it used standard components for scsi control, floppy i/f.  No graphics, 
simple line drawing.


Doug

[cctalk] Odd Unix computer Bio-Rad SRC 3200

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I have a Bio-Rad SRC 3200, which is a workstation that operated a 
Bio-Rad FTS-40 FTIR spectrometer.


A few years ago I got it to power on and it runs Unix variant, their 
product name was Idris.  I have 16 floppies (dated 1992) that came with 
the system, but the hard disk has died.


It is based on a 68030 CPU and has a floppy and SCSI disk and QIC tape 
drive.  Is it possible to run some flavor of BSD on this hardware?


What are the minimum requirements for BSD?

Doug

Re: Viking SCSI controller RS232 adapter

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 6/30/2022 4:05 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:

On Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 12:34 PM Douglas Taylor via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:


Update -  I have 3 of these Viking controllers, 2 are rebadged to
Alphatronix.

1. I was able to 'kludge' together jumpers to connect a laptop serial
port to the controller.  Pin 20 IDC -> pin 2 DB-9, pin 22 IDC -> pin 3
DB-9 and pin 24 or 25 IDC -> pin 5 DB-9.  It didn't seem to matter if
you used 24 or 25 for the ground.


Did you split off the connections to Pin 20 and Pin 22 of the controller so
that they only connected to the serial port, and not to the SCSI bus, or
were they wired in parallel to both the serial port and the SCSI bus?


You're quite right.  I didn't isolate those signals from the SCSI bus.  
That's what that adapter does, I'm sure.


Come to think of it, I can access drives connected to the controller as 
long as the RS232 pins are left floating.  One of those lines does 
something that I'm not aware of.  A search tells me that pin 20 is a 
ground on the SCSI bus, 22 and 24 are not assigned.


Geez, I'm beginning to think that they really didn't want you to do this

Doug

Re: Viking SCSI controller RS232 adapter

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Update -  I have 3 of these Viking controllers, 2 are rebadged to 
Alphatronix.


1. I was able to 'kludge' together jumpers to connect a laptop serial 
port to the controller.  Pin 20 IDC -> pin 2 DB-9, pin 22 IDC -> pin 3 
DB-9 and pin 24 or 25 IDC -> pin 5 DB-9.  It didn't seem to matter if 
you used 24 or 25 for the ground.


2. The Alphatronix monitor program assumes a VT100 terminal and sends 
escape codes, the Viking didn't.


3. I was not able to start the monitor program if a disk was attached to 
the SCSI bus for either type of controller.  In this case it was a 
SCSI2SD V5.2.


Here is what the Viking Monitor dialog looks like when you start it:


Viking Model QDO, S/N 8546
 Version A4.0, (C) 1989,90 TD Systems
 Type H for help

>H

To execute command, enter letter and return.
 DEL deletes last character.
 CTL-C aborts command and returns to prompt.
 XOFF/XON control console output.
Command list:
 A  Abort MSCP tasks, reset SCSI
 C  Display configuration
 D  Display SCSI devices
 F  Format unit
 M  Mode sense/select
 P  Tape port monitor
 R  Read block
 S  SCSI command
 T  Test menu
 V  Verify unit
 W  Write block
 X  Cold start exit

>C

Host Adapter parameters:
  SCSI 7, SCSI reset ON, Disconnect ON, Defect Management ON, DMA burst= 4
PORT A = Disk server, Autoconfigure

Here is one of the Alphatronix monitors report:  [I used this one on a 
PDP-11/53 to boot RT-11]


TM
  NNN NN   SSS   PPP     
   II     NN  SS SS  PP    PP    II RR RR EE
   II NN NN   NN  SS PP    PP    II RR RR EE
   II NN  NN  NN   SSS   PPP II  EE
   II NN   NN NN SS  PP  II RR RR EE
   II NN      SS SS  PP  II RR   RR EE
  NN NNN   SSS   PP     RR RR 


 by ALPHATRONIX
 by ALPHATRONIX



Host Adapter S/N 11003

Firmware Version 1.51, (C) 1988, 89, 90, 91  ALPHATRONIX Inc.
Licensed Material - Programs Property of ALPHATRONIX Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Type M for menu.

>m

INSTALLATION COMMANDS

1  set/show configuration    2  show attached drives
UTILITY COMMANDS

C certify/format disk    V  write verify (currently OFF)
MAINTENANCE COMMANDS

3  reset host adapter    4  reset SCSI bus
5  read a block  6  write a block
7  multi-block read-only test    8  single-block write-read test
9  low-level commands
enter number of selected command
ctrl-c aborts commands

>1

Host Adapter parameters:
  SCSI 7, SCSI reset ON, Disconnect OFF, Defect Management ON, DMA burst= 4
PORT A = Disk server, Fixed configuration
  Unit 0: SCSI 0, Parity ON, Disconnect OFF, Defect Management ON
  Capacity (autosize), Media type RD54
  Unit 1: SCSI 1, Parity ON, Disconnect OFF, Defect Management ON
  Capacity (autosize), Media type RD54

My questions at this point are:

1. Why can't I start the monitor is a disk is attached?

2. All of these boards are configured for a base CSR of 772150, standard 
MSCP hard disk DU.  The Viking and one of the Alphatronix boards work 
just fine with a SCSI2SD.  How do I get the other Alphatronix to work?  
Swap ROMs?


3. Is there something about the actual RS232 adapter board that I don't 
know about that keeps the monitor and disks coexisting?


4. Should I try attaching the terminal to the FP port and see what 
happens?  Is it the 'secret' back door?


Doug

Re: Viking SCSI controller RS232 adapter

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 6/28/2022 12:58 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
I have a couple of these boards but have never got into the on-board 
monitor which requires an adapter board that allows a terminal to talk 
to the controller board and do various things.


Looking at the manual on bitsavers there is almost enough info to 
construct my own adapter board.  Has anyone ever built there own 
adapter to the controller?


Doug

I wasn't clear about this.  The Viking board I have is a dual width 
q-bus board that connects SCSI  disk or tape devices VAXes or PDP11s 
using MSCP protocol.   In the bitsavers manual on figure 8 is a drawing 
of the 'Serial Port Cable Adapter'.  Table 2 lists the pin-out of the 50 
pin IDC connector and which lines are used for what signal.  In that 
list are these RS232 connections:


IDC pin 20 -> CON TX (RS232)

IDC pin 22 -> CON Rx (RS232)

IDC pin 28 -> FP TX (RS232)

IDC pin 30 -> FP TX (RS232)

I was able to trace these IDC connections back to an ICL232 chip on the 
Viking board which is an RS232 driver chip.


My question is which of these RS232 lines are brought out to the 'Serial 
Port Cable Adapter'?  Which ground do I use?  What do CON and FP stand for?


I am trying to de-bug one of the boards and would like to get into the 
on-board monitor and see what it tells me about the board configuration.


Doug

Viking SCSI controller RS232 adapter

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I have a couple of these boards but have never got into the on-board 
monitor which requires an adapter board that allows a terminal to talk 
to the controller board and do various things.


Looking at the manual on bitsavers there is almost enough info to 
construct my own adapter board.  Has anyone ever built there own adapter 
to the controller?


Doug

Re: Repairs of an H786 power supply for a BA11-N

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 6/26/2022 8:46 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Been working on fixing an old 11/03 system in a BA11-N chassis with an 
18 bit 9273 backplane. The power supply was working at first with no 
issues, but when I left it on for a bit and came back it had blown the 
power supply fuse. Replacing fuse causes another blow, so something 
was most definitely wrong.


First place to check was the primary side of the system. Fairly 
simple:  Rectify AC to DC, then pass through a pair of BUY69A NPN 
transistors, then into a second transformer which goes to the various 
regulators. The main rectifier was not shorted and the transistors 
looked fine as well. Took the caps off to check them, no issues there 
either...


So I found a copy of the H786 power supply schematics (used in the 
BA11-N series of pdp11 Q bus boxes). It's on page 290 in a big PDF 
scan of a bunch of MINC-11 documents that also include the RXV21, 
11/03 CPU, and the like. File is 
MP00652MNC11SchematicsJul78.2761676314.pdf if you need to find it.


Anyway, it also showed me another place where there could be a line AC 
short: There is of course a big rectifier that takes the 120v and 
turns it into big DC for the main switching transistors, but there is 
*also* a second little tiny rectifier buried in there that sources 
power for a "yes, 12v is there, start turning on the second stage 
regulator supplies". Sure enough it was shorted, ordered a 
replacement, put it in, and the power supply is working properly again.


The other issue was that the power fail lines were being asserted. 
That's a sidecar board, removing it allowed everything to work 
properly. Which means a problem with one of the LM339 OP amp chips. So 
I pulled and replaced both and now that works as well.


It's a fairly common unit, and now that these things are coming up on 
40 years old the silicon in them is starting to go bad. That's not 
good, but they can be fixed...


Fixing these things is never dull. Now on to fixing the MSV11-D memory 
board (2 bad 16k RAM chips) then the MiniMinc (which is basically a 
PDT11/150 with a different lid.) Not sure what that was used for, any 
ideas or thoughts?


C

CZ


I have an identical BA-11N setup and it still works (fingers crossed).  
Your post is extremely helpful should something go wrong with the power 
supply.  The date code on the box is 1970-something.


Doug

Using tu58fs with RT11 5.7

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I wanted to try using tu58fs with a RT11 system running version 5.7 to 
transfer files in/out.


To my surprise RT11 5.7 retired the DD: device, a DD.MAC file is there, 
but it is unsupported.


(1) How do you compile a device driver file?  How do you link and 
install it?


(2) Has anyone done this?

(3) Is anyone using tu58fs with a RT11 5.7 system?

Doug

Re: RT11 Freeware Collection

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Ken;

This worked perfectly!

I was able to mount the partitions (as shown below) and actually extract 
the entire 65K partition to a *.dsk file that SIMH was able to mount and 
read.
This is what I was trying to do.  Get files from the RT11freewarev2 cd 
into SIMH.  From there I can get them to my real PDP11 hardware.

Some of the files are binary so this process is necessary.

One comment - when you execute a mount command it takes a minute or 2 to 
decompress the file, so be patient!

One question - How did you know how much to skip?

Thanks for the effort you put into creating FSX.

Doug

On 4/29/2022 4:11 PM, Kenneth Gober wrote:
On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 10:55 AM Douglas Taylor via cctech 
 wrote:


I wanted to extract some parts of the RT11 Freeware iso file that is
available on the internet.  The note Tom Shoppa wrote indicates
that the
CD has 2 partitions.  When I burned the CD on a windows machine I
only
see one partition.

How to I extract the 2nd partition off the iso?


The second "partition" is just a second copy of all the files on the 
first partition,
except in RT-11 volume format so that it can be mounted directly on an 
RT-11

system with a CD-ROM drive attached. Since RT-11 volumes are limited to
32MB, larger disks are broken up into 32MB 'logical disks'.  The files 
are on

logical disks 13 through 19 (i.e. 32MB chunk numbers 13 through 19).

Since it's all the same files, there's little reason to bother looking 
at the second
partition if you are able to mount the first.  However, if you want to 
do it anyway
I have a Windows command-line tool that can be used to access the 
RT-11 portions of the iso:
GitHub - kgober/FSX: File System Exchange, a utility to access data 
stored in disk images 


Here are the FSX commands you would use to mount each of the chunks:
FSX> mount r13: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz 
FSX> mount r14: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz 
FSX> mount r15: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz 
FSX> mount r16: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz 
FSX> mount r17: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz 
FSX> mount r18: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz 
FSX> mount r19: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz 

FSX knows about .gz files and will treat the 'skip' option as the 
offset to

use *after* uncompressing the file.

You can then browse and extract files from each volume:
FSX> dir r19:
 29-Apr-2022
 System ID: DECVMSEXCHNG V41
 Volume ID: VMS Exchange
 Owner    : SHOPPA
README.TXT    23P 15-Oct-1999 TORS84.DSK 24535P 15-Oct-1999
UCLPLS.DSK   907P 15-Oct-1999 VMSBCK.DSK  1663P 15-Oct-1999
XASSMB.DSK  2036P 15-Oct-1999 DUSTAT.DSK   100P 15-Oct-1999
RT11  .LIS    13P 15-Oct-1999 < UNUSED > 36190
 7 Files, 29277 Blocks
 36190 Free blocks

FSX>type r19:readme.txt
Welcome, RT-11 User, to V2.0 of the RT-11 Freeware CD!
[... remainder removed ...]

FSX>save r19:readme.txt c:readme.txt
R19:README.TXT => c:readme.txt

-ken

Re: RT11 Freeware Collection

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Here is the link I used:

http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/trailing-edge_cd/rt11freewarev2.iso.gz

Doug

On 4/28/2022 5:35 PM, s shumaker via cctalk wrote:

Can you post the download link for the ISO?

Steve

On 4/27/2022 7:46 AM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

All;

I wanted to extract some parts of the RT11 Freeware iso file that is 
available on the internet.  The note Tom Shoppa wrote indicates that 
the CD has 2 partitions.  When I burned the CD on a windows machine I 
only see one partition.


How to I extract the 2nd partition off the iso?

Doug

RT11 Freeware Collection

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

All;

I wanted to extract some parts of the RT11 Freeware iso file that is 
available on the internet.  The note Tom Shoppa wrote indicates that the 
CD has 2 partitions.  When I burned the CD on a windows machine I only 
see one partition.


How to I extract the 2nd partition off the iso?

Doug

Re: idea for a universal disk interface

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Once upon a time I used an Emulex QD21, but I sold it because the actual 
ESDI disks I had were a pain in the butt.  Always crashing.

I still have a Webster (quad board) SRQD something.
I think I had a Dilog board also.  It's been a while, probably 20 years.
Doug

On 4/18/2022 9:12 PM, Chris Zach via cctech wrote:
Interesting, what kind of ESDI controllers do you have? They got 
advanced features like cache, ordered seeks, and burst mode/block mode 
DMA?


C


On 4/18/2022 6:09 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote:
Because of this I'm holding on to my DEC Qbus ESDI controllers!!!  
You never know

Doug

On 4/17/2022 4:35 PM, Guy Sotomayor via cctech wrote:
I chose ESDI and SMD fundamentally because the interface is 100% 
digital (e.g. the data/clock separator is in the drive itself). So I 
don't need to do any oversampling.


TTFN - Guy

On 4/17/22 11:12, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:


On Apr 17, 2022, at 1:28 PM, shad via cctalk 
 wrote:


hello,
there's much discussion about the right  method to transfer data 
in and out.
Of course there are several methods, the right one must be 
carefully chosen after some review of all the disk interfaces that 
must be supported. The idea of having a copy of the whole disk in 
RAM is OK, assuming that a maximum size of around 512MB is 
required, as the RAM is also needed for the OS, and for Zynq 
maximum is 1GB.
For reading a disk, an attractive approach is to do a high speed 
analog capture of the waveforms.  That way you don't need a priori 
knowledge of the encoding, and it also allows you to use 
sophisticated algorithms (DSP, digital filtering, etc.) to recover 
marginal media.  A number of old tape recovery projects have used 
this approach.  For disk you have to go faster if you use an 
existing drive, but the numbers are perfectly manageable with 
modern hardware.


If you use this technique, you do generate a whole lot more data 
than the formatted capacity of the drive; 10x to 100x or so. Throw 
in another order of magnitude if you step across the surface in 
small increments to avoid having to identify the track centerline 
in advance -- again, somewhat like the tape recovery machines that 
use a 36 track head to read 7 or 9 or 10 track tapes.


Fred mentioned how life gets hard if you don't have a drive. I'm 
wondering how difficult it would be to build a useable "spin 
table", basically an accurate spindle that will accept the pack to 
be recovered and that will rotate at a modest speed, with a head 
positioner that can accurately position a read head along the 
surface.  One head would suffice, RAMAC fashion.  For slow rotation 
you'd want an MR head, and perhaps supplied air to float the head 
off the surface. Perhaps a scheme like this with slow rotation 
could allow for recovery much of the data on a platter that 
suffered a head crash, because you could spin it slowly enough that 
either the head doesn't touch the scratched areas, or touches it 
slowly enough that no further damage results.


paul

Re: idea for a universal disk interface

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Because of this I'm holding on to my DEC Qbus ESDI controllers!!!  You 
never know

Doug

On 4/17/2022 4:35 PM, Guy Sotomayor via cctech wrote:
I chose ESDI and SMD fundamentally because the interface is 100% 
digital (e.g. the data/clock separator is in the drive itself). So I 
don't need to do any oversampling.


TTFN - Guy

On 4/17/22 11:12, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:


On Apr 17, 2022, at 1:28 PM, shad via cctalk 
 wrote:


hello,
there's much discussion about the right  method to transfer data in 
and out.
Of course there are several methods, the right one must be carefully 
chosen after some review of all the disk interfaces that must be 
supported. The idea of having a copy of the whole disk in RAM is OK, 
assuming that a maximum size of around 512MB is required, as the RAM 
is also needed for the OS, and for Zynq maximum is 1GB.
For reading a disk, an attractive approach is to do a high speed 
analog capture of the waveforms.  That way you don't need a priori 
knowledge of the encoding, and it also allows you to use 
sophisticated algorithms (DSP, digital filtering, etc.) to recover 
marginal media.  A number of old tape recovery projects have used 
this approach.  For disk you have to go faster if you use an existing 
drive, but the numbers are perfectly manageable with modern hardware.


If you use this technique, you do generate a whole lot more data than 
the formatted capacity of the drive; 10x to 100x or so. Throw in 
another order of magnitude if you step across the surface in small 
increments to avoid having to identify the track centerline in 
advance -- again, somewhat like the tape recovery machines that use a 
36 track head to read 7 or 9 or 10 track tapes.


Fred mentioned how life gets hard if you don't have a drive. I'm 
wondering how difficult it would be to build a useable "spin table", 
basically an accurate spindle that will accept the pack to be 
recovered and that will rotate at a modest speed, with a head 
positioner that can accurately position a read head along the 
surface.  One head would suffice, RAMAC fashion.  For slow rotation 
you'd want an MR head, and perhaps supplied air to float the head off 
the surface.  Perhaps a scheme like this with slow rotation could 
allow for recovery much of the data on a platter that suffered a head 
crash, because you could spin it slowly enough that either the head 
doesn't touch the scratched areas, or touches it slowly enough that 
no further damage results.


paul

Re: SGI Indigo keyboard / mouse / converter wanted

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Jules,

I don't have a solution, only the same problem, but with a Tektronix 
4200 series graphics terminal. Keyboards are rare, there is one on ebay 
for $700, yikes!
However, I do have 2 of these terminals and one working keyboard.  Was 
starting to go down the path of intercepting the startup, POST exchange 
that occurs, then trying to adapt a common PS/2 keyboard.

I was looking for minimal capability, not perfect emulation.

Doug

On 2/20/2022 10:46 AM, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:


Hi all,

A friend of mine has just acquired an Indigo (R4k with XZ graphics 
option), but of course it's the usual story and the keyboard/rodent 
had been lost. In absence of the genuine items they'd still be happy 
with a USB converter (at least for the time being), but it seems those 
are difficult to come by at present, too.


Does anyone happen to have a surplus converter suitable for these 
machines, and/or keyboard/rodent? (according to sgistuff keyboard is 
p/n 9500801 and mouse p/n 9150800)


[side note: they mentioned a USB converter, but I'm pretty sure years 
ago someone had implemented an adapter to PC-friendly PS/2 parts, too. 
I'm sure something like would do the trick, too]


thanks,

Jules

Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Put one together with back to back 9V batteries and a 5K pot.  Does 
exactly what I wanted.


The Data Translation board is set up for SE inputs and +/-10 V input range.
Was able to apply a series of DC voltages to the DT2762 board and record 
the A/D value using ODT (tedious, but works OK).
Using Octave (Linux) was able to convert the A/D 2's complement Octal 
numbers to decimal and plot input voltage versus A/D decimal value.  
Expected to see a nice clean linear plot.

The one DT2762 seemed to 'drop' bits, while the newer one seemed OK.

Next step is to capture a time varying signal and see if the A/D output 
follows the input correctly.  I'd like to use Macro-11 to manage the A/D 
board and Fortran to deal with the data.

What is the Fortran or F77 interface with Macro-11 routines?

Doug

On 2/13/2022 3:40 PM, Henk Gooijen via cctalk wrote:

Two batteries in series, using the “middle” as 0V reference.
The “+” is V+, the “-“ is V-.

Van: Douglas Taylor via cctalk<mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>
Verzonden: zondag 13 februari 2022 18:05
Aan: Jon Elson via cctalk<mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>
Onderwerp: Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

Is it possible to construct a battery driven circuit that
will present both positive and negative voltages at the
input?  A bridge of some sort?

Doug

Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 2/8/2022 7:36 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:

On 2/8/22 16:35, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 2/8/2022 5:22 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:

On 2/8/22 13:34, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Update on this:  I did put together a battery and voltage divider 
to test the AXV11.  The label on the A/D module says it brings the 
output from the multiplexer to one of the external pins.  I was 
able to verify that the voltage applied to a couple of the A/D 
inputs makes it through the multiplexer when selected using the 
CSR.  The next output available is from the Sample and Hold, and 
this is always pegged at +12v.  Am I wrong to assume that the 
sample and hold will 'freeze' its output when the A/D go bit is set?


Well, it will probably only hold the approximate voltage for a few 
seconds, but should be long enough to see on a voltmeter.


Jon


I was only using a voltmeter to look at it.

I'm going to try 2 different measurements; (1) use a scope to look at 
the S signal on the AXV11 and see what it does over time, (2) look 
at the same S signal on the Data Translation board which seems to 
be working.


The S will likely have a FET as the switch element, and those might 
be fairly easily damaged by external pulses.  I opened up some 
comparable Xincom modules and made minor repairs.


Jon

Stopped fooling with the AXV11 for now.  Applied various voltages to the 
Data Translation input and recorded the A/D octal values to get an idea 
of what the calibration of the board is.  It looks very linear, +/-10v 
range.


Using a single battery and voltage divider I was able to generate 
voltages on the input of the DT2762 board, however, I had to swap wires 
to get negative voltages.  Is it possible to construct a battery driven 
circuit that will present both positive and negative voltages at the 
input?  A bridge of some sort?


Doug

Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 2/8/2022 5:22 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:

On 2/8/22 13:34, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Update on this:  I did put together a battery and voltage divider to 
test the AXV11.  The label on the A/D module says it brings the 
output from the multiplexer to one of the external pins.  I was able 
to verify that the voltage applied to a couple of the A/D inputs 
makes it through the multiplexer when selected using the CSR.  The 
next output available is from the Sample and Hold, and this is always 
pegged at +12v.  Am I wrong to assume that the sample and hold will 
'freeze' its output when the A/D go bit is set?


Well, it will probably only hold the approximate voltage for a few 
seconds, but should be long enough to see on a voltmeter.


Jon


I was only using a voltmeter to look at it.

I'm going to try 2 different measurements; (1) use a scope to look at 
the S signal on the AXV11 and see what it does over time, (2) look at 
the same S signal on the Data Translation board which seems to be 
working.

Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Update on this:  I did put together a battery and voltage divider to 
test the AXV11.  The label on the A/D module says it brings the output 
from the multiplexer to one of the external pins.  I was able to verify 
that the voltage applied to a couple of the A/D inputs makes it through 
the multiplexer when selected using the CSR.  The next output available 
is from the Sample and Hold, and this is always pegged at +12v.  Am I 
wrong to assume that the sample and hold will 'freeze' its output when 
the A/D go bit is set?


At least the D/A's work on the AXV11 I have!  Glass half full.

Next tried the Data Translation DT2762 with the voltage divider source 
and this board appears to work correctly.  What I was able to observe 
was by applying different voltages to the input I see different binary 
values in the DBR.


The manual from bitsavers for this board lists a complete Macro 
diagnostic program in an appendix. Does anyone have an electronic copy 
of this Macro code?  Or the compiled utility?


Doug

On 2/6/2022 1:55 PM, Jerry Weiss via cctalk wrote:
These A/D systems use methods to isolate the sensitive analog signals 
from the electrical noise and ground plane of the computer.  Typically 
a differential input is standard, so you will probably need wire up 
two inputs.


If this is your first time with A/D, suggest you toggle in some code 
to trigger and report the A/D conversion repeatedly and use a small 
voltage battery with a potentiometer divider to drive the inputs.  
Most of the analog inputs should be high impedance and while not 
impervious, can take +- 30v w/o damage.


 Jerry




On 2/6/22 11:43 AM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Yes, I am putting 1 into the CSR to start the conversion and I do get 
a 200(8) indicating that the conversion is complete.  I wonder if 
this means the A/D chip is OK but something else, like the 
multiplexer chip or gain amp is fried.


On 2/6/2022 12:33 PM, Jerry Weiss via cctalk wrote:
Are you triggering an A/D conversion via the CSR or external 
signal?  Then check the A/D done bit.


See  EK-AXV11-UG-02 Chapter 4.

   Jerry

On 2/6/22 11:20 AM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
I have one of these and would like to use it, however it appears to 
only partially work.  Here is what I have found that works and what 
doesn't:


1. CSR and DBR are present and operational.

2. Jumpers set to 'factory'.

3. D/A portion works, can deposit codes in ODT and see voltages out 
on DAC pins that change depending on the octal value deposited in 
CSR+4 or +6.


4. A/D portion returns full scale code, either 3777 (2's 
compliment) or  (offset binary) whether in the input is open or 
shorted to gnd.


I think the problem is that the A/D inputs are not exactly 
protected and damage has occurred to this portion in the past.


Does anyone have any info on the A/D module?  Who made it? Can you 
open it up?  Does XXDP have a test for this?


Doug

Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I just took another look at the AXV11 board.  The A/D module has a 
diagram glued on top which shows the block functions of the device.  If 
you look close the pin numbers are listed where signals are brought out 
to the 36pin connector that plugs the module into the host board.
I may be able to inject a signal on one of the inputs and see how far it 
gets.  I think I can trace it through the multiplexer, the programmable 
gain amp and to the sample and hold and see what the A/D chip input is.


Doug

On 2/6/2022 12:26 PM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:

Now that I have thought a bit more, I think it was the DT2762



The board was made by Data Translation.  There is an identical board 
sold by them, in the DT2x6x series but I can'r remember the exact number.


Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
Skype:  tilbury2591nw.john...@ieee.org



On 2022-02-06 12:20, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
I have one of these and would like to use it, however it appears to 
only partially work.  Here is what I have found that works and what 
doesn't:


1. CSR and DBR are present and operational.

2. Jumpers set to 'factory'.

3. D/A portion works, can deposit codes in ODT and see voltages out 
on DAC pins that change depending on the octal value deposited in 
CSR+4 or +6.


4. A/D portion returns full scale code, either 3777 (2's compliment) 
or  (offset binary) whether in the input is open or shorted to gnd.


I think the problem is that the A/D inputs are not exactly protected 
and damage has occurred to this portion in the past.


Does anyone have any info on the A/D module?  Who made it?  Can you 
open it up?  Does XXDP have a test for this?


Doug

Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Yes, I am putting 1 into the CSR to start the conversion and I do get a 
200(8) indicating that the conversion is complete.  I wonder if this 
means the A/D chip is OK but something else, like the multiplexer chip 
or gain amp is fried.


On 2/6/2022 12:33 PM, Jerry Weiss via cctalk wrote:
Are you triggering an A/D conversion via the CSR or external signal?  
Then check the A/D done bit.


See  EK-AXV11-UG-02 Chapter 4.

   Jerry

On 2/6/22 11:20 AM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
I have one of these and would like to use it, however it appears to 
only partially work.  Here is what I have found that works and what 
doesn't:


1. CSR and DBR are present and operational.

2. Jumpers set to 'factory'.

3. D/A portion works, can deposit codes in ODT and see voltages out 
on DAC pins that change depending on the octal value deposited in 
CSR+4 or +6.


4. A/D portion returns full scale code, either 3777 (2's compliment) 
or  (offset binary) whether in the input is open or shorted to gnd.


I think the problem is that the A/D inputs are not exactly protected 
and damage has occurred to this portion in the past.


Does anyone have any info on the A/D module?  Who made it?  Can you 
open it up?  Does XXDP have a test for this?


Doug

Re: DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Yes, I have a couple of those and they are very close to the AXV11-C, 
except for the D/A.  They have a similar method of working.   The A/D 
modules look 'identical' but I am suspicious that there are variations 
of these modules that aren't readily apparent.


On 2/6/2022 12:26 PM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:

Now that I have thought a bit more, I think it was the DT2762



The board was made by Data Translation.  There is an identical board 
sold by them, in the DT2x6x series but I can'r remember the exact number.


Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU
Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept!
Skype:  tilbury2591nw.john...@ieee.org



On 2022-02-06 12:20, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
I have one of these and would like to use it, however it appears to 
only partially work.  Here is what I have found that works and what 
doesn't:


1. CSR and DBR are present and operational.

2. Jumpers set to 'factory'.

3. D/A portion works, can deposit codes in ODT and see voltages out 
on DAC pins that change depending on the octal value deposited in 
CSR+4 or +6.


4. A/D portion returns full scale code, either 3777 (2's compliment) 
or  (offset binary) whether in the input is open or shorted to gnd.


I think the problem is that the A/D inputs are not exactly protected 
and damage has occurred to this portion in the past.


Does anyone have any info on the A/D module?  Who made it?  Can you 
open it up?  Does XXDP have a test for this?


Doug

DEC AXV11-C analog board

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I have one of these and would like to use it, however it appears to only 
partially work.  Here is what I have found that works and what doesn't:


1. CSR and DBR are present and operational.

2. Jumpers set to 'factory'.

3. D/A portion works, can deposit codes in ODT and see voltages out on 
DAC pins that change depending on the octal value deposited in CSR+4 or +6.


4. A/D portion returns full scale code, either 3777 (2's compliment) or 
 (offset binary) whether in the input is open or shorted to gnd.


I think the problem is that the A/D inputs are not exactly protected and 
damage has occurred to this portion in the past.


Does anyone have any info on the A/D module?  Who made it?  Can you open 
it up?  Does XXDP have a test for this?


Doug

Re: Typing in lost code

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I've tried to OCR old Fortran Code from DTIC pdf documents.  There were 
2 big problems;


1. The copies are very poor to start with and all OCR attempts produced 
about 75% error rate.
2. Old Fortran code limited variable names to 6 characters so they were 
generally not descriptive of what they represented.  Some characters in 
the Fortran variables sometimes were missing in the printout and made 
recovery nearly impossible.


I hope that now gov't contracts require code to be archived 
electronically for posterity.  Probably never happen.


Doug

On 1/22/2022 8:06 PM, Ethan O'Toole via cctalk wrote:


Can the listings be OCR'ed?

    - Ethan



Has anyone ever used Amazon Mechanical Turk to employ typists to type in
old listings of lost code?

Asking for a friend.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: IEEE-488 on the PDP-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 11/17/2021 8:49 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 11/17/21 3:10 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:


Disk images have been sent to Al. I assume he will eventually upload
them to Bitsavers when he has time to do so...



uploaded to 
http://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/floppyimages/RT11-V05.01.ZIP


Wanted to thank both of you for responding to my original request for 
help.  I'm glad that the software and manuals are still around thanks to 
you two.


Doug

Re: IEEE-488 on the PDP-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I'm going by the 'Instrument Bus Subroutines Programmer's Reference 
Manual' that is on bitsavers. [/pdf/dec/pdp11/minc]  In section 4, page 
4-1 it seems to imply that there are 6 files:


IBLIB.OBJ
IBSVER.FOR
IBMNC.SYS
IBNMNC.SYS
IBXMNC.SYS
IBXNMC.SYS

I think that's it.  *.OBJ is a library to link to, *.FOR is a test 
program, *.SYS are device drivers for MINC and ordinary PDP-11 SJ, FB 
and XM monitors.  It probably is on it's own disk (RX01 RX02?)


Doug

On 11/16/2021 11:56 AM, Jonathan Chapman via cctalk wrote:

I should have them in my MINC-23 stuff. If you can figure out which 
distribution diskette they're on, I can make you an image or copy.

Thanks,
Jonathan

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐

On Tuesday, November 16th, 2021 at 11:01, Douglas Taylor via cctalk 
 wrote:


In my pile of DEC computer stuff I have a DEC qbus IBV11 IEEE-488

controller board (M7954) with cable (BN11-A) that connects to the GPIB bus.

It would be interesting to try this out, but I don't have the DEC

'Instrument Bus Subroutines' that work under RT-11.  Does anyone have

this package?  Or know where it can be found?

Doug

IEEE-488 on the PDP-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

In my pile of DEC computer stuff I have a DEC qbus IBV11 IEEE-488 
controller board (M7954) with cable (BN11-A) that connects to the GPIB bus.


It would be interesting to try this out, but I don't have the DEC 
'Instrument Bus Subroutines' that work under RT-11.  Does anyone have 
this package?  Or know where it can be found?


Doug

Re: Terminal Emulator for Android

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 11/1/2021 3:11 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

On Sun, 31 Oct 2021 at 22:07, Bill Degnan via cctalk
 wrote:

Juicessh ap for android has telnet.  I use it for my vax boxes.

Seconded. I almost never use SSH from Android, but JuiceSSH is my
go-to for the once-in-a-blue-moon occasion.


I'm going to go with Juicessh then, sounds just what I need. Thanks.

Having juicessh on my tablet will let me login to my machines on my home 
network while I lay in bed.  You know, when you get that burning desire 
to test something out just before you go to sleep.


Doug

Terminal Emulator for Android

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I would like to use my tablet, Samsung Tab E model SM-T560NU, to connect 
to my VAX and Linux computers.  There seem to be a large number of 
'Apps' out there.  What is a good one to use?


The VAX doesn't have SSH only insecure TELNET.  Another can of worms, 
SSH on the Vax?


Doug

Re: Looking for info on memory

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/19/2021 12:57 PM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctech wrote:

I am trying to bring up an 11/23 system in a BA23 box, and the only
memory i have is an obscure Plessey one. The only identification is the
p/n 705920 with dash-100 in white ink. By counting the chips I make it
4MB, but it does not respond. Since it takes the full 22-bit memory
space I can't see how any jumpers would change its accessibility. Does
anybody have a manual?

any help appreciated,

Nigel Johnson

Looking at the photo I began to wonder if Plessey made their own boards 
or are they re-badged from some other manufacturer.   I don't know.  If 
they are made by someone else, you might be able to dig up a manual.


Also, if you look at the documentation for other 4MB qbus memories how 
many jumpers do they have?  And what do they do?  It may help you 
understand your board.


Doug  (of course I don't have a 4MB qbus memory, but that apparently 
didn't stop me from posting.)

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/28/2021 6:19 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctech wrote:

On 8/28/21 4:13 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/2021 1:15 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 1:03 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Yes, I did create a new kernel and copy it to the correct place and 
chmod 644 the new unix file.


Did yo have fun playing with the overlays?  :-)


I don't know what this means.  The kernel creation was automatic, it 
seemed to check for enough room.


I guess you did the bare minimum to get the network up.  When I buld
a new kernel I tend to add all the devices (like multiple network cards
and serial cards) that I may want in the future.  I have often had to
manually shift things around and usually create one or two additional
overlays to get it all to fit.  I actually enjoy doing it.  :-)
I had only toyed with the idea of adding a dzv11 so real terminals could 
be connected to a real pdp11 Ultrix-11 system.  I guess I'll find out 
once I get there.






On my Debian system I can install ftpd and telnetd (they are still 
in the Debian package list) which are the unsecure ones, but I 
don't know how to configure them or start them.  As in, # systemctl 
restart ftpd


Probably easier to turn them on on Ultrix-11.  Just modify inetd.conf.
Actually, I just looked and ftp is on by default. Telnet is not.

I edited inetd.conf to uncomment telnet.  It helped.




It turns out to not be a hot topic: "How do I make my Liinux system 
less secure?",  but for us that noodle around with old computers 
with obsolete operating systems it is exactly what we need.  In the 
past I remember using Filezilla to go from a Windows7 machine into 
a Vax without any problem.


I suspect you will be somewhat disappointed with networking in
Ultrix-11.  Not that there is something wrong with it, just that
the hardware is nothing like you are used to.  In the early days
of networking it was not unusual for systems like the PDP-11 to
crash just because of the traffic passing by on their network
connection.  The advent of switches helped alleviate that but it
is still common to crash a system by pushing data at it from a
modern ftp.  I expect FileZila will do it.  To be honest, I always
preferred Kermit for moving files.  It is possible to keep packet
sizes down and even slow down the transfer rate to give the PDP
time to handle it.

bill



I brought up a Vax Alpha 3000-300 and tried interacting with the 
Ultrix-11 simulation:


Starting in Ultrix-11 I could log into the vax via telnet. Ultrix-11 
ftp was able to transfer a short ascii file from the Vax to the 
Ultrix-11 sim.


Just another note. remember that ulimit is only 1024 on Ultrix-11 by
default.  That means no file larger than 10M.  Unless you raise ulimit.




Going the other way, Ultrix-11 would reject an ftp request from the 
vax, here is the error message -


$ ftp 192.169.0.52
%TCPIP-E-FTP_NETERR, I/O error on network device
-SYSTEM-F-UNREACHABLE, remote node is not currently reachable
$


Been a long time.  Could have to do with PTYs.  Remember, FTP takes two
open connection and the number of possible connection on Ultrix-11 is
very limited.


I think I noticed that I only had 2 PTY's during the install/kernel 
process.  Glad you mentioned this, it had gone over my head.


Ignore the VAX error, the error was mine.  I typed the ip wrong, should 
have been 192.168.0.52, not 192.169.0.52.  Blame it on bad eyes, old 
age, small font, clumsy fingers.






Ultrix-11 would allow a telnet connection (after the change to 
inetd.conf) and I could do an ls, but when I asked for a man page it 
hung up.  Nothing after that, had to kill it.


I told you it was very unstable.  :-)



I got the same result whether I was telneting in from the Vax or 
Linux computer.  Probably not news to you.  I wonder if real hardware 
works just like this


Sometimes, but I always found SIMH less reliable with my limited use
of it.  I always preferred real hardware.



It was good to find out that you can get things in/out of the 
Ultrix-11 simulation.


Like I said, I usually find Kermit over emulated serial lines to be more
efficient at moving stuff on and off.  The network may be faster but
failures after 4 hours of a transfer can be very frustrating. Better
to let kkermit have it over night and then get a fresh start in the 
morning.


bill

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/28/2021 1:15 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 1:03 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Yes, I did create a new kernel and copy it to the correct place and 
chmod 644 the new unix file.


Did yo have fun playing with the overlays?  :-)


I don't know what this means.  The kernel creation was automatic, it 
seemed to check for enough room.




On my Debian system I can install ftpd and telnetd (they are still in 
the Debian package list) which are the unsecure ones, but I don't 
know how to configure them or start them.  As in, # systemctl  
restart ftpd


Probably easier to turn them on on Ultrix-11.  Just modify inetd.conf.
Actually, I just looked and ftp is on by default. Telnet is not.

I edited inetd.conf to uncomment telnet.  It helped.




It turns out to not be a hot topic: "How do I make my Liinux system 
less secure?",  but for us that noodle around with old computers with 
obsolete operating systems it is exactly what we need.  In the past I 
remember using Filezilla to go from a Windows7 machine into a Vax 
without any problem.


I suspect you will be somewhat disappointed with networking in
Ultrix-11.  Not that there is something wrong with it, just that
the hardware is nothing like you are used to.  In the early days
of networking it was not unusual for systems like the PDP-11 to
crash just because of the traffic passing by on their network
connection.  The advent of switches helped alleviate that but it
is still common to crash a system by pushing data at it from a
modern ftp.  I expect FileZila will do it.  To be honest, I always
preferred Kermit for moving files.  It is possible to keep packet
sizes down and even slow down the transfer rate to give the PDP
time to handle it.

bill



I brought up a Vax Alpha 3000-300 and tried interacting with the 
Ultrix-11 simulation:


Starting in Ultrix-11 I could log into the vax via telnet. Ultrix-11 ftp 
was able to transfer a short ascii file from the Vax to the Ultrix-11 sim.


Going the other way, Ultrix-11 would reject an ftp request from the vax, 
here is the error message -


$ ftp 192.169.0.52
%TCPIP-E-FTP_NETERR, I/O error on network device
-SYSTEM-F-UNREACHABLE, remote node is not currently reachable
$

Ultrix-11 would allow a telnet connection (after the change to 
inetd.conf) and I could do an ls, but when I asked for a man page it 
hung up.  Nothing after that, had to kill it.


I got the same result whether I was telneting in from the Vax or Linux 
computer.  Probably not news to you.  I wonder if real hardware works 
just like this


It was good to find out that you can get things in/out of the Ultrix-11 
simulation.


Doug

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Yes, I did create a new kernel and copy it to the correct place and 
chmod 644 the new unix file.
On my Debian system I can install ftpd and telnetd (they are still in 
the Debian package list) which are the unsecure ones, but I don't know 
how to configure them or start them.  As in, # systemctl  restart ftpd


It turns out to not be a hot topic: "How do I make my Liinux system less 
secure?",  but for us that noodle around with old computers with 
obsolete operating systems it is exactly what we need.  In the past I 
remember using Filezilla to go from a Windows7 machine into a Vax 
without any problem.


Doug

On 8/28/2021 12:54 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 12:43 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Its been fun  working with Ultrix-11 and have had success with the 
help of the list.  Thanks.  The tape file from Bill Gunshannon will 
create a working system.  Yay!


I'm at the point of trying to network the SIMH pdp11 Ultrix-11 system.

I have a few observations:

1. The youtube video 'Ultrix-11' shows connecting to sunOS systems. 
OK, he did this by simply issuing a single ifconfig command.  That 
didn't work for me.


I assume you built a new kernel with the right networking interface
in it?  :-)



2. Instead, I used the netsetup script supplied with the system, and 
had to reboot to get networking up.  I did seem to come up OK.


3. The SIMH FAQ suggests using a 2nd ethernet port, I was able to do 
this.  The linux computer I am running SIMH on has 2 ports.


4. The Ultrix-11 telnet ftp are old, unsecure versions, how do you 
connect to a modern Linux machine?  The Linux machines refuse the 
connections.


All telnet and ftp connectionms are old and insecure. There is no such
thing as secure telnet or ftp (or rsh or finger, you get the picture).
If you wish to go from the Ultrix-11 system to the Linux system you
will need to explicitly turn on telnetd and/or ftpd.  Or, do the same
on Ultrix-11 and go the other way.  There is no ssh for Ultrix-11 and
I seriously doubt there ever could be.



5. I also looked at the tuhs archive.  The Fred build script that 
generates a tk50 bootable tape image didn't work for me.  I 
substituted a file for the tape device and it caused SIMH to Halt.


Don't remember what system I bult the tape on but I doubt it was
an Ultrix-11 system.  Probably a VAX runnning netbbsd under SIMH.

bill

Ultrix-11 Networking

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Its been fun  working with Ultrix-11 and have had success with the help 
of the list.  Thanks.  The tape file from Bill Gunshannon will create a 
working system.  Yay!


I'm at the point of trying to network the SIMH pdp11 Ultrix-11 system.

I have a few observations:

1. The youtube video 'Ultrix-11' shows connecting to sunOS systems. OK, 
he did this by simply issuing a single ifconfig command.  That didn't 
work for me.


2. Instead, I used the netsetup script supplied with the system, and had 
to reboot to get networking up.  I did seem to come up OK.


3. The SIMH FAQ suggests using a 2nd ethernet port, I was able to do 
this.  The linux computer I am running SIMH on has 2 ports.


4. The Ultrix-11 telnet ftp are old, unsecure versions, how do you 
connect to a modern Linux machine?  The Linux machines refuse the 
connections.


5. I also looked at the tuhs archive.  The Fred build script that 
generates a tk50 bootable tape image didn't work for me.  I substituted 
a file for the tape device and it caused SIMH to Halt.


Doug

Re: Ultrix-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/25/2021 5:45 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk wrote:

On Aug 25, 2021, at 10:16 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk  
wrote:
I have near zero PDP-11 Unix experience, but I remember one flavor (BSD 2.11 ?) 
which set the top bit in its alleged ASCII output, which of course would break 
any terminal expecting actual 8 bit coding.

I discovered working with Unix V6 on my '11/45 that its tty output driver is 
hard coded to always cook bit 8 as a parity bit, for any character where bit 8 
is not already set (see Lions, line 8522).

   --FritzM.



My earlier reply didn't make it to the list.  Here it is:

In simh I am using an 11/53 cpu which has 2 serial ports and you do this :

   sim> set tti 7b

which clears the higher order bit.  In my configuration tti is the 
console.  With this set vi and man pages work as expected, more also.


Doug

Re: Ultrix-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/22/2021 8:21 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

On 8/21/21 11:50 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:

On 8/17/2021 1:39 PM, 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

On Aug 17, 2021, at 2:16 PM, Al Kossow via cctech 
 wrote:


images up under 
http://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/floppyimages/rx50/V7M-11-V1.0_6_USR_RX50-QJ083-H3.zip 





They are indeed different.  V7m is based on 7th edition A UNIX, 
whereas Ultrix was based in BSD.


JRJ


Actually, Ultrix-11 is based on V7m and Ultrix032 is based on BSD 4.x.

bill

In the video on youtube and in my experience the screen formating codes 
seem to be incorrect.  You can see this in the video when a man page is 
brought up.  The bolding does not occur.  I get the same result after 
installing.  The same with vi, it doesn't work in the video and doesn't 
work after installation.  I've tried Teraterm, putty, xterm all with the 
same result.  Haven't tried an actual terminal yet.  What was your 
experience?


Doug

Re: Ultrix-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Bill;

I started this thread by asking what I thought was a simple question 
about Ultrix-11.  Yes, I am trying to install and learn about this 
fascinating piece of old software.
Some of the folks who have posted know much more about Unix than I do 
and I am learning and enjoying this.


I just tried using the f77 compiler to see how it works.  It is really 
outdated and wouldn't recognize some accepted f77 items.  Even under 
SIMH it is slow!  But the load libraries are there.


There is a plot command in there that will drive a Tek 4014 graphics 
terminal.  Eager to find out how that works.


In the long run I would like to see if it can run on real pdp11 hardware 
and support multiple terminals/users.  Just for fun!


Doug

On 8/20/2021 12:24 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

On 8/20/21 11:50 AM, Peter Allan via cctalk wrote:

I just installed Ultrix-11 3.1 using the ultrix31.tap file from
https://pdp-11.org.ru/files.pl?lang=en
which is the location from the comments in Stephen's Machine Room 
video on

YouTube that I think started this thread.

It installed just fine, but just like the video, I ran out of space 
on /usr.


How can I make a larger /usr partition? Is it possible to do this at
installation time? There did not seem to be an option for this. Can 
it be

done by using an additional disk? That would seem likely, but not what a
system manager back in the 70's or 80's would expect to need to do,
especially as there is a relatively large amount of space left to create
/user1.

I noted the options for installing software using soft links to other
locations. Was that the preferred method when installing additional
software?


That worked for me.



Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Peter Allan



bill

Re: Ultrix-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/14/2021 1:54 PM, Warner Losh wrote:



On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 10:19 AM Douglas Taylor via cctalk 
mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote:


I ran into a YouTube video, that it is 5 years old, titled "Ultrix-11
3.1 on an emulated PDP-11/73" and I found it very interesting.
It shows installation of Ultrix-11 under SIMH.  The fellow steps
through
the installation process and appears to be quite knowable.
I wanted to replicate it but couldn't locate the *.tap file used
in the
video that was an image of the bootable TK50 distribution.
Bitsavers and tuhs.org <http://tuhs.org> have Ultrix-11 files, but
not the bootable tape
image.
Anyone know where the tape image is located?


https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/DEC/Ultrix-3.1/ 
<https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/DEC/Ultrix-3.1/> 
has ultrix-3.1-bootape.tar.gz and seems to be, at first blush, the 
boot tape (or its files) that you are looking for.


Warner


I took a look at that file and don't exactly know what to do with it.  
It is not a bootable image of a tape, but rather the files that are on 
that tape.  Have to do some more digging.  Its a learning experience.

Ultrix-11

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I ran into a YouTube video, that it is 5 years old, titled "Ultrix-11 
3.1 on an emulated PDP-11/73" and I found it very interesting.
It shows installation of Ultrix-11 under SIMH.  The fellow steps through 
the installation process and appears to be quite knowable.
I wanted to replicate it but couldn't locate the *.tap file used in the 
video that was an image of the bootable TK50 distribution.
Bitsavers and tuhs.org have Ultrix-11 files, but not the bootable tape 
image.

Anyone know where the tape image is located?

Doug

Re: What's left of the Houston Museum stuff

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 7/21/2021 7:19 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

On Jul 21, 2021, at 3:49 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk  wrote:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2103793056560583/permalink/3118441161762429/ 


That’s heartbreaking, especially as I see stuff in there, that looks to very 
likely be hardware I’m after (and I’m after almost nothing).

Zane



I agree, there are things that I would buy.  However, it is 1,500 miles 
from me and would require a drive through the South, in the Summer.  Ugh.


Doug

Re: VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

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

Hi folks,

I'm testing a little BlueSCSI adapter (BlueSCSI ) which
while being aimed at 68K Macs should also work as an 8 bit target for older
VAXen, it's a newer cheaper SCSI2SD solution and I should point out it
works as intended on a Mac Plus so the module itself is fine.

Nobody appears to have tested on small VAXen yet so tonight I dug out my
VLC to give it a go.

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'.

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.

Cheers,

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

Re: VT340 Emulation

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Someone already did this with a TEK4010 emulation:  See

https://github.com/rricharz/Tek4010

Hmmm... You could use a Raspberry Pi to emulate a number of terminals.

Doug

On 6/22/2021 3:49 AM, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote:

On 2021-06-22 01:03, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:


I'm now wondering about building something like a Raspberry Pi with an
LCD display (native resolution?)

Be careful. The "native" resolution of the vt340 is 800x480 in 4:3
format ...

So I would use an 15" 4K display at the RBpi, and scale up...

Imagine a Tekronox Emulation on a 4K display ;-)


in a custom case that's stylaized after
the VT340 (?) case, all be it abbreviated so that it's much shallower.
I'd probably simply run a full screen XTerm without any window manager.
(I might have a different way to start with a window manager and
traditional GUI.)
I could support serial, but if I'm using an SBC, why not use Ethernet
(or even WiFI)???

I would love to see REAL RS232 on a RBPi, probably even the original MMJ
from DEC for keyboard & mouse

Re: VT340 Emulation

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

DECterm does allow graphics.  I've used it, but can't remember the details.

For me the options were:

1. get a real VT340, already have a VT240
2. emulation software on a PC
3. DECterm, not a great option, works but if you want to use it remote 
the hardware multiplys

4. xterm, this was new to me, easy under linux

Doug

On 6/21/2021 11:33 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

I have to admit, I’m watching this with interest.  Hopefully I can see about 
getting this up and running one of these days.

I find myself wondering what it would take to build this on a Mac, the current 
Mac xterm *SUCKS*!!!  On the Mac, I can’t seem to use the custom DEC 
keybindings.

Actually does DECterm support either Sixel and ReGIS?  I’m dead on my feet, so 
won’t power up my VAXstation 4000/90 and look.

Zane




On Jun 21, 2021, at 8:13 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk  
wrote:

Grant;

Wow, that is very helpful.  I had downloaded xterm from invisible-island.net 
and executed a ./configure.  I complained that I lacked the Athena X widgets, 
so I paused on it.

I'm going to give this another try.

I'd like to thank all the kind folks who posted a response to my initial 
question.

Doug

On 6/20/2021 6:06 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 6/19/21 11:47 AM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

Really?  I'm interested.  How do you build your own xterm?

Download and extract the source code.

Here's the configure command that I most recently used before teaching Gentoo's 
ebuild about Sixel and ReGIS.  (The command is derived from the ebuild I was 
patterning off of.)

./configure --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --datadir=/usr/share 
--disable-full-tgetent --disable-imake --disable-setgid --disable-setuid 
--disable-toolbar --enable-256-color --enable-broken-osc --enable-broken-st 
--enable-dabbrev --enable-exec-xterm --enable-i18n --enable-load-vt-fonts 
--enable-logging --enable-luit --enable-mini-luit --enable-openpty 
--enable-regis-graphics --enable-screen-dumps --enable-sixel-graphics 
--enable-warnings --enable-wide-chars --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 
--infodir=/usr/share/info --libdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var/lib 
--mandir=/usr/share/man --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc 
--with-app-defaults=/usr/share/X11/app-defaults --without-Xaw3d 
--without-xinerama --with-utempter --with-x

The key part is "--enable-sixel-graphics" and / or "--enable-regis-graphics".  I'm also partial to 
the "--enable-256-color" and "--enable-screen-dumps".

The screen dumps mean that XTerm will save XHTML and / or XML dumps. Meaning 
they are text that you can search / copy paste. }:-)

P.S.  My messages to cctech don't seem to be going through.  So I'm re-replying 
to the message to cctalk.

Re: VT340 Emulation

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Grant;

Wow, that is very helpful.  I had downloaded xterm from 
invisible-island.net and executed a ./configure.  I complained that I 
lacked the Athena X widgets, so I paused on it.


I'm going to give this another try.

I'd like to thank all the kind folks who posted a response to my initial 
question.


Doug

On 6/20/2021 6:06 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:

On 6/19/21 11:47 AM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:

Really?  I'm interested.  How do you build your own xterm?


Download and extract the source code.

Here's the configure command that I most recently used before teaching 
Gentoo's ebuild about Sixel and ReGIS.  (The command is derived from 
the ebuild I was patterning off of.)


./configure --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --datadir=/usr/share 
--disable-full-tgetent --disable-imake --disable-setgid 
--disable-setuid --disable-toolbar --enable-256-color 
--enable-broken-osc --enable-broken-st --enable-dabbrev 
--enable-exec-xterm --enable-i18n --enable-load-vt-fonts 
--enable-logging --enable-luit --enable-mini-luit --enable-openpty 
--enable-regis-graphics --enable-screen-dumps --enable-sixel-graphics 
--enable-warnings --enable-wide-chars --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 
--infodir=/usr/share/info --libdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var/lib 
--mandir=/usr/share/man --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc 
--with-app-defaults=/usr/share/X11/app-defaults --without-Xaw3d 
--without-xinerama --with-utempter --with-x


The key part is "--enable-sixel-graphics" and / or 
"--enable-regis-graphics".  I'm also partial to the 
"--enable-256-color" and "--enable-screen-dumps".


The screen dumps mean that XTerm will save XHTML and / or XML dumps. 
Meaning they are text that you can search / copy paste. }:-)


P.S.  My messages to cctech don't seem to be going through.  So I'm 
re-replying to the message to cctalk.

Re: VT340 Emulation

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 6/18/2021 8:49 PM, Michael Kerpan wrote:
IIRC, Xterm has ReGIS and Sixel support in it's code these days, but 
most Linux distro disable those features in their prepackaged builds 
for some reason.



Really?  I'm interested.  How do you build your own xterm?

Doug



Mike

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 3:50 PM Douglas Taylor via cctech 
mailto:cct...@classiccmp.org>> wrote:


Right, according to the few notes I've seen on the packages currently
for sale on ebay.

I hesitate to buy because I picked up a similar piece of software,
Smarterm 240, which seemed to do the desired emulation. It was old
software for DOS, but I have an old DOS machine I use for PUTR I
thought
I could install it on and be up and running.  It didn't turn out that
way because Smarterm wanted a particular video card and driver
(which I
didn't have, of course).  I didn't find that out until I got the
package
open and tried installing it.

I don't know if the Reflection software has any restrictions like
that.
The versions I see for sale are for Win3.1 and such, not exactly the
heyday of plug and play.  I was hoping to get some guidance from
someone
who has used the Reflection software on what the actual
hardware/software requirements are.

On a side note, emulating a Tektronix 4010 is apparently free and
high
quality (see github).  It is the DEC graphics terminals that no
one has
produced an open source emulation software for, so that's why I am
asking this question.
Doug

On 6/18/2021 1:16 PM, Bill Degnan wrote:
> Reflection 4 should do that, right?
> Bill
>
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 1:15 PM Douglas Taylor via cctech
> mailto:cct...@classiccmp.org>
>> wrote:
>
>     Does anyone have experience with the Reflection software
that will
>     emulate a DEC VT340 color graphics terminal?
>

Re: VT340 Emulation

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Right, according to the few notes I've seen on the packages currently 
for sale on ebay.


I hesitate to buy because I picked up a similar piece of software, 
Smarterm 240, which seemed to do the desired emulation.  It was old 
software for DOS, but I have an old DOS machine I use for PUTR I thought 
I could install it on and be up and running.  It didn't turn out that 
way because Smarterm wanted a particular video card and driver (which I 
didn't have, of course).  I didn't find that out until I got the package 
open and tried installing it.


I don't know if the Reflection software has any restrictions like that.  
The versions I see for sale are for Win3.1 and such, not exactly the 
heyday of plug and play.  I was hoping to get some guidance from someone 
who has used the Reflection software on what the actual 
hardware/software requirements are.


On a side note, emulating a Tektronix 4010 is apparently free and high 
quality (see github).  It is the DEC graphics terminals that no one has 
produced an open source emulation software for, so that's why I am 
asking this question.

Doug

On 6/18/2021 1:16 PM, Bill Degnan wrote:

Reflection 4 should do that, right?
Bill

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 1:15 PM Douglas Taylor via cctech 
mailto:cct...@classiccmp.org>> wrote:


Does anyone have experience with the Reflection software that will
emulate a DEC VT340 color graphics terminal?

VT340 Emulation

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Does anyone have experience with the Reflection software that will 
emulate a DEC VT340 color graphics terminal?

Re: COMPAQ ISA PC to ethernent

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 5/20/2021 10:01 PM, Randy Dawson via cctech wrote:

If anyone has ideas about boards or software to connect this original Compaq to 
the net let me know!
Browsing the ebay, I do not find a PC 8 bit ethernet  board but still looking.
Then, the rest, a net set of tools in source would be great.


What model Compaq do you have?  Is it an 8086 model?  How early? Does it 
just have an ISA buss?


What do you need network connectivity for?

Doug

Boot Roms for MRV11-C

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

The boot roms for the MXV11-B multifunction board can be used in the 
MRV11-D general purpose ROM q-bus board.  Neat if you want to put 
together a small system.


I have a MRV11-C board and it differs from the MRV11-D board primarily 
in the ROM sockets, 24 pin on the MRV11-C and 28 pin on the MRV11-D so I 
can't use the MXV11-B ROM's directly.


Can the MXV11-B ROM set be adapted for the MRV11-C board?  If not, what 
can you use as a bootstrap ROM set on the MRV11-C?


Doug

Re: More interesting stuff

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/26/2020 7:11 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctech wrote:



Found a few other items that might be of interest to someone.

Two DEC Mice VS10X-EA Rev A3

DEC Joystick Model H3060

bill


Where did you see the H3060 Joystick?

Doug

Scientific Micro Systems driver

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

All;

SMS made disk controller systems that used their own device driver, 
seemed to be an enhanced DY (RX02) driver.  Does anyone have the 
driver/formatting software?


The model I have is FWD 0106 and is described in bitsavers:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sms/brochures/SMS_FWD0106,1106_Flyer_Aug82.pdf

Doug

PDP-11 based Data Translation system on ebay

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Many of you have seen this on ebay already:  item 224117176901

I'm on the east coast so it is out of my reach.

It appears to be a complete Data Translation data acquisition system 
including the software!  Someone please rescue this!


Doug

Re: DEC VR260 service docs / common failure modes?

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

That's a very interesting comment, got me to thinking.  The VR150 was 
connected to a working Vax Station 3100 with the proper DEC cable and I 
observed the non-working behavior.  However, the color RGB output from 
the VS3100 works just fine, I boot the machine into VMS and runs just OK 
(but using a different monitor and video cable).


In the VS3100, at least the one I have M78, I think the monochrome video 
output is separate from the RGB outputs.  I wonder if that part of the 
video circuit is not working correctly?


I understand your comment about the rate, the VR150 is a non-standard 
video refresh rate.  I think it is hard wired just for the DEC video output.


Doug

On 8/10/2020 1:37 PM, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:

One comment...if you don't have the correct cable and a system that is set
for the correct refresh rate, it may appear that the monitor does not
work.  Be sure you have compatible equipment.  This was a specialized
display.
Bill

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 1:19 PM Douglas Taylor via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:


Josh;

I have a DEC VR150 that is nearly functional; shows full screen but the
H/V are not in any sync at all.  Would love to use it with a VaxStation
3100.

Opened it up and found it quite a complicated monitor, not like a simple
PC monochrome monitor.

Purchased a microfiche manual off ebay, but haven't been able to view it
yet.

Eager to hear how you do with your larger monitor.

Doug

On 8/9/2020 3:10 AM, Josh Dersch via cctech wrote:

Hi all --

Picked up a non-functional but otherwise nice looking DEC VR260 (19" b
monitor) on the cheap, hoping to use it with my VAXstation 2000.  From

what

I've read, these were never the most reliable displays.  Curious if

anyone

has any information on common failure modes, or has service docs

squirreled

away somewhere.  I've at least found schematics, so I have something to

go

on, but it's not exactly the most straightforward design I've poked at.

Right now when powered up I hear a repeated low hum from the transformer
followed by a soft ticking noise so I'm guessing I've got power supply
issues at the very least.  Unsure what I should expect the monitor to do

if

it's not being fed a valid video signal (I haven't yet tried to hook the
VS2000 up to it) -- whether it'll go into free-running mode or do mostly
nothing until it has something to sync to...

Thanks as always,
Josh

DEC Server 300

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I'm interested in getting one of these, but browsing the manuals it 
appears there is software that is installed on the VAX to use them with VMS.


Is the software required to attach terminals and login to various 
Vax's?  Or is it for management of the Dec Server 300?


If the software is required, where do I find it?  Is it in the hobbyist 
distribution?  Is there a VAX and ALPHA version?


Doug

Re: DEC VR260 service docs / common failure modes?

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Josh;

I have a DEC VR150 that is nearly functional; shows full screen but the 
H/V are not in any sync at all.  Would love to use it with a VaxStation 
3100.


Opened it up and found it quite a complicated monitor, not like a simple 
PC monochrome monitor.


Purchased a microfiche manual off ebay, but haven't been able to view it 
yet.


Eager to hear how you do with your larger monitor.

Doug

On 8/9/2020 3:10 AM, Josh Dersch via cctech wrote:

Hi all --

Picked up a non-functional but otherwise nice looking DEC VR260 (19" b
monitor) on the cheap, hoping to use it with my VAXstation 2000.  From what
I've read, these were never the most reliable displays.  Curious if anyone
has any information on common failure modes, or has service docs squirreled
away somewhere.  I've at least found schematics, so I have something to go
on, but it's not exactly the most straightforward design I've poked at.

Right now when powered up I hear a repeated low hum from the transformer
followed by a soft ticking noise so I'm guessing I've got power supply
issues at the very least.  Unsure what I should expect the monitor to do if
it's not being fed a valid video signal (I haven't yet tried to hook the
VS2000 up to it) -- whether it'll go into free-running mode or do mostly
nothing until it has something to sync to...

Thanks as always,
Josh

Apple 1

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I got a notice from ebay that an Apple 1 is up for sale: $1.5M plus $1 
shipping, yikes!


ebay item number: 174195921349

Doug

Re: anybody have MOVIE.BYU?

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I did get Movie.BYU up on a linux machine and also an Alpha Vax, but 
what we really need is this reference:


Christiansen, H.N. and K.B. Stephenson, "MOVIE.BYU Training Manual," 
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (1982)


Anyone got it?  I'm afraid the only distribution was in the training for 
Movie.BYU which was expensive (in its day).  Haven't been able to find 
it on-line or searching libraries.


If you have geometry files for Movie.BYU that would add a great deal of 
value to this effort. I've run into old Nasa reports showing the space 
shuttle and International space station rendered with Movie.BYU.


Cool stuff.

Doug

On 4/16/2020 9:24 PM, Randy Dawson via cctalk wrote:

A couple other ccmp guys, Emanuel Steibler and Doug Taylor and I have been 
passing around what I have. Doug got it working under linux.

Where is the best place to put this?

I also have BYU's follow up CQUEL, greatly expanded, with X11 GUI.

Randy



From: cctalk  on behalf of Al Kossow via cctalk 

Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 12:07 PM
To: Jon Elson via cctalk 
Subject: Re: anybody have MOVIE.BYU?

On 4/15/20 11:34 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:


If anyone is interested, I could pack it up and send it to you. This was for 
VAX/VMS.  The directory contains 67 files.


I'd like the files you have.
I have a partial copy of mini-movie

Re: Old FORTRAN programs, libraries, graphics

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Got similar interests here.  I've been using PGPLOT on the Vax since it 
came out, the price was right!
Tried to get it to work with a Tektronix 4207, but something is a little 
different between it and the 4105 series.
I was able to get an old version of Gnuplot (3.4) to compile and run on 
a Vax alpha under Openvms 8.4.
It wouldn't compile on a 32 Vax under OpenVms 7.3, too bad, I had wanted 
to run gnuplot on that machine.  Maybe I needed an older version of gnuplot.


On 4/6/2020 6:00 AM, Dave Wade via cctech wrote:

I have been using PGPLOT but I guess you are aware of that.

https://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/

I also wonder if you might be interested in

https://github.com/rricharz/Tek4010

what I was looking for was a Calcomp Basic Plotting calls to HPGL as most of my 
plotters are HPLG and would like to plot some of the Calcomp sample plots on 
them

Dave


-Original Message-
From: cctalk  On Behalf Of emanuel stiebler
via cctalk
Sent: 05 April 2020 14:22
To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only 
Subject: Old FORTRAN programs, libraries, graphics

Being stuck at home, was musing the idea to look into some graphics
software from the '70's, or early 80's ...

Looking for some wire frames, hidden line removal, 3d graphics...

Any pointers?

View month ago or longer, somebody on this list recovered some large
package of FORTRAN code, and wanted to invest it, but I think it was posted
under a wrong subject, so I can't find it anymore ...

THANKS!

Re: Introduction and need help bringing some pdp11's back

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 10/29/2019 10:14 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Ok, first hurdle is down. In reading the RQDX3 Controller Module Users 
Guide it shows that for a BA23 the 50 pin cable goes down under the Q 
bus chassis then loops straight up into the RQDX3. Which is impossible 
to do with a modern (hee hee!) 50 pin SCSI ribbon cable as the cable 
keys are set up so that it would not be possible to plug the cable 
into the RQDX3 without inverting it (Because DEC likes to sell their 
cables with upside-down keys). However 30 seconds with a flush cutting 
pliers allowed me to remove the cam/key from the cable connector and 
plug it into the RQDX3.


System is now booting up off the floppy. Good step forward. I'll shut 
it down for now, and get a XXDP+ floppy from Ebay. That should allow 
me to format a Maxtor RD54 drive and get this thing up to steam.


Bit of progress. Thanks all! :-)

CZ 
I created an XXDP floppy for the RX33 drive in my BA23 based PDP-11/23 
using simh and then copying the image to real floppy using Putr.  It 
seemed brute force.  Is there an easier way?

Re: Looking for schematics of QBUS 32KW memory module.

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 9/8/2019 3:22 PM, Mister PDP via cctalk wrote:

Hello,

A few weeks ago I ordered a Sigma 400255 for my H11A LSI-11 computer with
the hopes of getting a 8" floppy hooked up for VCFMW. For the most part,
all the tests I ran from the ODT seemed to be AOK. The one this I couldn't
do it boot RT-11 from my TU58 emulator, as it would crash every time. Every
since I was able to boot RT-11 on my machine it has been unstable and prone
to crashes, but i chalked that up to the TU58 emulator, and not the machine
itself. Since I needed to boot from to TU58 in order to INIT and make a
bootable RT-11 disk for my system, I looked for other causes for the
crashes. I ran the VKAA XXDP test, which passed fine. I then ZKMA test,
which lo and behold listed back there were numerous bad addresses all over
memory. The only memory modules I have are 3 nearly identical 3rd party
32KW memory modules. The one that I have in the system right now came with
it, and is the one with memory errors. The other two are ones I bought on
eBay that are in rather poor condition and currently do not work at all. I
was hoping to transfer some of the 4116 chips from my nonfunctional units
over to my semi-functional unit, but I cannot find schematics for any of
the boards because they don't have any marking identifying marking on them.

If anyone knows where I can find schematics for these boards, that would be
wonderful. I am including a picture of one of these boards below.

https://i.ibb.co/sQwZw0j/32kwram.jpg

Thank You, Gavin Tersteeg


I have the Heathkit Memory Expansion Module Model H11-1 manual for the H11.

Has anyone offered you a working DEC MSV11 32k word memory board - so 
you can get thru VCFMW?  They are as common as hens teeth.


Doug

RXV21 questions

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I have 2 RXV21 RX02 controller boards.  They were bought to be used with 
the RX02 emulator, the one on github by AK6DN.


Finally, I finished one of the emulator boards and tried it out on a 
PDP-11/03 and found that one of the RXV21  boards worked and the other 
didn't.  I assumed the one board was bad.


Yesterday I tried the RX02 emulator in a BA23 with a 11/53 cpu (I also 
tried a 11/23+) cpu.  What I found is that the one that worked in the 
11/03 didn't work, while the other board kinda worked.  I could do a 
DIRECTORY and DUMP from RT11, but I couldn't boot the RX02 in the 
microPDP-11.


Today I ran into Chuck Dickman's web site that talked about the Etch 
versions of the board and which would work in a microPDP-11. He showed 
how to convert an Etch 'D' board to work in a microPDP-11.


I have Etch 'C' - this is the one that works in the 11/03, and an Etch 
'D'.  My 'D' board isn't exactly like the 'D' board he shows.


What are the changes to the 'D' board that he outlines?  What is exactly 
the reason why the 'C' works in the 11/03 and why an 'F' or modified 'D' 
is needed for the microPDP-11?


Doug

Re: XXDP on PDP-11/03

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/14/2019 10:17 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:

 > From: Paul Koning

 > Isn't the interrupt disabled by RESET?

Nope. On the -11/03 and KDF11-A, BEVNT is wired straight into the CPU, and
there's no internal register to control it.

The BDV11 does have a register which can enable/disable the LTC (it connects
BEVNT to ground via a transistor when the appropriate register bit is
cleared); but, ironically (given your question), BINIT/RESET does _not_ clear
that register! Only BPOK does. (My theory is they were short of a bus receiver
for BINIT, and rather than put a whole extra chip on the card...) So, once on,
it has to be explicitly turned off, or the 'boot' switch (which toggles BPOK)
has to be hit.

The KDF11-B and all KDJ11 machines do have the LTC register, which operates
'correctly'.

Noel


Everyone was right about what I was experiencing.  It was BEVNT/LTC.  
The front panel switches on the BA11-M I have read:


[HALT]  [RESTART] [AUX ON/OFF]

and I can't turn off the LTC from the front panel.  I had to set a 
switch on the BDV11 to disable BEVNT and with that XXDP booted up.  
Version 2.6.


Would like to run the RXV21 diagnostics since I have a 2nd controller 
that fails to work with the RX02 emulator.


Doug

XXDP on PDP-11/03

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Recently, I assembled one of the RX02 emulator boards developed by 
AK6DN.  I am using it presently in a BA11-M box with PDP-11/2 cpu 
(really basic 16 bit system).  I put the disk images from github on the 
SD card (RT11 V5.07 and XXDP not sure what version).


The box has a BDV11 bootstrap / terminator board and I use this to boot 
the RX02 emulator.  Works fine when I boot RT11, however I can't boot 
XXDP - it halts at 000104.


Do I need to use a different version of XXDP to run on the PDP-11/03?

Doug

Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/12/2019 1:25 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctech wrote:

On 8/11/19 8:51 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote:


The TC02 is an Emulex TS11 emulation for pertec interface tape drives.
The J1 and J2 are sort of standard terminology, don't know why.

Ah, the *Emulex* TC02.  You had me going there--DEC also has a DECtape
controller called the TC02.

Looking at the TC02, there are 374s to latch data coming from the
Qualstar and use the termination packs, but there are also 7438s driving
the lines from the TC02 to the Qualstar.   Those have no terminators.

The TC02 reference manual says that you get run lines up to 30 feet long
between the TC02 and formatter.

My point is that the driver technology for the Qualstar (i.e. read data
and status) is inappropriate for long cable runs.   The spec calls for
48 ma OC drivers.

--Chuck
,


The bad news is that the cable lengths must be short to use the Qualstar 
1260 with a PDP11, the good news is that I can lift and carry the tape 
drive!  For many of us in this hobby that it is extremely important.


After looking at pictures of the 1260 on the internet I see that it was 
designed to be used with a PC and the interface cable was 62 pins and 
quite short.  Someone mentioned earlier that it was a cheap tape drive 
that didn't meet the Pertec standard and I'm finding out what exactly 
that meant.


It is nice to have a reel to reel tape drive and watch it work.

Doug

Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/11/2019 10:44 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctech wrote:

On 8/11/19 6:00 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote:


I just looked at the TC02 and the Qualstar, there are termination
resistor packs on each.  The Qualstar has a bunch of 74LS240 IC's near
the J1 and J2 pertec interface cables.  The TC02 has a bunch of 74LS374
chips near the J1 and J2 connectors.

This is where the electrical engineer could help.  How do you determine
how long a cable the 74LS240 can drive?

TC02?  The DECtape controller?

Sorry, I must be dense; I'm not following.

--Chuck


The TC02 is an Emulex TS11 emulation for pertec interface tape drives.  
The J1 and J2 are sort of standard terminology, don't know why.

Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/11/2019 7:01 PM, Jon Elson via cctech wrote:

On 08/11/2019 11:11 AM, W2HX via cctech wrote:

I seem to remember they were ribbon cables
with each odd/even pair twisted which probably meant one
active and one ground twisted together.

Or differential pairs.


No, both Pertec unformatted and Pertec formatted interfaces were TTL 
single-ended.


Jon


I just looked at the TC02 and the Qualstar, there are termination 
resistor packs on each.  The Qualstar has a bunch of 74LS240 IC's near 
the J1 and J2 pertec interface cables.  The TC02 has a bunch of 74LS374 
chips near the J1 and J2 connectors.


This is where the electrical engineer could help.  How do you determine 
how long a cable the 74LS240 can drive?


Doug

Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/10/2019 1:56 PM, Jon Elson wrote:

On 08/09/2019 11:05 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote:
I have a question about cable length - any electrical engineers in 
the house?


Connected a Qualstar 1260 tape drive to an Emulex TC02 qbus tape 
controller in a pdp-11/53.  The interface is pertec with 2 50 pin 
cables.


When I use a pair of short flat ribbon cables, 18 and 30 inches each, 
it works.  Under RT11 I can INIT, Copy, DUMP, do a Directory.


It doesn't work when I use a pair of 5 foot long flat ribbon cables.  
Are they too long?  Do I need twisted pair type of cable?  Is it 
possibly a termination problem?


I have used cables about 20 feet long without trouble.  The 2 50-pin 
cables is the Pertec formatted interface, which is really forgiving.  
Does you drive have terminators in both ends of the cable (both at the 
TC02 end and the drive end)?
Now, I will mention that I have ONLY used twisted-pair ribbon cables 
with both flavors of interface, never straight ribbon cable.


Jon


I haven't checked to see if there are terminators (Arnold the 
Terminator) on either end.  I did check the long cables for continuity 
and found no problems.  It may be an EMI problem. Would folding the 
excess cable up and covering with anti-static plastic help?


Doug

Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/10/2019 4:57 AM, Dave Wade wrote:



-Original Message-
From: cctech  On Behalf Of Douglas Taylor
via cctech
Sent: 10 August 2019 05:06
To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts 
Subject: Pertec Interface Cable Length

I have a question about cable length - any electrical engineers in the house?

Its electronics, rather than electrical engineering. Electrical Engineering is 
power distribution.


Connected a Qualstar 1260 tape drive to an Emulex TC02 qbus tape controller
in a pdp-11/53.  The interface is pertec with 2 50 pin cables.

When I use a pair of short flat ribbon cables, 18 and 30 inches each, it
works.  Under RT11 I can INIT, Copy, DUMP, do a Directory.


So the hardware is good.


It doesn't work when I use a pair of 5 foot long flat ribbon cables. Are they 
too
long?  Do I need twisted pair type of cable?  Is it possibly a termination
problem?

I can't see 5 foot being too long for data from a tape, the data rates aren't 
huge. At most you have added 10ns to the delay times.
On the other hand I have been wrong in the past and could be wrong again..

I assume you have checked the cables. Ribbon cables are prone to come loose 
from the IDC pins if it’s a IDC connector, and if soldered can break


Doug


Dave
G4UGM

I bought the long cables off ebay, so they have to be good? Right? I 
think the short cables came from a hamfest.


The cables can be fairly long, I remember interfacing a TU80 to an 
Emulex QT14 (maybe) and the DEC cables were round and about 15 feet 
long.  And it worked.


It was too late last night to begin checking the long cables for 
continuity, so I fired off the email instead thinking it may be a 
termination problem.


Is it possible for the IDC and Card edge connectors to be put on wrong?  
You would want pin 1 to map to pin 1, and so on.


Doug

Pertec Interface Cable Length

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

I have a question about cable length - any electrical engineers in the 
house?


Connected a Qualstar 1260 tape drive to an Emulex TC02 qbus tape 
controller in a pdp-11/53.  The interface is pertec with 2 50 pin cables.


When I use a pair of short flat ribbon cables, 18 and 30 inches each, it 
works.  Under RT11 I can INIT, Copy, DUMP, do a Directory.


It doesn't work when I use a pair of 5 foot long flat ribbon cables.  
Are they too long?  Do I need twisted pair type of cable?  Is it 
possibly a termination problem?


Doug

Re: MicroPDP-11/23+ cabinet kit cables

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Noel;

Yep, that's the one.  I never thought one would be on ebay.  Imagine 
searching by the part number


Doug

On 7/26/2019 11:23 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:

 > From: Douglas Taylor

 > I'm putting together a MicroPDP-11/23 in a BA23 box. Have the M8189 CPU
 > quad width board and the bulkhead cabinet kit .. how the cabling goes
 > from the M8189 CPU board to the bulkhead cabinet kit?

I _think_ this might be the cable you need:

   https://www.ebay.com/itm/CK-KDF11-CABLE-ONLY-P-N-70-20451-1C/151622708242

but I'm not familiar with the cab kit, so I'm not sure.

 > The 10 pin connectors on the CPU board don't seem to be keyed ...
 > Is there something that gives the orientation away?

These 10 pin EIA connectors (same in the DLV11-J, KDJ11-B, etc) are keyed,
with a missing pin. DEC cables for these connectors have a plug in the
matching hole.


 > From: Glen Slick

 > In the photos that I have found of the M8189 console panel there is a
 > '1' just above the top right of the 20-pin connector indicating Pin 1.
 > A trace can be seen leading from that pin to the baud rate circuitry.
 > So that pin would go to Pin 1 of one of the 10-pin connectors on the 
M8189.

Y'all love to re-invent the wheel, I see:

   http://gunkies.org/wiki/DEC_asynchronous_serial_line_pinout#10_pin_header

I should check to see if the KDJ11-B has the same external baud rate
selection support, and if so, update the page to add it.

Oh, that's the other way to tell the orientation, with non-flat-cable cables;
with the loopback jumper on pins 7&9.

Noel