Re: FYI sunhelp.org down

[John Klos via cctalk]

There is no content on any other those sites, and some goto malware it 
seems.. So ..


Having known bill for 15+ years.. yeah hard break for him.. rip..respect.


Well, I'm happy to host any of Bill's content forever.

If you visit the sites as they are, you'll see content based on the 
current owners of mrbill.net, lispmachine.net, fiftieshouse.com... 
sunhelp.org doesn't resolve because it uses mrbill.net DNS servers, 
and no DNS servers are configured by the new owners of mrbill.net.


If you use 192.80.49.4 as your only DNS server, then try to visit any of 
those domains, you'll get answers for any / all of them that point to 
Bill's old address (184.94.207.190). When you visit one of those domains 
using this DNS server, the server at 184.94.207.190 will recognize the 
virtualhosts and will provide the proper content.


John

Re: FYI sunhelp.org down

[John Klos via cctalk]

I posted to  and saw my message got stuck in the mail
queue.  Upon a further inspection I saw that the domain has expired along
with `mrbill.net' where the nameservers used to reside and both have been
taken by someone else, taking the name service down for `sunhelp.org'.  I
can still reach Bill Bradford's personal page when I connect to the server
by its IPv4 address at: .


I noticed this, too. Since sunhelp.org uses mrbill.net DNS servers, and 
because the server at 184.94.207.190 is still up, we can still see the 
content if we make our own DNS, so I configured my server at 192.80.49.4 
(athena.zia.io) to answer for mrbill.net, for sunhelp.org, for 
fiftieshouse.com, and for lispmachine.net, so if you want to see any of 
these, temporarily set your DNS server to 192.80.49.4.


I did this in part to mirror sunhelp.org, but I suspect there are already 
mirrors out there.


Sorry to hear about Bill :(

John Klos

Re: Not-OFFLIST Re: domains available (FTGH)

[John Klos via cctalk]

BTW - the pictures there are from the days of film cameras - that's how 
long ago I put it in that 1U. After recapping it a few years ago, it's 
back to being 100% stable.


Given that there are plenty of new film camera available for sale, I’m 
not going to hazard a guess as how long ago that was.  The photo’s I 
took last weekend were on 35mm film.


I should've written that it was when film was the only real option unless 
you had money. I'd guess it was around 1998.


Okay, I was wondering if this were how you’re using it.  This was just 
about the only use case I could think of for a rack mounted A1200. 
Have you considered virtualizing your build servers?


There are three issues with that:

One, I don't really trust x86, considering the Intel Management Engine and 
AMD PSP aren't openly documented, so I prefer to run important services on 
non-x86.


Two, emulation isn't perfect and there are occasionally edge cases which 
occur because of things that are ever so slightly off because of FPU 
accuracy or things like that.


Three, emulation is often not as fast as real hardware. A VAXstation 
4000/90a is about as fast as SIMH running VAX on a really fast x86, and 
m68k emulation is often slower than on a real m68060 because BSD requires 
an MMU, and that means that JIT can't be used.


That’s a good question, I have four VAXstation 4000’s, the one /60 
runs 24x7, the other /60, as well as the /90 and the /VLC need work.  I 
know the VLC has power supply issues, though if I remember correctly 
they’re with the bearings.  I don’t remember what’s wrong with the 
other /60, and the /90.  I don’t think I’ve ever had the /90 
working.


I’d love to get one of the ones that isn’t running turned back into 
a workstation.


Anyone? :D

John

Re: Not-OFFLIST Re: domains available (FTGH)

[John Klos via cctalk]

I have to agree, that???s an interesting configuration.  The 1U Vaxstation 
4000/VLC makes a lot of sense, this, an A1200 I???m having a bit more 
trouble understanding.  What is the purpose of this system?


I would assume it can run Linux/Unix stuff? Though not sure you could get an 
accelerator on it.


I wonder if it was some solution sold to TV stations that used an Amiga and a 
genlock in a box?


The Amiga 1200 and accelerators for it are a form factor of a slightly 
thick and deep keyboard. Therefore, accelerators are made which don't 
require much height. The motherboard and accelerator fit tidily in a 1U 
case:


http://lilith.ziaspace.com

BTW - the pictures there are from the days of film cameras - that's how 
long ago I put it in that 1U. After recapping it a few years ago, it's 
back to being 100% stable.


All the machines run NetBSD, and the Alpha, UltraSPARC and Amiga systems 
compile pkgsrc bulk binary packages for each of their architectures. While 
I do use the 1U VAX to do test compiles, with 24 megs and 5 VUPs it 
wouldn't make much of a bulk builder. I have a VAXstation 4000/60 and a 
4000/90a for bulk building.


Speaking of VAXstations - can anyone recommend someone who does power 
supply recapping and repair? I would like to get the power supply of the 
VAXstation 4000/90a fixed, and while I could just open it up and replace 
the whole circuit board with one from a modern power supply, I'd really 
rather keep it at least somewhat original.


Thanks,
John

Re: domains available (FTGH)

[John Klos via cctalk]

Over the years I've snagged a few domains related to classic computing with
the best intentions of doing something with them. I have not, so I will be
letting the following expire:

decvax.org

dgeclipse.org

dgnova.org

hp1000.org

hp2000.org

pdp11.org

rt-11.org


For anyone here with an interest in any of these domains, I'm happy to 
offer free hosting for at least as long as I'm alive (working on finding 
volunteers to take care of things after that). I've hosted some of my 
accounts and sites since the '90s and can provide email, web, dynamic web, 
development, gopher, mailman and more.


I have real colocated servers, not purchased services, and the servers 
are, if nothing else, interesting. The collection include an AlphaServer 
DS25, a Sun Fire v254, an AMD Ryzen box (with ECC), a 1U Amiga 1200, and a 
1U VAX.


John Klos

Diskless VMS install

[John Klos via cctalk]

Hi,

I have a VAXstation 4000/60 with an internal disk but no CD drive. I'd 
like to install VMS (7.3), but I'm new to VMS.


I have a SIMH VAX instance running on the same LAN with VMS installed 
(mounting the VMS images is easy, of course). Can anyone point me to a 
HOW-TO which explains how to use one VMS system to MOP / netboot another 
system to install VMS?


Thanks,
John

Re: 1U VAX, was: Re: Computer stores

[John Klos via cctalk]

I was going to comment that the only way I could see a 1U VAX was if 
someone rack mounted a 4000/VLC.  Is that the stock VLC power supply? 
My cluster doesn?t even have that much space.


What do you use to go from SATA to SCSI (SCSI-1 even)?


It's a standard 1U power supply with a custom adapter. You can see it 
better here:


https://twitter.com/AnachronistJohn/status/1294725819038752768

I use a SATA to IDE adapter, then an IDE to UW-SCSI adapter, then an 
UW-SCSI cable and terminator, then finally a 68 to 50 pin adapter.


The previous drive was a Samsung SSD, but I think that constant, non-stop 
swap use wore it out. This was the smallest new spinning rust drive I 
could find.


SCSI2SD would work for a while, but, again, swap usage would wear out an 
SD card in no time, I'm sure.


John

Re: 1U VAX, was: Re: Computer stores

[John Klos via cctalk]

OK, I'll bite ;-)
What is it exactly?
There was a rtVAX on VME, which could be easily configured as 1U, but
what do you have?


https://twitter.com/AnachronistJohn/status/1291815674570891264

It's a VAXstation 4000/30 (also known as VLC) with a 500 gig SATA drive in 
a 1U case. It's colocated in a proper datacenter right now :D


John

Re: Computer stores

[John Klos via cctalk]

When dozens or hundreds start up within weeks or months of each other, 
every one is important, and most are interesting, but "FIRST" or 
"STARTED THE TREND" (implying being the "first") cease to really mean 
anything.


It's generally better to never use the word "FIRST"; there is almost 
always a lesser known one that was earlier.


That might be true for discussions where people don't care to do any 
research, or where words like "first" are uses more for hyperbolic 
emphasis, but suggesting someone started an industry on a list like this, 
I think, doesn't seem out of place.


If someone has examples of this being wrong, he / she will say so, and 
we'll all learn. If not, the original message has conveyed useful 
information.


Relatedly, I have what I think is the only 1U VAX in the world. I've 
mentioned this in many places, but if someone says I'm wrong and shows me 
an example of another, it would please me, not upset me. I'll have learned 
of another :)


John

Re: SIMH on low overhead platform

[John Klos via cctalk]

On Aug 17, 2020, at 12:43 AM, Tom Hunter via cctalk 
 wrote:

>
> Has SIMH been ported to a low overhead (instant-on) platform?

I use NetBSD on a surplus HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8, NetBSD 9.0-stable 
boots in just a few seconds. The hardware itself takes a couple minutes 
to go through its bootstrap process, however. (I should have considered 
setting up ESXi and installing NetBSD atop that to avoid the hardware 
boot process, since I'm regularly rebuilding and updating NetBSD?)


It's funny, but it seems to be true that the pricier hardware takes longer 
to POST. I bought several AMD AM1 CPUs / motherboards when a set only 
cost $50 and I use them as routers running NetBSD. From power on to 
booting the kernel is less than three seconds. Getting to fully multiuser 
is less than 30 seconds, even with DHCP.


Oh yeah, NetBSD 9.0-stable 64-bit also only takes a few seconds to boot 
on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. It's easy enough to just throw on an SD card and 
try out. Alas the Raspberry Pi 4 isn't supported yet by NetBSD, though I 
think it's coming along. An RPi4 with 4 or 8GB of RAM should be a very 
nice turnkey SIMH server.


Yes, the Pis boot very quickly. The Pi 4 is supported, but just not in 
NetBSD 9. The Pi 4 takes a wee bit longer to boot because it uses UEFI, 
but I think the difference in performance is well worth the extra few 
seconds.


https://github.com/pftf/RPi4
https://twitter.com/AnachronistJohn/status/1287628712981049345

A bonus is that you can boot directly off of USB attached storage 
(although I'm still loading UEFI and the kernel off of the SD card).


SIMH runs very well on the Pi 4.

John

Re: TU58 dump tool on Linux? (Mattis Lind)

[John Klos via cctalk]

Is there anyone that has already built a tool to dump TU58-tapes on a Linux
machine? I have the drive of course.

There is PUTR. But it is DOS only and is written in assembler so it cannot
be ported easily. The other option is running RT11 on a PDP-11, but then
there is the hassle of getting the dumps off the RT11 file system.


It is probably not too difficult to use relevant parts of the various TU58
Unix implementations out there to do something quickly, but if someone has
already done it, it would be great to not reinvent the wheel.

I have approximately 80  11/730 and 11/750 console and diag tapes that
need reading.


Just a thought - if the TU58 connects via serial, then what about running 
SIMH and giving it a serial device which is connected to the TU58? That 
could fix both problems - how to talk to the device, and how to deal with 
the data on the tapes.


John

Re: Raspberry Pi write cycles

[John Klos via cctalk]

But then it turned out not to be the load at all.  No matter what I ran 
on that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the 
symptom was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on).  I 
assume it was just something broken in the Pi itself.


You can simply root off of a USB disk by changing the "root=" parameter in 
cmdline.txt on the FAT partition on your SD card. Since the card won't 
otherwise be used unless you mount it if you do this, your next card 
should last forever. I've got a Suptronics x830 board and enclosure with 
an 8 TB drive which boots this way.


Any Pi processor newer than the original ARM1176JZ should run NetBSD 
pretty well. My 900 MHz Pi 2 runs NetBSD/vax almost as fast as a 
VAXstation 4000/30 (VLC), which is about 5 VUPS. An original Pi or Pi Zero 
should be able to emulate a VAX at least as fast as an 11/780.


One issue with CPU intensive things on Raspberry Pis is that even if your 
power supply provides plenty of current, the slightest drop in voltage can 
cause throttling. If you know your power supply is good but see a 
lightning symbol anyway, add "avoid_warnings=2" to config.txt on your SD 
card's FAT partition.


John

Re: Raspberry Pi for vaxen turbochannel

[John Klos via cctalk]

It occurs to me that the turbochannel slots have 4A each. It would be 
entirely possible to print a whole open source board like the raspberry 
Pi (or banana Pi, etc) on a turbochannel card and kill two birds with 
one stone.


I'n not quite sure why people are so interested in killing birds with 
stones, but perhaps that's a discussion for another time :)


I've thought about doing something similar. I use my Raspberry Pis / small 
computers to do more than just MOP boot, serve NFS, and perhaps NAT or 
route to the Internet:


https://hackaday.io/project/218-speed-up-pkgsrc-on-retrocomputers
(it does need to be updated a little)

It's not entirely clear whether you're talking about making a board that a 
Pi (whether Raspberry, Banana, or other compatible) can just plug in, or 
if you're talking about making a full TURBOchannel board that has a Pi on 
the board itself ("print a whole open source board"). If the full board, 
then it would make a lot more sense if it was interfaced directly to 
TURBOchannel and could present itself as various devices such as mass 
storage, ethernet and GPIO. Otherwise, why bother with the complexity?


My VAXstation 4000/90 has a TURBOchannel adapter. It was not easy to find, 
nor was it cheap. I'm currently using it for a TC-USB card:


https://web.archive.org/web/20170831062121/http://www.flxd.de/tc-usb/

So a Pi on a TURBOchannel card wouldn't be useful for any of my other 
VAXstation 4000/60 machines (nor VLC).


Otherwise, it would make a lot more sense to instead mount a Pi in a 3.5" 
drive's space and use a Molex drive power connector to power it. One can 
even get fancy and get a 12 volt to 5 volt regulator to power the Pi.


I looked in to the idea of using an ESP8266 in place of the AUI to give 
older machines wireless, but it seems this is hardly trivial:


https://hackaday.com/2015/06/12/retro-edition-the-lan-before-time/

That also dissuaded me from imagining something that could plug in to the 
AUI port and interface with a Pi or other SBC. The same goes for a modern, 
inexpenive, small way to interface an SBC with the 10BASE2 ports on older 
machines.


So I can't picture any better way to get ethernet from the back of the 
machine to a Pi / SBC, internal or otherwise, without an AUI and ethernet 
cable. How were you thinking of doing that?


John

Re: Excessive amount of time in interrupt stack mode

[John Klos via cctalk]

The system is mostly idle, RAM is mostly free (there's 32mb),
there is almost no paging, but the CPU is spending upwards of 70% of the
time in the interrupt stack mode.


If I had to guess, I'd say the most likely culprit is ethernet. Try 
disconnecting ethernet, perhaps the AUI, too, and see if it's any 
different.


John

Re: Vintage-computing relevant IOBCC entry

[John Klos via cctalk]

/* You are not expected to understand this. */

https://www.ioccc.org/2018/mills/hint.html


Unsurprisingly, the original 1984 submission still compiles and runs as 
expected on a VAX running NetBSD 8 with gcc 5.5.0 :)


https://www.ioccc.org/1984/mullender/hint.html

John

Re: Looking for a home for most issues of BYTE Magazine

[John Klos via cctalk]

Thank you all for all of the interest. The first person who wrote me isn't 
far away at all and will give it a good home, so I'm going to go with him.


While I'm fetching those, I'm going to make a list of other older hardware 
for which I'd like to find homes, so I'll post about that, and possibly 
about other magazines, in a week or so.


Thanks!
John

Looking for a home for most issues of BYTE Magazine

[John Klos via cctalk]

Hi, all,

I have a collection of most of BYTE Magazine from the beginning through 
about 1985. Instead of selling it on eBay, I'd rather find a home for it 
where people can enjoy it. I also have a small collection of other 
computer magazines from the late 1970s and early 1980s which I'd like to 
include.


Does anyone know of any person or organization within a reasonable 
distance from southern California who might take these magazines and 
preserve them, instead of just selling them on eBay?


Thanks!
John
--
I don't know which scares me more - that people adhere to the idea of an
omnipotent being powerful enough to create the universe, but whose
supposedly most cherished creation is a race modeled after himself which
can't stop hurting and killing each other, or the idea that those same
people cannot or will not consider the possibility that the universe is
random and unfeeling, and it's up to us to create order and beauty out of
chaos and entropy.

Bill Godbout

[John Klos via cctalk]

http://vcfed.org/wp/2018/11/13/r-i-p-bill-godbout-79/

:(

AlphaServer CPU compatibility question

[John Klos via cctalk]

Hi, list,

I've lurked here a bit but haven't posted much yet. I'm now working on a 
system that I think people here might know something about.


Can anyone here tell me whether the CPU modules from an AlphaServer ES45 
will work in an AlphaServer DS25?


According to Wikipedia, they're both EV68CB CPUs. Some sites (including 
HP's QuickSpecs) list the 1.25 GHz ES45 CPU card as containing 16 megs of 
cache, but some places list the 1.25 GHz card with just 8 megs, like the 1 
GHz card.


If I could find a 1.25 GHz CPU card with 16 megs of cache, and if it'd 
work, I think it'd be a worthwhile upgrade to my DS25.


Thoughts?

Thanks,
John