Re: [Simh] Terminal Emulator

[Richard]

I used PROCOMM on an 8088; I never used telix.

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Re: [Simh] Terminal Emulator

[Zane Healy]

I initially had to use Telix running on a 386sx laptop to send the bootstrap to 
my PDP-11.  I used it a lot in the 90’s.  One of the best MS DOS programs I 
know of.

Zane




> On Jan 25, 2018, at 6:45 PM, Dan Gahlinger  wrote:
> 
> telix
> 
>  Original message 
> From: Pär Moberg 
> Date: 1/25/18 9:43 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: Simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: [Simh] Terminal Emulator
> 
> Hello,
> I am looking for good terminal emulators for my 286. 
> I will attach to Linux and simh/pdp-11 and simh/pdp-8.
> I got a vga card for my 286.
> //Pär 
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Re: [Simh] Terminal Emulator

[Gregg Levine]

Hello!
Normally I use Putty when it can connect. But Kermit certainly will,
and since it is available for most of what you'd want to run inside,
it will fully enable loading and downloading of files.
-
Gregg C Levine gregg.drw...@gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 9:45 PM, Dan Gahlinger  wrote:
> telix
>
>
>
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Pär Moberg 
> Date: 1/25/18 9:43 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: Simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: [Simh] Terminal Emulator
>
> Hello,
> I am looking for good terminal emulators for my 286.
> I will attach to Linux and simh/pdp-11 and simh/pdp-8.
> I got a vga card for my 286.
> //Pär
>
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[Simh] Terminal Emulator

[Pär Moberg]

Hello,
I am looking for good terminal emulators for my 286.
I will attach to Linux and simh/pdp-11 and simh/pdp-8.
I got a vga card for my 286.
//Pär
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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 168, Issue 38

[khandy21yo]

The MicroVAX 3100 had a bug in the boot Rom that limited it to a 1.06? Disk. I 
don't know if it also occurred on other systems.


Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
 Original message From: Larry Baker  Date: 
1/25/18  7:17 PM  (GMT-07:00) To: heal...@avanthar.com Cc: SIMH 
 Subject: Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 168, Issue 38 
We ran into this on a real VAX when we added a 20GB SCSI disk, as I recall.  
Either VAX/VMS or the hardware (I think it was VAX/VMS) only looks at the 
low-order 24 bits of the disk size.  So, our 20GB disk was viewed as a 3+GB 
drive on the VAX.  Alpha/VMS has no problem handling larger drives.  I think 
I've used 100GB drives on an Alpha.  I know I have a 72GB and a 50GB drive on 
our Alpha now.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov






On 25 Jan 2018, at 6:04:06 PM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2018 18:01:41 -0800
From: Zane Healy 
To: Dennis Boone 
Cc: simh 
Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8


On Jan 25, 2018, at 2:22 PM, Dennis Boone  wrote:

If you're venturing into unix technology, it's possible to mount nfs
shares on the VMS machines.  Then you can use BACKUP to write save sets
onto the nfs share.  There seems to be some care needed with ADF
metadata.  Multinet seems to write this to a hidden file or
subdirectory; not sure what UCX/TCPIP do.

I actually looked into this option around 2008 (for the same Alpha).  If I 
remember correctly I ran into a problem on the VMS side of the file size limit 
(I have the same disk size now I had in 2008).  This can work, but you have to 
break larger disks up into chunks.  I’m hoping to avoid that, with the solution 
I’m looking at.

Zane

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Kevin Handy]

Ok, I already have a tool to convert old "noextend" basic+ to the newer
"extend" format.

It is 'b1filter.cc' in the src directory of

git clone http://github.com/khandy21yo/btran.git

it handles the end-of-line stuff as well as the '&' for print.  There are
some things it doesn't handle, like missing semi-colons in PRINT statements.

There are some of the '101 basic ganmes' in the 'examples' directory, as
well as a 'unbac' which might be useful for some.


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:58 PM, khandy21yo  wrote:

> Rsts basic+ has two modes. Extend and noextend,
>
> Noextend is the original mode, where 'line continues with a linseed and
> ends with a return. The & character works as a shortcut for print.
> Statements were separated with a colon :
>
> Extend mode was changed things around. It was a later addition. 'line
> continues used the &, statement separator was the /, and shortcuts were
> gone.
>
> Put a line at the front of the code like '1 noextend and they may work
> fine as is.
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
>
>  Original message 
> From: Clem Cole 
> Date: 1/25/18 6:15 PM (GMT-07:00)
> To: Johnny Billquist 
> Cc: Simh 
> Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for
> public access)
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
>
>>  I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment.
>
>
> I'm pretty sure Ahl was in Education System's group, which I thought at
> one point was in MRO (Marlboro).Small-systems was in the Mill.  MRO was
> 36-bit land.   So he would have had access to the 10s, but I note you're
> right there had been many 8s in the Education stream.
>
> That said, few HSs could even afford them.  Folks in HS's  (like my father
> who was teaching Math in a HS outside of Philadelphia during that time
> period) were most likely running on remote timesharing systems via dial-up
> lines - with GE(Honywell)/Mark-IV being the giant in that business (my own
> entry in the computers with him in '67 was on the Mark-II and Mark-III).
> DEC's customers that were trying to get into that business were mostly
> supported by PDP-10s, not small systems.
>
> RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came
> from the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also
> remember the PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).
>
> I can not look in my own archives from the time, my only PDP-10
> documentation I have left from the early 70s, is the white monitor 'phone
> book.'  I do have later (circa '78) PDP-10/20 docs but that would have be
> after the book described was published.
>
> Clem
>
>
> ᐧ
>
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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 168, Issue 38

[Larry Baker]

We ran into this on a real VAX when we added a 20GB SCSI disk, as I recall.  
Either VAX/VMS or the hardware (I think it was VAX/VMS) only looks at the 
low-order 24 bits of the disk size.  So, our 20GB disk was viewed as a 3+GB 
drive on the VAX.  Alpha/VMS has no problem handling larger drives.  I think 
I've used 100GB drives on an Alpha.  I know I have a 72GB and a 50GB drive on 
our Alpha now.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> On 25 Jan 2018, at 6:04:06 PM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2018 18:01:41 -0800
> From: Zane Healy >
> To: Dennis Boone >
> Cc: simh >
> Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?
> Message-ID:  >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> 
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 2:22 PM, Dennis Boone > > wrote:
>> 
>> If you're venturing into unix technology, it's possible to mount nfs
>> shares on the VMS machines.  Then you can use BACKUP to write save sets
>> onto the nfs share.  There seems to be some care needed with ADF
>> metadata.  Multinet seems to write this to a hidden file or
>> subdirectory; not sure what UCX/TCPIP do.
> 
> I actually looked into this option around 2008 (for the same Alpha).  If I 
> remember correctly I ran into a problem on the VMS side of the file size 
> limit (I have the same disk size now I had in 2008).  This can work, but you 
> have to break larger disks up into chunks.  I’m hoping to avoid that, with 
> the solution I’m looking at.
> 
> Zane



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Larry Baker]

As far as I am aware, there is no limit, up to the amount of disk space 
available.  Backup Save Sets are just RMS sequential files with fixed record 
lengths (on disk, usually 32768 bytes, on tape, I think the default is 4096, 
except 2048 for Interchange format).

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> On 25 Jan 2018, at 6:04:01 PM, Zane Healy  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 1:39 PM, Larry Baker > > wrote:
>> 
>> I agree completely.  DECnet is your friend.  On VMS, it works right out of 
>> the box.  I have never had a need to try rmt.  As I mentioned in an earlier 
>> email, I have built a DECnet FAL-to-NFS gateway using DECnet-Linux.  It 
>> works great for storing Backup Save Sets on an NFS file server.  Once there, 
>> they can be compressed with gzip to save space for long-term archive.
>> 
>> Larry Baker
>> US Geological Survey
>> 650-329-5608
>> ba...@usgs.gov 
> How large of a saveset can you create doing this?  This might work for 
> another use case I’m aware of.
> 
> Zane
> 
> 



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 4:18 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> 
> Exabytes?
> I know there was some people who thought they couldn't do variable size 
> reocrds, but that is actually incorrect. They can. It might be wasting space 
> on the underlying tape or something, I don't know. But I certainly had 
> Exabytes connected to VAXen and PDP-11s, and used the normal DEC tools to 
> play around, and Exabytes behaves just like any other tape drive, in all 
> aspects.
> 
>  Johnny

Back when the Alpha in question was an AlphaStation 200 4/233, it had an 
Exabyte EXB-10 tape library hooked to it with at the time “massive” 5GB tapes. 
:-)  At that time my max disk size was 2GB, and I could still buy new Exabyte 
tapes.  I have a SCSI box with a Exabyte 8500 drive and a CD-ROM drive setup to 
hook to any DEC system that needs it.

The Alpha also has a TLZ06 drive installed in it, and a TZ30 and DLT7000 drive 
that can be hooked up.

So if I cared to trust old tape drives, I have options for my backups.  I 
don’t, so I’m looking to go virtual.

Zane



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 1:39 PM, Larry Baker  wrote:
> 
> I agree completely.  DECnet is your friend.  On VMS, it works right out of 
> the box.  I have never had a need to try rmt.  As I mentioned in an earlier 
> email, I have built a DECnet FAL-to-NFS gateway using DECnet-Linux.  It works 
> great for storing Backup Save Sets on an NFS file server.  Once there, they 
> can be compressed with gzip to save space for long-term archive.
> 
> Larry Baker
> US Geological Survey
> 650-329-5608
> ba...@usgs.gov 
How large of a saveset can you create doing this?  This might work for another 
use case I’m aware of.

Zane


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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 2:22 PM, Dennis Boone  wrote:
> 
> If you're venturing into unix technology, it's possible to mount nfs
> shares on the VMS machines.  Then you can use BACKUP to write save sets
> onto the nfs share.  There seems to be some care needed with ADF
> metadata.  Multinet seems to write this to a hidden file or
> subdirectory; not sure what UCX/TCPIP do.

I actually looked into this option around 2008 (for the same Alpha).  If I 
remember correctly I ran into a problem on the VMS side of the file size limit 
(I have the same disk size now I had in 2008).  This can work, but you have to 
break larger disks up into chunks.  I’m hoping to avoid that, with the solution 
I’m looking at.

Zane


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Re: [Simh] Assorted ramblings was: Re: VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:35 PM, Armistead, Jason 
wrote:

> Clem and all
>
>
>
> Your knowledge of this and many other obscure (and not-so-obscure)
> subjects from the “early days” never ceases to amaze me.  If only there was
> a way to capture all these anecdotes  into one coherent “Wikipedia of
> computing history” …  Many of these stories are absolutely fascinating, and
> often amusing too.  Whether it’s the “he did / she did **THAT** … (which
> still lives on today)” or “we had to do this because of  limitation>” or “we cobbled this together with a few parts lying around in
> the labs at ”, they are great to read.
>
>
>
> Keep sharing the stories !  Long live the glory days of computing !
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Jason A.
>
>
>
​Most welcome - glad to help.

In the words of Monty Python, 'I'm not dead yet.'

Clem​
ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[khandy21yo]

Rsts basic+ has two modes. Extend and noextend,
Noextend is the original mode, where 'line continues with a linseed and ends 
with a return. The & character works as a shortcut for print. Statements were 
separated with a colon :
Extend mode was changed things around. It was a later addition. 'line continues 
used the &, statement separator was the /, and shortcuts were gone.
Put a line at the front of the code like '1 noextend and they may work fine as 
is.



Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
 Original message From: Clem Cole  Date: 1/25/18 
 6:15 PM  (GMT-07:00) To: Johnny Billquist  Cc: Simh 
 Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was 
Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access) 


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
 I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment. 
I'm pretty sure Ahl was in Education System's group, which I thought at one 
point was in MRO (Marlboro).    Small-systems was in the Mill.  MRO was 36-bit 
land.   So he would have had access to the 10s, but I note you're right there 
had been many 8s in the Education stream.
That said, few HSs could even afford them.  Folks in HS's  (like my father who 
was teaching Math in a HS outside of Philadelphia during that time period) were 
most likely running on remote timesharing systems via dial-up lines - with 
GE(Honywell)/Mark-IV being the giant in that business (my own entry in the 
computers with him in '67 was on the Mark-II and Mark-III).   DEC's customers 
that were trying to get into that business were mostly supported by PDP-10s, 
not small systems.
RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came from 
the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also remember the 
PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).
I can not look in my own archives from the time, my only PDP-10 documentation I 
have left from the early 70s, is the white monitor 'phone book.'  I do have 
later (circa '78) PDP-10/20 docs but that would have be after the book 
described was published.
Clem

ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

If it was applicable to the situation, then VMSTPC would work great.  It’s 
already installed on my Alpha, and I’m pretty sure there is a VAX binary for it 
in the VAX directory on there.  I also have it installed on my RSX-11M+.  It’s 
definitely a great tool.  Just not for this. :-)

Zane


> On Jan 25, 2018, at 2:54 PM, Armistead, Jason  
> wrote:
> 
> Zane
> 
> The program that Johnny is thinking of is VMSPTC
> 
> http://www.digiater.nl/openvms/decus/vax86a/bnelson/vmstpc/vmstpc.c
> 
> Note sure if this is the latest, but it came up in the first set of Google 
> search results for "VMSTPC"
> 
> Good luck
> Jason
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Johnny 
> Billquist
> Sent: Thursday, 25 January 2018 5:48 PM
> To: Zane Healy; Tim Shoppa
> Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?
> 
> Zane - unless I remember wrong, there is a tool from DECUS to copy tapes to a 
> file image, and then get that back to a tape again. The RSX version is called 
> TPC, and I'm pretty sure it also exists for VMS.
> 
> Using that, pull your physical tapes into files, copy the files over to the 
> simulated machines, and write them back out to simulated tapes there.
> 
>   Johnny
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

s/couple of people/couple of families/
ᐧ

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 8:47 PM, Clem Cole  wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:46 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
>
>>
>> Domain OS using 1056 bytes? On what systems? I used a lot of DN3000, 4000
>> and 5000 systems, and they used bog standard disk drives with 512 byte
>> sectors. (Interesting systems in some ways, but their windowing system was
>> pretty horrible.)
>
>
> ​All of the early ones -- until the DN1 I'm pretty sure.   They used a
> 1024 basic block, but Mike Spourer had used the Xerox Alto trick of putting
> some of the FS metadata into the controller microcode. That's what the
> extra 32 bytes were.   Masscomp and Apollo used the same SMS 'OMPTI 7000'
> controller for the ST506/ESDI drives, and you'll see it in the
> SMS marketing literature as it says something like "Supports 512/1024/1056
> block sizes".  I have controller doc somewhere in my basement - thinking
> about it, SMS might have even supported blocks as large as 4K - but I
> definitely remember them putting the 1056 stuff in for Apollo.   Remember
> we all knew each other, the firms were one town apart and couple of people
> had somebody working at each.
>
> Anyway, with the DN1, Apollo started to use the Xylogics 4xx
> controllers and Xylogics either wanted too much money for custom microcode
> or the Apollo guys decided custom microcode was too expensive.   In our
> Stellar days, we used to kid Mike about the 1056 bytes choice. BTW, Mike
> might have done the same thing at Prime, I never looked at/knew much the
> low level I/O of those systems. [@Stellar we used 4096 as the basic size
> but that was a multiple of 512 so it was never an issue].
>
> I've lost track of Mike, but Scott Baden (who is now a Prof at UCSD) was a
> CPU guy on Prime 750 and I'm still pretty close too, and he might know.
> I'll ask him if he remembers next time I see him.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
>
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:46 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

>
> Domain OS using 1056 bytes? On what systems? I used a lot of DN3000, 4000
> and 5000 systems, and they used bog standard disk drives with 512 byte
> sectors. (Interesting systems in some ways, but their windowing system was
> pretty horrible.)


​All of the early ones -- until the DN1 I'm pretty sure.   They used a
1024 basic block, but Mike Spourer had used the Xerox Alto trick of putting
some of the FS metadata into the controller microcode. That's what the
extra 32 bytes were.   Masscomp and Apollo used the same SMS 'OMPTI 7000'
controller for the ST506/ESDI drives, and you'll see it in the
SMS marketing literature as it says something like "Supports 512/1024/1056
block sizes".  I have controller doc somewhere in my basement - thinking
about it, SMS might have even supported blocks as large as 4K - but I
definitely remember them putting the 1056 stuff in for Apollo.   Remember
we all knew each other, the firms were one town apart and couple of people
had somebody working at each.

Anyway, with the DN1, Apollo started to use the Xylogics 4xx
controllers and Xylogics either wanted too much money for custom microcode
or the Apollo guys decided custom microcode was too expensive.   In our
Stellar days, we used to kid Mike about the 1056 bytes choice. BTW, Mike
might have done the same thing at Prime, I never looked at/knew much the
low level I/O of those systems. [@Stellar we used 4096 as the basic size
but that was a multiple of 512 so it was never an issue].

I've lost track of Mike, but Scott Baden (who is now a Prof at UCSD) was a
CPU guy on Prime 750 and I'm still pretty close too, and he might know.
I'll ask him if he remembers next time I see him.

Clem
ᐧ
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[Simh] Fwd: 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Warren Young]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:52 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

> On 2018-01-26 01:34, Warren Young wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:44 PM, Johnny Billquist > > wrote:
>>
>> I wonder if...this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC
>> had at some point.
>>
>> I believe we're using these BASIC programs as-is in our OS/8 distribution
>> .
>>
>
> Hmm. I would not expect much of that code to work on the BASIC that's
> under OS/8 without changes as well.
>

I'm basing that on a report from Bill Cattey who used that PDF to repair
several broken programs on the os8.rk05 disk image we were shipping prior
to rolling our own OS/8 distribution based on primary source media.

However, a search for "PDP" in that PDF turns up several interesting bits:

p20: a reference to "PDP-11 BASIC". This program is not among the set we
ship with our OS/8 distribution. I don't know if it's because it's been
tried and doesn't run or if no one bothered to put it in.

p27: a reference to the PDP-8 and the EduSystem 35, which was PDP-8 based;
but this BASBAL.BA program isn't among those we ship, either.

p102: a reference to "PDP-11 BASIC", but the first few lines are the same
in our OS/8 FOOTBL.BA! I did not read more closely to find out if the
similarity continues. (I thought I was done comparing on-screen BASIC
programs to printed BASIC programs by the late 1980s. :) )

p144: a reference to a PDP-7; we ship LIFE.BA, but line 2 says:

   2  REMARKABLY TRANSLATED TO OS8 BASIC BY KAY R. FISHER ...DEC

p235: another reference to "PDP-11" BASIC; we also ship a WEKDAY.BA, and Ms
Fisher is back with another REMark:

  20 REM MODIFIED TO LOOK RESPECTABLE ON PDP-8'S BY KAY R. FISHER ...DEC

So, apparently we are apostate, no longer living strictly by the book. :)
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

>  I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment.


I'm pretty sure Ahl was in Education System's group, which I thought at one
point was in MRO (Marlboro).Small-systems was in the Mill.  MRO was
36-bit land.   So he would have had access to the 10s, but I note you're
right there had been many 8s in the Education stream.

That said, few HSs could even afford them.  Folks in HS's  (like my father
who was teaching Math in a HS outside of Philadelphia during that time
period) were most likely running on remote timesharing systems via dial-up
lines - with GE(Honywell)/Mark-IV being the giant in that business (my own
entry in the computers with him in '67 was on the Mark-II and Mark-III).
DEC's customers that were trying to get into that business were mostly
supported by PDP-10s, not small systems.

RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came
from the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also
remember the PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).

I can not look in my own archives from the time, my only PDP-10
documentation I have left from the early 70s, is the white monitor 'phone
book.'  I do have later (circa '78) PDP-10/20 docs but that would have be
after the book described was published.

Clem


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

Yeah, as far as I can recall he was at EduSystems. Didn't really reflect that 
they might have had their own dialect. But that would make sense.

  Johnny 


Al Kossow  skrev: (26 januari 2018 01:59:57 CET)
>
>
>On 1/25/18 4:52 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
>> Hmm. I would not expect much of that code to work on the BASIC that's
>under OS/8 without changes as well.
>
>Edusystem BASIC?
>
>Didn't he come out of that world?
>
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Al Kossow]

On 1/25/18 4:52 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Hmm. I would not expect much of that code to work on the BASIC that's under 
> OS/8 without changes as well.

Edusystem BASIC?

Didn't he come out of that world?


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 01:34, Warren Young wrote:
On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:44 PM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:



I wonder if...this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC
had at some point.

I believe we're using these BASIC programs as-is in our OS/8 
distribution . 1975 is late in the 
PDP-8's lifetime, but also right at its peak of use, especially in 
education, since the microcomputer revolution had just barely gotten 
rolling by that point.


Hmm. I would not expect much of that code to work on the BASIC that's 
under OS/8 without changes as well.
I also checked another file, and found a comment that they should all 
work on RSTS/E and RSTS-11, except for SPACWR and another one, and of 
course I did most of my examination on SPACWR.
So that explains it. That specific file have more issues. Maybe the 
others will work fine in BASIC+ then.


  Johnny

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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 00:44, Clem Cole wrote:



On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:57 PM, Mark Pizzolato > wrote:


I think the documentation comment “cannot write variable-length
blocks and do not allow skipping forward over records between read
operations” was written when talking about the common cartridge
tapes that were available on 80s and 90s Unix workstations.  I don’t
recall the name.

That was not UNIX, that was the QIC standard.   Yes, those were blocked 
at 512 bytes.   Apollo's domain systems had a b*tch of time with them 
because their standard disk block was 1056 bytes​


Hmm. Ah. THose QIC tapes. Never liked them much, and never played much 
with them.
Domain OS using 1056 bytes? On what systems? I used a lot of DN3000, 
4000 and 5000 systems, and they used bog standard disk drives with 512 
byte sectors. (Interesting systems in some ways, but their windowing 
system was pretty horrible.)



   These things only supported fixed block size operations and not
variable record lengths (i.e. 80 byte tape labels, then different
sized data records, etc.).

​Right the 80 byte ANSI label, then different length data records.  UNIX 
handles that fine, even with RMT.​  FYI: My grad school housemate, Tom 
Quarles (of SPICE3 fame) wrote the ANSI tape and bunch of 
other tape support that most UNIX systems used, explicitly so he could 
read/write VMS tapes for the DEC guys who were doing some of the funding 
of the USB CAD lab.   Leffler (who wrote rmt) used Tom's tape stuff for 
the original debug of rmt.



   Given that the remote tape drive was a drive which could do
variable length record activities, I think MultiNet’s rmt support
actually worked well.  I don’t remember testing it though.  Whether
someone should try to do that now to backup simulated VMS systems is
another subject I may write about a little later.


​Understood.   I was just suggest​ing trying to keep another emulated 
system out of the scheme and going directly to the remote device either 
through DECnet or rmt or maybe even using a NAS as virtual tape files.   
It just seemed running a Linux with a tape and then running an emulated 
VAX on top of that seemed like an extra layer of indirection if there 
was an easier path.


Yes, I think the approaches are trying to do things in too complicated 
ways as well.


  Johnny

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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 01:25, Phil Budne wrote:

Johnny Billquist  wrote:

This is obviously a limitation of the rmt protocol, which makes the
assumption that all records are of equal length. Works for the standard
Unix tools, which also tend to want to use tapes with a fixed record length.


 From the FreeBSD 10.3 rmt(8) man page:

  . The protocol is comprised of the following commands,
  which are sent as indicated - no spaces are supplied between the command
  and its arguments, or between its arguments, and `\n' indicates that a
  newline should be supplied:
..

  Wcount\n
  Write data onto the open device.  The rmt utility reads count
  bytes from the connection, aborting if a premature end-of-file is
  encountered.  The response value is that returned from the
  write(2) call.

So each write to the tape can have a different record length.


Ah! Thanks. Then my muddy memory foiled me (I blame suggestions made me 
believe it).
So, rmt should really just work also from VMS, unless there are some 
other issues.


Still, tar and dump (and dd) under Unix do tend to use the same block 
size for all reads/writes, so they don't really test such things that much.



All this reminds me how happy I am not to deal with tape drives any
more!  I can't remember how many times I issued "mt fsf" without an
"&" not remembering the operation made the process incorruptible, and
resistant to CTRL-Z.

I always said tape drivers and boot roms always sucked because once
you got them working, you didn't want to touch them again!


:-)
I don't actually find them so bad. But they are more of a headache under 
Unix than under some DEC OS, most of the time, I'd say. But 
occasionally, you can get stuck waiting for tapes for a long time.


All that said, we have one drive online at Update, connected to Magica. 
A TU81, which can do 1600 (PE) and 6250 (GCR) BPI. Just in case anyone 
ever stumbles upon a tape that needs to be read...


We might, at some point, try to get a TU77 up and running as well, so 
that we can deal with 800 (NRZI) BPI as well.


  Johnny

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Re: [Simh] Assorted ramblings was: Re: VAX Tape Emulation?

[Armistead, Jason]

Clem and all

Your knowledge of this and many other obscure (and not-so-obscure) subjects 
from the “early days” never ceases to amaze me.  If only there was a way to 
capture all these anecdotes  into one coherent “Wikipedia of computing history” 
…  Many of these stories are absolutely fascinating, and often amusing too.  
Whether it’s the “he did / she did *THAT* … (which still lives on today)” or 
“we had to do this because of ” or “we cobbled this 
together with a few parts lying around in the labs at ”, 
they are great to read.

Keep sharing the stories !  Long live the glory days of computing !

Thanks
Jason A.

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Clem Cole
Sent: Thursday, 25 January 2018 6:44 PM
To: Mark Pizzolato
Cc: SIMH; Larry Baker
Subject: [External] Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?



On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:57 PM, Mark Pizzolato 
> wrote:
I think the documentation comment “cannot write variable-length blocks and do 
not allow skipping forward over records between read operations” was written 
when talking about the common cartridge tapes that were available on 80s and 
90s Unix workstations.  I don’t recall the name.
That was not UNIX, that was the QIC standard.   Yes, those were blocked at 512 
bytes.   Apollo's domain systems had a b*tch of time with them because their 
standard disk block was 1056 bytes​


  These things only supported fixed block size operations and not variable 
record lengths (i.e. 80 byte tape labels, then different sized data records, 
etc.).
​Right the 80 byte ANSI label, then different length data records.  UNIX 
handles that fine, even with RMT.​  FYI: My grad school housemate, Tom Quarles 
(of SPICE3 fame) wrote the ANSI tape and bunch of other tape support that most 
UNIX systems used, explicitly so he could read/write VMS tapes for the DEC guys 
who were doing some of the funding of the USB CAD lab.   Leffler (who wrote 
rmt) used Tom's tape stuff for the original debug of rmt.



  Given that the remote tape drive was a drive which could do variable length 
record activities, I think MultiNet’s rmt support actually worked well.  I 
don’t remember testing it though.  Whether someone should try to do that now to 
backup simulated VMS systems is another subject I may write about a little 
later.

​Understood.   I was just suggest​ing trying to keep another emulated system 
out of the scheme and going directly to the remote device either through DECnet 
or rmt or maybe even using a NAS as virtual tape files.   It just seemed 
running a Linux with a tape and then running an emulated VAX on top of that 
seemed like an extra layer of indirection if there was an easier path.


​
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-26 01:03, Tony Nicholson wrote:
Definitely BASIC-Plus on RSTS!  You may need to replace the “&” with 
“PRINT” in some of the files.


Which should tell you that it's not for BASIC+ on RSTS/E. :-)
Also, : for separating statements is, as far as I remember, also not in 
BASIC+, which instead uses \, just like BASIC+2.


Clem's suggestions of something for Tops-10 could possibly be right, but 
I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment. I was thinking 
that maybe BASIC-11 might match, but I've never used that implementation.


  Johnny



Tony

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 at 11:00, Clem Cole > wrote:


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:

  if this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC had at
some point.


​I think this is the Tops-10 BASIC dialect ​
ᐧ

--
Tony Nicholson >



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-25 22:57, Mark Pizzolato wrote:
I think the documentation comment “cannot write variable-length blocks 
and do not allow skipping forward over records between read operations” 
was written when talking about the common cartridge tapes that were 
available on 80s and 90s Unix workstations.  I don’t recall the name.   
These things only supported fixed block size operations and not variable 
record lengths (i.e. 80 byte tape labels, then different sized data 
records, etc.).


Exabytes?
I know there was some people who thought they couldn't do variable size 
reocrds, but that is actually incorrect. They can. It might be wasting 
space on the underlying tape or something, I don't know. But I certainly 
had Exabytes connected to VAXen and PDP-11s, and used the normal DEC 
tools to play around, and Exabytes behaves just like any other tape 
drive, in all aspects.


  Johnny

  Given that the remote tape drive was a drive which
could do variable length record activities, I think MultiNet’s rmt 
support actually worked well.  I don’t remember testing it though.  
Whether someone should try to do that now to backup simulated VMS 
systems is another subject I may write about a little later.


*From:*Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] *On Behalf Of *Clem Cole
*Sent:* Thursday, January 25, 2018 1:31 PM
*To:* Larry Baker ; SIMH 
*Subject:* Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:14 PM, Larry Baker > wrote:


Because UNIX tapes and tape driverscannot write variable-length
blocks and do not allow skipping forward over records between read
operations

​That's not a correct statement.   UNIX does it great - I've used it 
(and rmt) for years.  UNIX's tape driver is the most flexible of any OS 
I have ever used (and I have done tapes on probably greater than 25 
different OS's over the last 40 years).  That's why I suggest it.  I 
wonder what the issue for VMS is?


Hmm.. thinking about it, TCP sockets will remove the record orientation 
(TCP creates an stream of octets without any records), so if you are 
doing the funky RMS like stuff, its TCP that dropping those boundaries 
not the UNIX tape driver.   If you want same then it need to be set as 
meta-data.  But the UNIX tape drive works as expected.   The 'block' 
size is the size of the write, although I think the TM11 requires a 
minimum of 512 bytes.   Records passed with the MTIO ioctl' which mt/rmt 
all support..


That said,  I agree if he can get DECnet to work, that is likely to 
better integrated into the utilities.


Clem

​

Image removed by sender.ᐧ

Image removed by sender.ᐧ



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-01-25 22:31, Clem Cole wrote:



On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:14 PM, Larry Baker > wrote:


Because UNIX tapes and tape driverscannot write variable-length
blocks and do not allow skipping forward over records between read
operations


​That's not a correct statement.   UNIX does it great - I've used it 
(and rmt) for years.  UNIX's tape driver is the most flexible of any OS 
I have ever used (and I have done tapes on probably greater than 25 
different OS's over the last 40 years).  That's why I suggest it.  I 
wonder what the issue for VMS is?


Agreed. Unix have no problems with skips or variable length records. But 
it does require that you use the raw device (however, no sane person 
would ever use the block tape device, that is something completely 
useless in Unix).


Hmm.. thinking about it, TCP sockets will remove the record orientation 
(TCP creates an stream of octets without any records), so if you are 
doing the funky RMS like stuff, its TCP that dropping those boundaries 
not the UNIX tape driver.   If you want same then it need to be set as 
meta-data.  But the UNIX tape drive works as expected.   The 'block' 
size is the size of the write, although I think the TM11 requires a 
minimum of 512 bytes.   Records passed with the MTIO ioctl' which mt/rmt 
all support..


This is obviously a limitation of the rmt protocol, which makes the 
assumption that all records are of equal length. Works for the standard 
Unix tools, which also tend to want to use tapes with a fixed record length.


I thought that maybe rmt did preserve record length information, but 
thinking about it I can't actually remember that it did. But in case rmt 
do handle variable length records, then it should work. Whatever VMS 
does involving RMS and so on, is irrelevant. When the data hits the tape 
there is only variable length records and nothing else to it.


And no, TM11 controllers do not have a minimum length of 512 bytes.

That said,  I agree if he can get DECnet to work, that is likely to 
better integrated into the utilities.


I'd dump the tapes to local files using some tape copy program. Then I 
can transfer those files around using DECnet or TCP/IP, or whatever, and 
then write them out on simulated tape on whatever other VMS system he has.


Johnny

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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tony Nicholson]

Definitely BASIC-Plus on RSTS!  You may need to replace the “&” with
“PRINT” in some of the files.

Tony

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 at 11:00, Clem Cole  wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
>
>>  if this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC had at some
>> point.
>>
>
> ​I think this is the Tops-10 BASIC dialect ​
> ᐧ
>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

>  if this might be from some other BASIC dialect that DEC had at some point.
>

​I think this is the Tops-10 BASIC dialect ​
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

The old netnews copytape program from the 80s did the same thing.  Somebody
has a GitHub version of it: https://github.com/halfmanhalftaco/copytape


ᐧ

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:47 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

> Zane - unless I remember wrong, there is a tool from DECUS to copy tapes
> to a file image, and then get that back to a tape again. The RSX version is
> called TPC, and I'm pretty sure it also exists for VMS.
>
> Using that, pull your physical tapes into files, copy the files over to
> the simulated machines, and write them back out to simulated tapes there.
>
>   Johnny
>
> On 2018-01-25 16:17, Zane Healy wrote:
>
>> Just to be clear, I’m looking to backup a physical machine, to a virtual
>> tape drive, such that I can restore the data to either SIMH or a Physical
>> machine.  I don’t need to extract files.  I can extract files (and I have
>> with some of the most critical) via NFS to my Mac.
>>
>> Except for legacy hardware, most tapes I dealt with in the 90’s were in
>> the 20-40GB range.  Current tapes now are multi-Terabyte, but not something
>> most of us can afford to have at home, which is why I’m looking to go this
>> route.
>>
>> Zane
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 5:39 AM, Tim Shoppa > tsho...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> A couple of the tape image utilities I wrote or updated in the 1990s
>>> have that limit. Let me see if they are still in the SIMH utility tree.
>>> They never would’ve bitten me back in the 90s because the biggest reels I
>>> ever dealt with were 3600 feet at 6250 BPI, less than 250 Mbytes.
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
>>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 8:23 AM, Johnny Billquist > b...@softjar.se>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hmm. None of the tools I wrote ever had that limit. They just process
 records and don't give a damn about absolute disk or tape position.

 Johnny


 Tim Shoppa > skrev: (25
 januari 2018 00:53:34 CET)

 Many common tape image tools as of two decades use 32-bit
 integers to carry offsets around and will be limited to 4Gigabyte
 tape image sizes.

 I don't think this is a fundamental limit to the tape image
 formats used by SIMH, just a common limitation of the tape image
 tools you might find from 20 years ago.

 Tim.

 On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:02 PM, Zane Healy > wrote:

 What type/size of tapes does the VAX emulation support?  I
 was looking through the doc’s and it wasn’t obvious to me.
Is there a size limit?

 Thanks,
 Zane



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>
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Johnny Billquist]

Cool. Thanks. Downloaded and unpacket.
Anyone interested and on HECnet can now find them on MIM::DU:[101GAMES]

Looked a little at one or two files. BASIC+2 do not like them. The code 
uses special shorts, functions and specifics that don't match.
I wonder if BASIC+ accepts them either, or if this might be from some 
other BASIC dialect that DEC had at some point.


If I have plenty of time at some point, I might sit down and write a 
converter for them to BASIC+2 style.


  Johnny

On 2018-01-25 20:39, Tony Nicholson wrote:
On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:18 AM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:


Since the disk pack contains basic sorces, this could also probably
be used on rsx systems, but then we need a different file system.
Care to create a disk in rt11 format, since that is pretty much the
common file system that all oses have tools to read/write?


An RT-11 format RL01 with the 56 files from the DECtape is in a zip file at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hXBmOUL_dNQaYP6qH9vQ8VVe0KrLoNut/view?usp=sharing

When trying it on other systems be aware that in some of the BASIC-Plus 
source files there are continuation lines prefixed by  line 
endings (normal lines have ).


Also (in case you're wondering) there are only 56 files - since this was 
the maximum number of files that would fit on a DOS-11 format DECtape.


Was there a second DECtape with the remaining games from the book?  If 
not, one of these days when i get a round tuit - I should type them in!


Have fun!

Tony


Johnny


Tony Nicholson > skrev: (24 januari 2018
21:23:21 CET)

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:17 AM, Bryan.e.davies
> wrote:

Ok thanks for the verification. I'll download and unzip again.

Attached pic is the PDP emulator on the VT100 at CCH.


Sorry about the mix-up with RSTS disk formats.  I knew it was
different for older versions.

I've just made a RSTS level 0.0 format RL01 disk image so you
can use this on older versions of RSTS/E (verified and written
using RSTS/E V7.0-07). You can get a zip file containing this at


https://drive.google.com/file/d/15iRczp1kYITHuH6zYNImtZgtguw_g66V/view?usp=sharing



and I also added it (rl01-games-rsts0-0.dsk) to the original zip
file that I shared.

If anyone needs this on an RK05 image to run under older
versions of RSTS/E (like V4B or V06C) - e-mail me privately (or
use the DECtape image which I know also works)!

And to Mark Abene - yes I think the book from bitsavers was an
early version of the book by Dave Ahl - before he left DEC to
start Creative Computing magazine.

Tony


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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:57 PM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:

> I think the documentation comment “cannot write variable-length blocks
> and do not allow skipping forward over records between read operations”
> was written when talking about the common cartridge tapes that were
> available on 80s and 90s Unix workstations.  I don’t recall the name.
>
That was not UNIX, that was the QIC standard.   Yes, those were blocked at
512 bytes.   Apollo's domain systems had a b*tch of time with them because
their standard disk block was 1056 bytes​



>   These things only supported fixed block size operations and not variable
> record lengths (i.e. 80 byte tape labels, then different sized data
> records, etc.).
>
​Right the 80 byte ANSI label, then different length data records.  UNIX
handles that fine, even with RMT.​  FYI: My grad school housemate, Tom
Quarles (of SPICE3 fame) wrote the ANSI tape and bunch of
other tape support that most UNIX systems used, explicitly so he could
read/write VMS tapes for the DEC guys who were doing some of the funding of
the USB CAD lab.   Leffler (who wrote rmt) used Tom's tape stuff for the
original debug of rmt.




>   Given that the remote tape drive was a drive which could do variable
> length record activities, I think MultiNet’s rmt support actually worked
> well.  I don’t remember testing it though.  Whether someone should try to
> do that now to backup simulated VMS systems is another subject I may write
> about a little later.
>

​Understood.   I was just suggest​ing trying to keep another emulated
system out of the scheme and going directly to the remote device either
through DECnet or rmt or maybe even using a NAS as virtual tape files.   It
just seemed running a Linux with a tape and then running an emulated VAX on
top of that seemed like an extra layer of indirection if there was an
easier path.


​
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Armistead, Jason]

Zane

The program that Johnny is thinking of is VMSPTC

http://www.digiater.nl/openvms/decus/vax86a/bnelson/vmstpc/vmstpc.c

Note sure if this is the latest, but it came up in the first set of Google 
search results for "VMSTPC"

Good luck
Jason


-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
Sent: Thursday, 25 January 2018 5:48 PM
To: Zane Healy; Tim Shoppa
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

Zane - unless I remember wrong, there is a tool from DECUS to copy tapes to a 
file image, and then get that back to a tape again. The RSX version is called 
TPC, and I'm pretty sure it also exists for VMS.

Using that, pull your physical tapes into files, copy the files over to the 
simulated machines, and write them back out to simulated tapes there.

   Johnny

On 2018-01-25 16:17, Zane Healy wrote:
> Just to be clear, I’m looking to backup a physical machine, to a 
> virtual tape drive, such that I can restore the data to either SIMH or 
> a Physical machine.  I don’t need to extract files.  I can extract 
> files (and I have with some of the most critical) via NFS to my Mac.
> 
> Except for legacy hardware, most tapes I dealt with in the 90’s were 
> in the 20-40GB range.  Current tapes now are multi-Terabyte, but not 
> something most of us can afford to have at home, which is why I’m 
> looking to go this route.
> 
> Zane
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 5:39 AM, Tim Shoppa > > wrote:
>>
>> A couple of the tape image utilities I wrote or updated in the 1990s 
>> have that limit. Let me see if they are still in the SIMH utility 
>> tree. They never would’ve bitten me back in the 90s because the 
>> biggest reels I ever dealt with were 3600 feet at 6250 BPI, less than
>> 250 Mbytes.
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 8:23 AM, Johnny Billquist > > wrote:
>>
>>> Hmm. None of the tools I wrote ever had that limit. They just 
>>> process records and don't give a damn about absolute disk or tape position.
>>>
>>> Johnny
>>>
>>>
>>> Tim Shoppa > skrev: (25 
>>> januari 2018 00:53:34 CET)
>>>
>>> Many common tape image tools as of two decades use 32-bit
>>> integers to carry offsets around and will be limited to 4Gigabyte
>>> tape image sizes.
>>>
>>> I don't think this is a fundamental limit to the tape image
>>> formats used by SIMH, just a common limitation of the tape image
>>> tools you might find from 20 years ago.
>>>
>>> Tim.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:02 PM, Zane Healy >> > wrote:
>>>
>>> What type/size of tapes does the VAX emulation support?  I
>>> was looking through the doc’s and it wasn’t obvious to me. 
>>> Is there a size limit?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Zane
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ___
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>>>  
>>> 
>>> >> g-2Dedge.com_mailman_listinfo_simh=DwIGaQ=ilBQI1lupc9Y65XwNblLtw
>>> =CeQuuq99aEH_1RE1yGnGXY4AbMg6_1cjkYeJjaT-sd4=Tuv134HGgnWc1vxno4w
>>> peUgonHLScwAzyLK3tGM--Wo=KG58MZsCGTQPkaifTTlluf-_bo-FOhuQ7JJUEBB3H
>>> vk= >


-- 
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   ||  on a psychedelic trip
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Johnny Billquist]

Zane - unless I remember wrong, there is a tool from DECUS to copy tapes 
to a file image, and then get that back to a tape again. The RSX version 
is called TPC, and I'm pretty sure it also exists for VMS.


Using that, pull your physical tapes into files, copy the files over to 
the simulated machines, and write them back out to simulated tapes there.


  Johnny

On 2018-01-25 16:17, Zane Healy wrote:
Just to be clear, I’m looking to backup a physical machine, to a virtual 
tape drive, such that I can restore the data to either SIMH or a 
Physical machine.  I don’t need to extract files.  I can extract files 
(and I have with some of the most critical) via NFS to my Mac.


Except for legacy hardware, most tapes I dealt with in the 90’s were in 
the 20-40GB range.  Current tapes now are multi-Terabyte, but not 
something most of us can afford to have at home, which is why I’m 
looking to go this route.


Zane




On Jan 25, 2018, at 5:39 AM, Tim Shoppa > wrote:


A couple of the tape image utilities I wrote or updated in the 1990s 
have that limit. Let me see if they are still in the SIMH utility 
tree. They never would’ve bitten me back in the 90s because the 
biggest reels I ever dealt with were 3600 feet at 6250 BPI, less than 
250 Mbytes.


Tim

On Jan 25, 2018, at 8:23 AM, Johnny Billquist > wrote:


Hmm. None of the tools I wrote ever had that limit. They just process 
records and don't give a damn about absolute disk or tape position.


Johnny


Tim Shoppa > skrev: (25 
januari 2018 00:53:34 CET)


Many common tape image tools as of two decades use 32-bit
integers to carry offsets around and will be limited to 4Gigabyte
tape image sizes.

I don't think this is a fundamental limit to the tape image
formats used by SIMH, just a common limitation of the tape image
tools you might find from 20 years ago.

Tim.

On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:02 PM, Zane Healy > wrote:

What type/size of tapes does the VAX emulation support?  I
was looking through the doc’s and it wasn’t obvious to me. 
Is there a size limit?


Thanks,
Zane



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  ||  on a psychedelic trip
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Mark Pizzolato]

On Thursday, January 25, 2018 at 2:22 PM, Dennis Boone wrote:
>  > At one point, I remember that some VMS folks in ZK3 (CJ Coppersmith  
>  > seems to stick in my head by I do not remember) were messing we  
>  > putting a the UCB sockets library into VMS and were somebody ported  
>  > the Berkeley rcmd(3) suite on VMS from Tru64.
> 
> If you're venturing into unix technology, it's possible to mount nfs shares on
> the VMS machines.  Then you can use BACKUP to write save sets onto the nfs
> share.  There seems to be some care needed with ADF metadata.  Multinet
> seems to write this to a hidden file or subdirectory; not sure what UCX/TCPIP
> do.

I don't know where/how this discussion got steered into using rmt and/or other
IP based ideas (nfs) to access the simh tape drives, but if all of the involved 
systems
(simh VAX and the physical Alpha) are in a VMS Cluster, then the simulated VAX
Tape drives can be accessible cluster wide and they should just work as if they
were local devices.

- Mark
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Dennis Boone]

 > At one point, I remember that some VMS folks in ZK3 (CJ Coppersmith
 > seems to stick in my head by I do not remember) were messing we
 > putting a the UCB sockets library into VMS and were somebody ported
 > the Berkeley rcmd(3) suite on VMS from Tru64.

If you're venturing into unix technology, it's possible to mount nfs
shares on the VMS machines.  Then you can use BACKUP to write save sets
onto the nfs share.  There seems to be some care needed with ADF
metadata.  Multinet seems to write this to a hidden file or
subdirectory; not sure what UCX/TCPIP do.

De
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Dennis Boone]

 > I think the documentation comment "cannot write variable-length
 > blocks and do not allow skipping forward over records between read
 > operations" was written when talking about the common cartridge tapes
 > that were available on 80s and 90s Unix workstations.  I don't recall
 > the name.  These things only supported fixed block size operations
 > and not variable record lengths (i.e. 80 byte tape labels, then
 > different sized data records, etc.).

Various QIC-defined formats.  Block size usually 512, though a few
computer companies apparently stuffed custom firmware into the drives to
get other block sizes.  (AS/400 did this, I think, and I've read that
some Prime machines did it, though the 50-Series tapes I've read have
been standard 512 blocks, with a controller-applied logical block
spanning scheme so the drive looked more like 9-track.)

De
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Mark Pizzolato]

I think the documentation comment “cannot write variable-length blocks and do 
not allow skipping forward over records between read operations” was written 
when talking about the common cartridge tapes that were available on 80s and 
90s Unix workstations.  I don’t recall the name.   These things only supported 
fixed block size operations and not variable record lengths (i.e. 80 byte tape 
labels, then different sized data records, etc.).  Given that the remote tape 
drive was a drive which could do variable length record activities, I think 
MultiNet’s rmt support actually worked well.  I don’t remember testing it 
though.  Whether someone should try to do that now to backup simulated VMS 
systems is another subject I may write about a little later.

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Clem Cole
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 1:31 PM
To: Larry Baker ; SIMH 
Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?



On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:14 PM, Larry Baker 
> wrote:
Because UNIX tapes and tape drivers cannot write variable-length blocks and do 
not allow skipping forward over records between read operations

​That's not a correct statement.   UNIX does it great - I've used it (and rmt) 
for years.  UNIX's tape driver is the most flexible of any OS I have ever used 
(and I have done tapes on probably greater than 25 different OS's over the last 
40 years).  That's why I suggest it.  I wonder what the issue for VMS is?

Hmm.. thinking about it, TCP sockets will remove the record orientation (TCP 
creates an stream of octets without any records), so if you are doing the funky 
RMS like stuff, its TCP that dropping those boundaries not the UNIX tape 
driver.   If you want same then it need to be set as meta-data.  But the UNIX 
tape drive works as expected.   The 'block' size is the size of the write, 
although I think the TM11 requires a minimum of 512 bytes.   Records passed 
with the MTIO ioctl' which mt/rmt all support..

That said,  I agree if he can get DECnet to work, that is likely to better 
integrated into the utilities.

Clem

​
[cid:~WRD161.jpg]ᐧ
[cid:~WRD161.jpg]ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Larry Baker]

I agree completely.  DECnet is your friend.  On VMS, it works right out of the 
box.  I have never had a need to try rmt.  As I mentioned in an earlier email, 
I have built a DECnet FAL-to-NFS gateway using DECnet-Linux.  It works great 
for storing Backup Save Sets on an NFS file server.  Once there, they can be 
compressed with gzip to save space for long-term archive.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> On 25 Jan 2018, at 1:31:25 PM, Clem Cole  wrote:
> 
> That said,  I agree if he can get DECnet to work, that is likely to better 
> integrated into the utilities.
> 



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:14 PM, Larry Baker  wrote:

> Because UNIX tapes and tape drivers cannot write variable-length blocks
> and do not allow skipping forward over records between read operations
>

​That's not a correct statement.   UNIX does it great - I've used it (and
rmt) for years.  UNIX's tape driver is the most flexible of any OS I have
ever used (and I have done tapes on probably greater than 25 different OS's
over the last 40 years).  That's why I suggest it.  I wonder what the issue
for VMS is?

Hmm.. thinking about it, TCP sockets will remove the record orientation
(TCP creates an stream of octets without any records), so if you are doing
the funky RMS like stuff, its TCP that dropping those boundaries not the
UNIX tape driver.   If you want same then it need to be set as meta-data.
But the UNIX tape drive works as expected.   The 'block' size is the size
of the write, although I think the TM11 requires a minimum of 512 bytes.
Records passed with the MTIO ioctl' which mt/rmt all support..

That said,  I agree if he can get DECnet to work, that is likely to better
integrated into the utilities.

Clem

​
ᐧ
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Larry Baker]

The answer is: the rmt protocol is not sufficient to support Backup.  From the 
Multinet Installation and Administrator's Guide 
(http://www.process.com/docs/multinet5_5/install_admin.pdf):

About the RMT Client

The RMT client MULTINET RMTALLOC is used for accessing tape or CD-ROM drives on 
remote hosts over TCP (using RSHELL). If restrictions apply where RSHELL does 
not work, or if RSHELL outputs spurious login messages or greetings, RMTALLOC 
does not work. RMTALLOC depends on an RMT server to function properly. RMTALLOC 
creates a pseudo device that appears as an OpenVMS physical device to the 
OpenVMS BACKUP, COPY, and other utilities. The pseudo device is named RMTx:, x 
is the unit number. The actual tape or CD-ROM drive can be on another MultiNet 
OpenVMS system or on any host running the RMT server, such as those running the 
BSD or SunOS UNIX operating system.

For CD-ROM, RMTALLOC treats the drive as a file system, which speeds file 
access.

There are some limits to the types of tape devices you can access on other 
operating systems and the amount of control available. Because UNIX tapes and 
tape drivers cannot write variable-length blocks and do not allow skipping 
forward over records between read operations, they cannot be used with OpenVMS 
BACKUP or COPY commands. 

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> On 25 Jan 2018, at 12:57:46 PM, Clem Cole  wrote:
> 
> The question is do the standard tape utilities know how to exploit it -- i.e. 
> the moral equiv of the UNIX sequence:  cmd -f - | rmt host
> 
> I thought CJ and Co had some way to make that work in mid 90's versions of 
> VMS but I've forgotten the details (many beers ago).
> 
> 
> ᐧ
> 
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 3:11 PM, Tony Nicholson  
> wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 at 07:00, Larry Baker  wrote:
> Clem,
> 
> MultiNet included rmt support.  I do not know which versions included it or 
> whether MultiNet has a Hobbyist License.
> 
> 
> Process Software’s Multinet  and PMDF for OpenVMS have had hobbyist licenses 
> for a long time now. All you need to do is apply and provide an LMF checksum 
> value from your hobbyist licence - see the link from the OpenVMS Resources 
> page at
> 
> http://www.process.com/psc/resources/openvms-resource-center/
> 
> Tony
> -- 
> Tony Nicholson 
> 



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

The question is do the standard tape utilities know how to exploit it --
i.e. the moral equiv of the UNIX sequence:  cmd -f - | rmt host

I thought CJ and Co had some way to make that work in mid 90's versions of
VMS but I've forgotten the details (many beers ago).


ᐧ

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 3:11 PM, Tony Nicholson  wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 at 07:00, Larry Baker  wrote:
>
>> Clem,
>>
>> MultiNet included rmt support.  I do not know which versions included it
>> or whether MultiNet has a Hobbyist License.
>>
>
>
> Process Software’s Multinet  and PMDF for OpenVMS have had hobbyist
> licenses for a long time now. All you need to do is apply and provide an
> LMF checksum value from your hobbyist licence - see the link from the
> OpenVMS Resources page at
>
> http://www.process.com/psc/resources/openvms-resource-center/
>
> Tony
> --
> Tony Nicholson 
>
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Tony Nicholson]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 at 07:00, Larry Baker  wrote:

> Clem,
>
> MultiNet included rmt support.  I do not know which versions included it
> or whether MultiNet has a Hobbyist License.
>


Process Software’s Multinet  and PMDF for OpenVMS have had hobbyist
licenses for a long time now. All you need to do is apply and provide an
LMF checksum value from your hobbyist licence - see the link from the
OpenVMS Resources page at

http://www.process.com/psc/resources/openvms-resource-center/

Tony
-- 
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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 168, Issue 26

[Larry Baker]

Zane,

Now you lost me.  You initially said you wanted to backup SIMH VAXes.  If you 
want to do the backup to a virtual tape drive from a real VAX, you'll need 
something like MultiNet, and something on the other end that speaks the rmt 
protocol.  If you want to do a backup to something over the network, DECnet is 
your friend.  You can (and, I do) run SIMH VAXes on your Mac with huge virtual 
disk drives attached.  Your physical VAXes can boot into Standalone Backup and 
you can send the Backup Save Sets over DECnet to the SIMH VAX on your Mac.  If 
your physical VMS machine is an Alpha, as I recall, Alpha VMS did not support 
the same bootable Standalone Backup method as VAX VMS.  That is, you could not 
create a bootable SYSE directory tree on your boot disk.  However, the bootable 
Alpha VMS install disks let you drop into a console session where you could do 
that.  That means you have to have one of those bootable install disks and a 
CD-ROM reader on your physical Alpha.

Unless you are looking for the experience of dealing with tape drives, I think 
the DECnet remote file access method is easier and more useful.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> On 25 Jan 2018, at 7:57:30 AM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2018 07:17:38 -0800
> From: Zane Healy >
> To: Tim Shoppa >
> Cc: Johnny Billquist >, 
> simh@trailing-edge.com 
> Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?
> Message-ID: <4fd85e5b-8005-4758-a94d-9af76806d...@avanthar.com 
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Just to be clear, I’m looking to backup a physical machine, to a virtual tape 
> drive, such that I can restore the data to either SIMH or a Physical machine. 
>  I don’t need to extract files.  I can extract files (and I have with some of 
> the most critical) via NFS to my Mac.  
> 
> Except for legacy hardware, most tapes I dealt with in the 90’s were in the 
> 20-40GB range.  Current tapes now are multi-Terabyte, but not something most 
> of us can afford to have at home, which is why I’m looking to go this route.
> 
> Zane



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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VAX Tape Emulation?

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

You are not alone. I thought that myself the first time I saw it in GitHub.   
;-)
Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Zane Healy
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 2:46 PM
To: Paul Koning 
Cc: simh ; Mark Pizzolato 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

>> 
>> As far as I can tell, the GITHUB repository lacks such files.
>> https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/
> 
> No, it's right there.  Remember that Github displays are case sensitive, so 
> all the machine directories (being upper case, apart from "alpha") come 
> first, then the lowercase ones such as "doc".  

I’m laughing at myself.  Not sure about 3.9, as I’m not at that computer, but 
just checked GitHub.  I saw the doc directory and mistakenly thought it was 
HP3000 specific.  I should have clicked on it and checked.

Thanks!
Zane


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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

>> 
>> As far as I can tell, the GITHUB repository lacks such files.
>> https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/
> 
> No, it's right there.  Remember that Github displays are case sensitive, so 
> all the machine directories (being upper case, apart from "alpha") come 
> first, then the lowercase ones such as "doc".  

I’m laughing at myself.  Not sure about 3.9, as I’m not at that computer, but 
just checked GitHub.  I saw the doc directory and mistakenly thought it was 
HP3000 specific.  I should have clicked on it and checked.

Thanks!
Zane


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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Tony Nicholson]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:18 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

> Since the disk pack contains basic sorces, this could also probably be
> used on rsx systems, but then we need a different file system. Care to
> create a disk in rt11 format, since that is pretty much the common file
> system that all oses have tools to read/write?
>

An RT-11 format RL01 with the 56 files from the DECtape is in a zip file at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hXBmOUL_dNQaYP6qH9vQ8VVe0KrLoNut/view?usp=sharing

When trying it on other systems be aware that in some of the BASIC-Plus
source files there are continuation lines prefixed by  line endings
(normal lines have ).

Also (in case you're wondering) there are only 56 files - since this was
the maximum number of files that would fit on a DOS-11 format DECtape.

Was there a second DECtape with the remaining games from the book?  If not,
one of these days when i get a round tuit - I should type them in!

Have fun!

Tony


>
>
>
Johnny
>
>
> Tony Nicholson  skrev: (24 januari 2018
> 21:23:21 CET)
>
>> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:17 AM, Bryan.e.davies > > wrote:
>>
>>> Ok thanks for the verification. I'll download and unzip again.
>>>
>>> Attached pic is the PDP emulator on the VT100 at CCH.
>>>
>>
>> Sorry about the mix-up with RSTS disk formats.  I knew it was different
>> for older versions.
>>
>> I've just made a RSTS level 0.0 format RL01 disk image so you can use
>> this on older versions of RSTS/E (verified and written using RSTS/E
>> V7.0-07).  You can get a zip file containing this at
>>
>> https://drive.google.com/file/d/15iRczp1kYITHuH6zYNImtZgtguw_
>> g66V/view?usp=sharing
>>
>> and I also added it (rl01-games-rsts0-0.dsk) to the original zip file
>> that I shared.
>>
>> If anyone needs this on an RK05 image to run under older versions of
>> RSTS/E (like V4B or V06C) - e-mail me privately (or use the DECtape image
>> which I know also works)!
>>
>> And to Mark Abene - yes I think the book from bitsavers was an early
>> version of the book by Dave Ahl - before he left DEC to start Creative
>> Computing magazine.
>>
>> Tony
>>
>>
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>



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Larry Baker]

Clem,

MultiNet included rmt support.  I do not know which versions included it or 
whether MultiNet has a Hobbyist License.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> On 25 Jan 2018, at 7:57:30 AM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2018 09:57:54 -0500
> From: Clem Cole >
> To: Zane Healy >
> Cc: Mark Pizzolato >, simh 
> >
> Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?
> Message-ID:
>   

Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Larry Baker]

Zane,

Your idea of connecting a second disk to your SIMH VAXes will work fine.  
Create a second SIMH hard drive for your VAX(es).  Initialize it on the VAX.  
Then boot Standalone Backup and make an image Backup Save Set on your second 
disk.  Or, make an image copy.  Then you'll have a second bootable disk.  Any 
VAX can boot into Standalone Backup.  You boot SYSE instead of SYS0 with the 
boot flags.  VMS comes with a command procedure to create the bootable 
Standalone Backup SYSE directory tree.  Or, just duplicate your SIMH disk image.

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> On 25 Jan 2018, at 6:28:14 AM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2018 17:33:26 -0800
> From: Zane Healy >
> To: Paul Koning >
> Cc: Mark Pizzolato >, simh 
> >
> Subject: Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?
> Message-ID: <2092bbd6-85aa-45f9-ab8b-83925b64a...@avanthar.com 
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> 
>> On Jan 24, 2018, at 2:17 PM, Paul Koning > > wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 24, 2018, at 5:07 PM, Mark Pizzolato >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 2:03 PM, Zane Healy wrote:
 What type/size of tapes does the VAX emulation support?  I was looking
 through the doc’s and it wasn’t obvious to me.  Is there a size limit?
>>> 
>>> How big is your disk?  :-)
>>> 
>>> Really, there is no actual limit on total tape size, since the data format 
>>> is 
>>> only concerned with tape records which are then processed sequentially.
>> 
>> Then again, SIMH supports limiting the emulated tape size.  The SIMH VAX 
>> document shows that it uses this feature: the tape units can be set to a 
>> specific size limit, or 0 for unlimited.  The same is true for various other 
>> emulations; I see the PDP11 has the same sort of thing, and for example its 
>> TMSCP controller defaults to 98 MB (TK50 size).
>> 
>>  paul
>> 
> 
> How do I set the tape size to 0?  I’d say that’s a stupid question, but I’ve 
> had very little luck finding documentation on the options.  Though I won’t 
> rule out that I might be blind. :-)
> 
> While looking for the answer to that, I may have found a better solution.  It 
> looks like I can create a 50GB disk.  If I can do that, I can move my Alpha 
> disks over to SIMH.  That would actually be my preference.  The two disks I’m 
> the most concerned with are ODS-2.  The other two are ODS-5, and I think 
> there are some filenames from OpenSource software that will have issues with 
> ODS-2, but I can selectively move the data I want backed up to an ODS-2 disk.
> 
> The joke is, my 50GB disk only has about 8GB of data on it, one of the 36GB 
> drives is the big one at about 26GB.
> 
> Zane
> 



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 10:50 AM, Zane Healy  wrote:
> 
> 
>> ...
> 
> Interesting.  I wonder if the documentation has gotten dropped somehow.  
> Either that or I’m still being blind.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the GITHUB repository lacks such files.
> https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/

No, it's right there.  Remember that Github displays are case sensitive, so all 
the machine directories (being upper case, apart from "alpha") come first, then 
the lowercase ones such as "doc".  

> ...
> I’m using the SIMH build on Ubuntu in a VM.  That appears to be v3.8-1, and 
> oddly enough you can do “man vax” which points you to where the doc’s are.  
> Here are some of the applicable looking ones.
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  34768 Mar  2  2007 simh_magtape.pdf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 188726 Feb  8  2009 simh.pdf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   3501 May 27  2008 vax780_bug_history.txt
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 107942 Feb  8  2009 vax780_doc.pdf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117234 Feb  8  2009 vax_doc.pdf
> 
> And there is the info I was after, in vax_doc.pdf. :-)
> 
> SET TS0 CAPAC=m

Then again, 3.8.1 is quite old.

> It looks like the TK50 emulation is limited to 2GB, so I don’t want to use 
> that.

That's rather confusing.  There's a controller setting that specifies the 
device type (which doesn't make much sense since device type is a unit 
property).  But there is still a unit capacity command that seems to override 
the device setting.

> Plus it has details on the large disk sizes using SET RQn RAUSER{=n} that I’d 
> found out about last night,

Yes, RAUSER is nice to make up virtual disks of arbitrary convenient size.

paul


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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 6:57 AM, Clem Cole  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:25 PM, Zane Healy  > wrote:
> 
>   I’d like to backup to a simulated tape drive on the one emulated VAX.  The 
> largest drive on my Alpha is 50GB.  I’d prefer not to have to span tapes. :-)
> ​Another thought...  what are you running the emulator on?  Is it a 
> UNIX/Linux flavor of some type?   I ask because there might be another 
> solution that could work a little better in practice, although you'll need to 
> pull together some pieces.  The problem is the bits in my brain WRT to 
> VMS are 20+ years old and I've forgotten the details so you'll have to do 
> some homework.
> 
> At one point, I remember that some VMS folks in ZK3 (CJ Coppersmith seems to 
> stick in my head by I do not remember) were messing we putting a the UCB 
> sockets library into VMS and were somebody ported the Berkeley rcmd(3) suite 
> on VMS from Tru64.   I'm not sure if how much of that library or which 
> commands ever saw the light of day in a production version of VMS.   But the 
> idea (then) was that a VMS system could use remote services (such as a tape) 
> via a socket.  The UNIX command is called rmt(8) (and of course mt(8) and 
> IIRC rmt(8) was originally based on the rcmd(3) calls from rsh/rcp et al.
> 
> So assuming VMS supports same, using mt(8)/rmt(8) is trival on a UNIX side.   
>   But more importantly for you is that on the UNIX side the remote 'device' 
> can be a UNIX file as easily as a physical tape if the 'source' side knows 
> about using a socket as the output 'device.'.  I've used this trick to back 
> up some older systems to modern devices these days (my Masscomp box for 
> instance).  The "tape files" are stored on my NAS which has redundant 
> physical disks etc...  In fact,  I've even recompiled mt/rmt for my Mac at 
> one point and I have it working on *BSD with modern tapes (just needed to 
> grab the mtio.h file from BSD).  

Interesting…  I wonder if this is an option in the latest versions of OpenVMS.  
I was already researching OpenSource VTL options.  The problem being a distinct 
lack of support for OpenVMS in any OpenSource backup software that I could find.

Zane



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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 6:28 AM, Paul Koning  wrote:
> 
> On Jan 24, 2018, at 8:33 PM, Zane Healy  wrote:
>> 
>> How do I set the tape size to 0?  I’d say that’s a stupid question, but I’ve 
>> had very little luck finding documentation on the options.  Though I won’t 
>> rule out that I might be blind. :-)
> 
> In the SIMH source tree there's a "doc" subdirectory with documents for SIMH 
> generally, and for each of the ports.  The available configuration commands 
> can be found in the specific port document, for example vax_doc.doc and 
> vax780_doc.doc.
> 
> The commands are defined per controller type, but it looks like the code uses 
> a consistent syntax:
> 
>   set  capac=0
> 
>paul

Interesting.  I wonder if the documentation has gotten dropped somehow.  Either 
that or I’m still being blind.

As far as I can tell, the GITHUB repository lacks such files.
https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/

The v3.9-0 source at Trailing-Edge does as well.
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/

The v3.0 source on the other hand has a vax_doc.txt under the VAX subdirectory.

I’m using the SIMH build on Ubuntu in a VM.  That appears to be v3.8-1, and 
oddly enough you can do “man vax” which points you to where the doc’s are.  
Here are some of the applicable looking ones.
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  34768 Mar  2  2007 simh_magtape.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 188726 Feb  8  2009 simh.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   3501 May 27  2008 vax780_bug_history.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 107942 Feb  8  2009 vax780_doc.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117234 Feb  8  2009 vax_doc.pdf

And there is the info I was after, in vax_doc.pdf. :-)

SET TS0 CAPAC=m

It looks like the TK50 emulation is limited to 2GB, so I don’t want to use that.

Plus it has details on the large disk sizes using SET RQn RAUSER{=n} that I’d 
found out about last night, and an RRD40 type that I was unaware of.

Next step, installing Linux on a Core i5 box I picked up for $75 recently to 
run SIMH.  If all this works, it will allow me to *significantly* cut my 
electricity bill, while keeping my VMS data online and accessible. :-) 

Zane




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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Zane Healy]

Just to be clear, I’m looking to backup a physical machine, to a virtual tape 
drive, such that I can restore the data to either SIMH or a Physical machine.  
I don’t need to extract files.  I can extract files (and I have with some of 
the most critical) via NFS to my Mac.  

Except for legacy hardware, most tapes I dealt with in the 90’s were in the 
20-40GB range.  Current tapes now are multi-Terabyte, but not something most of 
us can afford to have at home, which is why I’m looking to go this route.

Zane




> On Jan 25, 2018, at 5:39 AM, Tim Shoppa  wrote:
> 
> A couple of the tape image utilities I wrote or updated in the 1990s have 
> that limit. Let me see if they are still in the SIMH utility tree. They never 
> would’ve bitten me back in the 90s because the biggest reels I ever dealt 
> with were 3600 feet at 6250 BPI, less than 250 Mbytes.
> 
> Tim
> 
> On Jan 25, 2018, at 8:23 AM, Johnny Billquist  > wrote:
> 
>> Hmm. None of the tools I wrote ever had that limit. They just process 
>> records and don't give a damn about absolute disk or tape position.
>> 
>> Johnny 
>> 
>> 
>> Tim Shoppa > skrev: (25 januari 
>> 2018 00:53:34 CET)
>> Many common tape image tools as of two decades use 32-bit integers to carry 
>> offsets around and will be limited to 4Gigabyte tape image sizes.
>> 
>> I don't think this is a fundamental limit to the tape image formats used by 
>> SIMH, just a common limitation of the tape image tools you might find from 
>> 20 years ago.
>> 
>> Tim.
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:02 PM, Zane Healy > > wrote:
>> What type/size of tapes does the VAX emulation support?  I was looking 
>> through the doc’s and it wasn’t obvious to me.  Is there a size limit?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Zane
>> 
>> 
>> 
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Clem Cole]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:25 PM, Zane Healy  wrote:

>
>   I’d like to backup to a simulated tape drive on the one emulated VAX.
> The largest drive on my Alpha is 50GB.  I’d prefer not to have to span
> tapes. :-)

​Another thought...  what are you running the emulator on?  Is it a
UNIX/Linux flavor of some type?   I ask because there might be another
solution that could work a little better in practice, although you'll need
to pull together some pieces.  The problem is the bits in my brain WRT
to VMS are 20+ years old and I've forgotten the details so you'll have to
do some homework.

At one point, I remember that some VMS folks in ZK3 (CJ Coppersmith seems
to stick in my head by I do not remember) were messing we putting a the UCB
sockets library into VMS and were somebody ported the Berkeley rcmd(3)
suite on VMS from Tru64.   I'm not sure if how much of that library or
which commands ever saw the light of day in a production version of VMS.
But the idea (then) was that a VMS system could use remote services (such
as a tape) via a socket.  The UNIX command is called rmt(8) (and of course
mt(8) and IIRC rmt(8) was originally based on the rcmd(3) calls from
rsh/rcp et al.

So assuming VMS supports same, using mt(8)/rmt(8) is trival on a UNIX side.
But more importantly for you is that on the UNIX side the remote
'device' can be a UNIX file as easily as a physical tape if the 'source'
side knows about using a socket as the output 'device.'.  I've used this
trick to back up some older systems to modern devices these days (my
Masscomp box for instance).  The "tape files" are stored on my NAS which
has redundant physical disks etc...  In fact,  I've even recompiled mt/rmt
for my Mac at one point and I have it working on *BSD with modern tapes
(just needed to grab the mtio.h file from BSD).
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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Paul Koning]

On Jan 24, 2018, at 8:33 PM, Zane Healy  wrote:
> 
> How do I set the tape size to 0?  I’d say that’s a stupid question, but I’ve 
> had very little luck finding documentation on the options.  Though I won’t 
> rule out that I might be blind. :-)

In the SIMH source tree there's a "doc" subdirectory with documents for SIMH 
generally, and for each of the ports.  The available configuration commands can 
be found in the specific port document, for example vax_doc.doc and 
vax780_doc.doc.

The commands are defined per controller type, but it looks like the code uses a 
consistent syntax:

set  capac=0

paul

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Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

[Johnny Billquist]

Hmm. None of the tools I wrote ever had that limit. They just process records 
and don't give a damn about absolute disk or tape position.

  Johnny 


Tim Shoppa  skrev: (25 januari 2018 00:53:34 CET)
>Many common tape image tools as of two decades use 32-bit integers to
>carry
>offsets around and will be limited to 4Gigabyte tape image sizes.
>
>I don't think this is a fundamental limit to the tape image formats
>used by
>SIMH, just a common limitation of the tape image tools you might find
>from
>20 years ago.
>
>Tim.
>
>On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 5:02 PM, Zane Healy 
>wrote:
>
>> What type/size of tapes does the VAX emulation support?  I was
>looking
>> through the doc’s and it wasn’t obvious to me.  Is there a size
>limit?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Zane
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
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