Re: [Simh] pdp11 - console input with high bit set

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Johnny Billquist 
> Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2020 00:58:08 +0200

> I would have to disagree with that. All older PDP-8 software is 
> definitely using MARK parity, not EVEN. Both on input and output. 
> (Sortof annoying if you aren't expecting it.)

> The ASR33, as configured by DEC, was normally also set up with MARK 
> parity, which is probably the reason all software expected it.

> Actually, older PDP-11 software is also expecting MARK parity. Lots of 
> the older diagnostics, for example.

> I wouldn't know about older PDP-10 software, but it would be a little 
> surprising if they did things differently than PDP-8 and PDP-11.

Hi, Johnny,

On the PDP-10, the rule was "Be strict in what you send, and generous in what
you accept." The standard was to send 7E1, and anything which could be made
7-bit on input was good (so 8N1 was popular).

    Rich

Rich Alderson
ex LCM+L
s...@alderson.users.panix.com
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Re: [Simh] Release of PDP10 KA/KI and PDP6 simulators.

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Zane Healy 
> Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 17:23:28 -0700

>> On Jul 10, 2019, at 4:29 AM, Richard Cornwell  wrote:

>> I am pleased to announce a new set of simulators for the PDP10 series of
>> computers by DEC. The simulators currently run the PDP6, KA10 and KI10. I
>> will be adding the KL10 later. The KA10 and KI10 simulators will run Tops 10
>> up to version 6.03. KA10 will run ITS and includes support for many of the
>> custom devices and networking. The KA10 also will run various versions of
>> WAITS (including those that use the BBN pager).

> Congratulations!  This is exciting news!  I’ll update my DEC emulation
> website as soon as I can.  My thanks to all involved for their efforts.  I’m
> particularly interested in the possibility of running WAITS.

I would just like to point out that WAITS has been running on a KL-10 at LCM+L
for several years, after I spent about 4 years on various parts of getting the
OS onto a disk, creating a system for turning Bruce and Martin's blob files
into DART tape images, and loading files onto the disks.

I discovered by accident that WAITS will run just fine under the KLH10 version
of the KL-10, since it will run with RSX-20F as well as KLDCP, depending on
the start address.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] PDP-6 and KA10 software kits

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Tue, 7 May 2019 00:06:29 -0400
> From: Richard Cornwell 
> 
> On Mon,  6 May 2019 23:52:00 -0400 (EDT)
> Rich Alderson  wrote:

>> WAITS never ran on a bare KA-10.  The PDP-6/KA-10, later the
>> PDP-6/KA-10/KL-10, then the KA-10/KL-10, and finally the bare KL-10,
>> were the SAIL WAITS systems. WAITS also ran on the Foonly F-1 at
>> CCRMA and a KL-10 at LLNL.

>   Define what you mean by bare KA-10. From what I can see early WAITS
>   ran on a KA10 with a custom IBM3330 disk interface. There appears to
>   be one version that ran on the KA10 that used the BBN pager. Note
>   Bruce's Javascript PDP10 appears to emulate a pretty standard KA10.

The KA-10 was always connected to the PDP-6 via shared memory as long as the
PDP-6 was in use (until the KA-10 and KL-10 were moved from the D. C. Power Lab
to Margaret Jacks Hall on the main quad).  In the sources, references to
processor P2 mean the PDP-6, until it was demoted to P3 and the KA became P2,
as the KL became the primary processor.

Yes, the KA-10 used the BBN pager.  We have it in Seattle.

The disk controller is irrelevant to which CPU(s) were in use.

>> (Having spent 4 years getting WAITS onto a KL-10 at the museum,
>> reading the source from top to bottom, I am quite confident of this
>> statement.)

>   If you can get me a copy of WAITS for KA10 I will give it a try.

Any pre-1974 WAITS.DMP will be KA/PDP-6 only.  Pick up the blob file, convert
the octal dump to binary, and you're good to go.

>> TENEX requires the BBN pager on the KA-10.

>BBN pager support is in my simulator however it is not tested. I
>have been unable to get TENEX to link, and don't think I have enough
>pieces to actually build the thing.

>Right now I have Tops 10 6.03 for both KA and KI (with VM), Tops
>5.03 for KA. I should have a pretty complete 4.5/4.72 soon. Along
>with a functional TSExec 1.4. Possibly also 3.19.

>Once I get the PDP6 mods done I plan on adding the WAITS PMP disk
>controller.

That will be fun.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] PDP-6 and KA10 software kits

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Zane Healy 
> Date: Sun, 5 May 2019 09:10:32 -0700

> The PDP-6 list sounds good, is there any other software still available?  For
> the KA10, TENEX and WAITS would be the most interesting.

WAITS never ran on a bare KA-10.  The PDP-6/KA-10, later the PDP-6/KA-10/KL-10,
then the KA-10/KL-10, and finally the bare KL-10, were the SAIL WAITS systems.
WAITS also ran on the Foonly F-1 at CCRMA and a KL-10 at LLNL.

(Having spent 4 years getting WAITS onto a KL-10 at the museum, reading the
 source from top to bottom, I am quite confident of this statement.)

TENEX requires the BBN pager on the KA-10.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] TMXR/UC15 documentation?

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Johnny Billquist 
> Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2018 01:23:37 +0200

> On 2018-07-17 14:01, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:

>> The ITS restoration team is getting ready to hook up eight (simulated)
>> Unibuses to a (SIMH) PDP-10.  The MIT AI KA10 machine really did this,
>> and we want some of the applications that used these capabilities.

> Really? The KA10 itself predates the Unibus. I guess it's possible they 
> added the ability to hook up Unibuses later in the life of the machine, 
> but the KI would have been around at that point as well, so a bit 
> surprising that they'd do anything with the KA at that point.

> Or was this perhaps a hack outside of DEC?

This was done at the MIT AI Lab, which had a KA-10 which they modified heavily
and ran until c. 1982.  The KI-10 was less forgiving of the kinds of hackery in
which they indulged, so would not have been as interesting a machine.

Rich
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[Simh] ^E as console escape [was Re: DZ issues on PDP10]

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Mark Pizzolato <m...@infocomm.com>
> Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2018 13:01:41 -0700

> On Saturday, April 14, 2018 at 7:34 AM, Quentin North wrote:

>> There has been quite a bit of chat about the DZ handler recently, so I just
>> wanted to share an issue that I have found whilst using a DZ mux on pdp10.
>> When I have more than one terminal connected, intermittently i/o on one
>> terminal stop until there is i/o on another terminal (usually me pressing
>> return). I haven't identified any cause but if I experience it again is
>> there any diagnostics I can do to help pin it down?

> First, please use the latest github code.
> Second, if you see something like that, use CTRL-E and SHOW MUX to help
  ^^
> understand what's happening.  If you see a problem please create an issue
> at https://github.com/simh/simh/issues.

Just an aside here regarding the Bob's choice of ^E as the console escape
character.  Because this character is used as the start of privileged commands
in TOPS-20, as well as being an import part of the EMACS command set, I have
always (as in, for more than 15 years now) included the following line in any
PDP-10 initialization script, to change the console escape for ^\ (the expected
character on the KS-10 and KL-10 front end processors):

  d wru 034

I suggest that anyone experimenting with the PDP-10 make that same change.

    Rich

Rich Alderson, Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

http://www.LivingComputers.org/
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Re: [Simh] Configuration limitations

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Johnny Billquist 
> Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2018 02:24:41 +0200

> On 2018-04-12 23:49, Bob Supnik wrote:

>> Enforcing configuration restrictions (for example, no mixing of disks 
>> and tapes on the same channel) is yet more work.

> Uh... Which should not be done to start with. From a hardware point of 
> view it is perfectly legal to mix tapes and disks on the same massbus. 
> Most OSes did not support that, but RSX-11M-PLUS actually do. It's 
> called a mixed massbus.

Similarly for TOPS-20, although Tops-10 does have such a restriction.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] TOPS-10 question

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Quentin North 
> Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2018 22:15:05 +

> Im trying to get the BCPL compiler on TOPS-10 going and I have the install CTL
> file which sets out the following pre-requisites:

> ; THE FOLLOWING MODS TO THE SYSTEM/CUSPS ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE SMOOTH  ;
> ; RUNNING OF BCPL PROGRAMS:   ;
> ; ;
> ; 1. CHECK THE CODE IN LINK RECOGNISES COMPILER CODE #13 AS REQUIRING ;
> ;SYS:BCPLIB.REL AS THE DEFAULT LIBRARY. CODE IS IN LINK V2 ONWARD.;
> ; 2. CHECK COMPIL RECOGNISES THE EXTENSION .BCL AND .BCP AS REQUIRING ;
> ;THE BCPL COMPILER. COM22C.SCM IS A FILCOM FILE OF NECESSARY MODS.;
> ; 3. GET A BCPL LIBRARY AREA BCL: ALLOCATED AND KNOWN TO THE MONITOR.

> Items 1 & 2 are relatively straight forward, but Im a complete novice on
> tops-10 and cannot seem to find out how to set up a new library as BCL: and
> known to the monitor. Can anyone familiar with the o/s give me any pointers?

You have to add an entry to the "Level D GETTAB Table" in COMMOD.MAC and build
a new monitor.  However, there is a place to do this in the MONGEN dialog, so
it's not too onerous.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] pdp11 i/o addressing

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Timothe Litt 
> Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 16:15:28 -0500

> Overlays were used to compensate for limited virtual address space.

ITYM "Overlays were used to compensate for limited address space."

I first encountered the notion of overlays in IBM 1401 and System/360 programs.
Neither computer had any notion of virtual memory, virtual addressing, memory
mapping, or any such hoohah.  You had the memory you were given, and that was
most decidedly that.

Rich

P. S. +3 Curmudgeon. :-)
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Re: [Simh] Crowther's Adventure game

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Carey Tyler Schug 
> Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2018 10:41:11 -0600

> I had always been told it was first written in some proprietary DEC list 
> processing language, and only later converted to FORTRAN.  Is this the 
> original conversion?

You have been misinformed, or you are confusing Adventure with Zork (which
Bob Supnik translated to FORTRAN from the MIT language MDL, a Lisp variant,
and called the result "Dungeon".)

Rich
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Re: [Simh] BLISS and C

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Clem Cole 
> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:21:36 -0500

> My point was less on PL/1 and more to the point that Ken had access to BCPL
> and did not have BLISS.   But he still decided to create what would become
> B.

Ken had no tools for the PDP-7, which was part of a Graphics-1 setup (with a
Type 340 display), not even an assembler.  The first thing he wrote on the
GECOS system (not yet shortened to GCOS, since it was a GE 635) was an
assembler, which shared absolutely nothing in terms of syntax with the DEC
assembler for the system.

Remember that BCPL originated on a PDP-7, and had an 18-bit word as its only
data type.  Since Ken had only a cross assembler to start with, B was the
simplest interim solution (a BCPL subset in an interpreter).

Rich
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Re: [Simh] BLISS and C

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Paul Koning 
> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 13:33:30 -0500

>> On Jan 29, 2018, at 12:05 PM, Clem Cole  wrote:

>>  ...  One can argue, why did Ken not just build something more like BCPL
>> instead of B?  I can not say, maybe the brevity of { } from PL/1 was more
>> attractive than the Algol BEGIN/END style?

> PL/I has begin/end as ALGOL does.  I don't know where { } came from, but it
> isn't from PL/I.  What perhaps did come from PL/I is ; as terminator rather
> than separator.

I was also going to point out that neither {} nor [] exist in (System/360 era)
EBCDIC, so could not have been used in PL/1.

PL/1 (or PL/I, to use the later naming convention) has both BEGIN/END and
DO/END, with different effects.  I got a long lecture from an office mate once
about a program which was using BEGIN/END where DO/END was preferable, because
BEGIN blocks actually create a new context, with internal/external scope
details, while DO blocks do not create a new context.

(The thing is, I was writing in Pascal, not PL/I, where begin/end works like
 PL/I's DO/END, but the rant was interesting enough that I let him run to
 competion before pointing that out to him.  Was that behavior new to Pascal,
 or inherited from Algol 60?)

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

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:35:18 -0600
> From: Hunter Goatley 

> On 1/26/2018 2:22 PM, Timothe Litt wrote:

>> BLISS would have done better in the outside world, except for the 
>> DECision to price it higher than the market would bear.

> Indeed! I was fortunate to get access to BLISS in college thanks to 
> DEC's CSLG program, but it was their second-most expensive compiler 
> license (after Ada), so virtually no one outside of DEC used it. When 
> they originally released Alpha, they weren't planning to make the BLISS 
> compiler available, but I and others worked to try to get DEC to change 
> that. As I'm sure you know, in the end, they released it with a free 
> license for both VAX and Alpha (and Itanium), but it was far too late 
> for most people to have any interest in adopting it. I still do some 
> BLISS coding, but I'm one of the few that I know of still doing it.

In fact, when Digital announced the free licensing for BLISS-32 and BLISS-16,
I immediately got in touch with our contact within Digital (help me out, Tim,
what was Dick's last name?  the guy who helped XKL get the 36-bit stuff and
introduced you and me in Marlboro) about getting BLISS-36 released the same
way.  There may not have been a large market for it, but I wanted to make sure
that XKL's customers had access if they wanted it.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] PDP-10 simulation: DEUNA support help needed

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff <l...@nocrew.org>
> Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2018 09:42:45 +0000

> Rich Alderson wrote:

>> only 3 systems ran WAITS: SU-AI at SAIL, a KL-10 system attached to
>> the S-1 project at Lawrence Livermore Labs, and a Foonly F2 at CCRMA

> Are you sure the S-1 WAITS was a KL?  In early HOSTS.TXT files,
> it's listed as an Foonly F2.

I can only go by what the WAITS source files say and what the WAITS systems
folks who advised me on the project have told me.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Dec-10 Day announcement from Living Computers: Museum + Labs

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Johnny Billquist 
> Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2017 01:01:11 +0100

> So I would assume it at least performs similar to a real RP07, which is 
> nice. Seek times will obviously almost always be better on todays disks. 
> As long as transfer rates are acceptable, then this is a very 
> interesting improvement.

We don't run any antique spinning rust on the timeshared systems these days.

> Me thinking right now if this wouldn't be a nice project for 
> Magica.Update.UU.SE (PDP-11/70 running RSX). The RA73 disks are really 
> the slow part of that system, compared to a system I have at home with 
> SCSI disks. We certainly have RH70 adapters just sitting there, and for 
> the 11/70, this could be a serious improvement in performance compared 
> to an UDA-50.

Well, our 11/70 (running 7th Edition Unix) has an MDE attached, so it is proven
to work with an RH70 as well as RH11s, RH10s, and RH20s.  I keep looking for a
round tuit so that I can arrange to test it against the RH780 in the 11/785.
(We don't have a /750, so I can't test it against an RH750.  Somebody asked.)

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Dec-10 Day announcement from Living Computers: Museum + Labs

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Johnny Billquist 
> Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2017 11:12:45 +0100

> Rich. This is a nice thing. Thanks.

Thanks, Johnny.

> I have one question/wish, though.

> I don't know if you were aware of a device called the RM06. This was a 
> Massbus disk created by Shelby, which was varible size.

I am not familiar with the RM06, which was not supported under Tops-10 or
TOPS-20.  The MDE started out as a replacement for the RP06 drives on our
DEC-1080 (replaced by the DEC-2065 on which we offer on-line accounts).
Because other operating systems for the PDP-10+Massbus only supported
the RP06 or RM03, we did not look beyond those for our own needs.

I was disappointed to learn that the RM05 was never supported, either.

> It would be a really nice thing to emulate. I can probably reverse 
> engineer it from the RSX driver, and I don't know which systems ever 
> supported it. RSX for sure. Possibly also RSTS/E, but beyond that is 
> more uncertain. Most people and systems had moved on from Massbus before 
> this drive came out.

> But it is a much nicer solution than emulating eight RP06 drives, when 
> you have some big disk in the backend.

Not if the OS doesn't support the big disk.

> Do you know what speeds this emulated massbus disk can achieve, by the way?

Fast enough to supply 8 RP07s on a KL-10 based Dec-10.  We haven't done any
serious benchmarking; it's good enough for our needs.

Rich
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[Simh] Dec-10 Day announcement from Living Computers: Museum + Labs

[Rich Alderson]

Happy DEC-10 Day!

It is my honor to announce that we at Living Computers: Museum + Labs
are releasing to the computing community our Massbus Disk Emulator
and all the associated software.  This device connects via Massbus
cables to the RH10 and RH20 interfaces on KI-10 and KL-10 systems, to
the RH11 interface on KS-10 and small PDP-11 systems (including the
front end 11/40 on the KL-10), and to the RH70 on the PDP-11/70.  The
MDE provides up to 8 emulated RP06 or RP07 disks (represented by disk
files in the format used by the SimH emulation of these systems).

We expect that it will also work with the RH780 on the VAX-11/780 and
VAX-11/785 although we have not yet tested it in this configuration.

The original MDE was designed by Keith Perez in 2005, and emulated up
to four RP06 drives connected to a KL-10.  The current generation was
a redesign by Bruce Sherry in conjunction with the restoration of our
DECsystem-1070 in 2012, and initially provided eight RP06 drives on
the RH10.  It has undergone continual development, with associated
software created for us by Bob Armstrong, and is now being opened up
for the use of the relevant communities.

To this end, we have placed the design files for the hardware and the
source files for the software to interface with it, along with our
library of Universal Peripheral Emulator routines, on public access
repositories at Github.  The URLs for these repositories are

https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/MDE2

https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/MBS

https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/UPELIB

These are released under a very liberal license which will allow for
free use of the MDE by any interested party.

Happy Dec-10 Day!

Rich


Richard Alderson, Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

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[Simh] FW: SimH IBM1130 GUI appears broken

[Rich Alderson]

JAMES FEHLINGER  posted the following to the ClassicCmp
mailing list.  I don't see anyone forwarding it (yet).

Rich

-Original Message-
From: cctalk On Behalf Of JAMES FEHLINGER
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2017 9:41 AM
To: cct...@classiccmp.org
Subject: SimH IBM1130 GUI appears broken

I originally attempted to post this to simh@trailing-edge.com,
but they have a policy of automatically rejecting any messages from
non-subscribers, and as I only read that list via the Web
interface, it doesn't seem worth it to subscribe just in order to
post one message.  However, I suspect that Brian Knittel and/or
Mark Pizzolato probably see stuff that's posted here too.

---

Once upon a time (i.e., prior to early January, 2016), the
SimH IBM1130 GUI worked like this (on Windows):

You start the simulator in a console window and issue the
commands (either manually or via a command file argument):

-
reset
detach prt
delete printer.txt

att dsk0 dms.dsk

att prt printer.txt
boot dsk
-

At this point, the simulator, after having booted the DMS
operating system, enters a "Wait state" and drops
back to the SimH prompt. The console window shows
(if you've started the simulator with the command file
argument "guijob" containing the above commands):

-
IBM 1130 Simulator V4.0-0 Beta git commit id: e8ea427d
guijob-2> detach prt
Not attached
PRT: creating new file
Loaded DMS V2M12 cold start card

Wait, IAR: 002A (4c80 BSC I ,00028 )
sim>
-

The line printer icon in the GUI now "shows paper" which,
if you view it (thereby "tearing it off" and causing
the creation of a new printer file) will show the boot
message from DMS.

At this point, you can submit a "job deck" by dragging a
file to the GUI's card reader icon -- e.g., one of the
decks from the software kit at ibm1130.org
(such as a job to print the LET [Location Equivalence Table] list.job,
a sample Fortran program for.job or one of the more substantial
Fortran programs like csort.job or swave.job, etc.)

Each time you drag the "job deck" file over the GUI's
card reader icon, the depicted input tray "fills up" and
the console shows, e.g.

sim> attach cr "C:\ibm1130\dms\list.job"
sim>

You then click the green PROGRAM START button, the blinkenlights
flash briefly, the card reader "empties", the printer "shows paper"
(if it was empty beforehand) and, most significantly here,
**the simulator enters Wait state and drops back to its prompt
when the program has finished**. The console window now shows (e.g.)

sim> attach cr "C:\ibm1130\dms\list.job"
sim> cont
Wait, IAR: 002A (4c80 BSC I ,00028 )
sim>

You can continue to submit jobs, without rebooting DMS, by dragging
a new deck to the card reader icon, and clicking PROGRAM START.
Each time, the simulator swallows the "cards", flashes the blinkenlights,
adds output to the line printer file, and enters Wait and drops
back to its prompt.

The "git commit id" in the IBM1130.exe used for the above example is e8ea427d 
from
https://github.com/simh/Win32-Development-Binaries archive
simh-4.0-Beta--2016-01-07-e8ea427d.zip (January 7, 2016).

If I use the IBM1130.exe from the very next archive
simh-4.0-Beta--2016-01-29-b8049645.zip (January 29, 2016), I get
a different result (using the same file of startup commands):

-
IBM 1130 Simulator V4.0-0 Beta git commit id: b8049645
guijob-2> detach prt
Not attached
PRT: creating new file
Loaded DMS V2M12 cold start card
-

Here, the simulator has not entered a Wait state and dropped back
to a prompt. If I try to drag a "job deck" file to the card reader
icon, the attempt is rejected with a Windows error gong and
the card reader remains empty.

I can get around this by performing the following:

Click the red "IMM STOP" button.

Drag the "job deck" file to the card reader icon. The reader
"fills up".

In the console window, type "boot dsk" to re-boot DMS
(clicking PROGRAM START doesn't work here!),
The card reader empties, the blinkenlights flash and apparently
the program runs. However, the simulator does not enter
Wait state when the program is finished. (Nor can I click on
the lineprinter icon to "tear off" and view the results at this point.)

However, if I again click the red "IMM STOP" button and then
click the lineprinter icon, I can see the results of the
program that just ran. Or, I can click IMM STOP, submit a
new job deck to the card reader, type "boot dsk" (you have
to re-boot DMS; PROGRAM START won't work!),
and the new program will run and add its results to the lineprinter output.

The very latest Win32 build of IBM1130.exe, from
simh-4.0-Beta--2017-05-02-e9dea63b.zip (May 2, 2017)
exhibits slightly different (but still apparently broken)
behavior.

When the startup command file executes, the initial result looks
correct (i.e., the same as 

Re: [Simh] panda dist

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Kevin Handy <khandy2...@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2017 01:31:54 -0600

> Don't know theproperplace to ask ths, so thought I'd ask here.

> Does this indicate aproblem with panda-dist, klh10, ornormal behaviour? I'm
> asking about the "ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION" message. Seems to not have caused
> any problems, but...

> @log operator
> @enable
> $terminal vt100
> $basic
> 
> READY
> 10 PRINT "HELLO"
> 20 END
> LIST
> 
> NONAME.B20
> Wednesday, April 5, 2017 00:17:22
> 
> 00010 PRINT "HELLO"
> 00020 END
> 
> READY
> RUN
> 
> NONAME.B20
> Wednesday, April 5, 2017 00:17:29
> 
> HELLO
> 
> 
> Compile time: 0.004 secs
> Run time: 0.004 secs Elapsed time: 0:00:00
> 
> READY
> SAVE TEST.BAS
> 
> READY
> OLD TEST.BAS
> 
> ? ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION EXECUTED
> ? INTERNAL ERROR AT PC 15636
> ? Proceed at your own risk...
> 
> READY


TOPS-20 on an XKL Toad-2:

!basic

READY
10 print "HELLO"
20 end
list

NONAME.B20
Thursday, April 6, 2017 11:08:35

00010 print "HELLO"
00020 end

READY
run

NONAME.B20
Thursday, April 6, 2017 11:08:41

HELLO


Compile time: 0.025 secs
Run time: 0.037 secsElapsed time: 0:00:00

READY
save test.bas

READY
old test.bas

? Illegal memory read
!
!i fo
 => BASIC (1): HALT at 477571; latest error: Reference to non-existent page, 
0:00:00.5
   Fork 2: HALT at 477571; latest error: Reference to non-existent page, 
0:00:00.0
!


Tops-10 on a DECSYSTEM-2065:

.r basic


READY, FOR HELP TYPE HELP.
10 print "hello"
20 end
list


NONAME11:09 05-APR-;7



10 print "hello"
20 end

READY
run

NONAME11:09 05-APR-;7



hello



TIME:  0.02 SECS.

READY
save test.bas

READY
old test.bas

READY


It looks as though it's an issue with the BASIC distributed with TOPS-20,
rather than a KLH10 or Panda distribution problem.  Have you tried it on
a SimH KS-10 (bringing the question back to relevance for this list)?

Rich

Rich Alderson
Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

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Re: [Simh] VAX 8200

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Ethan Dicks 
> Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2017 15:21:54 -0400

> On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 2:35 PM, Gary Lee Phillips  
> wrote:

>> Looking at what images I can find on the web, TU-80 seems correct. The one
>> we had was just generally flaky, I guess. It was 1600 bpi, 2400 foot tapes,
>> yes.

> 2400' tapes (1.5mil thickness) were standard but sometime later, thinner (1.0
> mil?) 3600' tapes came out.  I have read tape drive instructions that say not
> to use those tapes in this machine.  I wouldn't be surprised if most DEC tape
> drives didn't like thinner tape.

At LOTS (the Stanford academic computing facility where I worked from 1984-91),
we did nightly incrementals and weekly full backups on the DEC-20s, SC-30M (a
DEC-20 clone), and 2 VAXen, the staff-support 3600 and the student available
8800 (both running Ultrix).

On the -20s, weekly backups took up 3 2400' reels (only a small portion of the
3rd reel being used).  When Memorex came out with their 3600' tapes, I switched
us over to using them so that weekly backups (rotated on a monthly basis) took
up less space; nightly incrementals used 2400' because it was almost unheard of
fot need more than 1, and they were a sunk cost.

The 3600' tapes worked very nicely on TU78/TU79 drives and on the STC drives on
the SC-30M, and I don't recall any complaints about them on the TU81s attached
to the VAXen.  As operations manager, I would have heard.

Rich
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[Simh] [s...@alderson.users.panix.com: Re: Announcement: back10]

[Rich Alderson]

Johnny Eriksson responded to me privately, and I answered him the same way.
Since there has been further discussion since then, I'm going to make this
public.

Since that conversation, I've thought of another objection:  No one using
a Tops-10 or TOPS-20 backup tool will be able to read tape images in the
ANSI ASCII format, since both BACKUP and DUMPER force, repeat *force*, the
drive into coredump format, for both input and output.  Rather than rewriting
all the tools created to deal with tapes, why don't we simply use the right
format to begin with?

Rich

--- Start of forwarded message ---
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2017 15:55:55 -0500
From: Rich Alderson <s...@alderson.users.panix.com>
Subject: Re: [Simh] Announcement: back10

> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2017 11:34:45 WET
> From: Johnny Eriksson <b...@cafax.se>

>> Personally, I'd vote for coredump format, as it's the common denominator
>> among Tops-10 and its derivatives (SAIL's WAITS, Tymshare's TYMCOM-X, the
>> CIS monitor) and TOPS-20, with utilities to convert into the others if
>> necessary (which it rarely is).

> Are you suggesting that the backup utilities extract files in this format,
> i.e. four octets + the remaining four bits into octet five?  Instead of
> what I use now, which is five seven-bit values into five octets, plus the
> remaining bit into the high order bit of octet five?

> The latter as a default extract format has a number of features, like the
> fact that text is automatically readable, and all bits are preserved.

Actually, they are not.  Quoting from the TOPS-20 v7 Monitor Calls Reference
Manual (p2-41) and the Tops-10 v7.04 Monitor Calls Manual vol. 1 (p14-9):

(T20)
ANSI ASCII Mode

This mode stores a word of data as five 7-bit bytes in five frames of
a 9-track tape.  On a read  operation, five frames of 7-bit bytes are
read, left-justified, into  a word.  The remaining bits  (bits 35) of
each frame are  ORed together, and the result is placed  in bit 35 of
the word.   On a write operation,  the leftmost 5 7-bit  bytes of the
word are  written into five frames on  the tape.  Bit 35  of the word
must be  zero to conform to  ANSI standards.  It is  written into the
high-order bit of the fifth  frame, and the remaining high-order bits
of  the  first  four  frames   are  0.   This  mode  is  useful  when
transferring  ASCII data  from TOPS-20  to machines  that  read 8-bit
bytes.  This  mode is available on  any 9-track drive  connected to a
TM02 or DX20 tape controller.

(T10)
Code 4 (.TFM7B)  set 7-bit mode, called ANSI  ASCII (not available on
TM10s and  TC10-Cs).  This mode stores  one 7-bit ASCII  byte in each
frame of the  tape.  This mode is useful  for transferring ASCII data
from DECsystem-10s  to 8-bit byte-oriented machines,  such as PDP-11s
and System  360/370s.  Five left-justified (in core)  7-bit bytes are
stored in five  frames on the magnetic tape.  Bit 35  must be zero to
conform to ANSI standards.  Bit 35 is written into the high-order bit
of the last frame of each word.  The other high-order bits are set to
zero on write operations.  When the tape is read, all five high-order
bits are ORed and the result is stored in bit 35.

Note that both manuals specify that bit 35 should be zero.  The fact that this
mode accidentally works for 36-bit binaries on certain controllers does not
justify making it the standard default.  There are controllers (the TA78, for
example) which do not agree with the TM02/TM03 in things like this.

> If there is a compelling reason I can add an option to extract into core-
> dump format, but I plan to keep the default.

I would think accuracy of representation would be the most compelling argument
available, and would militate against ANSI ASCII mode as your default.

[ portion unrelated to this discussion snipped ]

--- End of forwarded message ---
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Re: [Simh] Announcement: back10

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Lars Brinkhoff 
> Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2017 10:42:00 +0100

> Johnny Eriksson wrote:

>> This is very much a work-in-progress, so things might change.  If
>> you have any opinion on how things should work, please let me know.

> If there's one thing I'd wish for, it would be for a standard encoding
> of binary 36-bit data into octets.  FTP uses high density format.
> Magtapes use core dump format.  ITS files and itstar use the evacuate
> format.  Then there's the ANSI-ASCII/KERMIT-36 5x7+1 format.  Let's not
> bring up disk images or 7-track and paper tapes.

> Converting between all these is a small cottage industry.

Personally, I'd vote for coredump format, as it's the common denominator
among Tops-10 and its derivatives (SAIL's WAITS, Tymshare's TYMCOM-X, the
CIS monitor) and TOPS-20, with utilities to convert into the others if
necessary (which it rarely is).

Is the evacuate format really used in ITS, or is it an artefact of putting
ITS files on Unix file systems?  That is, if a tape were simply copied via
a dd-style utility from a evacuated file, could ITS do anything with it?
Modulo record lengths as in SimH or E11 or DECUS tape-to-disk formats, a
coredump tape image can be dd'd directly to a physical tape, and vice versa.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] TSS-8 and ETOS free-redistribution licenses (PDP-8 operating systems)

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org>
> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 12:07:59 -0800

> On 1/16/17 12:02 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:

>> I don't recall any mention of CMU in his story, but perhaps the other person
>> was from CMU.  I can ask him, of course.

> "Computer Engineering" pg 180

Thanks, Al!  I sit corrected.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] TSS-8 and ETOS free-redistribution licenses (PDP-8 operating systems)

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Rick Murphy <s...@rickmurphy.net>
> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2017 14:29:01 -0500

> On 1/14/2017 8:29 AM, Clement T. Cole wrote:

Regarding TSS-8:

>> Anyway, I always thought it was created by a customer and DEC 
>> educational system group redistributed it.

> The ideas around TSS/8 (timesharing mode) came from a research project 
> at CMU.  CMU and DEC collaborated to build the initial TSS/8 system.

To the best of my knowledge, TSS-8 was written by Bob Clements (RCC) and
another DEC engineer, who wanted to create a monitor for the PDP-8 similar
to that for the PDP-10 (of which Bob was one of the designers).  This idea
is based on personal communication from Bob when he visited the museum for
our grand opening in April 2013.

I don't recall any mention of CMU in his story, but perhaps the other person
was from CMU.  I can ask him, of course.

    Rich


Rich Alderson
Sr. Server Engineer
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

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Re: [Simh] TOPS-20 4.1 Cobol 12c Sample test failure

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Pascal Parent 
> Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2016 22:55:48 -0700

> I installed TOPS-20 V4.1 and COBOL-74 12C in SIMH. However, I am running
> into an error when trying to run the XT74 sample in UETP.LIB.

> I also installed Cobol 12C from the same tape on the Panda Distribution
> using the KLH10 emulator. There the test is successful.

> See the from both systems below.

> Could this be explained by a difference between the KL-10 (KLH10) and KS
> (SIMH) simulated hardware or is it a symptom of a bug in SIMH? I am running
> this version:

> "PDP-10 simulator V4.0-0 Betagit commit id: cf1e7b9c"

> Let me know if there is any other information I can provide that would be
> useful.

I ask out of curiosity:  Did you try the same test on the KLH10 *KS10*
emulation?  Then you would be comparing apples to apples, rather than sloths
to gazelles.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] RT-11 source

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Johnny Billquist 
> Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2016 03:11:05 +0200

> In fact, I would probably suggest Ray start with just writing some code 
> to do some simple things without looking at existing code. The first 
> thing needed would be to just have something that can load programs from 
> a device, and run them. This will require some simple device driver, 
> some simple file system, and a simple command line interpreter.
   ^^

That's not even needed.  Beyond a 44 character file id in the VTOC on a disk,
none of the IBM batch operating systems for the System/360 has what we would
call a file system.  OS/360 requires the programmer to know how much space a
file might occupy in its lifetime and allocate that (including overflow areas);
DOS/360 requires the programmer to do all of that, *AND IN ADDITION* to define
the exact location of the file on disk.  I don't think anyone would argue that
those operating systems were unsuccessful in the marketplace.

Just sayin'.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] RT-11 source

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Ray Jewhurst 
> Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 10:44:05 -0400

> I know that RT-11 is under license from Mentec

No, you don't.  Mentec has not existed for many years now.  The remains
of the PDP-11 intellectual property have been in the hands of XX2247 for
several years.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Semi-OT: 7-bit binaries

[Rich Alderson]

CC'd to the SimH mailing list so that everyone sees that there is an answer to
the question, not just a complaint from an old fart.

> From: Cory Smelosky <b...@gewt.net>
> Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2016 11:34:50 -0700

> On Oct 4, 2016, at 10:57, Rich Alderson <s...@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:

>>> Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2016 19:05:19 -0700 (PDT)
>>> From: Cory Smelosky <b...@gewt.net>

>>> This is somewhat OT, but you people are honestly the best people to ask.

>> Why bother the SimH community, most of whom seem to be interested in Vaxen or
>> PDP-11s these days, when alt.sys.pdp10 is readily available?  They're hardly
>> the best to ask about non-8-bit architectures.

> I vaguely recalled a simh-related tool for binary format conversion.

I don't think I've ever seen any such thing, in 15+ years with simh, but that's
irrelevant.  I was wondering why you wouldn't ask the 36-bit experts.

>>> I have a 7-bit-clean binary (from the SC-40), using klh10's wfconv (input
>>> of 7, output of h - high density) gets me a readable file...containing
>>> errors.

>> What does that mean

> It appears to be in an a 7-bit ANSI tape record format. Unsure if due to a
> dump to take or on-disk.

If it's a tape (image) generated on a PDP-10, it will have a particular layout
which you have scrambled.

I had a look at wfconv.c, so I think I know what you did.  You used a command
similar to

wfconv -7h garbled.file

What you really needed to say was

wfconv -cd octal.dump

to get data to analyze.

>> SC-40 binary files contain 36-bit words.  Ain't no such thing as "7-bit-clean
>> binary" in an SC-40 context.  What are you really saying?  Or asking?

> Sorry - this is for the SPARC FE.

Was it generated on a Sparc running Unix?  Then there is no need for any file
conversion using wfconv at all.  Was it generated (or stored) on an SC-40?
Then you have to take cognizance of the 36-bit nature of the architecture.

>> A 7-bit binary implies a 7-bit architecture, which I doubt anyone ever
>> built.  Smallest non-8-bit architectures I've ever encountered are 12-bit
>> systems; smallest non-even word size I've ever encountered is 23 bits on the
>> Bendix G-15.

> It seems to have been for tape or similar.

I don't understand what you mean, here.  Tapes are generated for specific
systems, and take their architectures into account.

>>> I am getting:

>>>> Memoby mtst be inhtialize firs

>>> which should be:

>>>> Memory must be initialized first

>>> What step am I missing in conversion? `file` finally knows what it is,
>>> however.

>> It would seem to me that you aren't missing a step, you're missing a point
>> completely.  It looks as if you have stripped bits from a text file (which
>> is 7-bit ASCII packed 5 per word, left justified ).  What did you think you
>> were converting?  Why did you think you needed to convert anything at all?
>> What tool did you use?  What are you really trying to accomplish?

> wfconv from KLH10, a.out for the FE, with no readable data coming out unless
> converted from something that packed it in to 7 bits.

ARRRGGG!

OK, here's what you probably need, but do some analysis on the output of the
command I gave you above first:

wfconv -ch 9octets.in.2words.bin

>>> converted/a.out: SPARC executable not stripped

I would exted the same result on the output of that most recent command.

>> What does a SPARC executable have to do with an SC-40?  What (why) do you
>> expect a Unix utility (the file program) to know anything at all about the
>> internal format of a PDP-10 file, whether text or binary

> Front end processor.

OK.

>>> Thanks - non-8-bit text was never my strongest skill ;)

And none of this is text, or non-8-bit.

>> So you're expecting text, and have done something inappropriate to it.  To
>> what end?  Again, what are you really trying to accomplish?

> Get a disassembly of the FE binary.

OK.  I think I've got you where you wanted to go.

Here's the thing that you need to remember about the PDP-10 family.  Except in
very particular circumstances, data in bytes smaller than the 36 bit word are
always left justified in the word.  7-bit ASCII text is packed 5 per word, with
the rightmost bit (35) unused.  8-bit data from any source (PDP-11, VAX, Alpha,
Itanium, IBM 360/370/..., HP 21xx, etc. etc. usw. k.t.l.) are packed 4 per
word, with the rightmost *4* bits (32-35) unused, *EXCEPT* on very late tape
drives which could use so-called high-density mode and then 9 8-bit bytes are
stored as 4 x 8, bits 32-35 <<4 OR'd with bits 0-3 of the next word, and 4 x 8,
thus 72 bits in 9 8-bit tape frames.

NOW.  On 9-track tape, in the default mode for all

Re: [Simh] Semi-OT: 7-bit binaries

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2016 19:05:19 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Cory Smelosky 

> This is somewhat OT, but you people are honestly the best people to ask.

Why bother the SimH community, most of whom seem to be interested in Vaxen or
PDP-11s these days, when alt.sys.pdp10 is readily available?  They're hardly
the best to ask about non-8-bit architectures.

> I have a 7-bit-clean binary (from the SC-40), using klh10's wfconv (input 
> of 7, output of h - high density) gets me a readable file...containing 
> errors.

What does that mean

SC-40 binary files contain 36-bit words.  Ain't no such thing as "7-bit-clean
binary" in an SC-40 context.  What are you really saying?  Or asking?

A 7-bit binary implies a 7-bit architecture, which I doubt anyone ever built.
Smallest non-8-bit architectures I've ever encountered are 12-bit systems;
smallest non-even word size I've ever encountered is 23 bits on the Bendix G-15.

> I am getting:

>> Memoby mtst be inhtialize firs

> which should be:

>> Memory must be initialized first

> What step am I missing in conversion? `file` finally knows what it is, 
> however.

It would seem to me that you aren't missing a step, you're missing a point
completely.  It looks as if you have stripped bits from a text file (which
is 7-bit ASCII packed 5 per word, left justified ).  What did you think you
were converting?  Why did you think you needed to convert anything at all?
What tool did you use?  What are you really trying to accomplish?

> converted/a.out: SPARC executable not stripped

What does a SPARC executable have to do with an SC-40?  What (why) do you
expect a Unix utility (the file program) to know anything at all about the
internal format of a PDP-10 file, whether text or binary

> Thanks - non-8-bit text was never my strongest skill ;)

So you're expecting text, and have done something inappropriate to it.  To
what end?  Again, what are you really trying to accomplish?

Rich
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Re: [Simh] TOPS-20 5.1 on KS10?

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2016 20:43:57 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Cory Smelosky 

> I've heard and seen anecdotes of people having run TOPS-20 5.x on a KS10, 
> does anyone know how it was done, or done it themselves?

As far as I know, exactly 1 person, and 1 person only, ever ran Tops-20 v5.4
on a 2020, my late friend Mark Crispin.  He did it as an exercise, to see if
TCP/IP networking could be squeezed into the limited address space of a KS10
processor.  When I asked him about it a decade ago, he stated that the code
was lost and he had no interest in redoing it unless he was going to be paid
his regular consulting rate.

I'm willing to be proved wrong, but unless you want to port v5 yourself, I'd
say you were SOL.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Question about card readers.

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 19:54:22 -0400
> From: Richard Cornwell 

>>> Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 18:07:15 -0400
>>> From: Richard Cornwell 

>>> I am asking for feedback on how to handle Punched card input. I am
>>> wondering about how to handle the case of reading a greater then 80
>>> character record on a 80 character punch card. Should characters beyond
>>> the end of the card be truncated, or should they continue on the next
>>> card.

>>>Any ideas? 

   [I wrote:]

>> Would you mind expanding on the query a bit?  Since an 80-column card
>> can't store more than 80 characters' worth of data, how can there be
>> anything to be truncated or continued in a read?

>   Sometimes there is extra stuff in a line, or sometimes records come
>   from other sources. For example the IBM 7090 used 84 character
>   records on tape. But the native reader could only read in 72 columns.
>   Sometimes when editing a file, you end up putting blanks at the end
>   of the line, that you might miss. 

>   One use for producing longer then 80 character records at a punch
>   would be to include the stacker information at the end of the record.
>   The deck could then be read directly back in without manual editing. 

>   I am going to be adding card reader/card punch support to my KA10
>   simulator soon now and wanted to get some feedback on how to handle
>   this.

"Extra stuff in a line"?  "Records on tape"?  Color me confused.

I began my programming career on an IBM 1401 using 80-column Hollerith
cards and a 132-column 1403 printer, so I have some experience with fixed-
width devices.

A card is 80 columns wide.[1]  (OK, there were special purpose 51-, 60-, and
66-column cards, but the data on them would fit into 80 columns.)  There is
no way to put more than 80 columns of data onto a Hollerith card.

Tape is a different medium, and has nothing to say about how cards behave.
(By the way, I had a look at the IOCS manual for the 7090, and the only
reference I see to "84 character records" on tape refers specifically to
tape labels, which are metadata on the tape, and not even required.)  The
fact that the card reader only passed 72 columns' worth of data to the
processor again has nothing to do with how many columns of data are present.

I agree with Bob about adding metadata to the card image, so nothing's
needed for that.  Recording "column binary" data in 160 characters is an
implementation decision, but it does not mean that there are more than 80
columns on the physical card which is represented.

So what do you mean by "extra stuff on a line"?  There are no lines, only
80-column cards.  What are you trying to represent here?

Rich

[1] OK, there are the Univac "90-column" cards, which are the same
dimensions as the IBM Hollerith card.  They record 90 6-bit characters
across 45 columns, upper and lower halves of the card.  The holes are
circular and larger than the rectangular IBM holes.  They would have to
be special-cased in SimH.
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Re: [Simh] Question about card readers.

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 18:07:15 -0400
> From: Richard Cornwell <sky...@sky-visions.com>

>I am asking for feedback on how to handle Punched card input. I am
>wondering about how to handle the case of reading a greater then 80
>character record on a 80 character punch card. Should characters
>beyond the end of the card be truncated, or should they continue on
>the next card. 

>Any ideas? 

Hi, Rich,

Would you mind expanding on the query a bit?  Since an 80-column card can't
store more than 80 characters' worth of data, how can there be anything to
be truncated or continued in a read?

    Rich


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104

mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org

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Re: [Simh] Contributing to SimH

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Thu, 12 May 2016 08:47:27 -0400
> From: Richard Cornwell <sky...@sky-visions.com>

>   I have also started to add the stuff in to the KA10 sim to support a
>   KI10, however there is not much software available. I need VMSER for
>   Tops 6.03 or a version of Tops 7.01. I will also eventually be
>   putting up older versions of Tops 10 that I have transcribed, I have
>   4.5, 3.19, 3.5 and 1.4 (monitor only), along with Fortran 40. 

We are running 6.03A on the 1070 at Living Computer Museum.  I typed in
VMSER.MAC from a printout of the 6.03A fiche (since it was nowhere to be
found in the wild).  The picture of Paul Allen, Robert Michaels, and me
in front of the KI on my Twitter page (Alderson_at_LCM) is from the long
night of debugging that followed.

I'm happy to send you a copy.

>   Bob also mentions CTSS, I put my CTSS sources up on Github and am in
>   the process of working on writing a new installer to possible solve
>   one of the issues with large directories on CTSS. The copy of CTSS I
>   have matches the original sources and will recompile itself producing
>   identical listings. I am however unsure of the original directory
>   structure, if anyone has any info as to how the source was kept,
>   please drop me a note. I will also slowly be putting up other
>   software that I have transcribed over the years. 

Have you asked Thom Van Vleck over at multicians.org?

Rich

P.S. It later turned out that we had it on an uncatalogued mag tape in the
 PGA collection.  Not a wasted effort, because I know way more than I
 ever thought I'd want to about KI/KL paging.


Rich Alderson, emeritus curator
Sr. Systems Engineer
Living Computer Museum
2245 1st Avenue S
Seattle, WA 98134

http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
https://twitter.com/Alderson_at_LCM
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[Simh] file system conversion [not really Re: Way out idea for simh]

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Johnny Billquist 
> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 23:57:38 +0200

> On 2016-04-20 20:48, Ken Cornetet wrote:

>> Again, you don't need OS support for foreign file systems, you just need to
>> be able to read the disk blocks in a raw mode.

> And what Rich said (again) is that you cannot mount a foreign file system in
> Tops-10. The concept don't exist.

It's a little more complex than that, even.

When Tops-10 starts, it looks at all the devices on the system.  For disks, it
looks for a HOM block in a particular sector (actually, primary and secondary
HOM blocks, which must match except for the defined sector numbers, and each
has a pointer to the other).  If there is no HOM block, the disk is empty and
can be formatted with a Tops-10 file system.

Two other operating systems to my personal knowledge use the same HOM block
format, WAITS (which began life as a highly divergent Tops-10, well really
PDP-6 monitor) and TOPS-20 (which despite the name shares no code and no I/O
model with Tops-10).  If Tops-10 sees either of these OS names (or presumably
any other) in the HOM block (which has a location for this information), it
MARKS THE DISK OFFLINE.  Unavailable for any interaction, even raw I/O.

The solution, if you need to use a Tops-10 tool to look at the disk, is to
patch the monitor before bringing it up so as not to mark the disk(s) in
question as offline.  I used this method to build a WAITS file system on 3 RP07
disk images (since WAITS never had an installation tool which did this) using
FILDDT.

(NB: I could have done the same thing under TOPS-20, with that version of
 FILDDT, but the difference in file system data structure--128-word sector
 vs. 512-word page--would have made it more difficult than it already was.)

> From: "Veit, Holger" 
> Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 09:56:01 +0200

> Some structures, like Files-11, are well documented, other might not, or
> not fully. If the data structures used are sufficently known, whether
> simple or not, one can write host software that converts a user file and
> extracts or injects it into the expected data structure.

Yes.

Once I had an empty WAITS file system, I had to populate it.

The SAILDART Archive has available HTML-encoded versions of all the files ever
backed up to tape on the SAIL system (which is where WAITS originated, and was
one of three systems running WAITS).  In addition, there are "blob" files
associated with each marked-up file which contain the original data encoded as
lines 12-digit octal numbers, and all of the system metadata for each file is
encoded into the index file for each directory.

I wrote 3 tools on TOPS-20:  A text-to-binary program which grovels over a
directory full of the blob files and generates files of 36-bit words in aother
directory; a program which converts the metadata from a massaged index.html
file to the form it would take as a header on a DART backup tape created under
WAITS and prepends it to the output of the T2W program; and a program which
grovels over a directory of prefixed binaries and creates a DART-format tape
image.

Tools are always possible, the simpler the better.  (I could have packaged all
of the processing outlined in the previous paragraph into a single program, but
then it would have been much harder to correct mistakes in interpretation of
the scant documentation--mostly program source code--of DART and the WAITS file
system.)

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Way out idea for simh

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 17:04:18 +
> From: sky...@sky-visions.com

> For example the B5500 does not have the concept of a mountable pack.
> Drives could be attached, but they were a permanent attachment. For the
> Ibm 7000 line, most did not support disk. The disk drive that was
> supported by many of the machines was a large box that you could not
> put drives into (IBM 1301/2301). Also these machines all worked in BCD
> (6 bit), not Ascii.

> I am also not sure when TOPS10 got support for
> mounting foreign file systems. I dont believe that 6.03 or 5.03
> support this idea. 

As of 7.05 (the very last maintenance release, from 1990) it still hadn't.
I work with it daily.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Setting DECSERVER 90L to factory defaults

[Rich Alderson]

> From: "Robert Thomas" 
> Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 20:07:14 -0400

> This procedure doesn't re-establish the factory defaults.  It is one of those
> flawed designs that occasionally slip through to cut costs with unexpected
> consequences.  The 90L and 90L+ are the only Decservers with no reset to
> factory defaults capability.  The follow on product, the 90TL has a reset
> button.

Robert,

Now I understand.  I would consider the state of a 90L with password cleared
and all configurations deleted as "factory default" even though there's no
automated way to achieve it.  Difference of interpretation.  Since your post
originally indicated that not having the current passwords was the issue at
hand, I believed (given my definition of "fd") that I had given you a path
forward.

My apologies.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Setting DECSERVER 90L to factory defaults

[Rich Alderson]

> From: "Robert Thomas" 
> Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 17:37:09 -0400

> The comment with respect to the power/power on sequence is to allow for the
> authorize password change.  If one doesn't cycle power immediately after
> changing the password, the change is ignored.

> Given the simplicity of the device, we never enabled authorization or
> passwords. We have some Decserver-200's which are much more complex devices
> that have reset buttons as well MOP operations, i.e. download/upload of
> settings, ETC. 

Foo.  You are Bill Cunningham, and I claim my five pounds.

You clearly did not read the documentation to which I pointed you, which should
not surprise me but does, once again causing me to regret attempting to help
someone.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Setting DECSERVER 90L to factory defaults

[Rich Alderson]

http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/mds-199909/cd2/network/dsrvdom1.pdf
> From: "Robert Thomas" 
> Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 15:47:00 -0400

> I know that this is off topic, but we do communicate with Decservers from the
> SIMH microvax simulator.  We bought a replacement DECserver-90L and it is set
> with non-standard passwords, so it is unusable.

> Anyone know how to force a factory reset?  There is no reset button.

http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/mds-199909/cd2/network/dsrvdom1.pdf

Pages 40-41 in the PDF (pages 4-13 and 4-14 of the DECserver 90L user manual).

You need physical access to the 90L, because you have to power cycle it to
change from Authorized (uses passwords) to not.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] text from openvms

[Rich Alderson]

> From: "Bill Cunningham" 
> Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 14:23:35 -0500

> I have been studying the best way to copy from a vax simulator with =
> openvms to a linux host, text files. The Docs look like telnet and =
> kermit are the way to do it. So is there not a device like ISO that I =
> can copy TOO? I wouldn't think because cdrom is RO after all. and 'set =
> rq writeenable' isn't working nor is anything to do with cdrom working.=20

> There may be several ways to do this. I am not concerned so much =
> about binary files as several .txt files. Am I on the right track with =
> telnet and kermit from those who have attempted and done this?

I'm going to be sorry about this.

No, you are *NOT* *NOT* *NOT* on the right track.

You will have to install Kermit on your VMS (the "Open" is silent) system.
You will have the same freaking problems doing that as you have with TCP/IP,
which you will have to install on your VMS system in order to telnet in.

If what you really want to do[1] is to copy out some TEXT files from your VMS
system so as to be able to see them as TEXT files on your Linux host, use the
SimH commands to

1.  Enable the printer on the VAX.
2.  Attach a file name to the printer.

Then, in VMS, use the PRINT command to put copies of those TEXT files into the
file you have attached to the SimH simulated printer.

3.  Escape back to the SimH prompt and detach the printer file.

The result of that will be a TEXT file.  You can edit that on Linux to separate
out the TEXT files that you issued PRINT commands for on VMS.[2]

Rich

[1] That is, if you're not just trying to waste people's time and raise their
blood pressure.

[2] You could attach and detach individual files under SimH, but I'm afraid
that might be too complex.
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Re: [Simh] PDP-15/76

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 18:31:35 +0100
> From: Mattis Lind 

> We have a bunch of documents related to PDP-15 and XVM/DOS. Some of them
> does not appear to be present on bitsavers. If there are interest we will
> try to make an effort and have them scanned.

> http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/pdp-15-documentation

Yes, please, preserving all of the documentation for the PDP-15 software
would be a very good thing, and you have a lot of manuals which would be
very useful to anyone attempting to program one (either SimH or a real
PDP-15).

Rich
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Re: [Simh] networking support

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Paul Koning 
> Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2016 09:01:02 -0500

  [in response to a statement that only the PDP-11 and VAX simulators have
   networking support]

> pdp10 does, also.

I had to go look at the documentation for this.  I see that the DEUNA/DELUA is
emulated, but that no known operating system supports it.  OK, that jibes with
what I know.

I'm sorry.  I would not count unsupported hardware as "having network support".
But then, I'm funny that way.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Disk info request

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Timothe Litt 
> Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 20:47:45 -0500

> Below is a list of all the disks that have been used with FILES-11 (ODS2) for
> which I have reliable (I think) data.

> The list has blank spots for a lot of disks that I know exist, but for which I
> don't have reliable data.

> Name SecSiz Sec/Tk Tk/Cy Cyls   Capacity   LBNs   Delta
> *RA80 - -- - - -- -- --
> *RA81 - -- - - -- -- --
>  RA82   512 5715  1435  6281856001226925599.084 MB   913

I can provide some information about the hardware values, based on the table at
Phil Budne's site (http://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/dec.disks).

The RA80 has 31 sectors/track, 14 tracks/cylinder, and 546 cylinders.  On the
PDP-10, this gets you 124MB in 576-byte sectors.

The RA81 has 51 sectors/track, 14 tracks/cylinder, and 1248 cylinders.  This
gets you 446MB.

For comparison, the RA82 is listed as providing 608MB in 1423 cylinders, so the
PDP-10 habit of not using all the cylinders on a pack or HDA appears to hold
true for the MSCP disks as well.

Not exactly what Tim was looking for, but useful for comparison, I should think.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Disk info request

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Clem Cole 
> Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 12:04:30 -0500

> On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

>> I suspect MSCP came before SCSI.

> I agree.   In DEC's case, support for MSCP certainly was first, but I
> believe the protocols are contemporaries. NCR was a very early SCSI player,
> but Western Digital, Shugart or someone like that might have driven it
> originally (I've forgotten - I have some early SCSI docs at home, I
> think).  I forget when I first saw it.

Shugart Associates introduced Shugart Associates System Interface ("SASI")
privately in 1978, publicly in 1981.  This was standardized by ANSI as the
Small Computer System Interface in 1982; doesn't anyone else here remember the
"sassy/sexy" vs. "scuzzy" mini-war?

The date on the UDA50 manual appears to be 1982, so yes, contemporaneous.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] pdp11 and unix

[Rich Alderson]

> From: "Robert Thomas" 
> Date: Mon, 29 Feb 2016 12:37:19 -0500

> When I was in graduate school at Princeton in 1974, we used UNIX on a
> PDP-11/45 running Tex to typeset faculty papers, as well as writing compilers
> using lex and yacc and studying operating system and algorithm performance.
> Some graduate students over the summer ported UNIX to run on the IBM 370/195
> in a virtual machine.  There was a lot of activity going on that eventually
> escaped from academic labs into real commercial use.

Umm, no.  What you were using under Unix in 1974 would have been troff.

TeX was not invented until 1978.  It was written originally in SAIL on the
multiprocessor PDP-10 system at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
running the WAITS operating system (which diverged from the PDP-6/PDP-10
monitor c. 1971).  SAIL (the language) was also available under Tops-10 and
TOPS-20, but was restricted to the PDP-10 architecture.  Later it was
translated into Pascal.

A complete rewrite occurred in 1982, along with the creation of the WEB
literate programming system (Tangle, which creates unreadable Pascal code for
compilation, and Weave, which creates TeX code to document the program).  The
move to Unix (and elsewhere) came with the introduction of CWEB, which
generates C instead of Pascal.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Klh10 vs Simh

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:48:48 -0500
> From: Michael Kerpan 

> I've been hoping for a KL simulation in SIMH for a while. KLH10 lacks
> support for things like serial over Telnet which means that multiuser
> is essentially impossible on KLH10 without all kinds of networking
> mojo. Sadly, I don't have the skill to actually write such a beast,
> I'm of no use except as a data point regarding interest in such a
> development.

I don't understand what you're trying to say.  Multiuser klh10 is as simple as
configuring the Ethernet interface (which, admittedly, is the bletcherous NIA20
rather than the Stanford/Cisco MEIS) and telnetting in.

There is, in fact, a publicly accessible klh10 running at twenex.org.

Serial line interfaces were on their way out by 1990; XKL (who bought the
36-bit IP from Digital) never offered a serial line interface on their products
(leaving aside the console port as a special case).  Ken came to visit us once,
and he and I talked about a Toad-1 variant of klh10 (although XKL management
was against it, so it never happened).

Most of the work on klh10 v2 after Ken's initial release was done by the late
Mark Crispin, who also created a packaged release of TOPS-20 v7.1 (the Panda
distribution).  I was supposed to help his family break into the Linux box
running klh10 (lingling.panda.com), but allowed other commitments to get in the
way, so there has been no further development since 2011.

Neither MRC nor the XKL team had any use for DECnet, so both the Panda monitor
and the XKL monitor are TCP/IP-only (as $DEITY intended :-).

Rich
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Re: [Simh] RT-11 Storage Strategy

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Paul Koning 
> Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2016 15:02:26 -0500

> Still, the amazing part is that RT on DECtape actually works.  It's the only
> DEC OS I know of for which that is true.

I know that RSX-11M works on DECtape, at least in the form of RSX-20F, the
variant used on the 11/40 front end processor in the KL-10 based Decsystem-10
and DECSYSTEM-20 systems.

On the theory that you only know PDP-11 OSes, I'll point out that both OS/8 and
TSS-8 work perfectly well with DECtape, and I have been told by more than one
of the people involved in the incident that at least one disk emergency required
that DECtape be used as the swapping device on a KA-10 based PDP-10 system.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] RSTS/E 10.1-L and Paper tape

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Mark Pizzolato 
> Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 16:00:19 -0800

> Meanwhile, the 'crude' way to exchange data on most simulators can 
> actually be done with cut and paste in console or telnet sessions.

While I do use c for command lines from time to time, I've never found it to
be satisfactory for file transfer.  For that, I wrote a set of programs for
TOPS-20 to create or disassemble .tap (in klh10 terms, .tps) files.  (Well, I
also wrote versions for .tpc files, but I've never had reason to keep them up
to date as I've improved on the .tap variants.)

These have stood me in good stead for TOPS-20, Tops-10, ITS, and WAITS work,
moving data between real media, real systems, image files, and both SimH and
klh10.  I advocate for using tape images for most data transfer, since most of
the emulated minis and mainframes under SimH never had any kind of networking.

On the other hand, I'm one of the three people I know of in the world who still
makes a living programming in PDP-10 assembler.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] transferring files to and from v6 unix running in pdp11 emulator

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Will Senn 
> Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 10:35:06 -0600

> How can I efficiently copy files from my host system to unix version 6
> running in the pdp11 emulator and from unix 6 to my host system?

You have gotten a number of answers, but none of them strikes me as the
best method for what you want to do.

There is a raw 8-bit device (well, pair of devices) on the PDP-11 which
will do the trick:  The paper tape reader/punch.  Simply cat the file onto
a paper tape image, or cat it from a paper tape image into a file.  Won't
care whether it's text or binary.  Won't revise the content to match a
display (\t will stay \t).

I've used this in the past.  It works.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Al Kossow 
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:52:27 -0800

> On 11/12/15 5:25 AM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:

>> DEC's DECserver, Xyplex Maxserver, Annex terminal servers, and Xylogics
>> (for the ones I have touched and remember) all converted telnet into real
>> RS/EIA-232 lines.

> And Ungerman-Bass and Bridge Communications CS/200 before that. I think
> Bridge was the first TCP/IP serial bridge. UB was XNS and Net/One was one
> of the first 3rd party Ethernet products.

Does the Bridge box predate the Stanford terminal servers based on the SUN-1
processor board, like the Stanford routers?  These were the predecessor of
the offerings from 'cisco Systems (the original spelling).

Hmm.  Come to think of it, the purpose of these was to convert serial lines
to telnet.  My first encounter with "milking machine mode" (telnet to serial
lines) was a Cisco ASM connected to an IBM 4994 (headless Series/1) to allow
telnet into the IBM 4381s at LOTS, which was around 1989 and hardly early.
I don't know whether earlier Cisco terminal servers or Stanford EtherTIPs
(as they were called) had that capability in the standard software load.

Hmm.  A brief look at the Pelkey book says that it doesn't appear to address
academic developments like the Stanford University Network, miles of 3Mbit
Ethernet cable run through the steam tunnels c. 1980.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] An update on the UC15

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Bob Supnik 
> Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2015 13:52:14 -0400

> The UC15 supported a variety of PDP11 peripherals, but the only ones 
> that matter are thethe RK11/18b, and the LP11. A console port was 
> available for debugging, and sometimes a paper tape reader was added for 
> the same purpose, but they weren't visible on the PDP15 side. The 
> PDP11's clock was used for timing IO events but did not keep track of 
> daytime.

Didn't it also support the RH11/RP06?  I thought that it replaced the RH15
for that purpose.  (Did anyone ever buy an RH15?  It would be interesting
to know.)

Rich
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Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator

[Rich Alderson]

 From: Ken Cornetet ken.corne...@kimballelectronics.com
 Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2015 20:55:06 +

 Perl has goto. Just sayin'

*Pascal* has goto.

 Writing a VAX basic to perl translator sounds like fun, and when you are
 done, you'd have learned a usable language.

Yes, and one in which white space is not syntactically significant. :-)

Rich
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Re: [Simh] C64 and C128

[Rich Alderson]

 From: Bill Cunningham bill...@suddenlink.net
 Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 19:56:06 -0400

 I remember those floppy drives where big and heavy. I never had cp/m or
 a c128. I am reading that an 8502 and Z80A (which I can't find anything
 on) was inside. The Z80A was about 4 MHz. The Z80A word size I do not
 know. It was of course an 8 bit with a 16 bit address bus I believe. Now
 which is memory word size?

The Z80A ran at 4MHz.  It is a faster variant of the Z80, which ran at 2.5MHz.

You can leave off the word memory and the scare quotes in your question, and
stop worrying about addressing in the same breath.  The 2 are orthogonal.

Before the IBM System/360 came along, computers were word-addressed, character-
addressed, bit-addressed, or digit-addressed (decimal).

Bit-addressed computers represent characters as sequences of bits (the term
byte originally meant sequence of bits representing a character, not just
eight bits).  Decimal digits require 4 bits to be represented in binary, so
that's the word size there.  Character-addressed machines generally used 6
bits to represent a character, so that's the word size there.

Word-addressed computers comfortably operate on large numbers of bits at one
time, with data paths which transfer all of the data in parallel (except in
some very special cases like the PDP-8/s).  The size of the word in bits is the
defining characteristic of the computer.  Let's list a few examples of word-
addressed machines:

  SystemBits/Word   Bits/Addr
  ===   =

CDC 160448 15
CDC 160-A   12   6 or 12
CDC 660060 18
DEC PDP-1   18 12
DEC PDP-7   18 13
DEC PDP-10  36 18
IBM 709436 15

OK, that's enough for starters.  In each of those systems, the amount of data
which will be found at each consecutive address is the same number of bits, and
that is what the computer operates on.

OK, enter the System/360.  IBM had for years been manufacturing word-addressed
scientific computers (like the 709/7090/7094) and character-addressed
business computers (like the 1401).  They wanted to make a single line of
computers which could do both kinds of computing (character-oriented or larger
word-data oriented) equally well; the result was something of a compromise for
both sets of customers, but's beside the point.

What IBM did was take the byte notion, give it a fixed length, make it the
addressable element, and DEFINE THE WORD TO BE MULTIPLE BYTES (in this case,
four).  So the byte addresses go 0, 1, 2, 3, ... but the word addresses go
0, 4, 8, 12, ...  Data gets moved into and out of registers as words (or
halfwords or doublewords, but that's another story).[1]  From one memory
location to another, data moved in bytes.

SO:  Now we have a new definition of word size, one in which 8-bit bytes are
constant and addressable.

So people started building computers to work with the 880lb (400Kg) gorilla.
Some examples of computer systems that use this model:

  SystemBits/Word   Bytes/Word   Bits/Addr
  ===   ==   =

IBM System/360 324  24
DG Nova162  15
DEC PDP-11 162  16
DEC VAX324  32

At the same time, microprocessors began to appear, with smaller data sizes, and
it gets complex all over again.  The addressable unit is the 8-bit byte, and
registers only handle 8 bits, but addressing may be larger:

  Microchip Bits/Word   Bits/Addr
  = =   =

  Intel 80088   14
  Intel 80808   16
  Zilog Z80A8   16
  MOS Tech 6502 8   16
  Motorola 680916   16
  Motorola 68000   16   24
  Motorola 68030   32   32
  Intel 8086   16   20
  Intel 80286  16   24
  Intel 80386  32   32

Obviously, word size here is how large a register is into which data from
some number of bytes in memory can be stuffed.

I hope that clears up your confusion.

Rich

[1] As is the fact that different models hide the fact that they're really
moving 8 bits = 1 byte or 16 bits = 2 bytes = a halfword at a time in the
hardware, because that's an implementation detail which the 8 bits/32 bits
System/360 ignores.
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: PDP-10 simulation: DEUNA support help needed

[Rich Alderson]

 From: Phil Budne p...@ultimate.com
 Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 23:12:57 -0400

 Rich Alderson s...@alderson.users.panix.com wrote:
 On 27-Apr-15 14:56, Cory Smelosky wrote:
 ...This is getting absurd.  Just how many stacks exist?!
 BBN had a TENEX stack.  Not sure if DEC's started with it.

I think that line was Tim Litt, in response to Cory's plaintive query.

 No.

 Funny, I was going to say yes.  ISTR the user interface was awful (didn't
 use JFNs, so you needed to use special send/recieve calls).  My recall was
 that Kevin Paetzold wrote a wrapper around the BBN code for the TCP: device.

Ahh, yes.  I forgot about the BBN code--I was warned away from ever using it
when I first started doing TCP/IP programming, and ignored it ever since.

So I guess my answer should have been sort of. :-)

Thanks, Phil!

Rich
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Re: [Simh] -10 comms

[Rich Alderson]

Wandering further afield for a moment, I just want to point out that the KI-10
at Living Computer Museum has 2 sets of serial lines.  The publicly accessible
ones run at 9600bps via a DN87 connected to a DL10; the others, used for admin
connections internally, run at 2400bps through a DC10A/DC10F.  The course
materials on DN87 etc. were a lifesaver.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Simulating the PDP-15/76 Unichannel

[Rich Alderson]

At several points in the discussion, the KL-10 has come up as an
example of a system with a PDP-11 front end processor.  Reference
has been made to shared memory between the -11 and the PDP-10
engine which is the main reason for the existence of the system.

The PDP-11/40 front end and the PDP-10 engine do not share memory.
Data transfer takes place over a Unibus device (from the -11 side)
which resides in the I/O bay of the -10, called a DTE-20.  This is
a very simple device which ties into the interrupt systems of the
-10 and -11 with a doorbell; depending upon who is ringing whose
bell, data moves between the -11's memory and the -10's, but neither
side knows the address(es) in the other processor.

Note that the front end software is special, as well.  Both of the
loader programs, the older KLDCP which is retained by the diagnostic
package and the later RSX-20F[1,2,3], expect to deal with 18-bit
data on disk, not 16.

I'm not saying that a KL-10 emulation would not be interesting, just
pointing out that it has nothing in common with the Unichannel on
the PDP-15/76.

Rich

[1] Developed mostly from RSX-11M, with a few nods to RSX-11D, at
least as far as the doc writers were concerned.
[2] If you boot an RSX-20F floppy on an 11/40 without a DTE-20, you
will immediately receive a message on the console telling you
that the DTE-20 is not found and the system will halt.
[3] NB:  The primary front end must be an 11/40.  There are up to 4
DTE-20s in a KL-10, and the secondary systems can also be 11/34's,
I believe, but I don't think they run RSX-20F, just special loads
like DECnet or HASP/RJE software.
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Re: [Simh] Principal vintage software developer

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 15:33:05 -0700
 From: Mark Abene phi...@phiber.com

 On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 6:13 AM, Al Kossow a...@bitsavers.org wrote:

 On 6/10/14 3:28 AM, Quentin North wrote:

 I saw this job advertised in Seattle which may be of interest to members
 of the list

 http://www.vulcan.com/About/Job-Listings?jvi=oTAQYfw1,Job

 Brush off your PDP and CDC skills.

 I would suggest emailing Ian King before considering a job there.

 ...and getting fitted for a kilt.

Ian was the only person at LCM who wore a kilt; it's not a job requirement.

I won't try to speak for Ian, but I will point out that he posted a defense of
the job listing (as did Mike Ross) at The Register when commentors on this same
listing took cheap shots at it based on no information.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/10/vintage_coder_remember_control_data_the_lcm_wants_you/

Feel free to ask me about it, too.  I won't lie about it.  I am, after all, in
the same job as Ian was and I've been here 5 years longer.  (I interviewed Ian
for the job.)

Rich
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[Simh] Tim Litt

[Rich Alderson]

Tim,

If you're out there, please contact me off-line.  I have some questions only
you have the answers to.


Thanks,
Rich Alderson
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Re: [Simh] PSI for TOPS-20

[Rich Alderson]

 From: G. gerr...@mail.com
 Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 14:01:00 +0100

 On Wed, 15 Jan 2014 23:16:20 -0800, Mark Abene wrote:

 By chance, does anyone have a tape image of PSI for TOPS-20 v7?  I want to
 get X.25 connectivity going.  Probably a long shot, but doesn't hurt to ask.

 Both Trailing Edge and Bitsavers have BB-W661A-BM (V1.0 1983) and BB-W661B-BM
 (V1.1 1984) tape images, but they are for TOPS-20 V5.1 so maybe they do not
 work with V7. On the other hand, Autopatch tape 23 (V7 indeed) has references
 to PSI V1.1 so you may just want to give it a try... :)

Given that this question was raised in a SimH context, I have to point out that
SimH only emulates a KS-10 processor, which is limited to TOPS-20 v4.1, and
which does not support the DN20 interface (a PDP-11/40 [or /34?]) which does
DMA via the DTE20 into KL-10 memory.  Looking at the tape on Trailing Edge, it
specifies the DN20, so I think that this is a non-starter.

Someone please point out if I'm wrong about this.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] TOPS-20 Source with KMC11 Driver Code?

[Rich Alderson]

 From: Robert Jarratt robert.jarr...@ntlworld.com
 Date: Tue, 7 May 2013 23:33:36 +0100

 Can anyone point me at the right place to look at TOPS-20 driver code for
 the KMC11? I can see that it is trying to get the Microprocessor to do
 something and read back some values, but I don't know what values it wants
 to get and so it reports:

Hi, Rob,

http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tops20v41_monitor_sources/index.html

You want the file KDPSRV.MAC in that directory.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] Formally documenting PDP tape drive behavior (and other facets of SIMH and the systems it emulates)

[Rich Alderson]

 From: Armistead, Jason jason.armist...@otis.com
 Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:55:18 +

Sorry to drag this back up.  At the time it was posted, I was busy trying to
get KI10 diagnostics from a disk on the museum's Toad-1 system (TOPS-20)
freshly compiled from the MORDOR sources (derived ultimately from the backups
preserved by Tim Litt) onto DECtapes for the KI.  My colleague Ian King was
looking at alternatives to the method by which I was proposing to accomplish
this, which is what began this thread.

 There has been a lot of interesting discussion about tape drives on PDP
 systems in the last week or so.  It's great to hear those familiar with the
 inner workings of these devices, or with access to the manuals, share their
 wisdom.

 One question though - after the old timers are gone, would a newbie to SIMH
 be able to figure these same things out ?

Yes, although the route to knowledge is a bit complex.  I had to figure it out
for myself several years ago, not for SimH but for a forensic analysis of raw
bit dumps of the contents of some important DECtapes (2MB DOS files with the
real data hidden somewhere at random inside).

What the eager learner needs to do is to read all of the manuals describing
DECtape controllers for the various DEC architectures.  (The TD8E can be
skipped, for all the reasons Johnny, Bob and Tim have made clear.)  Yes, much
of the information is redundant, but I found that there were things mentioned
in one manual or another that were repeated nowhere else.

So you would want to look at the files in http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/dectape
as well as those for various controllers in the pdp-N directories.  You're
looking for TC01, TC02, TC08, TD10, and TC11.

 Or, in other words, do the accompanying comments in the code and the SIMH
 documentation adequately capture the nuggets of the conversations that take
 place on this list ?  And do we provide enough in the way of breadcrumbs to
 allow a newbie to re-discover this same information ?

 Capturing this knowledge is a hard thing to do, and with retrocomputing we
 are presently at a point in time where we can still rely on folks who
 designed, built, tested, operated and programmed these systems, and in some
 cases they still even have running systems available for experimentation and
 measurement.  But what happens when that is no longer the case ?

 Just food for thought ... let's make sure SIMH and its fellow emulators like
 MAME / MESS can still be enjoyed and understood by future generations.

Amen!

Rich Alderson
Living Computer Museum
Seattle
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Re: [Simh] mac lisp on pdp-10?

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 19:44:12 -1000
 From: Tim Newsham tim.news...@gmail.com

 Can ITS and maclisp run on the simh pdp-10 emulator?
 Does it run shrdlu?

Yes, they can.  I've been doing it for years.

I've not tried SHRDLU on ITS.


 Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 09:38:05 -1000
 From: Tim Newsham tim.news...@gmail.com

 I take that back.. the config files present in the klh10 dist under run
 already reference the PI-ITS-RP06.0-dbd9 file.

 Unfortunately I havent had much luck running it yet..  not sure why, but
 possibly because I'm on a 64-bit linux and I built everything with gcc
 -m32.  I built base-ks-its and copied the files from run/ksits and when I
 run kn10-ks klh10-kn.ini and type go it doesnt seem to be doing anything.
 If I hit a key the first key seems to have no visible effect but following
 keys print out a message like [CTYI: 15 = 415, old 415].  not sure if this
 is the emulator misbehaving, or me doing something wrong.

I remember seeing this under ks-kn10, but don't remember what the fix was off
hand.  I'm away from my computer until later this week, so I'll have to look
that up and get back to you, probably not on the SimH list.

The SimH KS-10 is much better behaved for ITS, in my experience; I only use
KLH10 for Tops-20 v7.x and Tops-10 v7.04.  Then again, I usually use the real
hardware at the museum for all three.

You need to look at Bjorn Victor's intro pages http://victor.se/bjorn/its/ for
how to set things up, even if you think you intend to use Ken Harrenstien's
distribution on the PI disk image (which you will have to convert to SimH
format with the KLH10 tools).

Rich Alderson
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Re: [Simh] Don Daglow's Dungeon

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2011 12:49:09 -0500
 From: Pierre Francesco pierrefrancescos...@gmail.com

 NOTE: This is NOT the prototype of Zork; this is an earlier game that bears
 the same name.

A correction:  The other DUNGEON is not the prototype of Zork.  ZORK (also
known as MADADV) was originally written in MDL (a Lisp dialect) on the Dynamic
Modeling Lab PDP-10 at MIT.  The Fortran translation of that game, known as
Dungeon, was done by an anonymous engineer at DEC (reputedly someone we all
know on this mailing list).

Rich Alderson
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Re: [Simh] minimal linux

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 13:51:38 -0500
 From: Jason Stevens neoz...@gmail.com

 The whole thing is based off of Xdenu, which was some super minimal
 thing at the time to make a simple X terminal... so networking is in
 there.

 This may be another way to a minimal 'bare iron' type of thing.

Hi, Jason,

There are any number of minimal Linux distros available using the latest
kernels.  Why travel so far back in time for the base platform?  Why not
reserve those impulses for the systems we love to emulate? ;-)

Rich Alderson
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Re: [Simh] Installing layered products on RSTS/E 10.1

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 01:15:56 +0800
 From: Michael Richter ttmrich...@gmail.com

 OK, thanks for the reply and I apologize for my tardiness in getting
 around to this.

 Well, I've got the following in my .ini file (eliding the unnecessary
 stuff):

 set tu enable
  set tu tm03
  ...
  set tu1 format=tpc
  attach -er tu1 tapes/ro/BASIC-PLUS-2-V2.6.TPC
  ...

 When I fire up RSTS/E 10.1 I do the following:

  [snip]

 So now I run @[0,1]instal layered_products and select BP2 when given
 the opportunity.  It goes through the usual questions: mount device,
 target account, etc. and then, after collecting all that information
 asks me if I'm ready to proceed.  When I answer yes:

  [snip]

 Restoring BP2 update components from the Installation kit
 Please mount volume 2 on _MM1:.
 Press RETURN to continue :

 I'm just at a loss here.  The tape is mounted.  It looks perfectly fine
 when I take a directory of it.  What's weirder is that I can't do
 anything with MM1: once I've run instal.  The device is offline and I
 can't for the life of me figure out how to do anything with it after
 that.  set device mm1:  /enable doesn't do the trick nor does anything
 else I can find.

Michael,

I've never installed software on RSTS/E, but I suspect that it's not
dissimilar to installing software on other operating systems for hardware
of similar design vintage:  More than 1 tape is involved.  When the first
tape's content has been loaded onto the disk, the operating system rewinds
and dismounts the tape and you are prompted to mount the next one.

What you need to do is to type the WRU character (SimH defaults this to ^E)
to get back to the simulator prompt and issue an ATTACH command for the
next tape in the installation sequence.  This should be described in the
installation manual.

Hope that helps.

Rich Alderson
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Re: [Simh] Bug in PDP-11 emulator docs

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:34:00 +0800
 From: Michael Richter ttmrich...@gmail.com

 The docs say that the TC11/TU56 DECtape drives are device DT.  In reality it
 seems they are TC.

On what operating system?

Rich
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Re: [Simh] transferring files to and from simh

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:34:46 +0800
 From: Fernan Bolando fernanbola...@mailc.net

 anybody have an updated method of transferring files to ITS/simh?

Updated with respect to what?  As far as I've been able to determine, one can
manipulate the Ruby script created by the genminsys script to pick up other
files and create an incorrect DUMP tape, or one can use itstar to create an
incorrect (differently, as it happens) DUMP tape.  I've done the former, and
have fixed two bugs in itstar and will be testing the results shortly.

I don't think there is a Kermit implementation for ITS, or a network interface
for the simulated KS-10.

Rich
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Re: [Simh] hi ?

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 06:28:42 +0200
 From: dott.Piergiorgio dott.piergior...@fastwebnet.it

 There's some day I don't receive messages from this ML... It's all OK  
 working ?

The traffic on this list is very burst-y, weeks going by without a single
posting followed by short periods of intense discussion.  It's going along
just fine.

(You never answered my question, for example.)

Rich Alderson
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[Simh] DECtape marks issue????????

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:08:01 +0200
 From: dott.Piergiorgio dott.piergior...@fastwebnet.it

 (looking to the DECTape marks issue, for example)

What is the DECtape marks issue?  The DECtape emulation in SimH does not
simulate the mark track on a DECtape, so I don't understand how there could
be a DECtape marks issue.

I suggested to Bob several years ago that the DECtape representation could
be made more realistic (and thereby more flexible).  His reasonable answer
was to point out that I could do the implementation, should I choose to do
so, and submit it for everyone's review; since I am not a C programmer, I
have never had the time to do that.  (Macro-20, sure.)

I'll outline my original vision, and my present simplification, and if you
(or anyone else) wants to pursue it, I'll be happy to provide insight into
the working of DECtape drives and controllers.

Represent the frames on a DECtape as 8-bit bytes; the timing tracks are
implicit in the order of the bytes in the resulting file.  Represent the
mark tracks with bits 0 and 7, one the inverse of the other (as a nod to
the automatic inversion of bit sense in a Read Backwards operation).  The
data tracks are 1 = bits 1 and 4, 2 = 2 and 5, and 3 = 3 and 6, where bits
1-2-3 are conjointly inverted with respect to bits 4-5-6.  We ignore the
fact that on a physical DECtape, 5 tracks' worth of data is redundantly
recorded on 10 tracks (T M 1 2 3 1A 2A 3A M T).

This can be simplified if we drop the inversion, and represent each frame
in an 8-bit byte where the mark track is bit 0 and data tracks are 5-6-7.

The controller (555, TC01, TC02, TC08, TC09, TD10, TD8E, TC11, or TC15)
is responsible for assembling 3 bits of data at a time into 12, 16, 18,
or 36 bit words and putting it into the CPU or memory, as appropriate.
That's where all the work is.  There's also the question of other brands
of computer (Data General comes to mind) and their controllers, as well.

Creating realistic DECtape emulations for SimH could turn into a cottage
industry.

But let's return to the question:  WHAT DECtape marks issue

Rich
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Re: [Simh] RT-11 .DSK usage (was DECUS C)

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:45:32 -0400
 From: sho...@trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa)

 Rich asks:

 So, do I understand correctly that I can attach one of these .dsk files
 to a drive in a SimH PDP11 instance, run RSX-11M or RSTS/E, and FLX will
 do the right thing with it?  Or is there other magic involved?

 Examples below show mounting the DECUS 11-424 disk image 110424.dsk
 under the MSCP driver unit 1 (aka rq1 in SIMH).

Thanks, Tim!  That's precisely the kind of thing I was hoping for!

Now, does anybody have a good way to convert Teledisk floppy images into
something that SimH can use?

Rich
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Re: [Simh] [simh] new paper on history of Unix

[Rich Alderson]

 Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:01:50 -0700
 From: Carl Lowenstein carl.lowenst...@gmail.com

 On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe be...@math.utah.edu
 wrote:

 This new paper on the history of Unix may be of interest to
 some readers; getting the PDF from the DOI may require an
 IEEE digital library membership (either personal or institutional):

  DOI =  http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MAHC.2009.55;,

  abstract = Until recently, the earliest versions of the Unix
 operating system were believed to have been lost
 completely. In 2008, however, a restoration team from
 the Unix Heritage Society completed an effort to
 resurrect and restore the first edition Unix to a
 running and usable state from a newly discovered
 listing of the system's assembly source code.,

 This paper as published by Usenix may be the same information.  In any
 case, it is easier to get a copy.

 http://www.usenix.org/event/usenix09/tech/full_papers/toomey/toomey.pdf

I took at look at the two offerings.  The IEEE page lists all the references
in that paper, a much longer list than the one that appears at the end of
the Usenix paper.  I'm not quite ready to shell out $19 for a PDF, so I have
no other way to judge the contenct, but that tells me that the IEEE paper is
likely to have a good deal more than the other.

Rich
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