Re: RT11 Freeware Collection
Ken; This worked perfectly! I was able to mount the partitions (as shown below) and actually extract the entire 65K partition to a *.dsk file that SIMH was able to mount and read. This is what I was trying to do. Get files from the RT11freewarev2 cd into SIMH. From there I can get them to my real PDP11 hardware. Some of the files are binary so this process is necessary. One comment - when you execute a mount command it takes a minute or 2 to decompress the file, so be patient! One question - How did you know how much to skip? Thanks for the effort you put into creating FSX. Doug On 4/29/2022 4:11 PM, Kenneth Gober wrote: On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 10:55 AM Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: I wanted to extract some parts of the RT11 Freeware iso file that is available on the internet. The note Tom Shoppa wrote indicates that the CD has 2 partitions. When I burned the CD on a windows machine I only see one partition. How to I extract the 2nd partition off the iso? The second "partition" is just a second copy of all the files on the first partition, except in RT-11 volume format so that it can be mounted directly on an RT-11 system with a CD-ROM drive attached. Since RT-11 volumes are limited to 32MB, larger disks are broken up into 32MB 'logical disks'. The files are on logical disks 13 through 19 (i.e. 32MB chunk numbers 13 through 19). Since it's all the same files, there's little reason to bother looking at the second partition if you are able to mount the first. However, if you want to do it anyway I have a Windows command-line tool that can be used to access the RT-11 portions of the iso: GitHub - kgober/FSX: File System Exchange, a utility to access data stored in disk images <https://github.com/kgober/FSX> Here are the FSX commands you would use to mount each of the chunks: FSX> mount r13: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz FSX> mount r14: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz FSX> mount r15: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz FSX> mount r16: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz FSX> mount r17: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz FSX> mount r18: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz FSX> mount r19: rt11freewarev2.iso.gz FSX knows about .gz files and will treat the 'skip' option as the offset to use *after* uncompressing the file. You can then browse and extract files from each volume: FSX> dir r19: 29-Apr-2022 System ID: DECVMSEXCHNG V41 Volume ID: VMS Exchange Owner : SHOPPA README.TXT 23P 15-Oct-1999 TORS84.DSK 24535P 15-Oct-1999 UCLPLS.DSK 907P 15-Oct-1999 VMSBCK.DSK 1663P 15-Oct-1999 XASSMB.DSK 2036P 15-Oct-1999 DUSTAT.DSK 100P 15-Oct-1999 RT11 .LIS 13P 15-Oct-1999 < UNUSED > 36190 7 Files, 29277 Blocks 36190 Free blocks FSX>type r19:readme.txt Welcome, RT-11 User, to V2.0 of the RT-11 Freeware CD! [... remainder removed ...] FSX>save r19:readme.txt c:readme.txt R19:README.TXT => c:readme.txt -ken
RT11 Freeware Collection
All; I wanted to extract some parts of the RT11 Freeware iso file that is available on the internet. The note Tom Shoppa wrote indicates that the CD has 2 partitions. When I burned the CD on a windows machine I only see one partition. How to I extract the 2nd partition off the iso? Doug
Re: idea for a universal disk interface
Once upon a time I used an Emulex QD21, but I sold it because the actual ESDI disks I had were a pain in the butt. Always crashing. I still have a Webster (quad board) SRQD something. I think I had a Dilog board also. It's been a while, probably 20 years. Doug On 4/18/2022 9:12 PM, Chris Zach via cctech wrote: Interesting, what kind of ESDI controllers do you have? They got advanced features like cache, ordered seeks, and burst mode/block mode DMA? C On 4/18/2022 6:09 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: Because of this I'm holding on to my DEC Qbus ESDI controllers!!! You never know Doug On 4/17/2022 4:35 PM, Guy Sotomayor via cctech wrote: I chose ESDI and SMD fundamentally because the interface is 100% digital (e.g. the data/clock separator is in the drive itself). So I don't need to do any oversampling. TTFN - Guy On 4/17/22 11:12, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: On Apr 17, 2022, at 1:28 PM, shad via cctalk wrote: hello, there's much discussion about the right method to transfer data in and out. Of course there are several methods, the right one must be carefully chosen after some review of all the disk interfaces that must be supported. The idea of having a copy of the whole disk in RAM is OK, assuming that a maximum size of around 512MB is required, as the RAM is also needed for the OS, and for Zynq maximum is 1GB. For reading a disk, an attractive approach is to do a high speed analog capture of the waveforms. That way you don't need a priori knowledge of the encoding, and it also allows you to use sophisticated algorithms (DSP, digital filtering, etc.) to recover marginal media. A number of old tape recovery projects have used this approach. For disk you have to go faster if you use an existing drive, but the numbers are perfectly manageable with modern hardware. If you use this technique, you do generate a whole lot more data than the formatted capacity of the drive; 10x to 100x or so. Throw in another order of magnitude if you step across the surface in small increments to avoid having to identify the track centerline in advance -- again, somewhat like the tape recovery machines that use a 36 track head to read 7 or 9 or 10 track tapes. Fred mentioned how life gets hard if you don't have a drive. I'm wondering how difficult it would be to build a useable "spin table", basically an accurate spindle that will accept the pack to be recovered and that will rotate at a modest speed, with a head positioner that can accurately position a read head along the surface. One head would suffice, RAMAC fashion. For slow rotation you'd want an MR head, and perhaps supplied air to float the head off the surface. Perhaps a scheme like this with slow rotation could allow for recovery much of the data on a platter that suffered a head crash, because you could spin it slowly enough that either the head doesn't touch the scratched areas, or touches it slowly enough that no further damage results. paul
Re: idea for a universal disk interface
Because of this I'm holding on to my DEC Qbus ESDI controllers!!! You never know Doug On 4/17/2022 4:35 PM, Guy Sotomayor via cctech wrote: I chose ESDI and SMD fundamentally because the interface is 100% digital (e.g. the data/clock separator is in the drive itself). So I don't need to do any oversampling. TTFN - Guy On 4/17/22 11:12, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: On Apr 17, 2022, at 1:28 PM, shad via cctalk wrote: hello, there's much discussion about the right method to transfer data in and out. Of course there are several methods, the right one must be carefully chosen after some review of all the disk interfaces that must be supported. The idea of having a copy of the whole disk in RAM is OK, assuming that a maximum size of around 512MB is required, as the RAM is also needed for the OS, and for Zynq maximum is 1GB. For reading a disk, an attractive approach is to do a high speed analog capture of the waveforms. That way you don't need a priori knowledge of the encoding, and it also allows you to use sophisticated algorithms (DSP, digital filtering, etc.) to recover marginal media. A number of old tape recovery projects have used this approach. For disk you have to go faster if you use an existing drive, but the numbers are perfectly manageable with modern hardware. If you use this technique, you do generate a whole lot more data than the formatted capacity of the drive; 10x to 100x or so. Throw in another order of magnitude if you step across the surface in small increments to avoid having to identify the track centerline in advance -- again, somewhat like the tape recovery machines that use a 36 track head to read 7 or 9 or 10 track tapes. Fred mentioned how life gets hard if you don't have a drive. I'm wondering how difficult it would be to build a useable "spin table", basically an accurate spindle that will accept the pack to be recovered and that will rotate at a modest speed, with a head positioner that can accurately position a read head along the surface. One head would suffice, RAMAC fashion. For slow rotation you'd want an MR head, and perhaps supplied air to float the head off the surface. Perhaps a scheme like this with slow rotation could allow for recovery much of the data on a platter that suffered a head crash, because you could spin it slowly enough that either the head doesn't touch the scratched areas, or touches it slowly enough that no further damage results. paul
Re: Looking for info on memory
On 10/19/2021 12:57 PM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctech wrote: I am trying to bring up an 11/23 system in a BA23 box, and the only memory i have is an obscure Plessey one. The only identification is the p/n 705920 with dash-100 in white ink. By counting the chips I make it 4MB, but it does not respond. Since it takes the full 22-bit memory space I can't see how any jumpers would change its accessibility. Does anybody have a manual? any help appreciated, Nigel Johnson Looking at the photo I began to wonder if Plessey made their own boards or are they re-badged from some other manufacturer. I don't know. If they are made by someone else, you might be able to dig up a manual. Also, if you look at the documentation for other 4MB qbus memories how many jumpers do they have? And what do they do? It may help you understand your board. Doug (of course I don't have a 4MB qbus memory, but that apparently didn't stop me from posting.)
Re: Ultrix-11 Networking
On 8/28/2021 6:19 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctech wrote: On 8/28/21 4:13 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote: On 8/28/2021 1:15 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: On 8/28/21 1:03 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote: Yes, I did create a new kernel and copy it to the correct place and chmod 644 the new unix file. Did yo have fun playing with the overlays? :-) I don't know what this means. The kernel creation was automatic, it seemed to check for enough room. I guess you did the bare minimum to get the network up. When I buld a new kernel I tend to add all the devices (like multiple network cards and serial cards) that I may want in the future. I have often had to manually shift things around and usually create one or two additional overlays to get it all to fit. I actually enjoy doing it. :-) I had only toyed with the idea of adding a dzv11 so real terminals could be connected to a real pdp11 Ultrix-11 system. I guess I'll find out once I get there. On my Debian system I can install ftpd and telnetd (they are still in the Debian package list) which are the unsecure ones, but I don't know how to configure them or start them. As in, # systemctl restart ftpd Probably easier to turn them on on Ultrix-11. Just modify inetd.conf. Actually, I just looked and ftp is on by default. Telnet is not. I edited inetd.conf to uncomment telnet. It helped. It turns out to not be a hot topic: "How do I make my Liinux system less secure?", but for us that noodle around with old computers with obsolete operating systems it is exactly what we need. In the past I remember using Filezilla to go from a Windows7 machine into a Vax without any problem. I suspect you will be somewhat disappointed with networking in Ultrix-11. Not that there is something wrong with it, just that the hardware is nothing like you are used to. In the early days of networking it was not unusual for systems like the PDP-11 to crash just because of the traffic passing by on their network connection. The advent of switches helped alleviate that but it is still common to crash a system by pushing data at it from a modern ftp. I expect FileZila will do it. To be honest, I always preferred Kermit for moving files. It is possible to keep packet sizes down and even slow down the transfer rate to give the PDP time to handle it. bill I brought up a Vax Alpha 3000-300 and tried interacting with the Ultrix-11 simulation: Starting in Ultrix-11 I could log into the vax via telnet. Ultrix-11 ftp was able to transfer a short ascii file from the Vax to the Ultrix-11 sim. Just another note. remember that ulimit is only 1024 on Ultrix-11 by default. That means no file larger than 10M. Unless you raise ulimit. Going the other way, Ultrix-11 would reject an ftp request from the vax, here is the error message - $ ftp 192.169.0.52 %TCPIP-E-FTP_NETERR, I/O error on network device -SYSTEM-F-UNREACHABLE, remote node is not currently reachable $ Been a long time. Could have to do with PTYs. Remember, FTP takes two open connection and the number of possible connection on Ultrix-11 is very limited. I think I noticed that I only had 2 PTY's during the install/kernel process. Glad you mentioned this, it had gone over my head. Ignore the VAX error, the error was mine. I typed the ip wrong, should have been 192.168.0.52, not 192.169.0.52. Blame it on bad eyes, old age, small font, clumsy fingers. Ultrix-11 would allow a telnet connection (after the change to inetd.conf) and I could do an ls, but when I asked for a man page it hung up. Nothing after that, had to kill it. I told you it was very unstable. :-) I got the same result whether I was telneting in from the Vax or Linux computer. Probably not news to you. I wonder if real hardware works just like this Sometimes, but I always found SIMH less reliable with my limited use of it. I always preferred real hardware. It was good to find out that you can get things in/out of the Ultrix-11 simulation. Like I said, I usually find Kermit over emulated serial lines to be more efficient at moving stuff on and off. The network may be faster but failures after 4 hours of a transfer can be very frustrating. Better to let kkermit have it over night and then get a fresh start in the morning. bill
Re: VT340 Emulation
On 6/18/2021 8:49 PM, Michael Kerpan wrote:
IIRC, Xterm has ReGIS and Sixel support in it's code these days, but
most Linux distro disable those features in their prepackaged builds
for some reason.
Really? I'm interested. How do you build your own xterm?
Doug
Mike
On Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 3:50 PM Douglas Taylor via cctech
mailto:cctech@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
Right, according to the few notes I've seen on the packages currently
for sale on ebay.
I hesitate to buy because I picked up a similar piece of software,
Smarterm 240, which seemed to do the desired emulation. It was old
software for DOS, but I have an old DOS machine I use for PUTR I
thought
I could install it on and be up and running. It didn't turn out that
way because Smarterm wanted a particular video card and driver
(which I
didn't have, of course). I didn't find that out until I got the
package
open and tried installing it.
I don't know if the Reflection software has any restrictions like
that.
The versions I see for sale are for Win3.1 and such, not exactly the
heyday of plug and play. I was hoping to get some guidance from
someone
who has used the Reflection software on what the actual
hardware/software requirements are.
On a side note, emulating a Tektronix 4010 is apparently free and
high
quality (see github). It is the DEC graphics terminals that no
one has
produced an open source emulation software for, so that's why I am
asking this question.
Doug
On 6/18/2021 1:16 PM, Bill Degnan wrote:
> Reflection 4 should do that, right?
> Bill
>
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 1:15 PM Douglas Taylor via cctech
> mailto:cctech@classiccmp.org>
<mailto:cctech@classiccmp.org <mailto:cctech@classiccmp.org>>> wrote:
>
> Does anyone have experience with the Reflection software
that will
> emulate a DEC VT340 color graphics terminal?
>
Re: VT340 Emulation
Right, according to the few notes I've seen on the packages currently for sale on ebay. I hesitate to buy because I picked up a similar piece of software, Smarterm 240, which seemed to do the desired emulation. It was old software for DOS, but I have an old DOS machine I use for PUTR I thought I could install it on and be up and running. It didn't turn out that way because Smarterm wanted a particular video card and driver (which I didn't have, of course). I didn't find that out until I got the package open and tried installing it. I don't know if the Reflection software has any restrictions like that. The versions I see for sale are for Win3.1 and such, not exactly the heyday of plug and play. I was hoping to get some guidance from someone who has used the Reflection software on what the actual hardware/software requirements are. On a side note, emulating a Tektronix 4010 is apparently free and high quality (see github). It is the DEC graphics terminals that no one has produced an open source emulation software for, so that's why I am asking this question. Doug On 6/18/2021 1:16 PM, Bill Degnan wrote: Reflection 4 should do that, right? Bill On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 1:15 PM Douglas Taylor via cctech mailto:cctech@classiccmp.org>> wrote: Does anyone have experience with the Reflection software that will emulate a DEC VT340 color graphics terminal?
VT340 Emulation
Does anyone have experience with the Reflection software that will emulate a DEC VT340 color graphics terminal?
Re: COMPAQ ISA PC to ethernent
On 5/20/2021 10:01 PM, Randy Dawson via cctech wrote: If anyone has ideas about boards or software to connect this original Compaq to the net let me know! Browsing the ebay, I do not find a PC 8 bit ethernet board but still looking. Then, the rest, a net set of tools in source would be great. What model Compaq do you have? Is it an 8086 model? How early? Does it just have an ISA buss? What do you need network connectivity for? Doug
Boot Roms for MRV11-C
The boot roms for the MXV11-B multifunction board can be used in the MRV11-D general purpose ROM q-bus board. Neat if you want to put together a small system. I have a MRV11-C board and it differs from the MRV11-D board primarily in the ROM sockets, 24 pin on the MRV11-C and 28 pin on the MRV11-D so I can't use the MXV11-B ROM's directly. Can the MXV11-B ROM set be adapted for the MRV11-C board? If not, what can you use as a bootstrap ROM set on the MRV11-C? Doug
Scientific Micro Systems driver
All; SMS made disk controller systems that used their own device driver, seemed to be an enhanced DY (RX02) driver. Does anyone have the driver/formatting software? The model I have is FWD 0106 and is described in bitsavers: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sms/brochures/SMS_FWD0106,1106_Flyer_Aug82.pdf Doug
Re: More interesting stuff
On 8/26/2020 7:11 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctech wrote: Found a few other items that might be of interest to someone. Two DEC Mice VS10X-EA Rev A3 DEC Joystick Model H3060 bill Where did you see the H3060 Joystick? Doug
Re: Old FORTRAN programs, libraries, graphics
Got similar interests here. I've been using PGPLOT on the Vax since it came out, the price was right! Tried to get it to work with a Tektronix 4207, but something is a little different between it and the 4105 series. I was able to get an old version of Gnuplot (3.4) to compile and run on a Vax alpha under Openvms 8.4. It wouldn't compile on a 32 Vax under OpenVms 7.3, too bad, I had wanted to run gnuplot on that machine. Maybe I needed an older version of gnuplot. On 4/6/2020 6:00 AM, Dave Wade via cctech wrote: I have been using PGPLOT but I guess you are aware of that. https://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/ I also wonder if you might be interested in https://github.com/rricharz/Tek4010 what I was looking for was a Calcomp Basic Plotting calls to HPGL as most of my plotters are HPLG and would like to plot some of the Calcomp sample plots on them Dave -Original Message- From: cctalk On Behalf Of emanuel stiebler via cctalk Sent: 05 April 2020 14:22 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Old FORTRAN programs, libraries, graphics Being stuck at home, was musing the idea to look into some graphics software from the '70's, or early 80's ... Looking for some wire frames, hidden line removal, 3d graphics... Any pointers? View month ago or longer, somebody on this list recovered some large package of FORTRAN code, and wanted to invest it, but I think it was posted under a wrong subject, so I can't find it anymore ... THANKS!
Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length
On 8/12/2019 1:25 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctech wrote: On 8/11/19 8:51 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: The TC02 is an Emulex TS11 emulation for pertec interface tape drives. The J1 and J2 are sort of standard terminology, don't know why. Ah, the *Emulex* TC02. You had me going there--DEC also has a DECtape controller called the TC02. Looking at the TC02, there are 374s to latch data coming from the Qualstar and use the termination packs, but there are also 7438s driving the lines from the TC02 to the Qualstar. Those have no terminators. The TC02 reference manual says that you get run lines up to 30 feet long between the TC02 and formatter. My point is that the driver technology for the Qualstar (i.e. read data and status) is inappropriate for long cable runs. The spec calls for 48 ma OC drivers. --Chuck , The bad news is that the cable lengths must be short to use the Qualstar 1260 with a PDP11, the good news is that I can lift and carry the tape drive! For many of us in this hobby that it is extremely important. After looking at pictures of the 1260 on the internet I see that it was designed to be used with a PC and the interface cable was 62 pins and quite short. Someone mentioned earlier that it was a cheap tape drive that didn't meet the Pertec standard and I'm finding out what exactly that meant. It is nice to have a reel to reel tape drive and watch it work. Doug
Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length
On 8/11/2019 10:44 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctech wrote: On 8/11/19 6:00 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: I just looked at the TC02 and the Qualstar, there are termination resistor packs on each. The Qualstar has a bunch of 74LS240 IC's near the J1 and J2 pertec interface cables. The TC02 has a bunch of 74LS374 chips near the J1 and J2 connectors. This is where the electrical engineer could help. How do you determine how long a cable the 74LS240 can drive? TC02? The DECtape controller? Sorry, I must be dense; I'm not following. --Chuck The TC02 is an Emulex TS11 emulation for pertec interface tape drives. The J1 and J2 are sort of standard terminology, don't know why.
Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length
On 8/11/2019 7:01 PM, Jon Elson via cctech wrote: On 08/11/2019 11:11 AM, W2HX via cctech wrote: I seem to remember they were ribbon cables with each odd/even pair twisted which probably meant one active and one ground twisted together. Or differential pairs. No, both Pertec unformatted and Pertec formatted interfaces were TTL single-ended. Jon I just looked at the TC02 and the Qualstar, there are termination resistor packs on each. The Qualstar has a bunch of 74LS240 IC's near the J1 and J2 pertec interface cables. The TC02 has a bunch of 74LS374 chips near the J1 and J2 connectors. This is where the electrical engineer could help. How do you determine how long a cable the 74LS240 can drive? Doug
Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length
On 8/10/2019 1:56 PM, Jon Elson wrote: On 08/09/2019 11:05 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: I have a question about cable length - any electrical engineers in the house? Connected a Qualstar 1260 tape drive to an Emulex TC02 qbus tape controller in a pdp-11/53. The interface is pertec with 2 50 pin cables. When I use a pair of short flat ribbon cables, 18 and 30 inches each, it works. Under RT11 I can INIT, Copy, DUMP, do a Directory. It doesn't work when I use a pair of 5 foot long flat ribbon cables. Are they too long? Do I need twisted pair type of cable? Is it possibly a termination problem? I have used cables about 20 feet long without trouble. The 2 50-pin cables is the Pertec formatted interface, which is really forgiving. Does you drive have terminators in both ends of the cable (both at the TC02 end and the drive end)? Now, I will mention that I have ONLY used twisted-pair ribbon cables with both flavors of interface, never straight ribbon cable. Jon I haven't checked to see if there are terminators (Arnold the Terminator) on either end. I did check the long cables for continuity and found no problems. It may be an EMI problem. Would folding the excess cable up and covering with anti-static plastic help? Doug
Re: Pertec Interface Cable Length
On 8/10/2019 4:57 AM, Dave Wade wrote: -Original Message- From: cctech On Behalf Of Douglas Taylor via cctech Sent: 10 August 2019 05:06 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Subject: Pertec Interface Cable Length I have a question about cable length - any electrical engineers in the house? Its electronics, rather than electrical engineering. Electrical Engineering is power distribution. Connected a Qualstar 1260 tape drive to an Emulex TC02 qbus tape controller in a pdp-11/53. The interface is pertec with 2 50 pin cables. When I use a pair of short flat ribbon cables, 18 and 30 inches each, it works. Under RT11 I can INIT, Copy, DUMP, do a Directory. So the hardware is good. It doesn't work when I use a pair of 5 foot long flat ribbon cables. Are they too long? Do I need twisted pair type of cable? Is it possibly a termination problem? I can't see 5 foot being too long for data from a tape, the data rates aren't huge. At most you have added 10ns to the delay times. On the other hand I have been wrong in the past and could be wrong again.. I assume you have checked the cables. Ribbon cables are prone to come loose from the IDC pins if it’s a IDC connector, and if soldered can break Doug Dave G4UGM I bought the long cables off ebay, so they have to be good? Right? I think the short cables came from a hamfest. The cables can be fairly long, I remember interfacing a TU80 to an Emulex QT14 (maybe) and the DEC cables were round and about 15 feet long. And it worked. It was too late last night to begin checking the long cables for continuity, so I fired off the email instead thinking it may be a termination problem. Is it possible for the IDC and Card edge connectors to be put on wrong? You would want pin 1 to map to pin 1, and so on. Doug
Pertec Interface Cable Length
I have a question about cable length - any electrical engineers in the house? Connected a Qualstar 1260 tape drive to an Emulex TC02 qbus tape controller in a pdp-11/53. The interface is pertec with 2 50 pin cables. When I use a pair of short flat ribbon cables, 18 and 30 inches each, it works. Under RT11 I can INIT, Copy, DUMP, do a Directory. It doesn't work when I use a pair of 5 foot long flat ribbon cables. Are they too long? Do I need twisted pair type of cable? Is it possibly a termination problem? Doug
DEC QBUS power supply minimum load
The M7264 CPU thread reminded me of the collection of LSI-11 CPU's that I have and want to get up and running. A very useful thread. This may have been covered some time in the past, but, my question is "What is the minimum load for the power supply in the BA11-M, -N and BA23 boxes?" Is it possible to create a load board, like the board you find in the sbox BA213 VAX's that ensure a minimum load on the power supply? Doug
Re: DEC VR150 CRT Monitor
On 1/16/2019 6:38 AM, Peter Coghlan via cctech wrote: I have one of these and would like to get it working correctly, but can't find any info on it from the internet. It has a date code of 1989 and was built in Yokahama Japan, by who I don't know. Does anyone know who DEC had build there CRT monitors back then? Are schematics available? I have a VR297-D3 which is actually a Sony GDM-1602. These details are written on the label on the back of my monitor though so I guess they aren't on yours. Regards, Peter Coghlan. I went and looked again. Hoped to find some other numbers, besides the UL and SA numbers I noticed a script S followed by CM 25100M. This is a high resolution black/white monochrome 15 inch monitor from 1989. I think that was the cat's meow back then. It was the low end of the DEC monitors available for the Vax Stations. I opened it up last year and it is built like a tank, don't remember any obvious OEM logos. Doug
Andromeda SCDC Qbus controller question
I just got one of these and wanted to configure it via the 10 pin RS232 port on the board. Is the port a standard DLV11-J type? I have one of those D-bit DLV11-J to DB25 adapters but not getting any response. Any info on the few jumpers on the board? Doug
Re: DEC BA213 and BA213 S-boxes?
Ethan; I have owned both BA213 and BA215 microvaxes. The one recurring problem I had was with the power supplies, H7868 I think the number is. Luckily, I picked up a couple of Dec Serv 550's which gave me spares and a PDP11/53 S box CPU. I was able to run the PDP11 in one of the VAX based BA boxes, the BA215 would make a good choice based on size and weight. If I remember correctly, the BA215 had space for one full height drive and a tape drive. Maybe someone else knows, but I think both boxes could use ordinary power cords, not like the VAX 4000-400 series which has that 20 amp cord. Doug On 3/31/2018 1:14 AM, Ethan Dicks via cctech wrote: Hi, All, Watching some of the recent traffic about what newer Qbus boards will and won't work with 2.11BSD, I've remembered a thing I was once looking for. Back when I did DEC hardware for a living, we stopped buying new stuff after we got a MicroVAX-II. As such, I have plenty of LSI-11 to KA630 parts but very little from after that era. I do happen to have 2-3 boards with S-box handles including a KDF-11 CPU and a SCSI card, a great start to a system. What I don't have is the enclosure. I have a BA123 "World Box" and it's great. I know a BA213 is roughly the same size, but I've never had one. The BA215 looks more interesting to me as a match for size and power requirements (1 PSU and 6 slots, half the BA213) but I've never even seen a BA215. Anyone here have much experience with the BA215? Any "gotchas"? So far, from my looking on eBay, I think I spotted one loaded as a VAX. I'm more interested in setting mine up as a PDP-11, so the VAX end of one is not exactly a selling point to me. An empty box would do just as nicely. I'd say 80% of my Qbus work has been with two boxes, the BA-11N and the BA-23, thus all the S-box questions. Thanks for any tips, tidbits and stories. -ethan
DEC VR150 montior
Does anyone have a schematic for this DEC monitor? I have one that has good video but doesn't seem to want to respond to video input.
Re: VMS 8.4 Alpha Hobbyist disk images
On 2/1/2018 12:55 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: I'm getting an Alphaserver 1000a and wanted to install VMS 8.4 - hobbyist license from CD. So, I went to the folder on my PC where I have the 8.4 hobbyist distribution. There are 3 ISO files; ALPHA084, ALPHA084LP1 and ALPHA084LP2. I thought I would burn these to CD and up and away. However, Windows 7 balks and says, 'The selected disc image file isn't valid'. Is it Windows 7 or is there something I'm missing? Is the CD on the Alphaserver 2048 byte block size or 512? Doug Progress: I was able to burn the hobbyist Alpha OpenVMS ISO images to CD using linux. Debian Liunx - you have to install cdrskin and the command I used was $ cdrskin --devices -data ALPHA084.ISO This is on a DELL desktop with one CD/DVD drive, instead of --devices I could have used dev=/dev/sr0. I was able to mount and explore these CD's on the Alphaserver 1000a. Doug
Re: DEC Storageworks
Ben; Jbod. Didn't know what it meant until today. The computer has 4 SCSI controllers, the Storageworks is operated in a split configuration. 4 drives are on a RAID controller, the other 3 are on a normal SCSI controller. What I was getting at with replacing the disks in the carrier was exactly what you mentioned; LVD or HVD SCSI. I don't know what is in there. Is it 50 pin or 68 or 80 pin. Doug On 2/4/2018 9:53 PM, Benjamin Huntsman wrote: I want to say the difference is in HVD vs LVD SCSI ... unless you’ve swapped out the guts yourself, I’d not mix and match... Then again it’s been forever since I monkeyed with those things and I could be mistaken... As for opening them, I’ve cracked them open before. It’s possible, but they were not manufactured to have their drives replaced easily... I damaged one last time I tried... be careful. Do you have the controller too, or just the jbod? -Ben Sent from my iPhone On Feb 4, 2018, at 1:42 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: The alphaserver 1000a I have has a storageworks array. The disk carriers are green in color, I see storageworks disks for sale on ebay that are blue. What is the difference? Are they interchangeable? Is it possible (or even wise) to open one of the green carriers and change the disk out? Doug
DEC Storageworks
The alphaserver 1000a I have has a storageworks array. The disk carriers are green in color, I see storageworks disks for sale on ebay that are blue. What is the difference? Are they interchangeable? Is it possible (or even wise) to open one of the green carriers and change the disk out? Doug
Re: VMS 8.4 Alpha Hobbyist disk images
Thanks for helping me understand what this is. My experience has been with Q-bus based Vaxes and this is very different in that SCSI controllers for Q-bus are rare while in this Alpha machine I've got too many! You were right about the MIN boot, I went into SYSBOOT> SET STARTUP_P1 " " to reset it from MIN. Now the console comes up in DecWindows and all the devices are visible. Now I know that the floppy is DVA0:. This is a nice computer. Doug On 2/2/2018 7:55 PM, Adrian Graham via cctech wrote: An update to this. I picked up the Alphaserver today, powered up fine. I reset the system password so I could log in. It is running OpenVMS 7.1 and has 7 disks in the Storageworks box. When I log in only the boot disk shows up from the $ show dev command. Nothing else, no CD, no tape which are all there. On powerup it shows: bus 2 slot 0 pka Qlogic ISP10x0 bus 2 slot 1 ewa DecChip 21040-AA bus 2 slot 2 pua DEC KFPSA bus 0 slot 11 dra Mylex DAC960 bus 0 slot 12 drb Mylex DAC960 bus 3 slot 0 pkb Qlogic ISP10x0 You’ve got a KZP*A, DE500, DSSI, pair of KZPAC (probably) and another KZP*A I think 4 of the storageworks disks are in a Raid in the storageworks (DRB). The DRA raid must have been external since on startup it spends time waiting for it and finally gives up. I’d pull whichever KZPAC isn’t connected to anything any more along with the KFPSA which will speed up INIT if nothing else. In console mode: show dev DKA400 RRD45 DKB400 RZ28 DKB500 RZ29 DKB600 RZ29 DRA0 4 member RAID 5 DRA1 1 member JBOD DRB0 4 member RAID 5 DVA0 MKA500 TLZ07 EWA0mac address PKA0 SCSI bus PKB0 SCSI bus PIA0 DSSI Bus ID 3 The first KZP*A has the CDROM and tape drive so that’s probably a KZPAA (Qlogic QLA1040), the internal disk shelf must be split bus if you’ve got 7 drives in there, 3 on the 2nd KZPAA (or BA) and 4 on the KZPAC. My desire is to setup this machine and use it, however, I don't want to undo things I can't put back together again. Any thoughts or advice? See above :) Take out boards that aren’t connected to anything. I assume you’re doing a MINIMUM boot which would explain the lack of devices when you log in? Pictures may help too. Cheers, — Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs - Celebrating Computing History from 1972 onwards w: binarydinosaurs.co.uk t: @binarydinosaurs f: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs
Re: VMS 8.4 Alpha Hobbyist disk images
On 2/1/2018 12:55 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: I'm getting an Alphaserver 1000a and wanted to install VMS 8.4 - hobbyist license from CD. So, I went to the folder on my PC where I have the 8.4 hobbyist distribution. There are 3 ISO files; ALPHA084, ALPHA084LP1 and ALPHA084LP2. I thought I would burn these to CD and up and away. However, Windows 7 balks and says, 'The selected disc image file isn't valid'. Is it Windows 7 or is there something I'm missing? Is the CD on the Alphaserver 2048 byte block size or 512? Doug An update to this. I picked up the Alphaserver today, powered up fine. I reset the system password so I could log in. It is running OpenVMS 7.1 and has 7 disks in the Storageworks box. When I log in only the boot disk shows up from the $ show dev command. Nothing else, no CD, no tape which are all there. On powerup it shows: bus 2 slot 0 pka Qlogic ISP10x0 bus 2 slot 1 ewa DecChip 21040-AA bus 2 slot 2 pua DEC KFPSA bus 0 slot 11 dra Mylex DAC960 bus 0 slot 12 drb Mylex DAC960 bus 3 slot 0 pkb Qlogic ISP10x0 I think 4 of the storageworks disks are in a Raid in the storageworks (DRB). The DRA raid must have been external since on startup it spends time waiting for it and finally gives up. In console mode: >>> show dev DKA400 RRD45 DKB400 RZ28 DKB500 RZ29 DKB600 RZ29 DRA0 4 member RAID 5 DRA1 1 member JBOD DRB0 4 member RAID 5 DVA0 MKA500 TLZ07 EWA0 mac address PKA0 SCSI bus PKB0 SCSI bus PIA0 DSSI Bus ID 3 My desire is to setup this machine and use it, however, I don't want to undo things I can't put back together again. Any thoughts or advice? Doug
Re: VMS 8.4 Alpha Hobbyist disk images
In my excitement about getting a new machine to play with I forgot what I had done previously with these iso images. That is, I used linux to dd them onto SD cards attached to SCSI2SD drive emulators. Geez, a few months go by and I forget everything. BTW, I looked at imgburn. When I downloaded the installer my Norton Antivirus found a Trojan in it, so I passed. Doug On 2/1/2018 1:10 PM, Dave Wade wrote: -Original Message- From: cctech [mailto:cctech-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Douglas Taylor via cctech Sent: 01 February 2018 17:56 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Subject: VMS 8.4 Alpha Hobbyist disk images I'm getting an Alphaserver 1000a and wanted to install VMS 8.4 - hobbyist license from CD. So, I went to the folder on my PC where I have the 8.4 hobbyist distribution. There are 3 ISO files; ALPHA084, ALPHA084LP1 and ALPHA084LP2. Whilst they may have a ".iso" extension, they are not, strictly speaking "ISO" files as that implies a file format within the CD. I believe that these are VMS (ODS) format disks and burning programs that check for ISO will fail. I thought I would burn these to CD and up and away. However, Windows 7 balks and says, 'The selected disc image file isn't valid'. Is it Windows 7 or is there something I'm missing? Is the CD on the Try http://www.imgburn.com/ I think that’s what I used... Alphaserver 2048 byte block size or 512? I honestly can't remember, but I don't think it matters. Doug Dave
VMS 8.4 Alpha Hobbyist disk images
I'm getting an Alphaserver 1000a and wanted to install VMS 8.4 - hobbyist license from CD. So, I went to the folder on my PC where I have the 8.4 hobbyist distribution. There are 3 ISO files; ALPHA084, ALPHA084LP1 and ALPHA084LP2. I thought I would burn these to CD and up and away. However, Windows 7 balks and says, 'The selected disc image file isn't valid'. Is it Windows 7 or is there something I'm missing? Is the CD on the Alphaserver 2048 byte block size or 512? Doug
Re: Microvax II 'primer'?
On 1/23/2018 7:58 PM, Jules Richardson via cctech wrote: On 01/22/2018 02:05 PM, allison via cctech wrote: On 1/22/18 2:18 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctech wrote: I can't believe you 'just carry it into the house' all by yourself, unless you are professional athlete. I also have a MicroVax II in the BA123 world box and it has wheels for a reason! The damn thing weighs 130 lbs! I took it to the VCF East last year, never do that again. Too heavy. Huge difference between BA23 and ba123 as the BA123 is about twice the size and internal board space. Mine's the BA123, the bigger one. It's heavy! I lifted it out of the van myself and put it onto one of the kids' old sleds so that I could drag it through the snow to the door it needed to go through, then picked it up again and took it up the few steps that were necessary. Did I mention that it was heavy? It won't get stolen. At VCF there were some young folks who helped me, thanks to them! I did take the side panels off, which helped a lot - I could lift it (just) then with one hand around the top edge and the other on the metal bar at the bottom by the power inlet. I certainly wouldn't want to carry one far. Yes, remove the NiCad battery. Its easily replaced. Does leaving it out entirely cause any issues (at least during a testing phase)? I was able to start and run the machine w/o the battery. Had to enter the date/time each startup. Not sure what else was remembered by the battery backup. If it's actually holding a charge at present (I seriously doubt it, but it doesn't appear to have leaked) is there any benefit to leaving it in initially - i.e. is it responsible for retaining any settings (e.g. disk parameters) that it would be useful for me to write down - assuming the system proves to be operational - before replacing it? RD53s had a problem with the head sticking against the stops. I repair them, yes I open them unstick it then remove the offending the rubber parts. That's useful to know - I'm certainly not against doing that myself if it proves necessary (assuming that's the drive I have) I saved the RD53's, maybe they can be revived. cheers Jules
Re: Microvax II 'primer'?
I can't believe you 'just carry it into the house' all by yourself, unless you are professional athlete. I also have a MicroVax II in the BA123 world box and it has wheels for a reason! The damn thing weighs 130 lbs! I took it to the VCF East last year, never do that again. Too heavy. When I got mine, it had only 3MB of memory and I found that I couldn't install VMS 5.5-2 or 7.3 with that amount of memory. I put in an 8 MB board and 11 MB total was fine. You should make your own cable to connect the console to a PC or terminal. Its that odd. I found the PC connection to be helpful because you can log what you are doing. Yes, remove the NiCad battery. The box I got had 3 RD53 disks in it and none worked. I am using a Viking SCSI controller and a SCSI2SD drive to boot the system. I left the RX50 drives in and reconfigured the RQDX2 to address them. They come in handy for getting the VMS hobbyist licenses in. The TK50 never worked. I put a DELQA in for networking, never tried a DEQNA. I consider it an important machine in computing history. It allowed scientific researchers, like myself, to get off of remote mainframes that billed at fantastic rates and compute in a more relaxed environment. BTW there is one in the Air & Space Museum in Washington DC. On 1/21/2018 2:25 PM, Jules Richardson via cctech wrote: So, I picked up (and I did just carry it into the house, and now I hurt) a Microvax II from another list member yesterday. Cosmetically it's a disaster (BA123 has a cracked top panel, broken wheels, missing front door, missing right-rear panel) but internally it appears to be complete; board wise we have: M7606 - CPU M7608 - 4MB ram M9047 - grant continuity M7504 - DEQNA ethernet M3104 - DHV11 8-port serial M7555 - RQDX3 disk controller M7546 - TX50 controller ... it's got a TK50 and hard drive (no idea of capacity). Operational status is a complete unknown, and I have absolutely zero knowledge about these systems - so my question at this stage is what background reading I need to be doing in terms of pre-powerup* checks, actually hooking a console, if there's a suggested minimal config I can use to diag the CPU, and then (assuming it gets to that point) how to actually use the thing (I'm assuming it was running VMS rather than Ultrix, but I don't know for sure). I'm wondering there aren't any handy tutorials out there, alongside whatever DEC docs are recommended. * e.g. for most machines I'd be thinking in terms of pulling all boards/drives, hooking up a dummy load to whatever PSU rails required it, and then at least running the PSU up in isolation first, but I don't know to what extent this machine requires some logic in place for the PSU to even run. cheers Jules
Re: Sync on Green RGB video
On 11/18/2017 6:44 PM, william degnan wrote: On Nov 18, 2017 4:09 PM, "Douglas Taylor via cctech" mailto:cctech@classiccmp.org>> wrote: > > I have a couple of vaxes that output 'unique' video, Alpha 3000 300, Alpha 3000 400, Vax 4000 VLC, and Vax Station 3100 M76. > > The Alpha and VLC each have a 3W3 type of connector and the 3100 has a 15 pin DEC designed connector. > > What does it take to connect these to inexpensive, modern VGA light weight monitors? > > Doug > I have played around with that problem. If you have a converter to get into a VGA port a newer high-end vga display will be able to adjust, but not a cheap one. Because I use my vice vga/digital display for mode stuff, I use a huge SGI color display for all of my 3w3 outputting systems and I just switch the cable around. If you could imagine 5 or 6 systems clustered around the one display. I am sure someone here has a technical explanation, but in a nutshell the 3W3 world signal isn't the same as a standard vga and cheap vga displays can't handle the refresh rate. Someone will prob. refine my answer but that's why you can't just stick an adapter on there. Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net <http://vintagecomputer.net> I ran into a similar comment somewhere on the internet somewhere (it's a big place) that you had to make sure that the LCD monitor supported the H,V rates put out by the DEC video frame buffer.
Sync on Green RGB video
I have a couple of vaxes that output 'unique' video, Alpha 3000 300, Alpha 3000 400, Vax 4000 VLC, and Vax Station 3100 M76. The Alpha and VLC each have a 3W3 type of connector and the 3100 has a 15 pin DEC designed connector. What does it take to connect these to inexpensive, modern VGA light weight monitors? Doug
DEC Keyboards with sticky keys
I have a couple of LK401 keyboards and they generate a 'keyboard error - 4' error on power up test when attached to a VT420. The problem seems to be one or more keys that are 'stuck on'. When the keyboard is turned upside down and shaken I can get the self test to pass. Is it possible to open the keyboards and repair this type of problem? I also have LK411 keyboards that have a PS/2 type of connector, is there an adapter to let me use these keyboards instead of the LK401s? Are the signals the same, only the connectors being different? Doug
Re: Convex C220 lives
On 9/11/2017 2:15 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctech wrote: On 09/11/2017 08:47 AM, Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctalk wrote: Now I¹m looking for some FORTRAN code that would typically have run on this kind of computer so I can show people what this kind of system was used for. Congratulations! I'd recommend starting with LINPACK: http://www.netlib.org/linpack/ Just to get an idea of the performance of the thing. --Chuck With LINPACK you can compare your results with others, including new computers. I would suggest other benchmarks, Dhrystone, Whetstone, FFT because the FORTRAN codes are readily available and there are reports from the CONVEX era that compare results from many different computers. NEC2 is a good idea. Also, look into calculation of Pi, it is entertaining. Doug
Emulated DEC Drives: UC07 and SCSI2SD
I am bringing up a MicroVax III in a BA23 box and I intend to run it from an SD card attached to a SCSI2SD adapter. The SD card was setup to have the size of RA90 and RA82 drives using the scsi2sd-util program on a Win7 computer to partition the 4GB SD card . When I attached it to an Emulex UC07 and edited the NVRAM (using the autodetect option) the UC07 saw the drives but with slightly different sizes. RA90: scsi2sd 2,376,153 sectors UC07 2,376,089 sectors RA82: scsi2sd 1,216,665 sectors UC07 1,216,601 sectors The difference is 64 sectors. When I installed VMS 7.3 it also warned me that the RA82 were not the correct size. The OS was installed to the RA90. Does this mean anything critical? Doug
RX02 Emulator
In my other post I asked about DEC 11/2 and 11/03 cpus and 18/22 bit backplanes. I am still interested in this but I am considering what type of disk to run from. I ran into a rx02_emulator on github and looks quite interesting, since it uses an actual DEC RXV21 interface it would be compatible with the 18 bit addressing. Does anyone have experience with this emulator? Where can you get the circuit board that is part of this project? Doug
Re: SMS 8" Floppy Drive
On 5/9/2017 3:05 PM, shad via cctech wrote: Hello, I have a clone PDP11, including an SMS QBUS board and a 8" drive. Not sure if it's the same model as yours. The controller runs MSCP for floppy with RX02 or IBM format , and for an MFM hard disk like Seagate ST251. Board code is SMS FWD0106. I should have some manual and drivers for it somewhere, if you manage to find the board, but utilities like formatter aren't for VAX, IIRC. Andrea The SMS documentation in bitsavers says the controller can be operated in two modes; compatible and extended. In the compatible mode the SMS unit will work with the DEC DY driver, or so they say. If that is true that would be good news since my disk drive hardware has only 2 floppies and no winchester disks. However, it looks I would need the SMS diagnostics or FW driver in order to format RX02 media. Nevertheless, if I do get it running and it is DEC RX02 compatible I would try to use it in the MicroVax just to see what happens Doug
SMS 8" Floppy Drive
All this talk about 8 inch floppies got me to look at a unit I have stored away. It is a rack mounted dual 8 inch floppy drive, SMS FWT Series. Model - FWT0522I-R It has one IDC connection on the back, 34 pin. The formatter in the unit has numbers - 1001828-0001 H and 0003451-0001 J written on it. Bitsavers didn't have anything about the FWT05 model, does anyone know if a Qbus controller exists for this? If it does perhaps I could get it working and hook it up to my MicroVax II, that would be an odd combination. Doug
