RE: Token Ring (really- and why)
It was written --- Might it not be both more historically accurate, and a great deal easier, to just use the version of FreeBSD that corresponds to the historical era being re-created? And skip feature, performance, and security improvements made since? --- Not in this case on the former, and the latter - agreed. The real historical part and focus of the exhibit isn't the FreeBSD machine. It's a dual bay HP2000 Timeshare BASIC machine. It has been restored to pristine cosmetic and electrical running condition (2000/Access) and that's the focus of the exhibit. One neat feature of the HP2000, even though it was a dedicated basic interpreter environment, it had the ability to submit jobs to HASP/MVS. MVS could run the code and direct output back to files on the HP2000, output to devices on that system, etc. It's a really neat add-on feature of the display/project to include and demonstrate that functionality. Given that a full blown VM/360 system isn't in the picture, we've used Hercules. One issue is cobbling together some hardware glue to deal with the interface between the HP and the IBM, basically emulating a sync modem and 2780 device on the Hercules side. That is mostly within my skillset. The other issue is that there needs to also be some terminal interaction on the IBM side, so we have a 3174 establishment controller with some 3179 terms and a 3290 gas plasma 4-session display. The 3174 attaches to the host (Hercules) via token ring. I had this all working perfectly with FreeBSD 7x, but when upgrading FreeBSD we lost token ring support. I could stay on an older version of FreeBSD, but then I am stuck with pretty old versions of Hercules (there are problems with newer versions of Hercules compiling under older versions of FreeBSD, some needed features are lacking in older versions of Hercules, etc.). So now you have the gory details as to why. Yes, there are a few other possible ways to skin this cat, but I have researched them all and found various issues both subjective and objective with going those alternate routes, hence my desire for native TR support. So back to the topic at hand. I pulled the oltr code from 7x svn and dropped it onto an 8x machine I had available for testing, added the requisites to sys/conf/files.i386, and make buildkernel attempts to fly. It appears the main reason that oltr was dropped at release 8 was that it had IFF_NEEDSGIANT which has been deprecated for MP Safe. Additionally, some of the functions in cpufunc.h (outbv and inbv) are no longer present in the exact same form. Outbv and inbv I can probably easily adjust, but I'm out of my league in the ins outs of removing the need for giant locks. I figured it wouldn't be as simple as just moving the code :) I'll beat my head against it as time permits, thanks for any input. Best, J ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Token Ring (really- and why)
On 04/09/12 23:42, Jay West wrote: It was written --- Might it not be both more historically accurate, and a great deal easier, to just use the version of FreeBSD that corresponds to the historical era being re-created? And skip feature, performance, and security improvements made since? --- Not in this case on the former, and the latter - agreed. The real historical part and focus of the exhibit isn't the FreeBSD machine. It's a dual bay HP2000 Timeshare BASIC machine. It has been restored to pristine cosmetic and electrical running condition (2000/Access) and that's the focus of the exhibit. One neat feature of the HP2000, even though it was a dedicated basic interpreter environment, it had the ability to submit jobs to HASP/MVS. MVS could run the code and direct output back to files on the HP2000, output to devices on that system, etc. It's a really neat add-on feature of the display/project to include and demonstrate that functionality. Given that a full blown VM/360 system isn't in the picture, we've used Hercules. One issue is cobbling together some hardware glue to deal with the interface between the HP and the IBM, basically emulating a sync modem and 2780 device on the Hercules side. That is mostly within my skillset. The other issue is that there needs to also be some terminal interaction on the IBM side, so we have a 3174 establishment controller with some 3179 terms and a 3290 gas plasma 4-session display. The 3174 attaches to the host (Hercules) via token ring. I had this all working perfectly with FreeBSD 7x, but when upgrading FreeBSD we lost token ring support. I could stay on an older version of FreeBSD, but then I am stuck with pretty old versions of Hercules (there are problems with newer versions of Hercules compiling under older versions of FreeBSD, some needed features are lacking in older versions of Hercules, etc.). So now you have the gory details as to why. Yes, there are a few other possible ways to skin this cat, but I have researched them all and found various issues both subjective and objective with going those alternate routes, hence my desire for native TR support. So back to the topic at hand. I pulled the oltr code from 7x svn and dropped it onto an 8x machine I had available for testing, added the requisites to sys/conf/files.i386, and make buildkernel attempts to fly. It appears the main reason that oltr was dropped at release 8 was that it had IFF_NEEDSGIANT which has been deprecated for MP Safe. Additionally, some of the functions in cpufunc.h (outbv and inbv) are no longer present in the exact same form. Outbv and inbv I can probably easily adjust, but I'm out of my league in the ins outs of removing the need for giant locks. I figured it wouldn't be as simple as just moving the code :) I'll beat my head against it as time permits, thanks for any input. I've been following this thread with a kind of bizarre fascination (or more accurately perhaps it should be the fascination of the bizarre?). Perhaps you should put those questions to the hackers@ list? Or even net@? Where is this exhibit? Is there somewhere I can follow your progress with this interesting diorama? I'd be fascinated to see this in operation :) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
