I'm a new simh user, and have mostly been using it to relive my youth on PDP-11s. But I also had played with TOPS-20 back in those misspent days, and wanted to see if I could have my own, fully realizing that SIMH can't run later versions of TOPS-20 because it simulates a KS10. Still, I am having trouble getting past the first few steps of the install.
I am starting from the install document at http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/pdp10/TOPS20/V4.1_Feb83/AA-P346A-TM_KS_Install_4.1_Feb83.pdf I have downloaded the install tape from http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/tapes/bb-d867e-bm_tops20_v41_2020_instl.tap.bz2 I use this "install.ini" file (cribbed from https://gunkies.org/wiki/Running_TOPS-20_V4.1_under_SIMH): set cpu tops-20 d wru 006 att tu bb-d867e-bm_tops20_v41_2020_instl.tap set rp rp06 att rp t20.dsk boot tu at which point I'm greeted with the expected MTBOOT> prompt. I then do: MTBOOT> /L MTBOOT> /G143 and basically say Y to all the questions: [FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION TYPE "?" TO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS.] DO YOU WANT TO REPLACE THE FILE SYSTEM ON THE PUBLIC STRUCTURE? Y DO YOU WANT TO DEFINE THE PUBLIC STRUCTURE? Y HOW MANY PACKS ARE IN THIS STRUCTURE: 1 ON WHICH "CHANNEL,UNIT" IS LOGICAL PACK # 0 MOUNTED: 0,0 DO YOU WANT THE DEFAULT SWAPPING SPACE? Y DO YOU WANT THE DEFAULT SIZE FRONT END FILE SYSTEM? Y DO YOU WANT THE DEFAULT SIZE BOOTSTRAP AREA? Y [STRUCTURE "PS" SUCCESSFULLY DEFINED] [PS MOUNTED] ?PS UNIT 0 HAS NO BAT BLOCKS. DO YOU WANT TO WRITE A SET OF PROTOTYPE BAT BLOCKS? Y %%NO SETSPD System restarting, wait... At this point, the simulator just sits there for hours, never giving the date/time question the installation guide says I should get next. It does seem that the install process has at least initialized the disk image, and if I reboot and tell it to skip all of those filesystem initialization steps, it blasts right to the %%NO SETSPD and "System restarting" steps, whereupon it hangs again. I'm running simh off of today's current git master branch. I have compiled it both on FreeBSD and on Ubuntu 16.04 with identical results (so I am not assuming it's just a FreeBSD incompatibility issue). I see plenty of old references to running TOPS-20 4.1 on SIMH, and no such references to this apparent hanging of the simulator at a very early stage in installation. Has anybody got this running? Am I missing something blindingly obvious somewhere? -- Tom Russo KM5VY Tijeras, NM echo "prpv_a'rfg_cnf_har_cvcr" | sed -e 's/_/ /g' | tr [a-m][n-z] [n-z][a-m] _______________________________________________ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
