Re: DEC PDP-8/e Omnibus backplane lubrication
On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 1:12 PM Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > > > I would suggest Caig > > I would suggest researching and understanding what their snake oil does > before > using any Caig product. > > Do not underestimate the lure of a good snake oil. I long for the smell of my ASR33. That KS7470 oil was magic. I stored it in the attic and would visit from time to time. But now the smell is gone. Evaporated. Like the perfume of a lost love it is no longer there. -chuck
Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x
On 16/05/2021 21:53, Zane Healy wrote: What exactly is VAX/VMS V5.5-2H4? I’ve never been too clear on that. It’s just V5.5-2 with added hardware support, isn’t it? Yes, that would seem to be the case: |---|-|--||9| |---| | |V5.5-2HW |Limited HW Release||3|2| OpenVMS VAX V5.5-2HW was a special hardware release that | | | | | FRS=9/4/92 | | | supported the following new VAX systems and peripherals: | | | | || | | VAX 7000 Model 600 & VAX 1 Model 600 (Neon) | | | | || | | VAX 4000 Model 400 (Omega-slow)/ VAX 4000 Model 100 | | | | || | | (Cheetah-Q) MicroVAX 3100 Model 90 (Cheetah-W) / VAXstation | | | | || | | 4000 Model 90 (Cougar) / RZ26 / TZ86 / ESE50 | |---|-|--|| | |---| https://web.archive.org/web/20170824234825/http://h41379.www4.hpe.com/openvms/os/openvms-release-history.txt (and also http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vms/openvms-release-history.txt). Antonio -- Antonio Carlini anto...@acarlini.com
Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x
On Sun, May 16, 2021 at 2:03 PM Zane Healy via cctalk wrote: > > What exactly is VAX/VMS V5.5-2H4? I’ve never been too clear on that. It’s > just V5.5-2 with added hardware support, isn’t it? https://wiki.vmssoftware.com/OpenVMS VIKING V5.5-2H4 July 26,1993 Limited Hardware Release based on V5.5-2. Includes support for VAX 4000 models: 100A, 500A, 600A, 700A. Also supports 2nd SCSI adapter, KZDDA, on MicroVAX 3100 Model 90. Also includes support for DEFTA (FDDI to TURBOchannel adapter) and DEFQA (FDDI to Q-bus adapter) and Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ) for StorageWorks RAID Array 110 Subsystem.
Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x
On May 16, 2021, at 1:42 PM, Antonio Carlini wrote: > > On 16/05/2021 21:00, Zane Healy wrote: >> Does anyone know if a 5.5-2 era CONOLD is available? These that have just >> been made available are beyond awesome, as I gave my paper set of 5.x doc’s >> to Paul Allen’s computer museum, only keeping the basic 6 paperbacks, since >> I have a complete 6.x set, and the base 7.2 set >> >> I’m going to see about putting them on PDXVAX (which is on HECnet), and >> making them available for viewing with VTBOOK. I need to hunt up copies of >> that and a couple other things. I should have them in my archives. >> >> I want to say that there is a WASD package that will handle bookreader >> format doc’s. > > V5.5-2 would be 1991-NOV or so. There's a CONDIST 1991-MAY on > https://vaxstuff.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/. and I have a CONDIST 1991-NOV. > > The next CONOLD I have is 1992-JUL (3 discs) (I can image that one next if it > will help). PDXVAX runs 5.5-2, so I was hoping to get doc’s specific to that release, though realistically even the 5.1 doc’s you just uploaded will be great, and I’m rather curious to get them accessible anyway. > There's a V5.5-2H4 OS CD on VaxHaven at > http://vaxhaven.com/cd-image/AG-PXL1A-RE.iso.zip. What exactly is VAX/VMS V5.5-2H4? I’ve never been too clear on that. It’s just V5.5-2 with added hardware support, isn’t it? Zane
Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x
On 16/05/2021 21:00, Zane Healy wrote: Does anyone know if a 5.5-2 era CONOLD is available? These that have just been made available are beyond awesome, as I gave my paper set of 5.x doc’s to Paul Allen’s computer museum, only keeping the basic 6 paperbacks, since I have a complete 6.x set, and the base 7.2 set I’m going to see about putting them on PDXVAX (which is on HECnet), and making them available for viewing with VTBOOK. I need to hunt up copies of that and a couple other things. I should have them in my archives. I want to say that there is a WASD package that will handle bookreader format doc’s. V5.5-2 would be 1991-NOV or so. There's a CONDIST 1991-MAY on https://vaxstuff.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/. and I have a CONDIST 1991-NOV. The next CONOLD I have is 1992-JUL (3 discs) (I can image that one next if it will help). There's a V5.5-2H4 OS CD on VaxHaven at http://vaxhaven.com/cd-image/AG-PXL1A-RE.iso.zip. Antonio -- Antonio Carlini anto...@acarlini.com
Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x
Does anyone know if a 5.5-2 era CONOLD is available? These that have just been made available are beyond awesome, as I gave my paper set of 5.x doc’s to Paul Allen’s computer museum, only keeping the basic 6 paperbacks, since I have a complete 6.x set, and the base 7.2 set I’m going to see about putting them on PDXVAX (which is on HECnet), and making them available for viewing with VTBOOK. I need to hunt up copies of that and a couple other things. I should have them in my archives. I want to say that there is a WASD package that will handle bookreader format doc’s. Zane > On May 16, 2021, at 11:46 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk > wrote: > > On 16/05/2021 13:51, Malte Dehling wrote: >> I have now generated a contents listing for the CONOLD CDs: >> >> https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-03 >> https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-07 >> > That looks interesting: the fundamental VMS documentation is there, but very > little of the layered product info is present. > > The MAR-1989 CONOLD has FORTRAN and DBMS and the JUL-1989 CONOLD has C, > FORTRAN, PASCAL, GKS, DBMS, VDE and DECforms. > > So I would speculate that these would be amongst the earliest CONOLD > distributions. I read elsewhere (comp.os.vms) that the first CONDIST > > went out in the VMS V5.0 timeframe and the 1989-05 CONDIST contains both VMS > V5.0 and V5.1. VMS V5.0 was announced > > in APR-1998 > (https://eisner.decus.org/anon/htnotes/note?f1=INDUSTRY_NEWS&f2=64.0), so it > is possible that some earlier CONDIST > > may yet appear. > > > I've put the CD_CONTENTS.DAT that I have up on github: > https://github.com/AntonioCarlini/dec-cdrom-distros. (I just realised that > I've mis-named the 1989-05 release as 1989-03 ... I'll fix that rsn). > > I guess that I should do something similar for the CONOLD CDROMs. Did you > find DECW$SHELF to be enough to build up an accurate list of contents? > > > Antonio > > -- > Antonio Carlini > anto...@acarlini.com >
Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x
On 16/05/2021 13:51, Malte Dehling wrote: I have now generated a contents listing for the CONOLD CDs: https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-03 https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-07 That looks interesting: the fundamental VMS documentation is there, but very little of the layered product info is present. The MAR-1989 CONOLD has FORTRAN and DBMS and the JUL-1989 CONOLD has C, FORTRAN, PASCAL, GKS, DBMS, VDE and DECforms. So I would speculate that these would be amongst the earliest CONOLD distributions. I read elsewhere (comp.os.vms) that the first CONDIST went out in the VMS V5.0 timeframe and the 1989-05 CONDIST contains both VMS V5.0 and V5.1. VMS V5.0 was announced in APR-1998 (https://eisner.decus.org/anon/htnotes/note?f1=INDUSTRY_NEWS&f2=64.0), so it is possible that some earlier CONDIST may yet appear. I've put the CD_CONTENTS.DAT that I have up on github: https://github.com/AntonioCarlini/dec-cdrom-distros. (I just realised that I've mis-named the 1989-05 release as 1989-03 ... I'll fix that rsn). I guess that I should do something similar for the CONOLD CDROMs. Did you find DECW$SHELF to be enough to build up an accurate list of contents? Antonio -- Antonio Carlini anto...@acarlini.com
Re: Documentation for F11 Chipset?
I have been looking at this and I think you are right. But the reason is odd. It looks like the ROMs are never being selected by the ROM address decode. I can't find on the printset anything that says what the boot address would be, perhaps that is burned into the F11 chipset? However, from the Pro technical manual the ROM addresses are in the ranges 1773-17767776, so I think the top 7 bits of the address should all be 1s. It looks like I never get anything other than 0s, when the address strobe (CT6 RCV AS H on the printset) is asserted. There is activity on the F11 chips, so I think they are working. Any ideas anyone? Rob, The start address on the DEC Pro is physical address 01776. As a virtual addresses this is at the beginning of the I/O page (016). This mapping extends up 4 KiB (to physical 01776 or virtual 016). But, of course, the ROM is actually 16 KiB long. So where are the other 12 KiB? They're at physical addresses 01773..01775. These physical addresses are not mapped into virtual address space at reset, but the boot ROM does map them during its execution to exactly where you'd expect: 013..015. Now, just to top off this confusion, the mapping of CPU-perspective physical addresses to ROM address lines is a little odd. It's really best described a table, which I hope doesn't get mangled by email formatting (all values in octal): Virtual Physical ROM offset 013* 01773 03 013* 01773 03 014* 01774 00 014* 01774 00 015* 01775 01 015* 01775 01 016+ 01776 02 016+ 01776 02 * = mapped later by boot ROM into virtual address space + = low half of I/O page -- mapped at CPU reset time So you can see the low 14 bits of physical address are fed directly to the ROM. It makes for a slightly lumpy looking layout. The decode for this is on page CT10 of the schematic. You can see the "ROM ADDRESS DECODER" section which has a NAND of address lines 21..15 being used as an enable on a 3-to-8 negative-output decoder and a 3-input negative-input OR on outputs 3,4,5. This selects physical addresses 0177[3,4,5]. Then E114 decodes the I/O page locations when A12 is low (01776..01776). This is the crucial reset-time ROM selection decoder. As to why the CPU starts at 016...I swear I saw that once in the documentation somewhere but I can't immediately find it again. I believed that the CPU is presented with some kind of word at reset time that tells it where to start executing. I believe that you can see this word constructed by E3 and half of E17 on page CT2 of the schematic, but I can't find the documentation that describes the layout of the word. You can see the word would be 0b1110L010 where L is ~(CT2 LPOK 1 L) and X is undefined. Notice that the high bits decode to 016, and I think that's where the start address comes from. I hope that answers your question. --Bjoren
Re: Looking for VAXSET Software Engineering Tools for VMS 4.x
On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 11:47:09AM +0200, Malte Dehling wrote: > I plan on updating the description for the CONOLD CDs with a list of > the books included. That probably means writing a script to extract > that information from the DECW$BOOKSHELF files. I have now generated a contents listing for the CONOLD CDs: https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-03 https://archive.org/details/vms-conold-1989-07 Cheers, Malte -- Malte Dehling
