Re: Speaking of emulators... I have a userland Venix/86 executive...

[Cameron Kaiser via cctalk]

> I've written a Venix/86 userland emulator. It uses FreeBSD's vm86 to run
> binaries natively and intercepts traps for things like system calls. I
> finally have it to the point where it can run the compiler via cc (which
> forks and execs c0, copt, cpp, as, ld, etc). My plans to try to recreate
> the sources for the binaries for Venix/86 from V7 and other extant sources
> have taken a step forward. Don't know if I'll ever get there, but at least
> I don't need a working Rainbow and can run the compiler at ~4GHz rather
> than ~4MHz
> http://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-new-path-vm86-based-venix-emulator.html

I wonder if an approach like this could work for Venix/PRO.

-- 
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com
-- Flat text is just *never* what you want. -- stephen p spackman -

Anyone need a Kaypro 4?

[Chris Zach via cctalk]

I have a pair of them now and CP/M is not my cup of tea. Anyone want to 
trade them for something Q-Bus or Unibussy? Or beer? Located in MD.


C

Speaking of emulators... I have a userland Venix/86 executive...

[Warner Losh via cctalk]

I've written a Venix/86 userland emulator. It uses FreeBSD's vm86 to run
binaries natively and intercepts traps for things like system calls. I
finally have it to the point where it can run the compiler via cc (which
forks and execs c0, copt, cpp, as, ld, etc). My plans to try to recreate
the sources for the binaries for Venix/86 from V7 and other extant sources
have taken a step forward. Don't know if I'll ever get there, but at least
I don't need a working Rainbow and can run the compiler at ~4GHz rather
than ~4MHz

http://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-new-path-vm86-based-venix-emulator.html
has my latest blog entry on it. The code lives in tools/vm86venix in my
https://github.com/bsdimp/venix repo for those that want to take a look. It
uses vm86 mode of 32-bit intel processors and traps all INT xx and other
privileged instructions and provides appropriate emulation... And the
compiled binary is smaller than the venix kernel (but it does less).

Warner

Re: CWVG

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 8/28/2021 5:14 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 3:01 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:


Back in 2005 I imaged both my Mod I and Mod II floppies using my Altair
and a program I wrote way way wayy back when for transferring floppy
images called "XMT".  But I like to image floppies two different ways,
and the Greaseweazle cannot (yet) deal with hard sectoring.


It can't---that's a surprise to me.   I used a MK III by the way--the
image is from 2007.



That is correct.  It can't.  I expect it is just a matter of software 
and firmware.  You can get a .scp file out of it by telling it to read, 
oh, 60 revolutions, but the .scp file is pretty useless.


JRJ

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

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.  :-)





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.



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: CWVG

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 8/28/21 3:01 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:
> 
> Back in 2005 I imaged both my Mod I and Mod II floppies using my Altair
> and a program I wrote way way wayy back when for transferring floppy
> images called "XMT".  But I like to image floppies two different ways,
> and the Greaseweazle cannot (yet) deal with hard sectoring.

It can't---that's a surprise to me.   I used a MK III by the way--the
image is from 2007.

Nowadays, I use an STM32F4 microcontroller.  MOre than capable enough
for anything I can throw at it.

--Chuck

Re: CWVG

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 8/28/2021 3:06 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 12:27 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 12:12 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:


I have successfully read a couple of Mod I disks (143KB).  But some
have not read very well.


I played with one when they came out. The software wasn't ready for
prime time.

I had hoped it had gotten better since then. Even something basic like
^C out of a transfer
locked the board up.


I believe that I used an MPI 100 tpi drive when I processed the Vector 4
images.   Came off without a hitch using a Catweasel.

Raw decoded image was about 600K.

One of the first jobs was to decode the memorite disk itself.

Here's the disk image dump, if you're curious.

https://app.box.com/s/mw9pk2xmrcr8ageu2ueuutvk4b6iw721

--Chuck





Back in 2005 I imaged both my Mod I and Mod II floppies using my Altair 
and a program I wrote way way wayy back when for transferring floppy 
images called "XMT".  But I like to image floppies two different ways, 
and the Greaseweazle cannot (yet) deal with hard sectoring.


Of course, I could also use my catweasel with these drives directly - 
but kind of a pain to do.


JRJ

Re: CWVG

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 8/28/2021 2:27 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 12:12 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:

I have successfully read a couple of Mod I disks (143KB).  But some 
have not read very well.


I played with one when they came out. The software wasn't ready for 
prime time.


I had hoped it had gotten better since then. Even something basic like 
^C out of a transfer

locked the board up.



And, still does, unfortunately.  I opened a ticket for that.  ;)

Re: CWVG

[Mike Douglas via cctalk]

I can archive your disk content if you end up needing some assistance. 

I have a few Vector Graphic machines with 100tpi Micropolis and Tandon 100-4M 
drives as well as Mod-I drives at 48tpi. I also have utilities to archive and 
recreate disks on these drives by exchanging the disk image with a PC via 
XMODEM (FLOP2PC and PC2FLOP). Note that these disk images can also be mounted 
and run under SIMH.

Mike

Re: RQDX3 firmware sources

[Charles Dickman via cctalk]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 8:01 AM emanuel stiebler via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On 2021-08-26 20:22, Charles Dickman via cctalk wrote:
> > Has anyone tried to compile the sources? succeeded?
>
> Where did you find the sources?
>

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/qbus/rqdxx/rqdx3_src.zip

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

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.




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.


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
$

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 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


It was good to find out that you can get things in/out of the Ultrix-11 
simulation.


Doug

Re: CWVG

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 8/28/21 12:27 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> On 8/28/21 12:12 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:
> 
>> I have successfully read a couple of Mod I disks (143KB).  But some
>> have not read very well.
> 
> I played with one when they came out. The software wasn't ready for
> prime time.
> 
> I had hoped it had gotten better since then. Even something basic like
> ^C out of a transfer
> locked the board up.

I believe that I used an MPI 100 tpi drive when I processed the Vector 4
images.   Came off without a hitch using a Catweasel.

Raw decoded image was about 600K.

One of the first jobs was to decode the memorite disk itself.

Here's the disk image dump, if you're curious.

https://app.box.com/s/mw9pk2xmrcr8ageu2ueuutvk4b6iw721

--Chuck

Re: Call for manuals and maybe floppies: IBM 8100

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 8/28/2021 2:25 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 12:11 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:



 also looked at some field service material available on archive.org.



Was this different from the docs I have on bitsavers?
They have all of bitsavers, but changed the filenames and screwed up the 
directory heirarchy.


IA is a nightmare to search.



The are indeed the same - I missed them because I only searched my own 
mirror for the manual numbers when I went searching for 8100 stuff last 
week.  Should have looked in IndexByDate.txt (blush)


BTW, I have scanned the PoO and storage manuals yesterday, and they are 
in the usual hierarchy I put stuff to contribute within.


JRJ

Re: CWVG

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 8/28/21 12:12 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:


I have successfully read a couple of Mod I disks (143KB).  But some have not 
read very well.


I played with one when they came out. The software wasn't ready for prime time.

I had hoped it had gotten better since then. Even something basic like ^C out 
of a transfer
locked the board up.

Re: Call for manuals and maybe floppies: IBM 8100

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 8/28/21 12:11 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:



 also looked at some field service material available on 
archive.org.




Was this different from the docs I have on bitsavers?
They have all of bitsavers, but changed the filenames and screwed up the 
directory heirarchy.

IA is a nightmare to search.

Re: CWVG

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 8/27/2021 10:08 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctalk wrote:

On 8/26/2021 2:51 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:



On 8/25/2021 5:58 PM, Mike Loewen via cctalk wrote:

On Wed, 25 Aug 2021, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:



    As a few of the signals on the 34-pin connector are different 
than the Shugart layout, I'm considering making up a custom cable and 
connecting it to my Catweasel MK4+. I have a utility from Andrew 
Lynch called "cwns", which is a modified version of "cw2dmk" to read 
Northstar hard-sector (10 SPT) diskettes. I might be able to modify 
that to read the VG 16 SPT diskettes, if the 1043-2 will work with 
the Catweasel.


It will not - but it has nothing to do with the cabling.  I already 
tried with my catweasel.  I was able to read flux, but between the 
hard sectoring and (possibly) different meta markers for the floppy 
sectors, the .scp file is useless.  I just got my Cypress board for a 
fluxengine in the mail yesterday, but haven't set it up yet - maybe 
tomorrow.  The website for fluxengine indicates it ought to work.




The fluxengine almost works with my Micropolis drives - but there are 
some problems.


1)  The drive select pins are different.  I am having *some* luck access 
one driver of my daisy-chained pair, but not the other.  The fluxengine 
setup and/or the drive also seem to get confused when I try to access 
the other drive.  I submitted an issue on github for more flexible drive 
selection / motor control capability.  One could work around this with 
suitable cabing / jumpering.


2)  So far I have not been able to read an entire Mod II disk 
successfully - lots of good sectors on two, but not all without errors 
on either one.  But I have not tried cleaning the heads on my drives, or 
trying the Mod I with different select jumpering.


3) The Micropolis drives are slow stepping, so I added multiple commands 
to seek to cylinder 0 to my script - not sure if that is actually 
working right.




Another update.  Without messing with the cable pinouts the fluxengine 
will only support a Micropolis drive strapped for DS2 (as fluxengine 
drive 0).


I have successfully read a couple of Mod I disks (143KB).  But some have 
not read very well.  Sometimes it goes "off the rails" and says there 
are 77 tracks, even when the input config specifies 35.  My guess is 
that at the least the decoder could probably need some improvement - a 
task I am not up for, at present.






Mike Loewen    mloe...@cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology    http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/


JRJ


JRJ


JRJ

Re: Call for manuals and maybe floppies: IBM 8100

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 8/26/2021 7:54 PM, Paul Berger via cctalk wrote:


On 2021-08-26 6:48 p.m., Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:
My next project once I finish my IBM 1410 FPGA implementation (so, a 
couple of years out, probably) would be to write an emulator for the 
boat anchor known as the IBM 8100.  I had exposure to these things 
back in the 1980s.  The project was not really a success: the DPPX 
operating system was way overkill for the underpowered machine, and 
wasn't reliable enough or capable enough to run them at remote 
locations with central administration.


The machine had some fairly sophisticated features:
   Two groups of 64 sets of registers with 8 32 bit registers each
   Auto increment and auto decrement indexed addressing
   Address translation - but not paging
   A primitive form of I/O channel


True story:  The early releases of DPPX were just awful buggy.  We 
ended up dedicating 3 conference rooms (with the dividers open) for a 
"warm room" for something like 3 months, housing our personnel and IBM 
personnel up from Texas.  At one point one of the IBM'ers was 
overheard on a public phone in the hallway of our public building 
telling someone he was there "to help the hicks from Wisconsin".  That 
got reported to our management and to IBM's management, and he was on 
the next flight back to Texas.  ;)


On the flip side, I was testing database recovery (it was my thing, 
back in the day - though we did not end up using the database / 
transaction manager).  I found some bugs in the database log journal 
recovery process.  I mentioned it to one of the IBM'ers in passing, 
also pointing out it wasn't urgent since we were not going to use DTMS 
anyway, at least not soon.  He pretty much begged me to report it - 
and anything else I found wrong.  Completely polar opposite attitude 
of the guy in the previous paragraph.


JRJ


The 8100 came out during my first stint in field service, most of the 
machines we saw where 8130s that ran the DPCX operating system and they 
where purchased to replace 3790 distributed processors. We had one 
customer who bought an 8140 and I helped with a model upgrade on it, 
which involved removing all the logic gates as one unit and replacing 
them with the upgraded one.  It would have been quicker and probably 
cheaper to ship an entire new machine, but they where advertised as 
field upgradeable so.   A few years later when I saw the inside of a 
S/38 I recognized the packaging of the system as being identical to the 
8140 except the 8140 did not have the built in CRT console or magazine 
diskette drive. This 8140 was running DPPX but I don't know how the 
customer got on with it as it was not my account.  It is said that the 
8100 processor is the Universal Controller (UC), but I am hoping it was 
a beefed up on from the UC engine that ran several of the "Industry 
Systems" controllers such as 3274 (NDS), 3601 (Banking), and 3651 
(retail store systems).


Paul.




I had a look at the UC information on 
bitsavers.org/pdf/IBM/microcontrollers, and also looked at some field 
service material available on archive.org.


The CPU comprises several boards, so it wasn't UC per se.  There was a 
ROS-driven micro controller that handled instruction fetch and 
branching, but it had 56 bit words per that field service material.


It may have had a similar software architecture to the UCs, but at 
present from what I have seen the similarity seems to end their.


JRJ

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Aug 28, 2021, at 12:22 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On 8/28/21 8:57 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:
> 
>> Neatly solved in the document's future (but our past and present) by having 
>> documents that are born digital.
> 
> Good luck translating documents that HP, DEC and IBM produced in their 
> proprietary "bookreader" formats so
> they don't look like crap.

The same goes for PDF, in many cases.  But I have found that running a PDF 
document through an OCR program that handles page formatting (like FineReader) 
can work quite well.  The OCR function itself of course works very nicely when 
you have input like that -- no variability in the letter shapes.  So you're 
really dealing with the conversion from page geometry to text flow that those 
programs also offer.

paul

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

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?  :-)

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.



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

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Jonathan Stone via cctalk]

 The old-school way to do this is to install inetd, ensure it gets started up, 
and uncomment the line in its config-file (/etc/inetd.conf ?) for telnet.

Setting up an ftp chroot area is painful. If you're using cleartext passwords 
(telnet) anyway, I'd set up rlogin/rsh, and use rcp.
Same story: /etc/inetd.conf, or whatever Debian replaced that with. Assuming 
Ultrix-11 has rsh/rcp, that is.  

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Yes, I did create a new kernel and copy it to the correct place and 
chmod 644 the new unix file.
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


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.


Doug

On 8/28/2021 12:54 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

On 8/28/21 12:43 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Its been fun  working with Ultrix-11 and have had success with the 
help of the list.  Thanks.  The tape file from Bill Gunshannon will 
create a working system.  Yay!


I'm at the point of trying to network the SIMH pdp11 Ultrix-11 system.

I have a few observations:

1. The youtube video 'Ultrix-11' shows connecting to sunOS systems. 
OK, he did this by simply issuing a single ifconfig command.  That 
didn't work for me.


I assume you built a new kernel with the right networking interface
in it?  :-)



2. Instead, I used the netsetup script supplied with the system, and 
had to reboot to get networking up.  I did seem to come up OK.


3. The SIMH FAQ suggests using a 2nd ethernet port, I was able to do 
this.  The linux computer I am running SIMH on has 2 ports.


4. The Ultrix-11 telnet ftp are old, unsecure versions, how do you 
connect to a modern Linux machine?  The Linux machines refuse the 
connections.


All telnet and ftp connectionms are old and insecure. There is no such
thing as secure telnet or ftp (or rsh or finger, you get the picture).
If you wish to go from the Ultrix-11 system to the Linux system you
will need to explicitly turn on telnetd and/or ftpd.  Or, do the same
on Ultrix-11 and go the other way.  There is no ssh for Ultrix-11 and
I seriously doubt there ever could be.



5. I also looked at the tuhs archive.  The Fred build script that 
generates a tk50 bootable tape image didn't work for me.  I 
substituted a file for the tape device and it caused SIMH to Halt.


Don't remember what system I bult the tape on but I doubt it was
an Ultrix-11 system.  Probably a VAX runnning netbbsd under SIMH.

bill

Ultrix-11 Networking

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

Its been fun  working with Ultrix-11 and have had success with the help 
of the list.  Thanks.  The tape file from Bill Gunshannon will create a 
working system.  Yay!


I'm at the point of trying to network the SIMH pdp11 Ultrix-11 system.

I have a few observations:

1. The youtube video 'Ultrix-11' shows connecting to sunOS systems. OK, 
he did this by simply issuing a single ifconfig command.  That didn't 
work for me.


2. Instead, I used the netsetup script supplied with the system, and had 
to reboot to get networking up.  I did seem to come up OK.


3. The SIMH FAQ suggests using a 2nd ethernet port, I was able to do 
this.  The linux computer I am running SIMH on has 2 ports.


4. The Ultrix-11 telnet ftp are old, unsecure versions, how do you 
connect to a modern Linux machine?  The Linux machines refuse the 
connections.


5. I also looked at the tuhs archive.  The Fred build script that 
generates a tk50 bootable tape image didn't work for me.  I substituted 
a file for the tape device and it caused SIMH to Halt.


Doug

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

Re: scanning resolution

I've never seen a perceivable difference beyond 600-800dpi in the material I 
work with

You have to consider the media you are working with. Even 600 is overkill for a 
DEC
pulp handbook from the 60's, while a high clay litho magazine may have 
half-toning to
that level.

Re: Ultrix-11 Networking

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

On 8/28/21 12:43 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Its been fun  working with Ultrix-11 and have had success with the help 
of the list.  Thanks.  The tape file from Bill Gunshannon will create a 
working system.  Yay!


I'm at the point of trying to network the SIMH pdp11 Ultrix-11 system.

I have a few observations:

1. The youtube video 'Ultrix-11' shows connecting to sunOS systems. OK, 
he did this by simply issuing a single ifconfig command.  That didn't 
work for me.


I assume you built a new kernel with the right networking interface
in it?  :-)



2. Instead, I used the netsetup script supplied with the system, and had 
to reboot to get networking up.  I did seem to come up OK.


3. The SIMH FAQ suggests using a 2nd ethernet port, I was able to do 
this.  The linux computer I am running SIMH on has 2 ports.


4. The Ultrix-11 telnet ftp are old, unsecure versions, how do you 
connect to a modern Linux machine?  The Linux machines refuse the 
connections.


All telnet and ftp connectionms are old and insecure. There is no such
thing as secure telnet or ftp (or rsh or finger, you get the picture).
If you wish to go from the Ultrix-11 system to the Linux system you
will need to explicitly turn on telnetd and/or ftpd.  Or, do the same
on Ultrix-11 and go the other way.  There is no ssh for Ultrix-11 and
I seriously doubt there ever could be.



5. I also looked at the tuhs archive.  The Fred build script that 
generates a tk50 bootable tape image didn't work for me.  I substituted 
a file for the tape device and it caused SIMH to Halt.


Don't remember what system I bult the tape on but I doubt it was
an Ultrix-11 system.  Probably a VAX runnning netbbsd under SIMH.

bill

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 8/28/21 8:57 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:


Neatly solved in the document's future (but our past and present) by having 
documents that are born digital.


Good luck translating documents that HP, DEC and IBM produced in their proprietary 
"bookreader" formats so
they don't look like crap.

I have the source tapes with the files for hundreds of HP manuals created with 
Interleaf.
I've not been able to recreate their workflow.

"Born Digital" is no panacea

Re: VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[emanuel stiebler via cctalk]

On 2021-07-13 15:39, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:

> When I did all my testing about a month and a half ago, I used a VT320.  I’m 
> not sure if I’ve ever tried to talk to a VAXstation with anything other than 
> a DEC terminal.

I don't have any problems with USB-Serial adapters, on most DEC
equipment. I have most VT***, but not always like to move them.
So a laptop is easier.

Just don't forget to switch of HW handshake on the USB side, and get
XON/XOFF ...

yes, sometimes one has tp play with 7/8 bits, parities etc., but it
usually works ...

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 28/08/2021 12:44, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote:


I always fail to understand this ...
With prices for hard drives like they are, and comparing to the amount
of work, it really is to scan a manual, I would recommend to scan with
the best resolution you have, and have those files as you "original scans"
Than, you apply whatever tricks you have in your bin, to "publish" those
scans.


Well the scanner claims 4800 dpi optical, so that's 1.6GiB per page.

(Actually the scanner claims 4800 x 9600 dpi optical  but I can't see 
how to ask it to do that).


So there's a question of what's practical. I only have about 4Tib of 
free space, so that's 2500 colour pages at most.


It's also incredibly inefficient: that same information, if it had been 
born digital, would take 100kB per page or so.


I've not tried opening a 100GiB document lately but I assume that any 
PDF reader will some issues.




Probably, one day there will be a nice tool, to do whatever you
expected, and you have the scan already on your drive, and the original
manual is digitized and preserved already.

Neatly solved in the document's future (but our past and present) by 
having documents that are born digital.



That just leaves a few hundred years of printed matter to deal with. 
Luckily noteshrink seems to do a good job.



Antonio

--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Antonio Carlini via cctalk]

On 28/08/2021 09:21, æstrid smith via cctalk wrote:

i've achieved satisfactory results paletteizing scans of low-color-depth 
material using a tool called 'noteshrink':

https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html

Well as a guide the 66 page AA-CJ39A-TE (VAX-11 RSX Installation Guide 
and Release Notes) is 8.8MB. That's with the front and rear cover 
scanned as 300 dpi JPG and also 12 colour pages as 300 dpi JPG.


Each of the 600dpi PNG pages comes out at 26MB.

I tried optipng first. Even "-o 7" (which I ran overnight but I forgot 
to time ...) only dropped a page down to 19MB. So completely impractical 
for even this small number of pages.



Noteshrink (which I've seen before but never bothered to try!) knocked a 
26MB PNG down to 700kB. The only issue is that the red looks quite a bit 
more brown than it should. I'll look into it a bit more as it looks 
good. Thanks



Antonio


--
Antonio Carlini
anto...@acarlini.com

Re: Tandon Track 0 adjustment

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 8/27/21 10:22 PM, Mike Loewen via cctalk wrote:
> 
>    What's the recommended method for adjusting the track 0 switch and
> track 0 stop on a Tandon TM100-2, if you don't have an alignment disk? I
> do have a scope.

I'll also add that too many people go into the business of re-alignment
without first cleaning the track 0 sensor.  Since everything is keyed
off of the track 0 reference, this can lead to grief later on.

Clean the sensor first and see if that doesn't clear up your alignment
issues.

--Chuck

Re: Tandon Track 0 adjustment

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 8/27/21 10:22 PM, Mike Loewen via cctalk wrote:
> 
>    What's the recommended method for adjusting the track 0 switch and
> track 0 stop on a Tandon TM100-2, if you don't have an alignment disk? I
> do have a scope.

Just use a known-good disk and adjust for best results.  That's about
all you can do without a calibrated reference floppy.

There were also non-scope digital alignment disks with sectors recorded
at various offsets and azimuths from ideal.  Those could be handled by
simple code that read sector IDs.

--Chuck

Re: VAX4000 VLC diagnostics/console

[Greg Stark via cctalk]

On Tue., Jul. 13, 2021, 15:39 Zane Healy via cctalk, 
wrote:

>
> When I did all my testing about a month and a half ago, I used a VT320.
> I’m not sure if I’ve ever tried to talk to a VAXstation with anything other
> than a DEC terminal.
>

I had the serial console on a model 60 working connected to a Sparc 5 but
never got it to work with any PC USB adapters of any sort.

>

Re: RQDX3 firmware sources

[emanuel stiebler via cctalk]

On 2021-08-26 20:22, Charles Dickman via cctalk wrote:
> Has anyone tried to compile the sources? succeeded?

Where did you find the sources?

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[emanuel stiebler via cctalk]

On 2021-08-28 04:21, æstrid smith via cctalk wrote:
> i've achieved satisfactory results paletteizing scans of low-color-depth 
> material using a tool called 'noteshrink':
> 
> https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html

Even if you don't use the tool, it is worth reading ;-)

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[emanuel stiebler via cctalk]

On 2021-08-27 16:50, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:

> For photographs or shaded areas that don't necessarily come out well
> under those settings, I plan to use 8-bit greyscale. I'd prefer to use
> 600dpi but I may have to fall back to 300dpi if the per-page fiile size
> shoots up too much.

I always fail to understand this ...
With prices for hard drives like they are, and comparing to the amount
of work, it really is to scan a manual, I would recommend to scan with
the best resolution you have, and have those files as you "original scans"
Than, you apply whatever tricks you have in your bin, to "publish" those
scans.

Probably, one day there will be a nice tool, to do whatever you
expected, and you have the scan already on your drive, and the original
manual is digitized and preserved already.

Just my .001 cents ;-)

And I was talking about pictures/hafltone etc.

The recommendations for b/w & text/line drawings are clear ...

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[æstrid smith via cctalk]

i've achieved satisfactory results paletteizing scans of low-color-depth 
material using a tool called 'noteshrink':

https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html

-- 
æstrid smith (she/her)
=<[ c y b e r ]>=
antique telephone collectors association member #4870



On Fri, Aug 27, 2021, at 13:50, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:
> I have a few manuals to scan and I'm looking for suggestions, about how 
> to add bookmarks and how to handle colour.
> 
> Bookmarks should be easier, so lets start with that. I want to add 
> bookmarks (or whatever they are called) so that it is easy to navigate 
> to page "2-48" or "C-17" in a document. Many of the PDFs on bitsavers 
> have that and I've found it very useful so I'd like to do that for my 
> future scans. I've tried with pdftk (the Java port as the original is no 
> longer available on my distro) but that failed. So I tried GhostScript 
> and that also failed, while also rewriting the PDF to be considerably 
> larger. Is there simple way to achieve this (ideally from the CLI)?
> 
> 
> Now for the scanning itself.
> 
> For manuals that are simple monochrome, I plan to scan at 600dpi bilevel 
> G4 encoded, wrapped in PDF.
> For photographs or shaded areas that don't necessarily come out well 
> under those settings, I plan to use 8-bit greyscale. I'd prefer to use 
> 600dpi but I may have to fall back to 300dpi if the per-page fiile size 
> shoots up too much.
> 
> The real issue is colour. I know that various people have looked at the 
> issue of how to efficiently scan pages that are mostly black and white 
> but have some coloured text (RSX-11 manuals and early VMS manuals did 
> this to highlight terminal input, for example). I don't think this is a 
> solved problem and I'm not expecting a solution, what I'm really looking 
> for is to check that what I'm about to produce will have all the 
> information that a future efficient algorithm is likely to need.
> 
> I'm going to start by scanning the whole manual as though it had no 
> colour (so 600 dpi bilevel G4 encoded, except for pages with photos and 
> shading and so on). Then I'm going to go back and rescan the pages that 
> have colour and scan those at 600 dpi and save as a JPG. Then I'll 
> produce a final PDF with the colour pages inserted. I'll also produce a 
> PDF with the B pages that were replaced by colour pages (I assume OCR 
> will be better served by non-jaggy scans).
> 
> So the final outputs will be:
> manual.pdf  - the whole manual, including whole pages scanned as colour 
> if any colour is present on them
> manual_BW.pdf  - the G4-encoded bilevel pages that were replaced by 
> colour pages
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> Antonio
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Antonio Carlini
> anto...@acarlini.com
> 
> 

Re: CWVG

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 8/26/2021 2:51 PM, Jay Jaeger via cctech wrote:



On 8/25/2021 5:58 PM, Mike Loewen via cctalk wrote:

On Wed, 25 Aug 2021, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:



    As a few of the signals on the 34-pin connector are different than 
the Shugart layout, I'm considering making up a custom cable and 
connecting it to my Catweasel MK4+. I have a utility from Andrew Lynch 
called "cwns", which is a modified version of "cw2dmk" to read 
Northstar hard-sector (10 SPT) diskettes. I might be able to modify 
that to read the VG 16 SPT diskettes, if the 1043-2 will work with the 
Catweasel.


It will not - but it has nothing to do with the cabling.  I already 
tried with my catweasel.  I was able to read flux, but between the hard 
sectoring and (possibly) different meta markers for the floppy sectors, 
the .scp file is useless.  I just got my Cypress board for a fluxengine 
in the mail yesterday, but haven't set it up yet - maybe tomorrow.  The 
website for fluxengine indicates it ought to work.




The fluxengine almost works with my Micropolis drives - but there are 
some problems.


1)  The drive select pins are different.  I am having *some* luck access 
one driver of my daisy-chained pair, but not the other.  The fluxengine 
setup and/or the drive also seem to get confused when I try to access 
the other drive.  I submitted an issue on github for more flexible drive 
selection / motor control capability.  One could work around this with 
suitable cabing / jumpering.


2)  So far I have not been able to read an entire Mod II disk 
successfully - lots of good sectors on two, but not all without errors 
on either one.  But I have not tried cleaning the heads on my drives, or 
trying the Mod I with different select jumpering.


3) The Micropolis drives are slow stepping, so I added multiple commands 
to seek to cylinder 0 to my script - not sure if that is actually 
working right.






Mike Loewen    mloe...@cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology    http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/


JRJ


JRJ

Re: Scanning Suggestions (Bookmarks & Colour)

[Michael Mulhern via cctalk]

I have been scanning to 400 and 600 dpi TIFF and using scantailor-advanced
to post-process. Where manuals have had colour highlighting I’ve had good
results selecting indexed colour as the output type for those pages.

Unfortunately pathetic rural internet connection means I’ve only been
pushing optimised PDFs to the internet archive, but all original and
processed scans are kept and backed up.

I’m not just doing manuals, but whatever I find interesting in my library
at them time.

So far I’ve only done 500+ in the last 12 months, but it’s also therapeutic
for me as well as for sharing.

For your education and/or reading pleasure
https://archive.org/details/@jongleur

Cheers

Michael.

On Sat, 28 Aug 2021 at 8:05 am, Antonio Carlini via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On 27/08/2021 22:10, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> > On 8/27/21 2:05 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
> >
> >> For material such as the RSX manuals you mentioned, the tool needed
> >> is a compression algorithm that handles color with hard edges
> >> faithfully.  Basically that means a lossless compression scheme.
> >> That should be fine, since pages like that should compress very well,
> >> at least if the scan has been touched up just a bit to make the page
> >> background reasonably pure white.
> >
> > Ethan worked on a filter a long time ago for DEC manuals. J David
> > Bryan's work was mentioned recently.
>
> I did see it, but it didn't look like a cookie-cutter recipe. I'd be
> happy to be proved wrong though. What I don't want to have to do is
> manually process each page (beyond having to decide which to scan in
> colour). I would be looking for an algorithm or process that I can just
> point at scanner data for a page and have it spit out the optimised PDF
> page. I'm sure that will appear at some stage, but I don't think it
> exists yet. The RSX-11M/M-PLUS Error Logging Manual, for example, has
> somewhere between 20 and 50 pages with colour present. I can pick those
> out and re-scan them and I can relatively easily merge those pages with
> the original B scan, but if I have to manually examine each page, I'll
> never make it to whatever manual is in my list after that one :-)
>
> >
> > It is trivial to add page bookmarks with Eric Smith's tumble with the
> > -b %F option
> >
> Thanks, I'll look into tumble.
>
>
> Antonio
>
> --
> Antonio Carlini
> anto...@acarlini.com
>
> --


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