[cctalk] Re: MS-DOS
> Could we please keep politics off this list? I could argue at length > about this topic but I'm not going to, this list is not the forum for > that. *clears throat* Yes, what Paul said, please. De ᕙ( ︡’︡ 益 ’︠)ง▬▬█
[cctalk] Re: Pick system in Manitoba looking for a new home
> The card cage has a VERY strong DEC look to it - probably LSI-11. The tape drive is a rebadged Cipher streamer. The two disk are Priam devices, in spite of the Xentek label on the one. De
[cctalk] Re: Fwd: Civility; Was Re: Re: LCM auction pre-notice
Folks, Once again, it seems I need to ask everyone to drop this discussion. I _still_ don't want to have the moderation flags and banhammers. De
[cctalk] Re: 8P8C but width of an RJ-11
> I'm trying to source a new I/O cable for a Convergent WorkSlate (this > one is grody from degenerating plasticizers). It's 8P8C with a little > offset snag reminiscent of a DEC MMJ, but it's the width of an RJ-11: > while an "RJ-45" Ethernet cable is too wide, a phone handset cord is > the right width even though it obviously doesn't have enough > connectors. I messed around with filing down a junk Ethernet patch > cord but that's just making a mess bigger than the icky cable. There's a connector system called RJ Point 5, which puts the latch clip on the narrow side, makes the connector half or less the width of a standard 8p8c modular, and looks like it uses internal pins instead of surface contacts. De
[cctalk] Door / AC power key for various Sun equipment
For irrelevant reasons, I noticed the other day that the parts-for-power-plants mafia and ebay sellers are all asking $45 - $120 for a Sun 330-2014 key. WTH. If you don't care about the purple plastic on one end, I'm pretty sure that you can make these thusly: Ilco 1043J aka IL11, cut 34244 b-t Illinois/TImberline disc, DSD-44 The Sun handbook says these systems use this key: PRODUCT AC POWER KEY POWER INTERLOCK KEY DOOR KEY E3000/E3500 330-2014 No Interlock 330-2014 E4x00/E5x00/E6x00 330-2014 No Interlock No Key Sun Fire V480/V880/V490/V890 330-2014 No Interlock 330-2014 Sun Fire 3800/48x0/6800 330-2014 No Interlock 330-2014 Sun Fire E4900/E6900 330-2014 No Interlock 330-2014 56" and 68" Rack 330-2014 No Interlock No Key Sun Fire Cabinet 330-2014 No Interlock 330-2014 Hopefully this saves someone some bucks. De
[cctalk] Re: Chumba on discord
Folks, This thread needs to end here, please. I'd rather not have to break out the emergency moderation flag and the banhammer. De
[cctalk] Re: teletype roll as an RF termination load
> I wouldn't think it would work much better than a light bulb, though. Load it up with a wide range tuner, and you could probably make contacts across three states, though, just like the light bulb. :) De
[cctalk] Re: 5,34 Petaflop System Cheyenne
Cheyenne is a nice basement system. Only needs 1.75 MW. The system which replaced Cheyenne is Derecho, a 19.8 petaflop system. https://news.ucar.edu/132904/scientists-nationwide-launch-first-projects-new-ncar-supercomputer Last fall, NOAA/NWS replaced theirs (one in Manassas, one in Phoenix) with new 12.5 petaflop systems. As the models evolve, they get more demanding. They were able to implement new and enhanced forecast models on the new machines. https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-completes-upgrade-to-weather-and-climate-supercomputer-system De
[cctalk] Re: DEC Processor Books
> I have often wondered about the people we find in the various DEC > Processor (and other) books. Were they models in staged > photo-sessions or were these candid shots from DEC facilities and if > so, can anyone identify who they might be. Someone asked this about the covers of the old Prime manuals. The FAQ has a list of identifications, earlier ones were in-house staff, later stock photos were used. I'd be astonished if any of the photos were candid. I imagine DEC did much the same. De
[cctalk] Re: Keyboard Blockers?
> I thought, at first, some dirt or debris had gotten stuck there, but > on closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be > stuck. I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black > plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing > the key. > The question came to mind; "What sort of application would be so > crude that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain > keys?" I saw this in at least two applications: 1. The Service Merchandise chain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) used serial terminals for their in-showroom catalog ordering. Some keys were blocked somehow, though I never peeled up key caps to see how. :) I want to say that backspace was one of the blocked keys, the aggravation of which is probably why I remember this. 2. CLSI library systems (LIBS100 on PDP-11). Ours here had ADM-3A (iirc) terminals with the break key blocked, iirc, though there were plenty of other ways to discombobulate the thing inadvertently. It was also available via dialup from keyboards that were not so modified. I once heated up a paper clip to read hot and shoved it through the stem of a TVI-925's SEND key, which was used for block mode functions, and caused the terminal to vomit screen contents back to the host. Unwanted presses of course produced a heck of a mess. (Older versions of our application ran in block mode, but you could always hit ESC-S to send the screen, and it was unfortunately easy, at least for me, to thwack SEND by mistake.) De
[cctalk] Re: Did something happen to comp.os.vms ?
> Did something happen to comp.os.vms and/or usenet? All the DEC > newsgroups appear to be missing from Eternal September. There has been a huge flood of spam originating from google, in various newsgroups, for a few months. I saw 15,000 one day in comp.os.vms alone. This problem has prompted google to drop usenet support from Groups, which happened late last month. (The existing posts are still accessible, they claim.) Many are largely happy about this change. ;) It's possible this is related to your issue, though I see that someone else managed to subscribe to c.o.v. on Eternal September, so perhaps not. Sadly, a lot of c.o.v. regulars were using ggroups to post. Hopefully they take advantage of one of the alternatives. De
[cctalk] Re: mod.sources archive?
> Googling for "mirror uxc.cso.uiuc.edu" found me one hopeful hit: > https://www.funet.fi > pub > misc > Notes.README Ron, Another good search approach that I hadn't thought of. Many thanks! De
[cctalk] Re: mod.sources archive?
> How much is older than that? I didn't think uucp got going until V7 > was released outside of AT&T in 1980 or 81... I'm sure someone > will correct my notions though :) If memory serves (hahahalolrofl...) the origins of usenet go back to at least 1980. (Ignoring the Plato history.) What set this off was a desire to look at and maybe fiddle with the old Notes package by Ray Essick and Rob Kolstad. De
[cctalk] Re: mod.sources archive?
> Maybe https://archive.org/details/usenet-mod It includes > mod.sources.mbox.zip Thanks, didn't think of that. I've found things in there before. That takes us back into 1984. The net.* hierarchy is also in the same collection, and its net.sources mbox goes back to ~1982. Anyone know of an archive that has stuff older than 1982? De
[cctalk] mod.sources archive?
Does anyone have or know of an archive of old mod.sources (predecessor of comp.sources.unix) posts? I know googlegroups has it, but that only means nothing since it's effectively inaccessible there. De
[cctalk] Re: FYI: Hobbes OS/2 Archive logs off permanently in April
> According to a warning on the site: "After many years of service, > hobbes.nmsu.edu will be decommissioned and will no longer be > available. You the user are responsible for downloading any of the > files found in this archive if you want them. These files will no > longer be available for access or download as of the decommission > date." Jason Scott has indicated he has archiving under control. De
[cctalk] Re: IBM VM "CMS" tape format
> I slept on the problem a bit--good thing that I'm old; I like to > sleep--and think that I've got it sussed out. :) > Tape appears to consist of 4101 byte blocks, each with a "/02CMSx" > header; the first one seems to be "CMSF" with the intervening ones being > "CMSV" and then a final 87 byte block starting with "/02CMSN" and with > what appears to be file metadata, including the file name. The body of > the 4K+ blocks appears to be 80 character card images. Last block of > each file seems to be padded with nulls. Starting on pdf page 135 here is a description of the FST data structures from circa 1986: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/370/VM_SP/Release_5_Dec86/LY24-5221-2_VM_SP_Release_5_Data_Areas_and_Control_Block_Logic_Volume_2_CMS_Dec1986.pdf Might help sort the CMSN block. De
[cctalk] Re: IBM VM "CMS" tape format
> The distance between the CMS header and the CMSN header appears to be > much larger than 800 bytes--the first, for example is about 4K . The > next CMS file name header follows about 80 bytes later. Later versions of the filesystem would be more likely to use 2k or 4k blocks. > I don't see any indication of file or record lengths in the header, > which is troubling. The first block has the following (ASCII > version) The FST contents would be the filesystem metadata, wherever that has landed. De
[cctalk] Re: IBM VM "CMS" tape format
> Ive got a tape here from what I believe to be a VM system. The > structure is unknown to me, although I can possibly take a stab at > it. Lots of data between tapemarks that seems to consist of a number > of records that start out something like this (translated from > EBCIDC): I think this might be the older VMFPLC (not VMFPLC2) format, used by IBM for software distribution and other things. The format seems fairly simple: Five character block header (x'02' 'CMS' 'N' or '0'), 800 bytes of contents. First block is the FST for the file. https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#42 Old VMFPLC may be just CMS TAPE DUMP under the covers. De
[cctalk] Re: VCFMW vendor tables
> This dislike of “Discord” has touched a nerve for me. It’s also one > of the reasons the cctalk list has lost most of it value. Discord is > a collection of channels most devoted to specific subjects that you > more or less subscribe to. It’s just a server and you need an invite > to join a group. I’m in the Classic computer group and find it to be > filled with knowledge people willing to share that knowledge with > others. Saying you don’t like “Discord” is like saying you don’t > like TV. If you don’t like the content, simply don’t watch it. Don’t > blame the medium. No, you've completely missed the point. Many of us strongly dislike _Discord_. Strongly enough to refuse to participate in any activity going on in a Discord channel. Discord-the-organization has a long history of being privacy intrusive, banning alternative clients, and other sorts of malfeasance. De
[cctalk] Re: Little Databases
> Surely you hyperbole. Since it's used in Android for various things, and in Firefox and Chromium for various things, he's not in the least. De
[cctalk] Re: Good Inventory Program for keeping track of my DEC boards, parts, computers, etc?
> I would also appreciate any recommendations for database software. In addition to GCstar, which is an application you run on your workstation, there are some open source collection management tools aimed at museums and the like. Most of the latter probably require some server side support. A few examples are listed here: https://www.oedb.org/ilibrarian/5-free-and-open-source-tools-for-creating-digital-exhibitions/ De
[cctalk] Re: Good Inventory Program for keeping track of my DEC boards, parts, computers, etc?
> I'm looking for a good inventory program to help me keep track of all of > my PDP-8 stuff. > I would like to keep track of physical location, board etch revision, > board modification revision, bus type, where used, etc. If you're using a unix-like operating system, GCstar seems relatively usable, and lets you define your own database fields. De
[cctalk] Re: SCAMP at 50 (IBM 5100)
> Wait! There is a SCAMP other than Burroughs' Single Chip A-Series=20 > Mainframe Processor. And then there's the SC/MP. De
[cctalk] Re: Old Professional/350 software, any of this out there
> Starting to go through my boxes of POS stuff. I know of course that > 3.2 is out there (minus the Pro/Communications option which has a bad > disk in the distro) however are these disks out there now? I appear to have diskette sets including Pro Hard Disk 3.0, a 3.1 update set, DECnet Pro, COMMTK, F77, Pascal, Word-11 v3.0 for Pro, what looks like a few class software packages in engineering - physics - chemistry, maybe others. I haven't read these, so I don't know for sure what's really there. Is this stuff already in captivity, or should I add it to the list of stuff to read? Dex
[cctalk] Re: BEWARE: Phishing
> > It is important to keep everyone aware of phishing attempts, but it's=20 > > also important to make sure when you send warning emails to simply=20 > > delete the actual URL that the criminals provide so that nobody=20 > > accidently clicks on something... > As someone that tends to investigate a lot of things -- though not this=20 > specific one -- I appreciate breaking, but not removing, URLs. While bowdlerizing the link in an obvious way is probably a good plan, it seems like blindly clicking on a link labeled BEWARE might not be a good plan. :) De
[cctalk] Re: ST-251 Data Recovery for Glenside Color Computer Club (GCCC)
> At the most recent CoCoFEST!, I brought home the old Glenside Club > Computer Hard Drive. The mechanism is an ST-251, and I was wondering > if someone on-list would be willing to attempt to pull data off the > drive. I have no ability to configure to read this drive type, and > the data is not precious or anything, I just though we should try to > pull it off for historical sake. The best way to approach this, given the interchange issues with MFM disk controllers, is probably to use one of Dave Gesswein's MFM Emulator devices. It'll give you a flux image that can then be decode. There may not be a decoder for the CoCo format yet, but it's probably not too far different from other common things, so hopefully it could be constructed fairly easily. The MFMEmu community seems to be willing to help with this. De
[cctalk] Re: 3D Printing
> Is there any way to change the orientation of an object on the table > using just the STL file? Creality's slicer software is a fork of Cura. Cura can rotate objects on the platform during the slicing process. Not sure I've ever actually used Creality's version, but in the more generic version I use, the workflow is something like this: 1. Click the object to select it. 2. Find and click the rotate button in the toolbar on the left (circular arrow); the object is now surrounded by a "gyroscope". 3. Use the arrows on the "gyroscope" to rotate the object. Seems like there was a button somewhere to pick a face of the object and make it coincident with the build platform, too. De
[cctalk] ESDI drive imaging
I think I know the answer to this, but just in case: Is there a way to image ESDI disks other than to hook them up to their usual host controller and use the host? E.g. for MFM, I'd grab the MFM Emulator board. Cheers, De
[cctalk] Mail veracity signing
Folks, A heads up that I've turned on some mail veracity signing functionality in Mailman. One could hope it would just work, and that I made no mistakes in the configuration, but... :) I'm working on this to try to improve deliverability of list traffic. De
[cctalk] Delivery woes
Folks, As I try to track down why various subscribers are getting booted from the list in the last couple of days, I'm noticing that a number of you are subscribed from an address that forwards elsewhere. This works poorly. TL;DR follows, but basically this is brought to you by the fact that modern email sucks almost as much because of the anti-spam processes as because of the spam itself. In the modern world, forwarding is pretty much dead on arrival. Avoid it where possible. I'll be over here swearing right along with you. TL;DR: to be able to deliver any email at all these days, we have to comply with a couple of schemes designed to make it harder to forge mail -- DKIM and SPF. The combined effect of making the necessary declarations in the DNS entries for classiccmp.org is that if you try to forward mail, you look like you're _impersonating_ classiccmp.org. Many large providers (google, yahoo, etc.) refuse such mail. The same anti-spam mechanisms also make it difficult to run a proper RFC compliant mailing list, because then classiccmp.org would be sending mail with _your_ From: address, making classiccmp.org look like an impersonator. Still $w34ring. Cheers, De
[cctalk] Re: Beaglebone Black Industrial
> Yes, but I am pretty sure it doesn't have the ethernet. And I found > a bargain on the Beaglebone Black Industrial. It does have ethernet. They dropped the HDMI output. But the main advantage is price, so if you already found a deal, win. De
[cctalk] Re: Beaglebone Black Industrial
> Does anyone here know if the Beaglebone Black Industrial is he same > as the regular Beaglebone Black? I have a couple of the MFM Emulator > boards to build and will need a couple Beaglebones for them. They're supposed to be the same except with expanded operating temperature range. You know the Greens work for the MFMemu, right? De
[cctalk] Re: Power supply for DEC VK100 GIGI?
> Kludging something up with a modern supply looks fairly easy; there's > plenty of room in there, but it will be ugly. Don't know what I'll > do about the fan, but the VK100 logic itself probably doesn't need a > fan so whatever is built into the ATX will be enough. At least the ATX won't be full of RIFA caps? De
[cctalk] Re: Power supply for DEC VK100 GIGI?
> A friend gave me a DEC VK100 (aka GiGi) recently. It's in really nice > shape, but it is missing the power supply. Before I try to kludge > something up with an ATX supply, I thought I'd ask if anybody knows > where I might find an official replacement. The board in the supply is an Astec, so might be findable other ways than just "the GIGI supply", but you probably don't have any of the fan, switch / plug assembly, or bent sheet metal either, I bet. Photo here: https://yagi.h-net.org/gigi_ps.jpg De
[cctalk] Re: Age of Tape Formats?
> Wow! I'd love to see the 1971 vintage GCR tape controller, it must > have been the size of a 360 CPU! We had a GCR controller from > Storage Tech. in 1982 or so that was the same size as a PDP 11/44 > large cabinet. CDC Keystone drives (92185) had it integrated into > the 680x controller micro, which I thought was pretty amazing. The IBM history pages seem to say that the initial 3420 offerings were 1600, in 1971, and that later models added GCR in 1973. The control unit, 3803, was similarly sized to the 3420 drive, iirc a bit shorter, but very roughly the same occupied square footage. https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3420.html De
[cctalk] Re: Age of Tape Formats?
> I’m working on a project, and I need to know the age of various tape > formats. For example when were 6250bpi 700’ 9-Track tapes or DC600A > cartridges introduced? Is there any good resource online that > documents this? Wikipedia is of some help, but the older you go, the > spottier it is. For QIC, qic.org has a some info. For DLT and LTO, the wikipedia pages are fairly useful. De
[cctalk] Re: KDJ11-E M8981 11/93 EPROM firmware dump?
> Anyone have a dump of the KDJ11-E M8981 11/93 EPROM firmware? > That would be U106 377E7 V2.01 (I assume the full part number would > have been 23-377E7) size 65536 sha256sum f3a4a9932c99a316709ae3f34580478d16b0498ad5af1809f7e7193417498618 url https://yagi.h-net.org/1193_u106_ha9908_377e7_v201_dec99.bin size 5376565 sha256sum 798fee4249139ea613af4a76711e5ab08d32e67d0bdd3bd91b8269f99f8689fe url https://yagi.h-net.org/1193v2rom.jpg De
[cctalk] Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes
> Then I'd image the tape with Tapeimgr and see if I could figure out > what software was used. I've reverse-engineered a few, Retrospect and > one other, I think I uploaded it all to my Github. Phil's overall process is good, but you shouldn't use `dd` to image tapes. It discards tape block length information, which is Bad . This Tapeimgr tool just uses dd under the covers. (In some scenarios, it _may_ be true that the tape blocks are all fixed length, but you may only get one pass through the tape, so why risk it?) https://github.com/brouhaha/tapeutils is probably a better choice. It does not do as much work with metadata, but you can collect and record such metadata in a sidecar file with no more effort than using Tapeimgr. For QIC carts and the like, the little rubber bands often go sticky, and may need to be carefully replaced. And definitely do testing of the drive with a scratch monkey before risking the irreplaceable target ones. De
[cctalk] Re: digest problem, starting with #115
> Has anyone else noticed that the list server is screwing up digest > emails, starting with Volume #115? Stan, Your subscription was set to "Summary Digest". I've switched it to "Plain Text Digests". Let's see if that makes things better. De
[cctalk] Re: list problem with digestmode
> I have received four digest emails since noon: 2:57PM (8 msgs), 3:47 > PM (7 msgs), 5:44 PM (7 msgs), and 8:24 PM (6 msgs). (Yes, all > embedded messages are different.) I dug into the list digest settings a little. It looks like the way the migration tool set them doesn't match the old behavior. It's been flushing the digest out based on a (very small) size threshold. I've adjusted the settings to try to force it to flush on a once-daily basis. I may have to fiddle with this a little. Let me know if you still get multiple issues per day. > I tried going to the website to "login" and check my status...it said > my email address wasn't known (which, of course, was patently > false...since I'm receiving emails :) As previously discussed on-list, the current version of mailman treats the concepts of subscription and web login separately. You can be subscribed without having a user account. If you _create_ an account with a matching email address as a subscription, mailman will associate the two pieces. De
[cctalk] Re: Disk imaging n00b
> Is Constant Linear vs Angular Velocity (?) anything I need to worry > about when sticking within the IBM PC compatible line from say '90 > forward? There aren't that many platforms that used CLV drives. I don't recall seeing one in the PC world. If anyone did, they would have been specialty stuff. > The only other thing that I might add to this would be Zip or Syquest > disks if I ever acquire media / drives. I haven't seen a flux imaging system for Zip/Jaz drives. MO stuff might be easier optically. But those don't tend to have the sorts of issues where you'd need to flux image anyway -- just a bunch of blocks, and a dd-type tool ought to work fine. De
[cctalk] Re: Disk imaging n00b
> Is there a reason to do a real IMAGE backup, rather than a file > backup? People have occasionally found interesting things in the unallocated sectors of disks. For garden variety PC format disks, it's not necessary to do flux imaging to preserve that sort of thing, though. A regime using a dd-like tool is adequate. De
[cctalk] Re: Disk imaging n00b
> I was thinking about acquiring a Kryoflux in the next few months and > starting to collect better quality images of disks. I recently saw > someone on Twitter suggest that Kryoflux wasn't the best route to go > and suggested a SuperCard Pro instead. Some people are bothered by Kryoflux's behavior around openness of their formats and the like. I _think_ they've addressed that, but if you care about this, you will have to verify. _My_ Kryoflux went deaf -- quit hearing any flux on the read line from the drive -- but that doesn't seem to be common. The SuperCard Pro doesn't seem to support 8" disks. That may or may not be an issue for you. The frustrating part of the whole flux imaging arena is that the hardware is actually the _easy_ part. Software to decode flux images for all the myriad on-disk formats, copy protection schemes, etc is both the hard part _and_ the part everyone seems to skip over. If you just need to process Apple / Atari / Commodore / PC diskettes, you're probably covered. For anything else you're probably on your own. Note that some disk types are CLV, not CAV (e.g. some Mac disks), and reading them without additional hardware support may be problematic. De
[cctalk] Re: AMP Punched Card Reader
> I don't know that as a song, but it's one of the final lines of the > poem "The Last Bug". "Now I will do nothing but listen, To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it." De
[cctalk] Re: AMP Punched Card Reader
> I was curious if anyone recognizes this punched card reader. Marked: > AMP Incorporated - SYSCOM Division. Can't help with the identity, but I'm loving the 9 edge hanging out the front in contravention of the instruction label! :) Apparently AMP didn't know the "face down nine edge first" song... De
[cctalk] Re: Minicomputer front panel.
> Those are good examples, but is it "many" or just those two and maybe > one or two more? For example, Burroughs and IBM mainframes were both > very much "lights and switches" control panel type machines. For > that matter, so were the other CDC products; the 6000 series was a > bit of an outlier I think. CDC was just an early adopter of the idea that a front panel involving a keyboard and display are more user-friendly and more powerful than a vast number of lights and switches. De
[cctalk] Re: ReGIS converter
> I'm conflating my Sixel work with my ReGIS work. I know that there > are a number of utilities to work with Sixel, but it seems like there > are fewer that work with ReGIS. Indeed. I've fiddled with Sixel in xterm, for example. It turns out ReGIS is hard to google, partly of course because it predates the internet by too much, but more because of the Philbin. > You might do some sleuthing to see if any vector programs will do > what you want. I've looked at some of the common tools, but so far no joy. > Aside: I think that GNU Plot can be made to output ReGIS. So maybe > you can abuse it / press it into service. Yes, I think you're right. I may end up doing some examples with it. > I'm also curious what you're wanting to do. I run into few people > that work with ReGIS and am always curious what others are doing with > ReGIS (and Sixel). I'm basically working on a GIGI demo, and would like to be able to take existing vector files and convert them to ReGIS. De
[cctalk] ReGIS converter
Does anyone know of a tool that can convert from one or more vector image formats to ReGIS? For use on unix-ish platforms. De
[cctalk] Re: double cctalk membership
> I followed the suggestion in a previous message to logon to the new > server and set my desired list settings. Now I show up with two > subscriptions for my email address, one as "nonmember" and the new > one as "member". It does not appear that I am receiving doubles > delivery of messages, so I'm not sure if this is an issue or not. Mailman has an interesting (half snark) object model for lists, people, and subscriptions. A "nonmember" is, if I understand it correctly, an email address it's seen before that wasn't subscribed at the time, and which doesn't get list postings sent to it. If both existing proves to cause issues, I'll see about excising one. De
[cctalk] Re: Vacation messages (was Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 94, Issue 24)
> Are these vacation messages becoming a problem? We never saw then > before. Maybe. Has the blasted thing replied to the list more than once now? De
Re: Retire cctech
Folks, I've migrated all of the cctech subscribers to cctalk, and removed the cctech list. I've tried to arrange that mail sent to cctech gets forwarded to cctalk, but that may require a bit of tuning. I do still have the various posting archives which will make an appearance in the (hopefully) near future. In the process of retiring cctech, I preserved digest vs individual message subscription settings, but may have inadvertently altered the _form_ of digest you receive. If you want to change this, or any other, subscription setting, you should be able to visit: https://classiccmp.org/mailman3/postorius/lists/cctalk.classiccmp.org/ and log in to fiddle with your settings. Old list passwords did not port over, so on the first visit you'll probably have to use the "sign up" link top right to create a username and password to use to get at your subscriptions. De
Re: Retire cctech
> Are the old posts all archived and searchable? I have a gap from 2016 > through 2022, and before that it is complete back to Mar 29, 2007 (I > think it is complete). I think I have cctech back to 2005 for import into the new mailman web system. I also have the mailman2 pipermail archives that go back to 2014. I have cctalk archives back to the beginning in 1998? to load, and the pipermail back to 2014. The pipermail archives are online now. The stuff to load still requires some massaging to get it to load cleanly. Since it's somewhere north of 400,000 messages, and I'm not getting diagnostics about _why_ some messages aren't getting loaded, it's taking some time to finish the cleanup. De
Retire cctech
Folks, I've belatedly realized that it's going to be a bit of a headache to implement the old cctalk/cctech crossposting duality under the new version of mailman. I seem to recall a discussion about retiring the cctech list and just continuing with cctalk, and that the consensus was in favor of that. I'll call this message a consent agenda indicating that I plan to do that, unless there's loud outcry. De
List migration
Friends, The process of migrating the cctalk and cctech mailing lists to a new host in Chicago is underway. This evening, I've moved the list mail handling to the new server, and this message will be the first live test. Assuming this works, you shouldn't have to change anything to post to the list. The green web pages, the old "pipermail" list archives, and web access to archives of new postings from this point still require a little work, which I hope to complete in the next day or two. I will eventually import the old pipermail archives into the new posting archive, but that may take a little longer. The new hosting is provided by the Chicago Classic Computing group. Many thanks to Jay West for hosting the lists for 20 years! /Dennis Boone
Re: IBM PC Connecting to DECNET
> Specific to IBMPC to DECNET networking...anyone worked in this > environment? Not me. I don't have the D drive that fails or the > network, but I am curious what I would need to make this work. Maybe > I can put something together. Anyone using a Digital Ethernet > Personal Computer Bus Adapter today? If the stack that's installed is DECnet/DOS, then there are a few docs on bitsavers. I'd guess that the command "C:\CJR" leads to the stuff that loads the network stack and tries to set up the connections. The stack may have drivers for other ethernet card types. If it is some form of DECnet then it might be able to talk to, say, a DECnet Phase IV stack on an emulated vax, making it fairly easy to set up a test. If it's not DECnet/DOS, sniffing the files in the C:\DEC file tree might be informative. De
Re: Cctalk subscription disabled
> You may also want to look at the timing the list software uses for > deciding when to notify people they've had excessive bounces; I got > this on April *24*, fully two weeks after I stopped getting messages; > a similar thing happened on March 21, but that one was only one week > late: Modern anti-spam measures, especially google's, have gotten fairly non-deterministic, at least to outward inspection. It is especially difficult to reason about delivery timing. For example, the list server may well have had the notice in queue trying to get google to accept it for a number of days. Google is known to hold things for several days, progressively showing them to a few more people, until it decides whether they're spam or not. A single-address notice wouldn't seem to be a candidate for that behavior, but _I_ wouldn't bet any money against google comparing such a single-address message against other singles that were statistically (or machine-learning-y) similar. Yes, two weeks seems long, but if a number of list posts were queued up on the list server not getting delivered to you for some days, and google deferred some of them, and google deferred the notice, and google held the notice after accepting it, that could actually pretty easily add up to more than two weeks. Mailman sends the notice at the point it makes the decision. There are some knobs for how many bounces over what time period result in action. De
Re: HP 54200D oscope practically worthless?
> The scope does what it is supposed to, you get a time-domain > visualization of voltage. Though, they are awkward to use due to the > lack of rotary encoders. Scaling horizontally or vertically requires > you to go into a menu, navigate to the right option, do the actual > scaling and go back. It's better than no scope at all, but not > exactly the model you'd hunt. It has HP-IB, and the manuals mention the HP desktop computers of that era, so you could probably build a more facile interface on a modern machine. De
Re: Typing in lost code
> That's true generally. Anything other than actual photographs > (continuous tone images) should NOT be run through JPEG because JPEG > is not intended for, and unfit for, anything else. Printouts, line > drawings, and anything else with crisp edges between dark and light > will be messed up by JPEG. PNG and TIFF are examples of appropriate > compression schemes. TIFF actually isn't a compression scheme, it's a tagged file format, and one _can_ specify jpeg compression of images in a TIFF file. Perhaps it would be better to say one should avoid _lossy_ compression schemes on scans with crisp edges or large areas of solid color. These are areas where jpeg will add visible noise. De
Re: VAX 780 on eBay
> I know that some IBM mainframes prefer 3ɸ power but I know of multiple > people that have re-wired their CECs to use 1ɸ power. My Multiprise 2003/205 claims to want a pair of 3-phase inputs. I've run it on two "phases" on a single side. It bitches, of course, and one loses the intended redundancy, but it runs. De
Re: VAX 780 on eBay
> In my current house I have done 240V/50A wiring, 240V/50A Sub Panel, > lots of 240V/30A outlets. None of which I would advise the usual > amateur to do. :-) IIRC nothing in the VAX cpu actually requires 3 phase. The PDU(s) just eat that from the wall. De
Re: CWVG
> Back in the 2007 time frame, Andrew Lynch had written a utility to read > Vector Graphic hard-sectored diskettes on a Catweasel board. Called > "CWVG", does anyone have a copy of the program? The program doesn't appear to have made it onto vector-archive.org. I'll add to Jay's comment about 100 tpi floppies: there was a Tandon model (100-4M?) that did 100 tpi also. Of both the M and T models are scarce. De
Re: Extremely CISC instructions
> I'm interested in collecting examples of single instructions for any CPU > architecture that are unusually prolific in one way or another. The Prime 50 Series has a few candidates: 1. The procedure call instruction allocates a stack frame, saves the calling procedure's state, then calculates the effective address of the called procedure's Entry Control Block, from which it loads various register values. It then follows a chain of argument pointer assembly words following the instruction opcode to compute the locations of any arguments, storing those into the stack frame. In the process, it may follow chains of address indirection, perform ring weakening, and extend the stack into a new segment. The process of transferring argument addresses is interruptible, and will be resumed if necessary when the called procedure begins running. 2. A series of semaphore instructions manage serialization. A semaphore consists of a count field and a list of PCB addresses. The wait instruction increments the count and adds the PCB address to the list. A notify decrements the count and schedules the next winner. 3. Instructions related to interrupt handling and process exchange, and stack management. On 50 Series, the operating system sets up various scheduling and process control structures, and then the microode is responsible for selecting entries from scheduling queues, fetching needed state from a process control block, and starting execution of the new process. A process PCB is "on" one queue at a time, whether it be the idle list, or one of various priority level queues. First level interrupt handlers are responsible for notifying second level responders, which entails the microcode manipulating queues and other process control structures. 4. Register save and restore instructions may read or write up to 27 words from main RAM, depending on the save mask. 5. Decimal arithmetic, numeric edit, character string copy / fill / move / compare / translate / edit operations which may read or write up to 64k words of memory. The edit instructions run subprograms of somewhat arbitrary length, and opcodes including conditional copy, fill, insert, etc. De
Re: Help reading a 9 track tape
> Well you could ask Silverfrost who now own it. I think a lot of Salford > Pr1me software was lost. Vague memory suggests that someone did, and that they don't have it any more. When I asked Rob Jung, ex-Primate, if he still had the Prime version of his ARJ compressor, he didn't have that either. So many ex-things... There was a 2550 on ebay some years back that came from Salford, and I had hoped that someone would get it running so we could see if anything interesting was on its disks, but it dropped out of sight. > I wish I could find the X.25 software we wrote... That'd be interesting too. At least we have the Prime X.25. De
Re: Help reading a 9 track tape
> It was intended to be a stop-gap, to be discarded when the ICL was > replaced with PR1ME. However the PR1ME was benchmarked with Fortran 66. > When Pr1me Fortran 77 was delivered its performance was "pants" so the > "stop gap" ICL compiler was ported to PR1ME... Wish we could find that Prime compiler. I think there were one or two others, as well. De
Re: Intel iPSC/860 restoration
> I've been using them for a couple of weeks now. Easy to apply > (compared to plastiands) runs perfectly in DC300-600 sized > cartridges. Is there a size that works for the minicarts? De
Re: QBUS/UNIBUS card handles
> how about https://www.essentracomponents.com/en-us/p/pcb-card-pullers Two thoughts - * Not sure the mounting hole spacing is correct; the one from Vince's site looks to be about 2" between centers; the Essentra says 1.25". It's entirely possible I don't know diddly about DEC card handles though. * Minimum order 500, and 1000 before a price break. De
Re: QBUS/UNIBUS card handles
> There is an stl file on this page (4th down on the right): > I had a few of these printed for a Unibone I put together, and they > came out well. Fritz, Perfect, thanks! De
Re: QBUS/UNIBUS card handles
> Does anyone have a design for printing card handles for QBUS / UNIBUS > cards? It seems a natural application. I suppose I should be more specific: the plastic kind that are just handles, also seen on flip chip cards, -8 stuff, whatever. Not extractor levers or s-box stuff. TIA, De
QBUS/UNIBUS card handles
Folks, Does anyone have a design for printing card handles for QBUS / UNIBUS cards? It seems a natural application. Some grepping of the list logs, a brief plonk through the gadawful thingiverse search, and various googling have produced no existing designs. Thanks, De
Cipher C995 manuals
I have a recalcitrant Cipher C995 9track drive. Does anyone have manuals for this thing? It seems to be enough different from the M990 to matter. Thanks, De
Re: eBay sellers
> And that is why there are SNADs! :D "Systems Network Architecture Distribution Services" ? :) De
Re: TSX
> Also came across a TSX Plus reference guide and install guide, from > 1985. These two fill a very large binder, have they already been > scanned? The 6.50 manuals, TSX Plus 6.50, and the COBOL and RTSORT layered products are also available here: http://tsxplus.classiccmp.org/ De
Re: Vax/pdp on ebay
> Sold for $4,900. Looks like a couple of low score bidders got in a > bidding war and really wanted to win. Must be those deskthority people _really_ wanted those '220 keyboards. :) De
Re: Vax/pdp on ebay
FWIW, the plate on my 11/93 in BA123 cab just has "DIGITAL". De
Re: PIC programmers? More generic programmer? Port?
> Any gotchas with the PICKit-3 clones out there? I have the feeling > that sticking with PIC would be better than trying to port to > Arduino, and imagine that as things continue to age there will be > more applications for interfaces. Any better but still cheapish > alternatives for programming? IIRC the PK-3 doesn't get any new device support at this point. Existing stuff continues to work. Depending on the nature of the devices you might want to use in the future, it might be worth considering a PK-4. I actually do very little PIC stuff, so I can't speak to which devices, how Microchip removes support from their software, etc. and recommend salt grains here. De
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
> I realized I also don't know the RD31 and RD32. The rest of the list I found long ago is: RD31Seagate ST-225 20 MB RD32Seagate ST-251 42 MB RD51Seagate ST-412 10 MB RD52Quantum Q54031 MB It's clearly incomplete, as you found there were two different devices used for one of th RD models. De
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
> I've now tracked down analogous manuals for all Pro drives except for > the RD53, I don't know what kind of drive that is. I believe: RD53Micropolis 1325 71 MB RD54Maxtor XT2190 159 MB De
Re: Serial numbers intelligence
> I'm curious to what degree people have used serial number > intelligence gathering and countermeasures in the industry. Like > were/are there market research firms that would go to Fry's and > record numbers off of boxes to try to extrapolate sales for things > like printer consumables, and whether companies like HP ever took > measures to try to obfuscate the potential information content of > their product serial numbers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/20/secondworldwar.tvandradio De
Re: Nine track file marks, Burroughs
> I can't say that I've ever observed that, but then, I probably never > looked for it either. 80 bytes starting with HDRx, etc. is a pretty > good indicator of the nature of the block. I've seen lots of tapes > with 81-character records, however. (Univac 36 bit systems for > example). Drat. I was hoping you'd have this answer. ;) Looking for filemark-less transitions either way between 80-byte records with known label names, and other kinds of records, is what my detector script for this does. De
Re: Nine track file marks, Burroughs
Jon, Thanks for your thoughts. > Your tape dump looks very much like a classic ANSI tape label format, > except for the missing file mark after the HDR2 record. Are ALL > those file marks after HDR2 missing, or just some of them? Right, and they're supposed to be ANSI69ish, though they are in EBCDIC. No, not all of them are missing, not even if one "compresses" out some of the "obvious" ones along the lines of your example. > I can see it being quite reasonable for there to be no file mark > after HDR2, if you were going to write your own format. That > specific FM is just not actually needed if you KNOW the first data > record follows HDR2. So, the format could be : Yes, you could. The Burroughs doc seems to say the FM is supposed to be there between every group of labels and the preceding or following data, though. De
Nine track file marks, Burroughs
Folks, I've now seen two Burroughs tapes where some of the expected file marks between labels and file data were apparently missing. I think a reasonable description of these is "Burroughs/Unisys B6x00 'Library/Maintenance' tapes with ANSI-69 labels" Reading drive is a Cipher GCR Cachetape with SCSI interface The one I read yesterday read in streaming mode and reported no read errors. I tried re-reading it today, and it read in start-stop mode, but still didn't have the missing file marks. (It also encountered a few errors, and eventually ended up sticking to the head, this time. Guess that bake cycle was a one-shot, which isn't a surprise.) This tape is a "Burroughs Series 7 / 100% Tested / 3200 FCI" 1200 foot reel written at 1600 BPI in 1986. Here's the beginning of the tape: file 1 record 1 size 80 : e5 d6 d3 f1 f0 f3 f6 f1 f3 f0 40 d7 d9 d6 c7 d9 VOL1036130 PROGR 0010: c1 d4 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 f6 f5 f3 f0 AM 6530 0020: f3 f0 f5 f0 f3 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 30503 0030: 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 0040: 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 f1 1 file 1 record 2 size 80 : c8 c4 d9 f1 c6 c9 d3 c5 f0 f0 f0 40 40 40 40 40 HDR1FILE000 0010: 40 40 40 40 40 d7 d9 d6 c7 d9 c1 f0 f0 f0 f1 f0 PROGRA00010 0020: f0 f0 f1 f0 f0 f0 f1 f0 f0 40 f8 f6 f2 f0 f2 40 001000100 86202 0030: f8 f6 f2 f3 f2 40 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 86232 00 0040: f0 f0 f0 40 c1 f9 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 000 A9 file 1 record 3 size 80 : c8 c4 d9 f2 e4 f0 f1 f0 f2 f4 f0 f1 f0 f2 f4 f3 HDR2U01024010243 0010: f0 f1 f0 f1 f0 f0 f0 f0 f3 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 01013000 0020: f0 f0 f0 f0 f0 f6 f4 f0 f0 f1 f3 40 f0 f0 f6 f4 0640013 0064 0030: 40 40 f0 f6 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4006 0040: 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 file 1 record 4 size 2070 : 40 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 03 03 04 ... ...etc. Is oddness with file marks something others have seen with Burroughs tapes? Something the Cipher drive is known for? Moon phase? Incorrect fifth digit of my SSN? I've not had this missing file mark problem with tapes written on other vendors systems - Prime, IBM, DEC. Cluebats appreciated. De
Re: Remote job submission from PDP-11
Folks seem to be mostly going at hardware here, but the o.p. indicated emulation. I'll point out, since I haven't seen mention of it, that Kevin Jordan's Nostalgic Computing Center has many of its emulated systems linked via RJE - the Cybers, the Primes, and the VM/CMS machine at least. http://www.nostalgiccomputing.org/index.html De
Re: SCP/Microsoft 20HAL uploader
> Excellent! That's a great piece of info. Not sure why a TOPS-10 > command would be embedded in a program like this. The notion of > filtering/delay itself makes sense but that command would make sense > only if IBM had a DECSYSYEM too, no? That part's a puzzler. Perhaps the link was from the PC to the MS DEC-10 and thence out to IBM? De
Re: SCP/Microsoft 20HAL uploader
> Partially related to that is a program called “20HAL” which was a > code uploader Microsoft used in the late stages to get code from > Microsoft in Bellevue to IBM in Boca Raton, FL. The TOPS-10 manual says that: (SET) TTY FILL n sets delay characteristics for the line to class `n`. There's a table of the number of filler characters sent after each of a number of different control characters. Class 3 uses the most fillters. The filler characters used are CR after a CR, and DEL after all the others. It could make sense to do this during a file transfer, depending on the assorted endpoints, etc. De
Re: 9 track tapes and block sizes
> What I know is that tape is subdivided in files by means of marks, > and each file is subdivided in blocks of equal size. Er, no. The blocks aren't necessarily of equal size. Unix people who are used to tar often seem to have this mindset, but the general case is that records can be of varying size. > Now suppose you find and unknown tape you want to preserve: using dd > you could easily 1:1 copy tape files to hard disk files using a SCSI > drive and Linux. DON'T DO THAT. If you use dd, you're throwing away information. Specifically, you're throwing away knowledge of the block size. Most of the conventional unix utilities don't care. Many other things do. In many cases, it's difficult or impossible to reconstruct the block sizes from the content, but even if it was, it's terrible archival practice. There are file formats for containing tape image data. The most common one is probably the simh .tap format. These all preserve block lengths, tape marks, indications of errors in reading the original, etc. Many fail to provide a means to embed metadata, but you can put that in separate adjacent files. > But: how you know which block size is on the tape? Generally speaking, do a read of a blocksize as large or larger than the max on the tape, and the system will hand you the full record, and the actual number of bytes read. If you're writing C or scripting code, the unix read() call does this. From the command line, you can do it with dd - specify a large block size and a count of 1, and it'll tell you what it actually got as it exits. For 9 track, few systems could write blocks larger than 32k or 64k, so those are decent guesses for "large" there. If it's DLT or something more modern, then the largest possible block might be a lot larger. The system reading the tape may impose a limit based on available buffer space. You should able to iteratively determine the largest size it will accept. Many of the quarter-inch cartridge formats actually don't support block sizes other than 512 bytes. If they were used on systems that expected to be able to write larger and/or variable records, the system hardware or software may have implemented a logical blocking layer on top of the 512 hardware layer. If you're reading one of these and don't have the original hardware/software to decode it, you'll have to figure out how to decipher it yourself. De
Re: Seeking "MEGATEK" Sun 3/4 era (?) VME Graphics accelerator information and driver
> Alas I have no idea what they are or if there is hope of using them. Megatek built graphics terminals and I think plotters that were used in CAD shops. Prime used them with some of their CAD offerings. Megatek also did boards for at least DG, -11, Modcomp systems, maybe others. In fact, some of the terminals may be based on Nova processors. The Megagraphic line mentions a bit-slice custom processor inside. The Whizzard line seems to interface via RS-232, but the Megagraphic family brochures say they had pio/dma interfaces for a variety of minicomputers, so are probably closer to matching your board set. You'd be looking for the relevant terminal, I'd think. De
Re: Unix text processing software with daisy wheel output
> I want to use my daisy wheel printer to create letters and memos and > similar (rather simple) texts. What can I use to write the text? I worked on a v7 system that had a troff driver for iirc Diablo 630 printers, but I don't see it in stock v7. For groff, you'd probably hunt up a dvi-to-630 converter to do the same thing. > I think "special effects" with daisy wheel printers are "bold" and > "underline" parts. And "double stroke" (if that's the correct word, I > mean a space char between each char). Depending on the environment, it may be possible to change wheels in mid document to get italics or font changes. On a daisywheel, bold is generally done by double striking, and if the printer is capable (the Vector Graphic micros with their Qume Sprint daisywheel printers did this) micro-motion in between strikes. Underscore is obviously fairly straightforward, as are overstrikes for e.g. line-through or to construct some special characters that might not be on the wheel, like cent signs, section symbols. De
Re: mail on spool as G-d intended was Re: Future of cctalk/cctech
> > > > I read this list on PINE, on a shell account at my ISP. > > > Barbarian! At least upgrade to Alpine. (That's what I use.) :D > > Philistines, all of you. I use a hacked version of Elm. > mutt! `less`, out of system spool. De
Re: Prime Sample System Releases
> I just noticed on comp.sys.prime that I missed a couple of sample > system releases. I have a process set up to dump messages from some > news groups into my IMAP server for easy reading with my mail client, > but I don't have anything set up to easily reply via the news groups. > Does anyone know what's new in the recent sample system releases? V5 adds the source code for PRIMOS 19.2, and the diagnostics programs, to that image. V4 corrected ACL problems in the Rev19 and Rev24 images. V3 removed additional junk, and rebuilt the disk images as 600 MB drives, split 30/10 heads filesystem/paging. It also included enhancements to the wrapper scripts: directory independence and the ability to run the runem script from a terminal. We learned that the C compiler isn't quite right in at least Rev. 23 of the samples (and presumably the public emulators, since the samples are derived from them), so there'll be a v6 coming sometime soon. De
Re: pdp11/05 key?
> Late to the party, but there’s PDP11 keys sold on ebay here: Though that may be useful to many, it's the wrong key for this thread. De
Re: pdp11/05 key?
> Does anyone have information on having a replacement PDP-11/05 key > made? I believe I can make these. I'd like to have a test. May I send you one? The key is a Chicago GRB2: cut 215 on an Ilco S1041T. You can use a 1041T and cut it down. De
Re: Prime 50-Series emulator announcement
Bill, > Is there anywhere we can find a list of what is avaiable on each of > those images? I tried a few and at least one has all the compilers > but no emacs. Another has emacs but apparently no compilers. :-) > I'm impressed so far but would really like to find systems that I can > do some real programming on. Is it possible for someone to build a > Rev 24 image with everything on it? There's not a list of what's on each image. I'll think about creating one. Recall that the layered products tended to be related to the version of the base OS. Sometimes you could use an older version on a newer PRIMOS, sometimes not. Since the ones we have came with specific distribution tape sets, or from backups of specific machines, and basically nobody just had everything Prime sold, the systems we can build are "uneven". The largest collections of layered products in captivity are for 19, 22 and 23. I think the only copy of INFORMATION is on 21. Etc. There are incomplete source sets for 19 and 22. We're in the process of revamping the 19.2 sample system to have the source for the kernel it's running baked in. > My last real work with Primos was during the move from Rev 19 to Rev > 20. I am amazed at how much I have forgotten and really regret > having gotten rid of all my documentation (at least I think I did, I > suppose it is possible there is still a box in the attic full of > Prime manuals including my course books from the internals class!) I've had to refresh a few things, but I'm amazed at how many details are still in my head. There's a lot of new stuff post-20, too. I know I ended up with some of your manuals. Lots of scanned manuals at sysovl.info in PDF form, if you can live with that. A couple versions of the internals class manual are there. I'm still moving stuff into that site, so if there's something specific you need, let me know and I'll see if I can help. > One other one that I should know but forgot is how to add a user. > Would be nice to set it up properly before I start loading programs > on it. You do that with EDIT_PROFILE. Make sure the priority ACL is set (I think that's being done at boot), and run it from the console. De
Re: Prime 50-Series emulator announcement
I've uploaded an updated set of sample system images. Jim worked through rebuilding the disk files with more filesystem and paging space, and we enhanced the run script wrapper a bit. There are also a couple of help text tweaks, system startup fixes, etc. The tarball is 142882727 bytes, and its sha256sum is 32647dbcc3a0d541209eafc2f78d054e456d58046c9b3c5bc4ca64a8d9fc0037. De
Re: Prime 50-Series emulator announcement
I realize I told a lie the other day. INFORMATION is actually installed on the rev21 public emulator, and the samples. A few manuals are online. I feel like I've seen one or two more that I can't find just now. I haven't gotten these integrated into sysovl.info yet: http://yagi.h-net.org/prime_manuals/pdr3905_inform_refgde_1981.pdf http://yagi.h-net.org/prime_manuals/pdr3906_perform_refgde_1980.pdf http://yagi.h-net.org/prime_manuals/prirun_scans/Prime%20Information%20Update%205.3.2%201983.pdf You can think of MIDASPLUS as similar to ISAM. A _lot_ of shops used it. The application I supported really should have been on a real database, as we had cross-file relations, but that was "too slow" and "too expensive", so it was on MIDASPLUS, and we suffered through the inevitable partial updates. MIDASPLUS was preceded by MIDAS, which was preceded by KIDA. KIDA was originally part of the base os. MIDAS stands for "multiple index data access system", iirc. I _think_ the distributed systems management stuff (DSM) may have internally used FORMS, so you might grovel through those bits on the rev23 machine. I saw a few episodes of The Prisoner many years ago, but don't remember the title sequence. De
Re: Prime 50-Series emulator announcement
> Great news. I look forward to trying it out. Other than compilers, is > there much else to run on Prime at the moment? Do any applications > still exist to try and run? Is Prime Information (apparently the > platform's "killer app") available? Are there any games? Was there > the equivalent of a DECUS or Usenix through which freeware speed > across the community? Michael, The US national user group was NPUG. There were regional and maybe local sub-groups. The software library, PULSE, was Prime-supported. I'm not aware of many applications in captivity. In particular, I'm not aware of any of the CAD/CAM or office automation software. The former would of course be hard to run without the relevant graphics terminals, and emulation of their connecting controllers. There's a fair amount of material that we don't have packaged up for download yet, including one or two versions of INFORMATION, some text games, and most of a PULSE library from the Rev 17? era. The Georgia Tech Software Tools environment is available. There are several full screen editors, including Emacs and the Sheffield editor. We have the indexed file handler, but not the DBMS. I've never seen the SyncSort, Oracle or SPSS (and SAS?) packages, though they existed. There's some chance of recovering some utility things like serial file transfer software like x/y/z-modem, and maybe at least the host side of one of the more integrated PC-to-Prime integration packages. We're hoping the availability of the emulator will bring more things to light, including software and documentation. De
Re: Prime 50-Series emulator announcement
> > So, how do I login a regular user? Does the emulator come up with > > an open port that I can telnet into to get a regular serial line? > Use the emulator -tport command line option to set its incoming > terminals port. Bill, The inittab snippet from Jim's message that I reposted here shows you how the runem script expectes to be invoked, and run shows you the various options used to run the public emulators. De
Re: Prime documentation
> OK,CO SYSTEM>ED.SHARE.COMI 7 /* Share ED editor > Not found. (CO) > ER! To continue through to the end of the startup process, tell it: CO CONTINUE 6 Until this is fixed, you'll have to use the non-shared editor, NSED, instead of the shared editor ED. > Thank you for all the work you've put in to making these systems and > this wealth of PRIME information and resources available to hobbyists!!! Most of the credit goes to Jim, who invested a stupendous number of hours in writing the emulator, and a bunch more in scanning a lot of those manuals. De
Re: Prime 50-Series emulator announcement
A set of sample system images derived from the public emulators can be downloaded from https://yagi.h-net.org/p50em_samplemachines.tar.gz to get you started. The tarball is 309078820 bytes, and its sha256sum is 8fe261f7a9f19e9fab2814371387f9cef5c64161fe7cf4bdc542144202678ca9. We may rebuild these later and distribute them individually in a more formal fashion. De
Re: Prime documentation
> I think I'm making progress. I don't know if I've encountered an > emulator issue, or if the primos_22.1.4_1of3.tap tape image from > Bitsavers is bad. I didn't encounter any errors unzipping the zip > archive it was in. When restoring logical tape number 2 from it, I > got an MT read error: I was able to reproduce the issue. When I repacked these using the Rev. 22 MAGSAV, the install worked correctly. Here's the repacked tape set: https://yagi.h-net.org/m2214repack.tar.gz Since the emulator doesn't support limiting the size of a tape, I don't have a way to produce these things spanned across virtual reels. That means you'll have to adjust the instructions a little. You need to read the saves in this order: BT U1 U2 V1 IC You won't have a "next reel" prompt in the middle. Each restore will be logical tape 1. De
