[cctalk] QProbe2023 - QBUS Blinkenlights
Fellow nerds, not sure who knows about this project, so here an announcement ... again? As QBUS PDP-11s (03,23,73,83,93, also uVAX) don't have lots of lamps like the old UNIBUS machines, their owners suffer on "Blinkenlight envy". So I was pushed to pimp up the QBUS diagnostic adapter "QProbe" https://www.retrocmp.com/tools/qprobe Model "QProbe2023" has now focus on entertainment. There's a QBUS signal display in style of old PDP-10/12/15 rack header panels. It can be build into a 5.25" drive case ... or into the BA23 case itself. https://www.retrocmp.com/tools/qprobe/327-qprobe2023-overview By lucky incident you can even see the idle loop pattern of RSX11M+ on some J11 systems. See a full boot of RSX11M+ at time index 5:56 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajAcxGwK-vQ As it also has RESTART/HALT/AUX switches, it's also helpful for PDP-11s mounted case-less in a standalone backplane (like the one at https://retrocmp.com/projects/lsibox and on the "Frankenstein" video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoW7Szkppww=403s ) Btw for unknown reasons, I cannot register to classiccmp itself ... CC me direct in your replies. kind regards, Joerg
VAX9000 unearthed
Hi, my computer club c-c-g.de could acquire the remains of a VAX9000 ! The machine ran at the GWDG computing center in Göttingen, Germany, around 1993. Parts of it were in stock of their museum for 20+ years. See lots of hires-pictures at https://c-c-g.de/fachartikel/359-vax-9000-ein-starker-exot (scroll to the bottom for a slide show). Joerg
Re: VAX/VMS 4.0 source listings scans
Paul, Full micro fiche scans of VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source listings are now published at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/microfiche/vms-source-listings/AH-BT13A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.0_SRC_LST_MCRF/AH-BT13A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.0_SRC_LST_MCRF/ Did I miss it, or is the kernel missing? I learned from http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vms/training/EY-00014-DP_VMS_Internals_and_Data_Structures_1984.pdf that they don't have a "kernel", but an "executive". From the Preface chapter: "The words "system" or "VMS system" are used to describe the entire software package that is a part of a VAX-11 system, including privileged processes, utilities, and other support software as well as the executive itself. The word "executive" refers to those parts of the VMS operating system that reside in system virtual address space. The executive includes the contents of the file SYS.EXE, device drivers, and other code and data structures loaded at initialization time, including RMS and the system message file. " Joerg
Re: VAX/VMS 4.0 source listings scans
Hi Emanuel, Full micro fiche scans of VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source listings are now published at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/microfiche/vms-source-listings/AH-BT13A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.0_SRC_LST_MCRF/AH-BT13A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.0_SRC_LST_MCRF/ THANKS A LOT FOR DOING THIS !!! Not sure who needs to know. Perhaps they are useful for emulation crash analysis, or for educational purposes. You also see the highly optimizing BLISS32 compiler at work. Spent already hours yesterday staring at the code ;-) Me too! Btw, the "Internals" documents in http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vms/training/ train you to understand these sources. Thanks again, I guess you spent some time on that ... Oh yes, I did. best regards, Joerg
VAX/VMS 4.0 source listings scans
Full micro fiche scans of VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source listings are now published at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/microfiche/vms-source-listings/AH-BT13A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.0_SRC_LST_MCRF/AH-BT13A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.0_SRC_LST_MCRF/ The update to V4.1 is at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/microfiche/vms-source-listings/AH-BT13A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.0_SRC_LST_MCRF/AH-EF71A-SE__VAX-VMS_V4.1_SRC_LST_MCRF_UPD/ Not sure who needs to know. Perhaps they are useful for emulation crash analysis, or for educational purposes. You also see the highly optimizing BLISS32 compiler at work. regards, Joerg
PDP-11 Diagnostic Program Listings Micro Fiche Scans
Hi Friends, Micro fiche scans of the PDP-11 XXDP listings are online now: http://files.retrocmp.com/fichescanner/bitsavers/pdf/dec/pdp11/microfiche/Diagnostic_Program_Listings/ You can insert this into your bitsaver mirror tree with $ cd $ wget --recursive --level 0 --no-host-directories --cut-dirs 2 --no-parent -R index.htm?* http://files.retrocmp.com/fichescanner/bitsavers/ You need about 130 GB space for 1600+ listings. A Win10 version of wget is at http://files.retrocmp.com/wget-1.21.2-win32.zip In 2016 I posted a batch of listings, which was archived at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/microfiche/ftp.j-hoppe.de/... These were repacked and included in the above distribution. So despite I'm very pleased to see my name on bitsavers: Please discard the "ftp.j-hoppe.de" directory now ! For each listing there are 3 files: - a "gray" pdf in archive quality. - a highly compressed "bw" pdf, about 10x smaller. - an ASCII *.dat with context and title strip data, prepared for database import. The pdfs contain pictures of their fiches as title pages. The quality of the fiches is everything between "brilliant" and "awful" DEC made every possible error while preparating them, the list is endless. My favorite bug: Title strips glued to the wrong fiche (corrected here). I even tried OCR but the results where poor. "ocrmypdf" (= "tesseract + pdf") seems a good tool, but the fiches are too problematic for a fully automatic run. You have to dive into tesseracts training procedures. See https://hub.docker.com/r/jbarlow83/ocrmypdf/ Some project links: http://www.retrocmp.com/projects/scanning-micro-fiches https://youtu.be/X22gr5THBRA https://hackaday.com/2021/09/17/automatic-microfiche-scanner-digitizes-docs/ By the way: This project ate up lots of (physical and personal) resources. I'll will scan other document sets in the future, maybe begging for a donation then. Enjoy! Joerg
