Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Fritz Mueller via cctalk]

> On Aug 1, 2017, at 7:37 PM, Jerry Weiss  wrote:
> 
> It is possible to install the TCP/IP Package on a 248K
> machine using the DEUNA/DELUA 18-bit (Non Unibus  Map-
> ping)  EU18XM.SYS handler.

Thanks Jerry, I'll check that out.  Might also be a bit of work to shave down 
RT-11 5.3 to fit on a single RK05, but it would be fun to play with.

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Mattis Lind via cctalk]

2017-08-02 1:24 GMT+02:00 Fritz Mueller via cctalk :

>
>
> On 08/01/2017 01:23 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote:
>
>> I have posted my code (and pinouts) on Google Drive at:
>>
>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2v4WRwISEQRUUxuNGhZRENvYjQ
>>
>
> Thanks, Jay -- I'll check it out!
>
> Mattis: I *do* have a DELUA, actually, but haven't slotted it yet to check
> it out.  Your suggestion would be to work up something simple at the link
> layer?  That might be worth a look, too...
>

Yes. Maybe something directly on the link layer or hardcoding the IP/UDP
headers crudely. Not a full IP stack.

>
> --FritzM.
>
>
>
>

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Jerry Weiss via cctalk]

> On Aug 1, 2017, at 7:32 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On 08/01/2017 05:27 PM, Jerry Weiss wrote:
>> If you install the DELUA, don’t forget there is TCP/IP support for RT11 from 
>> Alan Baldwin at http://shop-pdp.net/rthtml/tcpip.htm.
> 
> Hi Jerry -- I had seen the RT-11 TCP/IP stuff, but my 11/45 can only address 
> 256K of memory, so doesn't meet the minimum reqs :-(
> 
>   --FritzM.
> 
> 


FYI - from the TCP/IP  RT-11 documentation….

   NOTE

 It is possible to install the TCP/IP Package on a 248K
 machine using the DEUNA/DELUA 18-bit (Non Unibus  Map-
 ping)  EU18XM.SYS handler.  This handler requires 7.5k
 bytes for code and packet buffers.  This configuration
 allows  at  most  one networking application to be ac-
 tive.  

That plus there is a light version of the FTP user program provided.


On the other hand, using a DR11-C, DRV11 etc.. with an external Arduino 
handling the IP stack would probably be 10x faster (or more) than the 
native implementation.  I only get about 5-8 Kbytes/sec with a DELQA 
under RT11.  


Jerry Weiss
j...@ieee.org

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Fritz Mueller via cctalk]

On 08/01/2017 05:27 PM, Jerry Weiss wrote:
If you install the DELUA, don’t forget there is TCP/IP support for RT11 
from Alan Baldwin at http://shop-pdp.net/rthtml/tcpip.htm.


Hi Jerry -- I had seen the RT-11 TCP/IP stuff, but my 11/45 can only 
address 256K of memory, so doesn't meet the minimum reqs :-(


--FritzM.

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Jerry Weiss via cctalk]

> On Aug 1, 2017, at 2:50 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 2017-07-31 21:05 GMT+02:00 Fritz Mueller via cctalk :
> 
>> 
>>> On Jul 31, 2017, at 11:30 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
>> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Well, I'm confused now.  What do 16 bit paralel and ethernet have to do
>> with each other?
>> 
>> Nothing, directly; confusion created by poor quoting on my part,
>> probably!  The goal is a higher-bandwidth and higher-convenience connection
>> between the PDP-11 and modern desktop compute.  So DR11 <-> Arduino <->
>> ethernet, as Jay has done, is one good approach.
>> 
> 
> I guess that another solution is to put a DEUNA or DELUA on the Unibus and
> write some small piece of software that initializes it and send and
> receives datagrams directly from the PDP-11. The programming model doesn't
> look too difficult.
> 

> On Aug 1, 2017, at 6:24 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk  
> wrote:
> ...
> 
> Mattis: I *do* have a DELUA, actually, but haven't slotted it yet to check it 
> out.  Your suggestion would be to work up something simple at the link layer? 
>  That might be worth a look, too...
> 
>--FritzM.
> 
> 


If you install the DELUA, don’t forget there is TCP/IP support for RT11 from 
Alan Baldwin at http://shop-pdp.net/rthtml/tcpip.htm 
.

If transfers between RT11 systems is possible and sufficient (ie:physcial to 
simh),  
check out Megan Gentry's RTEFTP package.  She did document
the protocol, but I am not aware of implementations on other platforms.


Jerry 

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Fritz Mueller via cctalk]

On 08/01/2017 01:23 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote:

I have posted my code (and pinouts) on Google Drive at:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2v4WRwISEQRUUxuNGhZRENvYjQ


Thanks, Jay -- I'll check it out!

Mattis: I *do* have a DELUA, actually, but haven't slotted it yet to 
check it out.  Your suggestion would be to work up something simple at 
the link layer?  That might be worth a look, too...


--FritzM.

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Jay Jaeger via cctalk]

On 7/31/2017 12:52 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk wrote:

> 
>> On Jul 31, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Jay Jaeger  wrote:
>>
>> I have Ethernet shield for my Arduino Uno, and I use that and a simple
>> (in my case, perl,  program to talk to the final destination device.  I
>> have two cables, one for each direction, from the DR11-C (not using DMA)
>> to the Arduino.
> 
> Awesome -- it seemed likely somebody here would have done this sort of thing 
> already :-)
> 
> Jay, does your Arduino support TTL-level signaling, or did you have to use 
> some level-shifting chips?  How did you arrange the cabling/packaging?
> 
> I'm more familiar with FPGA platforms than Arduino, but this might give me a 
> good excuse to finally play around with Arduino a bit!
> 
>   --FritzM.
> 
> 

Others have already addressed the signal level issue.  Not a problem.
When I (recently) developed the Arduino version, I checked the current
sink/source current specs to make sure I wasn't going to blow anything up.

I have posted my code (and pinouts) on Google Drive at:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2v4WRwISEQRUUxuNGhZRENvYjQ

Please read the readme files!  ALL of them (except maybe the PC Parallel
port one).

I would not mind comments/suggestions for improvement if delivered
gently, but the odds that I would actually change anything are pretty
small.  Of course, you can do what you want with your copy.  Some of
this code dates back to 1989.

Just today, while transferring an 18,000 block RT-11 logical disk (LD):)
file, I discovered that the Perl PC program that talks to the Arduino
can sometimes report the wrong checksum.  Most of the time it has been
right, but for that file it reported the wrong number, even though the
file did checksum right when I checked it when it got to the PC.  If
that one is wrong, then odds are its partner for sending files from the
PC is wrong, too.

The Arduino code and the PDP-11 code are probably the best places to
look to understand the protocol.  Basically it is a simple fully
interlocked handshake for each byte transfer.  Each block (fixed at 512
bytes) is preceded by a "flag byte".  The startup process has its own
special flag byte.

0x55  Initial Sync
0x22  Data block  (followed by 512 bytes of data)
0x00  EOF

(You can ignore the PC-ParallelPort folder unless you plan to use a PC
parallel port for transfers - it is a lot slower than using the Arduino,
and is old DeSmet C code.  But BE CAREFUL reading this code, because the
PC parallel port hardware *** INVERTS *** some of the signals.)

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Mattis Lind via cctalk]

2017-07-31 21:05 GMT+02:00 Fritz Mueller via cctalk :

>
> > On Jul 31, 2017, at 11:30 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >
> > Well, I'm confused now.  What do 16 bit paralel and ethernet have to do
> with each other?
>
> Nothing, directly; confusion created by poor quoting on my part,
> probably!  The goal is a higher-bandwidth and higher-convenience connection
> between the PDP-11 and modern desktop compute.  So DR11 <-> Arduino <->
> ethernet, as Jay has done, is one good approach.
>

I guess that another solution is to put a DEUNA or DELUA on the Unibus and
write some small piece of software that initializes it and send and
receives datagrams directly from the PDP-11. The programming model doesn't
look too difficult.

/Mattis


>
> --FritzM.
>
>
>

Re: homebrew PDP-11 bus adapters - was Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Fritz Mueller via cctalk]

On 08/01/2017 10:16 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

Another stillborn project?

I don't see any software to make the Beaglebone talk Unibus


Yes, this one has been around for a couple years now but sadly doesn't 
seem to have progressed...

Re: homebrew PDP-11 bus adapters - was Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

Another stillborn project?

I don't see any software to make the Beaglebone talk Unibus


On 8/1/17 9:39 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk wrote:

> I just saw this a few minutes ago...
> 
> https://trmm.net/Unibus
> 
> 
> --Toby

homebrew PDP-11 bus adapters - was Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Toby Thain via cctalk]

On 2017-08-01 10:26 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:



From: cctalk [cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] on behalf of Fritz Mueller via 
cctalk [cctalk@classiccmp.org]
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 3:05 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?


On Jul 31, 2017, at 11:30 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk 
<cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

Well, I'm confused now.  What do 16 bit paralel and ethernet have to do with 
each other?


Nothing, directly; confusion created by poor quoting on my part, probably!  The goal is a 
higher-bandwidth and higher-convenience connection between the PDP-11 and modern desktop 
compute.  So DR11 <-> Arduino <-> ethernet, as Jay has done, is one good 
approach.

--FritzM.


__

OK, makes sense now.  I need to look at that.

Anybody ever consider making an Arduino a new PDP-11 device?

bill




I just saw this a few minutes ago...

https://trmm.net/Unibus


--Toby

RE: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

From: cctalk [cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] on behalf of Fritz Mueller via 
cctalk [cctalk@classiccmp.org]
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 3:05 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 11:30 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk 
> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> Well, I'm confused now.  What do 16 bit paralel and ethernet have to do with 
> each other?

Nothing, directly; confusion created by poor quoting on my part, probably!  The 
goal is a higher-bandwidth and higher-convenience connection between the PDP-11 
and modern desktop compute.  So DR11 <-> Arduino <-> ethernet, as Jay has done, 
is one good approach.

--FritzM.


__

OK, makes sense now.  I need to look at that.

Anybody ever consider making an Arduino a new PDP-11 device?

bill

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Don North via cctalk]

On 7/31/2017 2:52 PM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote:

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 1:52 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk
 wrote:

On Jul 31, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Jay Jaeger  wrote:
I have Ethernet shield for my Arduino Uno, and I use that and a simple
(in my case, perl,  program to talk to the final destination device.  I
have two cables, one for each direction, from the DR11-C (not using DMA)
to the Arduino.

Jay, does your Arduino support TTL-level signaling, or did you have to use some 
level-shifting chips?

"Arduino" covers a lot of hardware, but in the case of the Uno and
Mega (and many other models), the GPIO pins are CMOS-level (5V Vcc,
but CMOS thresholds, not TTL).  Not a massive fanout, but a few mA per
pin - at least one TTL load.  You can't drive 8 LEDs from one port,
but you can sink 1-2 LEDs on the same port (the specifics are well
covered in the Atmel datasheets for each processor).


I'm more familiar with FPGA platforms than Arduino, but this might give me a 
good excuse to finally play around with Arduino a bit!

I know there are people here who are not fond of them for various
reasons (some non-technical), but I do a lot of quick-and-dirty things
with them.  They are frequently overkill, but with clones at $6 (and
licensed ones under $30), they do a lot.  Where you can run into
complications is trying to use all the Arduino library function calls
to, say, read and write I/O pins at megahertz speeds (the MCU is
routinely clocke at 16MHz or 20MHz, and mostly
one-instruction-per-cycle).  digitalWrite() and digitalRead() end up
executing hundreds, if not thousand of machine cycles.  You can, of
course, write in AVR assembler, but mostly, just banging on the
relevant DDR and Data registers in C works plenty fast enough, much,
much faster than the Arduino library calls.

TL;DR - the chips are fine.  The libraries are heavy.  Someone coming
from another architecture can get up to speed pretty quickly to read
and write bits and bytes from GPIO pins.

-ethan

Totally agree with the above comments. As an example, my RX02 drive emulator 
(runs on an Arduino Mega2560 with a custom interface shield) code is available 
here: https://github.com/AK6DN/rx02_emulator  as an example. Uses the SDcard 
library, and does very high speed bit banging on GPIO ports thru optimized C 
routines to act as an RX02 drive connected to RX11/RX211/RXV11/RXV21/RX8E-28 
interfaces in a PDP system.

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Ethan Dicks via cctalk]

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 1:52 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk
 wrote:
>> On Jul 31, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Jay Jaeger  wrote:
>> I have Ethernet shield for my Arduino Uno, and I use that and a simple
>> (in my case, perl,  program to talk to the final destination device.  I
>> have two cables, one for each direction, from the DR11-C (not using DMA)
>> to the Arduino.
>
> Jay, does your Arduino support TTL-level signaling, or did you have to use 
> some level-shifting chips?

"Arduino" covers a lot of hardware, but in the case of the Uno and
Mega (and many other models), the GPIO pins are CMOS-level (5V Vcc,
but CMOS thresholds, not TTL).  Not a massive fanout, but a few mA per
pin - at least one TTL load.  You can't drive 8 LEDs from one port,
but you can sink 1-2 LEDs on the same port (the specifics are well
covered in the Atmel datasheets for each processor).

> I'm more familiar with FPGA platforms than Arduino, but this might give me a 
> good excuse to finally play around with Arduino a bit!

I know there are people here who are not fond of them for various
reasons (some non-technical), but I do a lot of quick-and-dirty things
with them.  They are frequently overkill, but with clones at $6 (and
licensed ones under $30), they do a lot.  Where you can run into
complications is trying to use all the Arduino library function calls
to, say, read and write I/O pins at megahertz speeds (the MCU is
routinely clocke at 16MHz or 20MHz, and mostly
one-instruction-per-cycle).  digitalWrite() and digitalRead() end up
executing hundreds, if not thousand of machine cycles.  You can, of
course, write in AVR assembler, but mostly, just banging on the
relevant DDR and Data registers in C works plenty fast enough, much,
much faster than the Arduino library calls.

TL;DR - the chips are fine.  The libraries are heavy.  Someone coming
from another architecture can get up to speed pretty quickly to read
and write bits and bytes from GPIO pins.

-ethan

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Fritz Mueller via cctalk]

On 07/31/2017 12:15 PM, Don North wrote:
Arduino UNO (the 'original') and the Mega2560 big brother both use 5V 
I/O microprocessors, so all the I/O is directly 5V capable.


Awesome, that seems like the way to go, then -- just need to bodge the 
appropriate cables.  I'll check it out!


  --FritzM.

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Don North via cctalk]

On 7/31/2017 10:52 AM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk wrote:

On Jul 31, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Jay Jaeger  wrote:

I have Ethernet shield for my Arduino Uno, and I use that and a simple
(in my case, perl,  program to talk to the final destination device.  I
have two cables, one for each direction, from the DR11-C (not using DMA)
to the Arduino.

Awesome -- it seemed likely somebody here would have done this sort of thing 
already :-)

Jay, does your Arduino support TTL-level signaling, or did you have to use some 
level-shifting chips?  How did you arrange the cabling/packaging?

I'm more familiar with FPGA platforms than Arduino, but this might give me a 
good excuse to finally play around with Arduino a bit!

--FritzM.


Arduino UNO (the 'original') and the Mega2560 big brother both use 5V I/O 
microprocessors, so all the I/O is directly 5V capable.


I happen to prefer the Mega2560 based design because it has a more capable CPU 
(lots more flash and RAM), 4 hardware serial ports, and lots of I/O (50+ pins) 
and it is not that much more expensive (based on Amazon clone suppliers; direct 
from Arduino .org suppliers it is priced way too high for the components it uses).


I used the Mega2560 in my RX01/02 emulator design, with a custom shield to 
interface to DEC standard RX11/211/8E 5V controllers using 5V logic. Works fine.


Arduino is pretty simple to program in more or less vanilla C if you want. The 
tools are freely downloadable from the web from www.arduino.cc

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Fritz Mueller via cctalk]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 11:30 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> Well, I'm confused now.  What do 16 bit paralel and ethernet have to do with 
> each other?

Nothing, directly; confusion created by poor quoting on my part, probably!  The 
goal is a higher-bandwidth and higher-convenience connection between the PDP-11 
and modern desktop compute.  So DR11 <-> Arduino <-> ethernet, as Jay has done, 
is one good approach.

--FritzM.

RE: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Bill Gunshannon via cctalk]

From: cctalk [cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] on behalf of Fritz Mueller via 
cctalk [cctalk@classiccmp.org]
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 1:52 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Jay Jaeger <cu...@charter.net> wrote:
>
> I have Ethernet shield for my Arduino Uno, and I use that and a simple
> (in my case, perl,  program to talk to the final destination device.  I
> have two cables, one for each direction, from the DR11-C (not using DMA)
> to the Arduino.

Awesome -- it seemed likely somebody here would have done this sort of thing 
already :-)

Jay, does your Arduino support TTL-level signaling, or did you have to use some 
level-shifting chips?  How did you arrange the cabling/packaging?

I'm more familiar with FPGA platforms than Arduino, but this might give me a 
good excuse to finally play around with Arduino a bit!

__

Well, I'm confused now.  What do 16 bit paralel and ethernet have to do with 
each other?

bill

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Fritz Mueller via cctalk]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Jay Jaeger  wrote:
> 
> I have Ethernet shield for my Arduino Uno, and I use that and a simple
> (in my case, perl,  program to talk to the final destination device.  I
> have two cables, one for each direction, from the DR11-C (not using DMA)
> to the Arduino.

Awesome -- it seemed likely somebody here would have done this sort of thing 
already :-)

Jay, does your Arduino support TTL-level signaling, or did you have to use some 
level-shifting chips?  How did you arrange the cabling/packaging?

I'm more familiar with FPGA platforms than Arduino, but this might give me a 
good excuse to finally play around with Arduino a bit!

--FritzM.

Re: PDP-11: DR11-C to FPGA or 1284?

[Don North via cctalk]

On 7/30/2017 7:47 PM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk wrote:

So, I have lately been using PDP11GUI to retrieve images of RK05 disk packs and 
to write images to these packs on a PDP-11.  This is awesome, but its a bit 
frustrating that it takes a couple hours to read or write an image this way.

I do, however, have a couple of DR11-C parallel interface cards.  It occurred 
to me that it might be pretty straightforward to interface one of these to an 
FPGA eval card, and this would give me a much higher-bandwidth way to move data 
on and off the PDP-11 (in fact, the RK11 could even be run in 
non-increment-address-mode pointed at the DR11-C, which would be pretty speedy.)

Another approach might be to interface the DR11 directly to a 1284-to-USB 
adapter.  This would only be eight bits wide, so you couldn't use the direct 
RK11/DR11 NPR hack, but it would still be a lot faster than 9600 baud serial.

Before I put too much thought into either of these, I thought I'd ping here to 
see if anybody else has already interfaced a DR11 in either of these two ways?

 cheers,
   --FritzM.


Or interface the DR11-C parallel port to an Arduino (I like the Mega2560 boards 
myself) that has an SDcard shield.


Then just write a bit of Arduino code to interface to the DR11-C port and write 
data to the SDcard using the SDfat library.


When done, just sneakernet the SDcard over to your PC and copy the files.

On the PDP-11 side just write a little macro11 program that reads all blocks of 
the disk and dumps them to the DR11-C, with appropriate handshaking, of course.


Don