Re: [Simh] rsx problem
- Original Message - From: Kevin Monceaux ke...@rawfeddogs.net To: simh@trailing-edge.com Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2015 2:14 PM Subject: Re: [Simh] rsx problem Bill, On Sat, Mar 07, 2015 at 01:51:56PM -0500, Bill Cunningham wrote: - Original Message - From: Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm m...@infocomm.com Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2015 12:12 AM Subject: Re: [Simh] rsx problem Since the terminal window isn't start automatically, you should perform the suggested telnet command from another window manually BEFORE you follow the instructions about entering a boot command Seems like I need to add frame buffer and windowing support as well as a windowing system to my host system. No, telnet doesn't need any of that. Just replace another window in the advice above with another shell. After you've started SIMH go to wherever you can find another command prompt on your system and perform the suggested telnet command before entering a boot command. If you're starting SIMH at a Linux virtual console you could use a second virtual console to perform the telnet command. Or you could use something like GNU screen. I am not understand ing something. I will study that script. I added gnome-desktop. It's fine and as you point out. nothing changes. There is a shell script on the page I looked at that I didn't copy maybe I need that. shrug Bill ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] rsx problem
- Original Message - From: Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm m...@infocomm.com To: Bill Cunningham bill...@suddenlink.net Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2015 12:12 AM Subject: Re: [Simh] rsx problem Use the original config file. Notice that the last useful lines in the file are the attempt to start the separate terminal window followed by echo command giving instructions. Since the terminal window isn't start automatically, you should perform the suggested telnet command from another window manually BEFORE you follow the instructions about entering a boot command Seems like I need to add frame buffer and windowing support as well as a windowing system to my host system. Bill ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] 'Showstopper'
Sounds a bit hyped... Well, no more so than 'The Soul Of A New Machine'. This was in the days when the general public were still prepared to be amazed at, and interested in, stories of programmers that stayed up all night, etc. Programmers probably have a cooler image than they did when I were a lad, but some of the 'outsider mystique' has surely been lost now that everyone does it :-) dave ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] 'Showstopper'
Soul of a New Machine (still have a copy) came out back when I was still in college and we were a Data General shop with two MV/8000's. So it was a doubly interesting read. Not only for the story itself but the fact that it also applied to the actual hardware and OS we were learning computer science on (it also explained very nicely what those eight memory rings were that we kept hearing about) . I do wish there was a viable SIMH Eclipse emulator with AOS/VS available. 30+ years later I still have gobs of computer printouts of various interesting AOS/VS programs. Many in assembler. My first real job in the mid-80's was working for a reseller that dealt in both DEC and Data General hardware. That was the last time I was able to really hack with an AOS/VS system running on an MV/4000. Robert On 3/7/2015 9:30 AM, dave porter wrote: Sounds a bit hyped... Well, no more so than 'The Soul Of A New Machine'. This was in the days when the general public were still prepared to be amazed at, and interested in, stories of programmers that stayed up all night, etc. Programmers probably have a cooler image than they did when I were a lad, but some of the 'outsider mystique' has surely been lost now that everyone does it :-) dave ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] suspicious code in pdp11_rl.c
When I saw the suspicious code subject, I was half hoping that the code in question would have been something like scan local hard disk, send all files to dark server in Khazakstan. Oh well. ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] rsx problem
On 2015-03-07 19:51, Bill Cunningham wrote: - Original Message - From: Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm m...@infocomm.com To: Bill Cunningham bill...@suddenlink.net Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2015 12:12 AM Subject: Re: [Simh] rsx problem Use the original config file. Notice that the last useful lines in the file are the attempt to start the separate terminal window followed by echo command giving instructions. Since the terminal window isn't start automatically, you should perform the suggested telnet command from another window manually BEFORE you follow the instructions about entering a boot command Seems like I need to add frame buffer and windowing support as well as a windowing system to my host system. How about just not starting the console on a telnet port? Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip - B. Idol ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] ADC Super Six simulation question
Hello Malcolm, I wrote the ADC Super Six simulation for SIMH a while ago (maybe 2007 or 2008.) I found some of my original files today that I used to create a boot disk for a Digitex computer that I have with a Super-Six in it. I built the CBIOS in SIMH, tested it on SIMH, and then wrote it to a real floppy disk using ImageDisk. The real computer actually booted! Today I uploaded this stuff to GitHub: https://github.com/hharte/digitex It has been a long time since I worked on this, and I forgot nearly everything about it by now; however, there are some notes and a SIMH config file in the GitHub repository. Take care, Howard From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Malcolm Macleod Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 4:58 PM To: simh@trailing-edge.com Subject: [Simh] ADC Super Six simulation question I'm trying to get ADC S6 simulation running in the altairz80.exe simulator - so far without success. Here are the SIMH commands I've been trying: SET ADCS6 ENABLED SET CPU Z80 ATTACH ADCS60 AD-MS-P1.IMD [this is the name of a known good IMD image copied from real 8 floppy] BOOT ADCS60 The BOOT command returns the following message, but then hangs indefinitely: Booting ADCS6 Controller My questions are: 1. Any suggestions as to why this is hanging indefinitely - am I missing some critical steps? 2. Do I need to load an image of the S6's on-board EPROM somewhere? 3. Can other floppy image formats (such as DMK) be used with the simulator? If anyone has a working SIMH script and IMD boot disk for the S6, I'd appreciate a copy. Thanks in advance, Malcolm. ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] rsx problem
On 2015-03-07 20:14, Kevin Monceaux wrote: Bill, On Sat, Mar 07, 2015 at 01:51:56PM -0500, Bill Cunningham wrote: - Original Message - From: Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm m...@infocomm.com Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2015 12:12 AM Subject: Re: [Simh] rsx problem Since the terminal window isn't start automatically, you should perform the suggested telnet command from another window manually BEFORE you follow the instructions about entering a boot command Seems like I need to add frame buffer and windowing support as well as a windowing system to my host system. No, telnet doesn't need any of that. Just replace another window in the advice above with another shell. After you've started SIMH go to wherever you can find another command prompt on your system and perform the suggested telnet command before entering a boot command. If you're starting SIMH at a Linux virtual console you could use a second virtual console to perform the telnet command. Or you could use something like GNU screen. Why are people making things so complicated??? simh is started in a shell. If you don't assign the console port to a telnet port, you'll have it in the same window as you started simh. No need to make things so complicated in the beginning. Jeez. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip - B. Idol ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
Re: [Simh] DEC floppy disk interleave questions
Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk (.IMD) format can preserve the floppy disk metadata. He has some DEC disk images in this format on his site: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm When I implemented several floppy disk controllers for the SIMH/AltairZ80 simulator several years ago, I wrote a module for SIMH called sim_imd which can utilize the ImageDisk format within SIMH. At that time, I had a patch to make it work as an alternate to the flat file format that is normally used for SIMH for the pdp_rx disk controller. I tested sim_imd with the PDP-11 RT11 disk image from Dave's site, and it worked fine. I may be incorrect, but if I remember correctly, the RX02 disks have the sector header in single-density and the data field in double-density. In that case, I don't think ImageDisk will be able to handle it. If you hook up an 8 floppy drive to a semi-modern PC motherboard with the right disk controller, then you may be able to read at least RX01 disks with ImageDisk. Last time I tried this was around 2008, and I believe I used an Intel Desktop Board with Pentium 4 CPU and Shugart 800 drives. Only certain PC floppy controllers can read single-density, and even fewer can write it. Preserving the sector headers is fairly important in my opinion. It allows the image to be written back to a physical disk and used on real hardware. That said, just getting the data off the disk in a flat file is still very useful for most purposes. -Howard -Original Message- From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2015 4:52 PM To: Alan Frisbie; SIMH@trailing-edge.com Subject: Re: [Simh] DEC floppy disk interleave questions Hi, Alan. On 2015-03-08 00:47, Alan Frisbie wrote: I have a large quantity of disks that I wish to copy to files that can be directly used by the SIMH PDP-11 emulator and by the E11 emulator. They include 8 floppies (both RX01 and RX02), RL01, and RL02. The issue is that the disks have sector sizes that differ from the usual 512 bytes, as well as having interesting interleave and stagger factors. RX50 (and RX33?) disks have (I think) 512-byte sectors, but some odd track usage. I also believe that RX02 disks have the first track in single-density mode, just to complicate things, but it isn't used by most DEC O/S software. RL01 and RL02 disks also have bad-block sectors at the end of the disk. I am assuming that SIMH and E11 emulate the device faithfully enough that programs which are aware of the interleaving and small sector sizes will work properly. If this assumption is wrong, please enlighten me. If my assumption is correct, what is the best way to copy the raw disks (which are in a variety of O/S formats) to files which the emulators will be happy with. I can bring up a real PDP-11 with RX02, but will probably be using a microVAX-II with an Andromeda FDC11-B controller and Shugart 800 drives. I don't mind writing my own code with QIOs. I have a bunch more questions related to this, but this will do for now. :-) All of this is related to cleaning out my storage units and de-cluttering my life. Hmm, I believe this is not absolutely straight forward. The problem is that simh (or E11) do not emulate the physical layer, but the logical one. As such, the image files of disks are assumed to always be containing sequential blocks, and no block headers are in the image file. So, it will work, in that, if you can dump out an image from a disk, where block #1 is block #1 on the image file, then things will just work fine. If you dump out the physical blocks raw, including block headers, then they are not usable by the emulators. Logical rearranging of blocks will work fine, though. So, the trick you normally see with RX01/RX02, where they remap block numbers to other blocks numbers in the device driver, is just fine. You just want the actual physical blocks, in the order they are on the disk. )As indicated by the disk block headers.) The actual layout, as created when formatting the disk, will not carry over, but it is also not important. (I hope I'm making sense here, I feel I might be overcomplicating my text...) Bad blocks, as described by the RL01/RL02 bad block tables, are totally under the device drivers and system software, so that is just fine. Systems will avoid those blocks, even on a dumped image of the disk, assuming you copy all blocks, including the bad block list. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip - B. Idol ___ Simh mailing list Simh@trailing-edge.com http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh ___ Simh mailing list
