Re: [Simh] Fwd: [TUHS] An abandoned piece of K C

[Leo Broukhis]

On the StackExchange page https://retrocomputing.stackex
change.com/q/4965/4025

I got a comment: Re: the Ken Thompson addition and, therefore, the idea of
asking the people that were actually there; Kernighan remains an employee
of Google and can sometimes be spotted at the NYC office. Sadly I recently
left but if anybody else here is a Googler then the usual internal means
might allow a query to be put if appropriate respect is applied. I attended
a presentation he gave while I was there and he seems like a very
approachable fellow.

Can anyone contact Mr. Kernighan?

Thanks,
Leo

On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 1:42 PM, Leo Broukhis  wrote:

> Well, somebody had to have done it!
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Larry Stewart  wrote:
>
>> I took the liberty of cross posting this earlier to TUHS and I got
>> an authoritative answer :)
>> -Larry
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> *From: *Ken Thompson 
>> *Subject: **Re: [TUHS] Fwd: [Simh] An abandoned piece of K C*
>> *Date: *2017, November 3 at 2:30:08 PM EDT
>> *To: *Lawrence Stewart 
>>
>> it's news to me.
>>
>>
>>
___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

Re: [Simh] NetBSD 7.0+ halt on development version (and some earlier versions) simh - mac and linux

[Mark Pizzolato]

On Thursday, November 9, 2017 at 10:19 PM, Will Senn wrote:
>   I am trying to run the latest netbsd in simh on the microvax 3900 sim
> according to the instructions found at
> https://www.netbsd.org/ports/vax/emulator-howto.html and I'm getting a
> halt. I tried it on the latest, but also on the 7.0 iso which apparently 
> worked at
> some point. I also tried it on linux and it halted there as well. This issue 
> has
> been raised previously, but I didn't see the resolution. Here is my mac run
> with simh and ini file:
> 
> $ vax
> 
> MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Beta    git commit id: 733ac0d9
> sim> do -v {netbsd-boot}
> File open error
> sim> do -v netbsd-boot
> netbsd-boot-1> load -r ka655x.bin
> netbsd-boot-2> set cpu 64m
> netbsd-boot-3> set rq0 ra92
> netbsd-boot-4> at rq0 netbsd.dsk
> netbsd-boot-5> set rq1 cdrom
> netbsd-boot-6> at rq1 vax.iso
> netbsd-boot-7> at xq0 en1
> libpcap version 1.8.1 -- Apple version 67.60.2
> Eth: opened OS device en1
> netbsd-boot-8> boot cpu
> 
> KA655-B V5.3, VMB 2.7
> Performing normal system tests.
> 40..39..38..37..36..35..34..33..32..31..30..29..28..27..26..25..
> 24..23..22..21..20..19..18..17..16..15..14..13..12..11..10..09..
> 08..07..06..05..04..03..
> Tests completed.
>  >>>boot dual:
> (BOOT/R5:0 DUAL
> 
>    2..
> ?41 DEVASSIGN, DUAL
> HALT instruction, PC: 0C1A (MOVL (R11),SP)
> sim> q
> Goodbye
> Eth: closed en1

Please try:
>>>boot DUA1:

Note the Digit 1, rather than the letter "L".

- Mark
___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

[Simh] NetBSD 7.0+ halt on development version (and some earlier versions) simh - mac and linux

[Will Senn]

All,

 I am trying to run the latest netbsd in simh on the microvax 3900 sim 
according to the instructions found at 
https://www.netbsd.org/ports/vax/emulator-howto.html and I'm getting a 
halt. I tried it on the latest, but also on the 7.0 iso which apparently 
worked at some point. I also tried it on linux and it halted there as 
well. This issue has been raised previously, but I didn't see the 
resolution. Here is my mac run with simh and ini file:


$ vax

MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Beta    git commit id: 733ac0d9
sim> do -v {netbsd-boot}
File open error
sim> do -v netbsd-boot
netbsd-boot-1> load -r ka655x.bin
netbsd-boot-2> set cpu 64m
netbsd-boot-3> set rq0 ra92
netbsd-boot-4> at rq0 netbsd.dsk
netbsd-boot-5> set rq1 cdrom
netbsd-boot-6> at rq1 vax.iso
netbsd-boot-7> at xq0 en1
libpcap version 1.8.1 -- Apple version 67.60.2
Eth: opened OS device en1
netbsd-boot-8> boot cpu

KA655-B V5.3, VMB 2.7
Performing normal system tests.
40..39..38..37..36..35..34..33..32..31..30..29..28..27..26..25..
24..23..22..21..20..19..18..17..16..15..14..13..12..11..10..09..
08..07..06..05..04..03..
Tests completed.
>>>boot dual:
(BOOT/R5:0 DUAL

  2..
?41 DEVASSIGN, DUAL
HALT instruction, PC: 0C1A (MOVL (R11),SP)
sim> q
Goodbye
Eth: closed en1

==

and linux - doesn't seem to like my nic setting:

vax netbsd-boot

MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Beta    git commit id: 1d2742ed
Eth: open error - Unknown or unsupported network device
netbsd-boot-7> at xq0 enp0s25
File open error

KA655-B V5.3, VMB 2.7
Performing normal system tests.
40..39..38..37..36..35..34..33..32..31..30..29..28..27..26..25..
24..23..22..21..20..19..18..17..16..15..14..13..12..11..10..09..
08..07..06..05..04..03..
Tests completed.
>>>boot dual:
(BOOT/R5:0 DUAL

  2..
?41 DEVASSIGN, DUALnetbsd-boot-8> boot cpu

HALT instruction, PC: 0C1A (MOVL (R11),SP)
sim>

Thanks,

Will

--
GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462  7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF

___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

Re: [Simh] Attach tar to tape device and access it from v7 in simh

[Paul Koning]

> On Nov 9, 2017, at 3:10 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> 
> On 2017-11-09 07:51, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>> Johnny Billquist  writes:
>>> I bet that would be written in some ANSI C, for which you won't find a
>>> C compiler for V7...
>> GCC has a PDP-11 backend, so maybe you can cross compile it.
> 
> That would depend on if calling conventions, register conventions, a.out 
> format and so on are compatible between V7 and whatever format gcc uses. Not 
> to mention you also need all the V7 libraries where you do the cross compile. 
> I suspect this might be a bit much to deal with for Will...

Some years ago the 2BSD flavor of the pdp11 back end in GCC was deleted, 
leaving only the "DEC" style (which isn't actually quite right for DEC 
assemblers).  Some day I hope to restore it, but other things will likely come 
first.  It may not be all that hard, a matter of retrieving it from the old 
releases and doing some modest tweaks to bring it back in.  I'd encourage 
others to give it a try.

paul

___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

[Simh] off topic, but many of you might find this interesting

[Ken Cornetet]

Seeing people on the list wax nostalgic over unixes (unixen? Unixi?)  long past 
got me to thinking about my first home unix: Microport system 5/AT. It was 
fairly impressive for the day - real, honest to God system 5 release 2 unix 
that would run on a PC/AT (80286) machine. I ran this at home from sometime in 
the late 80s until I bought a Slackware linux CD sometime in the early 90s. 
Uucp email, anyone?

I did some research on Microport System5/AT and saw where a few people had 
attempted to get it running under various emulation platforms with no complete 
success until one of the developers of VirtualBox got involved and added 
support for it into VirtualBox. I found another user who had managed to get it 
running in VirtualBox by manually specifying disk geometry into System V/AT's 
fdisk, but it wasn't entirely clear what he'd done.

Having luckily had the foresight to create image files of my install disks all 
those years ago, I managed to get it up and running. Unfortunately, one of my 
floppy images was corrupt, but fortunately it was the text processing options, 
which isn't all that interesting.

So anyway, if any of you unix archeologists are interested in Microport System 
V/AT, let me know and I'll get you the install floppy images and details of how 
to configure the disk geometry.


___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

Re: [Simh] Attach tar to tape device and access it from v7 in simh

[Will Senn]

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 9, 2017, at 2:10 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> 
>> On 2017-11-09 07:51, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>> Johnny Billquist  writes:
>>> I bet that would be written in some ANSI C, for which you won't find a
>>> C compiler for V7...
>> GCC has a PDP-11 backend, so maybe you can cross compile it.
> 
> That would depend on if calling conventions, register conventions, a.out 
> format and so on are compatible between V7 and whatever format gcc uses. Not 
> to mention you also need all the V7 libraries where you do the cross compile. 
> I suspect this might be a bit much to deal with for Will...
> 
>  Johnny
> 

You got that right, Johnny. Besides, the binary on the tape for more, a lesser 
less, works well enough:).  

I'm slowly but surely getting better at figuring out the environment - as I hit 
obstacles and overcome them, sometimes through my own efforts and sometimes 
with a little much appreciated assist.

I've still got a ways to go, before I'm ready to cross compile for V7 without 
just doing the script kiddie method of copying and pasting stuff somebody said 
oughta work without any real depth of understanding what's going on under the 
hood. 

I've cross compiled linuxy stuff for arm and suchlike, but it's scripted, the 
binary formats standard, the header files in the right places, any chrooting 
set up by the scripts, etc. The concept isn't that difficult, but there are a 
lot of moving parts and potential complications. That said  Warren's written 
some tools for this kinda work that are prolly simpler IIRC (aout?).

Will
___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

Re: [Simh] OpenBSD on Simh VAX 3.8-1 - Segmentation fault

[Gary Lee Phillips]

Long time ago. It was probably Slackware 9. And as Mark says, the makefile
needed a lot of tweaking and I'm not real proficient at C stuff so it took
me a lot of fumbling around. The simh version was 3.8 or perhaps even
earlier. Slackware didn't have much in the way of precompiled packages at
the time.

When I moved from Slackware to Debian things got a whole lot easier for the
most part. When I was still working I had some forced experience with
RedHat and (eeeww) UnixWare, but I find Debian much more straightforward
and reliable. I use the Mint variant because I like the desktop and user
interfaces.

--Gary




> On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 2:00 AM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:
> > On Wednesday, November 8, 2017 at 9:43 PM, Gregg Levine wrote:
> >> Hello!
> >> Gary which release  of Slackware Linux was this? I've found that SIMH
> >> properly builds on all releases from 7.2 (Which was only released as a
> Snap
> >> Shot Disk from the time of the first shows) all the way the 14.1.
> >> I only needed to figure out how to update the LibCap library so that
> >> networking would work properly once that arrived not too long ago. As an
> >> aside I moved away from trying to build it here on this laptop running
> 14.2
> >> 64bit, because networking requires a fixed connection, not WiFi.
> >
> > His issues might not have much to do with Slackware, but more to do
> > with the version of simh.
> >
> > The github simh code (4.x) has built easily on most systems for a very
> long
> > time.
> >
> > Simh 3.9 was reasonable as well but not as robust as the current code.
> >
> > Simh 3.8-x might have needed local customizations relating to the
> > local system environment.  The folks putting together the debian and
> > other simh packages certainly messed with the makefile.
> >
> > - Mark
> >
>
___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

Re: [Simh] OpenBSD on Simh VAX 3.8-1 - Segmentation fault

[Gregg Levine]

Hello!
I agree. Last time I made my big try it was to first have to track
down and build a copy of tcpdump that would build properly on Eleven.
As I recall releases later then 0.8 for libpcap would in fact be
needed for networking to work properly that way. On Linux of course.
On Windows I simply either made use of the Minimal Cygwin project
build files, and of course the tools, and installed beforehand the
Winpcap library. Or install that library, and then a prebuilt binary
who did do networking.

And I am certainly agreeing with you regarding the job they did
concerning the local customization things for Debian and its ilk.

Anyway if this works I'll need to track down the right methods for
shoehorning DecNet onto it. I've other items. The bigger problem is of
course that of remembering which DEC OS the networking stuff ran well
on

Incidentally I've corrected the mispelling of the library name. And my
name is exactly as spelled on the signature. The name you posted must
have been an autocorrect mistake.
-
Gregg C Levine gregg.drw...@gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."


On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 2:00 AM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 8, 2017 at 9:43 PM, Gregg Levine wrote:
>> Hello!
>> Gary which release  of Slackware Linux was this? I've found that SIMH
>> properly builds on all releases from 7.2 (Which was only released as a Snap
>> Shot Disk from the time of the first shows) all the way the 14.1.
>> I only needed to figure out how to update the LibCap library so that
>> networking would work properly once that arrived not too long ago. As an
>> aside I moved away from trying to build it here on this laptop running 14.2
>> 64bit, because networking requires a fixed connection, not WiFi.
>
> His issues might not have much to do with Slackware, but more to do
> with the version of simh.
>
> The github simh code (4.x) has built easily on most systems for a very long
> time.
>
> Simh 3.9 was reasonable as well but not as robust as the current code.
>
> Simh 3.8-x might have needed local customizations relating to the
> local system environment.  The folks putting together the debian and
> other simh packages certainly messed with the makefile.
>
> - Mark
>
>> -
>> Gregg C Levine gregg.drw...@gmail.com
>> "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 11:11 AM, Gary Lee Phillips 
>> wrote:
>> > Thanks for the very clear answer, Mark.
>> >
>> > I followed your instructions and the 4.0-0 beta built in minutes. Last
>> > time I tried to build Simh myself, it took several frustrating days of
>> > patching the makefile and changing references. That was on Slackware
>> > Linux and several versions back of both the environment and Simh. So
>> > thanks ever so much to the developers who have continued to enhance and
>> tune this package.
>> > It is brilliantly done.
>> >
>> > Now the even better news. The vax3900/vax module in 4.0-0 beta does
>> > not have the segmentation fault I encountered with 3.8-1. OpenBSD 5.7
>> > is able to ftp and sftp transfer in and out without any complaints. So
>> > thank you again to whoever it was that found and fixed that problem.
>> >
>> > --Gary
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 1:50 AM, Mark Pizzolato 
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi Gary,
>> >>
>> >> On Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 5:29 AM, Gary Lee Phillips wrote:
>> >> > I am running VAX 3.8-1 on a 64-bit Linux system. It performs well
>> >> > with OpenVMS as the operating system. But when I try to run it with
>> >> > OpenBSD 5.7 there are issues.
>> >> >
>> >> > The base system installs and boots correctly. But in order to bring
>> >> > in tools such as language compilers or editors, it is necessary to
>> >> > use ftp or sftp. I cannot get these to transfer anything because
>> >> > the moment a transfer starts, no matter which mode or direction or
>> >> > whether the transfer is initiated from within OpenBSD or from the
>> >> > outside, an immediate segmentation fault occurs. This appears to be
>> >> > within the SimH code itself, and not on OpenBSD.
>> >>
>> >> That would certainly seem to be the case.  Simulator crashes
>> >> definitely should be fixed.  3.8-1 was released some 8 years ago, and
>> >> 3.9 was some 6 years ago.  Both are way behind the current code base
>> >> located at https://github.com/simh/simh/ downloadable as
>> >> https://github.com/simh/simh/archive/master.zip
>> >>
>> >> > The same SimH VAX environment running OpenVMS 7.3 can perform
>> >> > transfers over ethernet without any apparent issues.
>> >>
>> >> This is a useful data point.
>> >>
>> >> > I have tried running SimH in supervisor mode or in user mode, same
>> >> > results. Also same results whether the transfer is initiated by
>> >> > root or by a normal user account.
>> >>
>> >> I wouldn't expect you to be able to run the simulator as non-root and
>> >> have Ethernet functionality...

Re: [Simh] Attach tar to tape device and access it from v7 in simh

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>> Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> I bet that would be written in some ANSI C, for which you won't find
>>> a C compiler for V7...
>> GCC has a PDP-11 backend, so maybe you can cross compile it.
> That would depend on if calling conventions, register conventions,
> a.out format and so on are compatible between V7 and whatever format
> gcc uses.

Right, it depends on a lot of things.  GCC says it targets BSD, unknown
version.  I don't know whether that's compatible with V7.  There also
seems to be PDP-11 backends for PCC and LCC.  The former targets
2.11BSD.

I mostly just wanted to point out that there may be, or might not be far
from, an ANSI C compiler for V7.

> Not to mention you also need all the V7 libraries where you do the
> cross compile.

In this case I would just copy the assembly language output file to the
target system, and build it there.  So not pure cross compilation.

It could be that the software uses lots of definitions and calls which
aren't supported in the V7 libraries.  Or that it's too bloated to fit
in a PDP-11.

___
Simh mailing list
Simh@trailing-edge.com
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh

Re: [Simh] Attach tar to tape device and access it from v7 in simh

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2017-11-09 07:51, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:

Johnny Billquist  writes:

I bet that would be written in some ANSI C, for which you won't find a
C compiler for V7...


GCC has a PDP-11 backend, so maybe you can cross compile it.


That would depend on if calling conventions, register conventions, a.out 
format and so on are compatible between V7 and whatever format gcc uses. 
Not to mention you also need all the V7 libraries where you do the cross 
compile. I suspect this might be a bit much to deal with for Will...


  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