Re: [Simh] MAME and simh

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

PuTTY is a pretty accurate [free] VT emulator, particularly if you apply the 
non-default settings found in this Migration Specialties guide for OpenVMS and 
Tru64 Unix compatibility:
http://www.migrationspecialties.com/pdf/PuTTY_Settings.pdf

You could also select the original DEC MCS character set (which came on the 
VT200) instead of ISO-8859-1 (LATIN-1 West Europe) and get similar results. A 
few characters with the high bit set are slightly different, but they are 
pretty close.

PuTTY behaves the same on Windows or Linux. I'm running it on Windows 10 and 
Linux Mint 19.1 and see no real difference other than the out-of-band 
keystrokes (like copy/paste and menu activation).

David

-Original Message
From: Simh  On Behalf Of Lars Brinkhoff
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2020 2:09 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] MAME and simh

Dan Gahlinger wrote:
> SecureCRT is available for Linux, natively!

FWIW, PuTTY too.

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Re: [Simh] EXT : MAME and simh

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Why not use PuTTY for the VT terminal emulator, which is known to work with 
SIMH?

What is the point of trying to use MAME for VT emulation?

From: Simh  On Behalf Of Peter Allan
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2020 9:34 AM
To: Simh Trailing-Edge Mailing List 
Subject: EXT :[Simh] MAME and simh

Hi folks,

I am trying to get MAME to talk to simh in order to use MAME as a VT terminal 
emulator. However, I am failing to get the two to talk to each other. I have 
been using simh for over 10 years, but I only picked up MAME two days ago.

I have tried MAME v 0.222 on Windows 10 and MAME v 0.208 on Debian 10.1. Both 
start up successfully, but I have trouble using them. I also have a set of 13 
ROMs for several VT terminals.

I have found some helpful information on the web, specifically

https://zork.net/~st/jottings/Real-VT102-emulation-with-MAME.html

and

 https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/MAME_and_SIMH

The latter page looks like it should be just what I am looking for, but it 
describes using a VT240 ROM. My vt240 ROM doesn't work. My vt220 ROM does work, 
but when I follow the instructions to 'press F3 to enter setup', nothing 
happens.

I have also got the impression that some of the command line options for mame 
have changed over time, so some older information on the web may no longer be 
accurate.

So, has anyone got this combination to work? If so, can they send me exact 
instructions on how to do it please. I hope that I am simply failing to do 
something that will become obvious with hindsight.

My normal Linux system is CentOS 6, CentOS 7 or Fedora 31, but I also have 
Debian 10.1 available.

I run several simulated VAX and PDP-11 instances using simh.

Cheers

Peter Allan

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Re: [Simh] Can't start VAX from SSH

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Not sure if this will be helpful or not..

The SDL video subsystem error makes me think that they put in a patch that your 
current version of LibSDL has a problem with, or have applied some protection 
to prevent LibSDL from attaching to the Mac graphics console. You might want to 
check to see if there is a newer and more compatible version of LibSDL for your 
patched system version.

Or obviously, turn off the VAX QVSS/QDSS component that requires the LibSDL 
library and start the VAX without the graphics head.  :-(

David

From: Simh  On Behalf Of Baker, Lawrence M
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 4:48 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Can't start VAX from SSH

I am working from home and can only SSH in to my desktop Mac at work.  Our 
unhelpful IT department automatically patches and reboots our system, which 
must have happened last night.  That terminated the SIMH VAX I left running.  
Normally, I leave my desktop logged in.  Until today, I have had no trouble 
starting my SIMH VAX remotely.

Today, no one is logged in to my desktop.  When I SSH remotely and try to start 
my SIMH VAX, it fails immediately with the error message:
$ ./vax-20200419
_RegisterApplication(), FAILED TO establish the default connection to the 
WindowServer, _CGSDefaultConnection() is NULL.
SDL Video subsystem can't initialize
Is there any way around this short of driving to work and logging in to my 
desktop?


Larry Baker

US Geological Survey

650-329-5608

ba...@usgs.gov


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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Releasing terspy.mar - vax/vms terminal spy program

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Oh no… management frequently asked VMS admins to ‘spy’ on general users for a 
few reasons back in the day, before the politically-correct era.

-  Make sure users were not defrauding the company [stealing inventory 
with illegal transactions, etc.]  (without user consent)

-  Watch user sessions when managers reported various discipline 
problems (without user consent)

-  Debugging full-screen application behavior from a remote location by 
having the user walk us through what they did (with user consent)


SET HOST/LOG sessions are difficult to use to see where full-screen 
applications went wrong, since you have to manually interpret all of the logged 
VT escape sequences. ☹

For a while, there was a company selling a SPY utility for VMS, as well as 
freebie versions floating around. The commercial version allowed the watcher to 
enter data in the watched session by using a special command sequence to enable 
remote data entry. I don’t recall any of the freebie versions ever allowing 
data entry from the watcher, for fairly obvious security reasons.

There was also another highly privileged program on the DECUS tapes, GLOGIN, 
which allowed a privileged user to login as another user, so that you could see 
what application behavior occurred within the context of a specific user. I 
found a weird bug in one of our application programs that only occurred when 
the username was exactly 7 characters long using GLOGIN to login as the user 
who had reported the bug that we couldn’t duplicate ourselves. ☺

David

From: Simh  On Behalf Of Robert Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 10:23 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Releasing terspy.mar - vax/vms terminal spy program

>$ SET HOST/LOG will log your own session. This program logs someone else's 
>session.

  That’s true – I’m assuming the person being spied upon wants to be spied on.

Bob

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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: EXT :Re: Mouse capture on VAXstation II/GPX (KA630) simulator V4.0-0 Current

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Well, the QVSS device is monocolor, so you shouldn’t see any color. The QDSS 
device was multicolor.
If the “set cpu model= vaxstationgpx” seems to enable the qdss (multicolor) 
device instead of the qvss (monocolor) device, then you should be setting qdss 
(multicolor) capture, not qvss.
Note that the QVSS and QDSS share the same IO space by default, and were 
[practically] mutually exclusive in a normal system, but could technically both 
exist at the same time if the CSR and Vectors were set correctly in an extended 
backplane. If both are actually enabled and working, that could easily account 
for some mouse jumpiness as the software double-dispatches the mouse event.

The Operator console can be toggled on and off with one of the function keys or 
a control-key sequence. I can’t remember what the toggle sequence is off the 
top of my head. Might be worth looking at one of the old Vaxstation manuals. 
Some of the odd console behavior might also be from setting the console 
parameter in your configuration file, or if you are using the wrong QxSS device.

David


From: Simh  On Behalf Of Supratim Sanyal
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 1:38 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Mouse capture on VAXstation II/GPX (KA630) 
simulator V4.0-0 Current


Very interesting. With "qvss capture" below "cpu model", mouse now works 
(jumpy, but better than no mouse). Also, I am getting console replies at the 
top of the graphical desktop, and have lost color. Here's a screenshot.

[cid:image001.png@01D5FE0D.37F12C40]
On 3/19/20 1:25 PM, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
On 3/19/20 11:09 AM, Hittner, David T [US] (MS) wrote:
et cpu model=vaxstationgpx
set qvss enable; if required – I think ‘set cpu model = 
vaxstationgpx’ does this implicitly
set qvss capture

Tried this sequence:

set cpu model=vaxstationgpx
set qvss enable
set qvss capture

Trying to set capture after the CPU model produces this:

"Capture Mode Can't be changed with device enabled"

BTW, an explicit "set qvss enable" produces this twice, so I think your 
thoughts on implicit enable is correct ...

"QDSS Display Created.  Uncaptured Input Mode
QVSS Display Created.  Uncaptured Input Mode"



--

Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT

39.19151 N, 77.23432 W

QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

--

Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT

39.19151 N, 77.23432 W

QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Mouse capture on VAXstation II/GPX (KA630) simulator V4.0-0 Current

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Shouldn’t the configuration order be:
set cpu model=vaxstationgpx
set qvss enable; if required – I think ‘set cpu model = 
vaxstationgpx’ does this implicitly
set qvss capture

There may be some odd interaction if capture mode is enabled before setting 
vaxstationgpx.

David

From: Simh  On Behalf Of Supratim Sanyal
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 7:57 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Mouse capture on VAXstation II/GPX (KA630) simulator 
V4.0-0 Current

I built the latest SIMH microvax2 on FreeBSD and found the behavior is exactly 
identical on FreeBSD as well. The problem is not Linux specific.

Any ideas?

TIA
Supratim


---
Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet


On Mar 15, 2020, at 11:36 PM, Supratim Sanyal 
mailto:supra...@riseup.net>> wrote:
The pointer does not seem to be captured at all. The guest O/S is VAX/VMS 
5.5-2H4 with DECwindows. Am I missing something in the configuration? Other 
than an unusable DECwindows desktop, everything works perfect.

SIMH version:

VAXstation II/GPX (KA630) simulator V4.0-0 Current
Simulator Framework Capabilities:
64b data
64b addresses
Threaded Ethernet Packet transports:PCAP:TAP:VDE:NAT:UDP
Idle/Throttling support is available
Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) support
RAW disk and CD/DVD ROM support
Asynchronous I/O support (Lock free asynchronous event queue)
Asynchronous Clock support
FrontPanel API Version 12
Host Platform:
Compiler: GCC 8.3.0
Simulator Compiled as C arch: x64 (Release Build) on Mar 15 2020 at 
03:44:22
Build Tool: simh-makefile
Memory Access: Little Endian
Memory Pointer Size: 64 bits
Large File (>2GB) support
SDL Video support: SDL Version 2.0.9
PCRE RegEx (Version 8.39 2016-06-14) support for EXPECT commands
OS clock resolution: 1ms
Time taken by msleep(1): 1ms
Ethernet packet info: libpcap version 1.8.1
Time taken by msleep(1): 1ms
OS: Linux hp-compaq-tower 4.19.0-6-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 
4.19.67-2+deb10u2 (2019-11-11) x86_64 GNU/Linux
git commit id: b848cb12
git commit time: 2020-03-12T00:10:54-04:00

Configuration

set qvss capture
set cpu model=vaxstationgpx
set cpu 16m
set cpu idle=vms
load -r ../data/ka630.bin
attach nvr ../data/microvax2.nvram
set console notelnet

; First network adapter (TCP/IP)
set xq enable
set xq mac=52-2f-73-a8-51-19
attach xq vde:/tmp/vde-ip.ctl

; Second network adapter (DECnet 31.38)
set xqb enable
set xqb mac=AA-00-04-00-26-7C
attach xqb vde:/tmp/vde-dnet.ctl

set rq enable
set rq0 ra92
attach rq0 ../data/vms5.5-2H4-vaxstationII.ra92-1.5gb.disk0.dsk
set rq1 ra92
attach rq1 ../data/vms5.5-2H4-vaxstationII.ra92-1.5gb.disk1.dsk
set rq2 rrd40
attach rq2 ../data/DECVAXVMS552H4.iso

set tq tk50
set tq enable
attach tq0 ../data/jnet036.tap
attach tq1 ../data/AQ-PXL00-R1.A01.tap

set dz enable,lines=4
attach -a -m dz 4823

set rl disable
set ts disable

set cpu conhalt

Regards,
Supratim Sanyal

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Re: [Simh] VMS hobbyist license

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

>What would HPE do if the pak they released were posted anonymously with the 
>termination date removed?

HPE would be within their full rights to prosecute anyone who strips the 
termination date from the PAKs and reposts with a new checksum.

If you are just talking about reposting the original (what appear to be mostly 
universal) FINAL PAKs with the termination date intact, I don't suspect that 
HPE would quite as upset as the above open-ended software piracy scenario given 
that they are exiting the OpenVMS business, and the fact that there IS a 
termination date on the original PAKS which limits their financial loss, but 
you should always ASK PERMISSION before doing ANYTHING  that is in VIOLATION of 
the Terms and Conditions, as this proposal clearly is.

There's little that individuals can do to stop software piracy. However, 
individuals can elect to NOT be part of the software piracy problem.

David

From: Simh  On Behalf Of Dan Gahlinger
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2020 9:40 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VMS hobbyist license

What would HPE do if the pak they released were posted anonymously with the 
termination date removed?

I ask because countries like Russia just don't care, or like Iran...

*I can neither confirm nor deny that such a posting exists...

Dan

From: Simh 
mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com>> on 
behalf of John H. Reinhardt 
mailto:johnhreinha...@thereinhardts.org>>
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2020 9:32:34 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com 
mailto:simh@trailing-edge.com>>
Subject: Re: [Simh] VMS hobbyist license

On 3/13/2020 11:29 AM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
The domain decusserve.org doesn't exist?



Typo on my part in the original.  It should be one "s"...  
 for the web page.  
ssh to eisner.decuserve.org for the login.



--

John H. Reinhardt

On 3/11/2020 9:23 PM, Tony Nicholson wrote:
The URL for OpenVMS hobbyist renewal is

https://www.hpe.com/h41268/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548

You need to make sure you put valid information in the form and make sure you 
put something reasonable in the "How do you use the Hobbyist Program?" question.

If you don't have a Chapter number, go to (via ssh) 
eisner.decusserve.org and log in with the 
username of REGISTRATION and follow the prompts. That gets you registered in 
the US DECUServe chapter (all nationalities are welcome) and gets you a valid 
member number for registration.  You may have to wait a week or two for the 
number to become active at HPE.

Tony


On Thu, 12 Mar 2020 at 11:48, dave porter 
mailto:dave_list_a...@verizon.net>> wrote:
I let my VMS hobbyist license expire a few years back.  Can I get one
now for the next year?  Would someone remind me of how?

Thanks.
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Various

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

My college, DePauw University (Greencastle, IN, USA), had a DEC card reader 
attached to their PDP-11/45 running RSTS/E, and later connected it to their new 
VAX 11/782(!) running VMS.
They made all intro students in 1979 learn to use the card punch machines and 
submit programming jobs on cards, until they finally got rid of the card 
punch/readers in favor of interactive terminals in 1980-81.

David

From: Simh  On Behalf Of Clem Cole
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2020 11:39 AM
To: Timothe Litt 
Cc: SIMH 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Various



On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 10:50 AM Timothe Litt 
mailto:l...@ieee.org>> wrote:

Among others, DEC OEM'd Documation card readers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se0F1bLfFKY
Mark - sorry to go a little direct (simh) topic here [this sort of belongs on 
Warren's COFF mailing list), but since the Card discussion started here as I'm 
kinda curious and will ask it.

Did DEC actually sell that many?   In my years of working around DEC gear 
starting in the late 1960s, I think I saw a card read/punch only once on a 
PDP-6 IIRC, but it might have been a KA10.   I don't think I ever saw one on a 
PDP-8/11 or Vaxen.

I certainly saw and used them on IBM 1401/360 systems, the Univac 1100s and 
CDC's.  I have not so fond memories of the IBM 1442, much less a 26 and 29 
keypunch (and a couple of great stories too).

That said, when I think of DEC gear, my memories are of paper tape or either 
the original DEC-Tape units or a couple of cases the old cassette tape units 
DEC had on some of the laboratory PDP 11/05s.
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Unattended background SIMH process

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Mark can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that most of the SIMH 
simulators can already save the state (from the ^E prompt) and restore using 
the SAVE and RESTORE commands. I think this capability was added to facilitate 
very long debugging sessions over a multi-day period.

It's possible that the only thing that might need to be added to SIMH to 
support an automatic save on a hardware power fail is the ability for the 
master thread to detect the power fail event and initiate an auto-save, and of 
course enough time to actually perform the save before the power fails. 
Potentially this power fail detection and auto-save from the master thread 
could be enabled by something like a "POWERFAIL AUTOSAVE " command.

Unfortunately, there's frequently not enough time to write a state file to disk 
before the real power actually fails. However, this auto-save feature could 
potentially be of significant value if the SIMH simulator was running in a 
virtual machine, and could detect the VM shutdown event, and perform  the SIMH 
auto-save during the VM shutdown processing.

David

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Paul Koning
Sent: Wednesday, December 4, 2019 9:06 PM
To: Johnny Billquist 
Cc: Simh 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Unattended background SIMH process



> On Dec 4, 2019, at 8:05 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
> 
> On 2019-12-05 01:34, Paul Koning wrote:
>>> On Dec 4, 2019, at 6:15 PM, Kevin Handy  wrote:
>>> 
>>> What it sounds like you need, is  for simh to detect the shutdown interrupt 
>>> itself, and then save the current state of everything in the machine to a 
>>> file. Upon power-up, it then needs to restore back to that state.
>>> You;d have to save the current configuration settings,  state of memory, 
>>> cpu registers, device structures, etc., and then be able to read it all 
>>> back in and restore everything back to a working state. Could get 
>>> complicated, for example the disk drive have a timer in them so that they 
>>> don't respond instantly to read requests, so this type of thing would need 
>>> to be saved.
>>> Is it possible to manually do this right now? Store the state of a machine, 
>>> them restore it back using simh commands to individually reset all the 
>>> devices?
>> On a PDP11, this could be handled via a power fail interrupt, assuming the 
>> OS you have supports power fail and recovery. RSTS-11, with core memory (so 
>> you'd want to persist the memory across restarts) does. I'm not sure if 
>> others do.  (RSTS/E does not.)
> 
> Right. And all members of RSX do handle power fail and recovery. Individual 
> programs can also be notified if a power fail even happened while they were 
> running, in case there is something they need to do under such circumstances.

I should have remembered that.  In fact, on IAS (and RSX-11/D if I remember 
right), the system boot takes advantage of this: the SAV command saves a system 
image on disk, the boot loader reads that back in, and then power fail ASTs are 
delivered to all the relevant parts to restore them to operating state.  Neat 
trick.

In RSTS-11, a power fail and recovery simply leaves the system state as it was, 
with all the logged in terminals still logged in.  For a long power outage 
that's not really a good feature.  I saw it work once while in college.  RSTS/E 
dropped this because of the switch to semiconductor memory; instead it offers 
automatic restart (a clean startup, so everything is logged out and back to 
idle).

paul


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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Issue #731 - simh PDP11 RSX11M-PLUS Unibus 11/94 system with 2 DEUNA ethernet device XUB not working

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

This was a user configuration issue, where the user accidentally turned off 
SIMH auto-configuration by explicitly setting an address/vector on another 
device, which broke the XUB controller. The issue has been closed by the OP.

I took a look at the pdp11_xu.c code to see if I could spot any obvious 
initialization errors without serious debugging, since I know that a double XU 
configuration works correctly on a VAX780.

I actually _did_ find a coding error in pdp11_xu.c in my quick review, but it 
makes no real difference, since the fields receive the correct value as the 
code is currently written.

In the initialization of xub_reg[], there are two cut-n-paste defective lines:

  { BRDATA ( SETUP,   ,   XU_RDX, 8, sizeof(xua.setup)), REG_HRO},
  { BRDATA ( STATS,   ,   XU_RDX, 8, sizeof(xua.stats)), REG_HRO},

Which really should be initializing the 5th field using the sizeof() the XUB 
structures rather the sizeof() the XUA structures:

  { BRDATA ( SETUP,   ,   XU_RDX, 8, sizeof(xub.setup)), REG_HRO},
  { BRDATA ( STATS,   ,   XU_RDX, 8, sizeof(xub.stats)), REG_HRO},

Mark P, could you peer review and make this simple change to pdp11_xu.c for me?
I see that the corresponding pdp11_xq.c initialization does not have this 
cut-n-paste defect.

David

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2019 6:30 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Issue #731 - simh PDP11 RSX11M-PLUS Unibus 11/94 
system with 2 DEUNA ethernet device XUB not working

Paul's point is actually fully relevant even if you do not bring up DECnet. In 
RSX, this is a property already done at the CEX level. CEX knows the DECnet 
address, and sets all ethernet controllers to the corresponding MAC address, 
even if you do not run ethernet.

The actual MAC address you set in the simh configuration file is pretty much 
irrelevant. It needs to be the MAC address corresponding to the DECnet address 
you assign.

All that said, from what I've received from you in other mails certainly 
suggest that there is some kind of problem in simh. The second ethernet 
controller do not even start.

   Johnny

On 2019-07-27 20:50, Geoff Conway wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> The main test environment I am using is with 1 PC with 2 ethernet 
> NIC’s each connected to a separate IP router – with one being on the 
> main Internet router with a 192.168.0.x subnet UNA-0 and the other 
> UNA-1 being on the private router with the 192.168.10.x subnet.  This 
> hopefully should not be an issue in my case.
> 
> Thanks for the heads up though – and I will still need to check to see 
> if I can identify what MAC addresses XU, XUB do have – but as I have 
> confirmed that the NIC’s are on different segments I should be safe.
> 
> I also usually never ran up the DECNet software fully with just 
> loading the $CEX environment without starting DECNet Then the BQTCP 
> code connects to each device via ETHACP and initializes the IP 
> interfaces – so I usually never ran the DECNet Phase IV networking 
> software side of things as I didn’t have a second DECNet node to communicate 
> with.
> 
> When I couldn’t get anywhere with XUB I shutdown the unibus simh 
> environment and created the separate Qbus system – with the 2 x DEQNA 
> with just the $CEX subsystem loaded and with XQ, XQB loaded found that 
> both ethernet interfaces worked ok with the 2 x DEQNA’s.
> 
> It was only after I had created the 2 independent simh configs with 
> their own unique disk sets that I realized that they should be able to 
> communicate with each other through winpcap via attaching XU with eth6 
> (internet router) and XUB with eth5 (private lan router) with the qbus 
> simh system attaching XQ with eth6 and XQB with eth5 the 2 systems 
> overlaying the 2 system Network Interfaces under Windows 10  That was 
> done only as check to confirm the DECNet Phase IV networking comms was 
> fully working – and works with UNA-0, QNA-0, QNA-1 but not UNA-1. I 
> suspect that with only $CEX loaded in each simh RSX system that the 
> driver’s hard-coded MAC address applies with the XU and XQ drivers 
> each having unique MAC addresses (as do XUB and XQB) preventing the 
> duplicate MAC address problem occurring when on the same subnet.
> 
> If I restrict the unibus system to just loading $CEX (to activate the 
> ethernet interfaces (but not DECNet) and then startup the BQTCP 
> software with DEBUG enabled at separate times for each ethernet device 
> I should be able to at least work out what XUB is meant to be doing 
> versus what it is doing by comparing DEBUG from XU and XUB and maybe 
> identify the underlying issue.
> 
> As both ethernet interfaces are configured to be initialized at a 
> TCP/IP level acquiring an IP address lease via DHCP there should be an 
> initial sequence of almost identical messages for each of the XU, XUB 
> drivers which may provide a further clue to this puzzling issue.
> 

Re: [Simh] EXT : VAXstation 4000 Model 60

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

>Why so many self-test errors?

Because the simulator is relatively new, and getting it running an OS was more 
important than passing all of the diagnostics. It can be quite difficult to 
pass hardware diagnostics, particularly since some hardware diagnostics are 
timing dependent, which is tough to get right in a simulation. Many (if not 
most) of the simulators cannot fully pass all OEM diagnostics, but they work 
well enough to run the Operating Systems correctly. See the recent thread about 
simulating disk formatting behavior, and Bob Supnik's multiple papers about 
getting the hardware details right on the SIMH web site.

Usually simulators will be altered over time to be able pass more diagnostics, 
as people help refine the simulation.

> I assume the "NUMBYTES" value for DKA300 is an artifact of the SHOW DEV 
> command not coping with such a large disk.

Many of VAX line have difficulty in dealing with SCSI disks of greater than 
1.07 GB and 8GB due to the number of bits allowed for the LBN in the various 
smaller SCSI command blocks of the time. If the disk seems to be undersized, 
you are probably experiencing the notorious "disk wrap" that occurred when you 
attach a disk larger than what the SCSI commands can accommodate and map. Try 
reducing the size of your user-sized disk until you see the correct value 
recognized.

> Is there anything I can do to speed up the self-test (i.e. a way to curtail 
> it)?  VMS itself seems to boot OK.

You can always alter the boot ROM to skip the tests. The boot ROM tests take a 
specific length of time, and the simulator is faithfully running the tests, 
using the simulated wait times to allow the simulated devices time to respond.

David



-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Jeremy Begg
Sent: Friday, July 12, 2019 8:59 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] VAXstation 4000 Model 60

Hi,

I am trying to set up SIMH on a new Linux server, an Intel NUC8i3BEH  with 16GB 
RAM and 250GB SSD running Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS.

I've built the VAXstation 4000 Model 60 simulator on this system and I didn't 
notice any errors while building.  (The build itself was very quick.)

VAXstation 4000-60 (KA46) simulator V4.0-0 Currentgit commit id: 
5e8f4803

I've prepared two ODS-2 VMS disk images and attached them to RZ2 and RZ3, 
respectively.

When I run BOOT CPU it loads the VAXstation boot ROM from the internal copy and 
starts the system self-tests, which take quite a few minutes to run -- just 
like the real hardware :-(

The self test results in several errors.  Here's the transcript:

  Loading boot code from internal ka46a.bin

   
   
  KA46-A V1.4-38E-V4.2
  08-00-2B-02-10-2C
  104MB
  
  ?? 001   3DZ  0032
  ?? 001   4 CACHE  0768
  ?? 001   7IT  1152
  ?? 001   8   SYS  0128
  ?? 001   9NI  0024

  >>> show dev

VMS/VMB  ADDR  DEVTYPENUMBYTES RM/FXWPDEVNAM REV
---    --- ----- ---
ESA0 08-00-2B-02-10-2C
DKA200   A/2/0 DISK 2.15GB  FXRZ23   
0A18
DKA300   A/3/0 DISK20.13MB  FXRZ23   
0A18
   ..HostID..A/6   INITR



  >>> 

Why so many self-test errors?

I assume the "NUMBYTES" value for DKA300 is an artifact of the SHOW DEV command 
not coping with such a large disk.

Is there anything I can do to speed up the self-test (i.e. a way to curtail 
it)?  VMS itself seems to boot OK.

Here's my SIMH initialisation script:

   ; set memory size to 104MB 
   set cpu 104m   
   set cpu idle=vms   
   set cpu instructions=packed,extended,noemulated
   ; set cpu autoboot 
   set cpu conhalt
   ;  
   ; change the 'escape' character from ^E to ^P  
   set console wru=10 
   ;  
   ; Create and attach two SCSI disks 
   attach rz2 eric_SYSTEM.dsk 
   ; set rz3 rzuser=8427936   
   attach rz3 eric_USER.dsk   
   ;  
   ; Disable remaining disk devices   
   set rz0 disable
   set rz1 disable
   set rz4 disable
   set rz5 disable
   set rz7 disable
   ;  
   boot cpu

I'm yet to attach the ethernet interface, which won't use tun/tap.

Thanks,

Jeremy Begg

  +-+
  |VSM Software Services Pty. 

Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VAX emulator slow to configure extra disks

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

IIRC, the large HSx controllers could define a controller offset number that 
was added to the individual drive numbers. This would allow multiple HSx 
controllers to have large non-overlapping disk ID numbering using 8-bit drive 
plugs: ie. HSx1 at offset 0 could have drives 0..255, HSx2 at offset 256 could 
have drives 256..511, etc. Not many sites had that many hard drives, although I 
remember seeing one client that had a massive disk farm attached via HSx 
controllers..

I seem to remember that the KDA50 or RLV12 controllers had a set of internal 
dip switches that allowed the same sort of offset disk numbering functionality, 
but I am not sure. 

David

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2019 1:36 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VAX emulator slow to configure extra disks

On 2019-06-24 15:12, Paul Koning wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jun 23, 2019, at 4:44 PM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:
>>
>> ...
>> As Tim mentioned, some of the hardware that is modeled did indeed 
>> allow arbitrary unit numbers (via plugs on the drive).
>>
>> Some 14 months ago support was added to provide per drive Unit plug
>> values to be set.   This is set via:
>>
>> sim> SET RQn UNIT=plug
>>
>> plug can be any value from 0 thru 65534.  Default unit plug for each 
>> RQn is n.
> 
> I know of 8 bit unit number plugs, in the RA series drives.  I haven't run 
> into 16 bit unit numbers.

I think the 16-bit unit number fact is incorrect. If I remember right, it is a 
12-bit number, and then you have a 4-bit subunit number, which I don't know if 
anything ever used.

RA60, RA80, RA81 and RA82 had these large unit plugs, with 8 pins on them that 
you could cut, so the largest possible unit number on those were 255. However, 
RA90 and RA92 have a digital display, which you program the unit number on, and 
they go to 4095.

RA70 have 8 dip-switches to select unit number.
RA71, RA72 and RA73 must have a front panel, which sits on a SA7x box. 
That front panel is also digital, and you have four displays - one for each 
drive in the box. But even though they also could hold 4 digits, the unit 
numbers for these drives wrap at 255.

> Some operating systems may limit the supported numbers.  For example, RSTS 
> allows unit numbers 0 to 15 for MSCP disks.  And it supports multiple MSCP 
> controllers, but the unit numbers must be unique -- unlike VMS which allows 
> DUA0 and DUB0.

I haven't checked, but I sortof suspect that RSX won't like unit numbers above 
255. But at least in RSX-11M-PLUS, unit numbers do not have to be unique. As I 
mentioned, there is an extra mapping layer between the device unit numbers in 
the OS, and the physical unit numbers on the disks. And there is no correlation 
between them.

In addition, RSX-11M-PLUS also have a naming scheme like VMS which is used by 
the reconfiguration tool, so you can also see names like DUA0: 
and DUB0: if you look in some places. But in normal operations, you refer to 
the disks as DUn:, where n goes from 0 to as many MSCP disks you have, and are 
a separate numbering from the disk unit numbers.

   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
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VAX networking issue

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

VMware is somewhat inconsistent in what triggers their network security to 
block access. It's some bizarre internal algorithm. I've had VMware allow 
network access for months and then all of a sudden shut off network access with 
no apparent change to the configurations or usage of the VMs. I've even seen 
the VMware network suddenly block working network access because someone pinged 
the IP address of the VM hosting SIMH machines. :-(

There are ways to fine-tune the allowed network access via configuration files 
to keep the overall enhanced security level up without enabling promiscuous 
mode, but you'll have to RTFM the VMware documentation.


-Original Message-
From: Zane Healy [mailto:heal...@avanthar.com] 
Sent: Saturday, June 8, 2019 4:48 PM
To: Hittner, David T [US] (MS) 
Cc: Mark Pizzolato ; simh 
Subject: Re: EXT :Re: [Simh] VAX networking issue

Thanks!  Putting the vSwitch into promiscuous mode did the trick.

What’s really strange is that it a VM on host1 would work, but not host2 or 
host3, until I made that change.  Yet, none of them were set to promiscuous.

Zane



> On Jun 7, 2019, at 8:36 AM, Hittner, David T [US] (MS) 
>  wrote:
> 
> VMware has put some serious security enhancements on network ports in the 
> last few releases to prevent spoofing and otherwise tighten network security 
> to best practices.
> 
> You might try enabling promiscuous mode on the vSwitch that you have the VM 
> connected to and see if that solves the "two mac addresses coming from the 
> same network port" problem.
> The vSwitch promiscuous mode is set to "reject" by default.
> 
> David
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Zane 
> Healy
> Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2019 4:21 PM
> To: Mark Pizzolato 
> Cc: simh 
> Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VAX networking issue
> 
> 
>> On Jun 6, 2019, at 2:11 PM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:
> 
>> The above output is suspicious since it doesn't say that the XQ 
>> device has been attached to any interface.
>> 
>> What is the output of SHOW ETHER on this simulator?
>> Are you running as ROOT (which is required for network functionality on 
>> Linux unless you are using VDE Ethernet)?
>> Is the VM Hypervisor you're running under configured to pass arbitrary MAC 
>> addresses out of that VM?
>> 
>> Apart from these considerations relating to basic packet capabilities, once 
>> you have any networking functionality, you may encounter a problem that has 
>> been reported on some Linux systems.  You're not encountering this now, but 
>> if you do, you should add the following line to your configuration file:
>>  sim> SET CLOCK NOCATCHUP
>> 
>> The problem that is not always observed will be fixed soon and the SET CLOCK 
>> NOCATCHUP will no longer be necessary.
>> 
>> - Mark
>> 
> 
> I just figured out that this is a VMware issue.  I’m going to have to do some 
> checking.  I have a 3 system VMware cluster.  Two of the systems are HP SFF 
> PC’s, the third is an HP DL380 G7.  I just migrated the VM over to one of the 
> SFF systems, and it works.  The SIMH/VAX is now a member of the cluster.
> 
> I was unaware of SHOW ETHER, that should help me see what’s going on.  I’ll 
> shut the VM down and migrate it back to the DL380.
> 
> Zane
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VAX networking issue

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

 VMware has put some serious security enhancements on network ports in the last 
few releases to prevent spoofing and otherwise tighten network security to best 
practices.

You might try enabling promiscuous mode on the vSwitch that you have the VM 
connected to and see if that solves the "two mac addresses coming from the same 
network port" problem.
The vSwitch promiscuous mode is set to "reject" by default.

David

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Zane Healy
Sent: Thursday, June 6, 2019 4:21 PM
To: Mark Pizzolato 
Cc: simh 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VAX networking issue


> On Jun 6, 2019, at 2:11 PM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:

> The above output is suspicious since it doesn't say that the XQ device 
> has been attached to any interface.
> 
> What is the output of SHOW ETHER on this simulator?
> Are you running as ROOT (which is required for network functionality on Linux 
> unless you are using VDE Ethernet)?
> Is the VM Hypervisor you're running under configured to pass arbitrary MAC 
> addresses out of that VM?
> 
> Apart from these considerations relating to basic packet capabilities, once 
> you have any networking functionality, you may encounter a problem that has 
> been reported on some Linux systems.  You're not encountering this now, but 
> if you do, you should add the following line to your configuration file:
>   sim> SET CLOCK NOCATCHUP
> 
> The problem that is not always observed will be fixed soon and the SET CLOCK 
> NOCATCHUP will no longer be necessary.
> 
> - Mark
> 

I just figured out that this is a VMware issue.  I’m going to have to do some 
checking.  I have a 3 system VMware cluster.  Two of the systems are HP SFF 
PC’s, the third is an HP DL380 G7.  I just migrated the VM over to one of the 
SFF systems, and it works.  The SIMH/VAX is now a member of the cluster.

I was unaware of SHOW ETHER, that should help me see what’s going on.  I’ll 
shut the VM down and migrate it back to the DL380.

Zane




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Re: [Simh] Vax.exe emulator and Multinet network configuring

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

There is another potential solution for DECNET IV packet transmission over 
IP-only wireless, but it requires two computers:  set up an IP tunnel between 
your wireless PC and a PC on the wired network, and shove the DECNET packets 
through the IP tunnel letting the tunnel wrap/unwrap the DECNET packets in an 
IP wrapper.

A non-IP tunneling example (but not a direct DECNET solution):
https://www.networkstraining.com/passing-non-ip-traffic-over-ipsec-vpn-using-gre-over-ipsec/


David

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Hittner, David 
T [US] (MS)
Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2019 3:20 PM
To: Mark Pizzolato ; Jonathan Welch 
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Vax.exe emulator and Multinet network configuring

(It's been a long time since I've played with SMAC on wireless. I did get it to 
work, but it wasn't worth the pain to me, so I upgraded to DECNET/OSI 
non-compatibility mode.)

IIRC, when you start DECNET IV, it sends a broadcast packet to see if there is 
an address collision with the hard-coded DECNET IV address before it changes 
the MAC to the DECNET IV MAC. I seem to remember that after using SMAC to set 
the hard DECNET IV address on the wireless card, that I had to start DECNET, 
then stop it, because it errored out on a duplicate address, and then manually 
start DECNET IV again. Or maybe the process was start DECNET, stop DECNET, run 
SMAC, and then start DECNET.

Unless you put something into the Ethernet base code that prevents a DECNET IV 
collision error to avoid the DECNET start/stop/start sequence?

SMAC success with DECNET IV presumes that your wireless router and wireless NIC 
will pass non-IP packets. If they won't pass non-IP packets, your only wireless 
option if you want DECNET is to upgrade to DECNET/OSI in non-compatibility (IP 
only) mode, or get different wireless components that will pass non-IP packets. 
Non-IP wireless components do exist, it's just tough to identify them.

David

-Original Message-
From: Mark Pizzolato [mailto:m...@infocomm.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:21 PM
To: Hittner, David T [US] (MS) ; Jonathan Welch 

Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :RE: [Simh] Vax.exe emulator and Multinet network configuring

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 11:14 AM, David T Hittner wrote:
> > There probably isn't a way to set the host network device's MAC 
> > address so
> that won't get you there.
> 
> If you are privileged enough, SMAC can set the MAC address on Windows.
> Google "smac change mac address".


Thanks for that tidbit.

> Changing the MAC address to the DECNET address does make it a bit 
> trickier to start up DECNET though.

Meanwhile, beside the other detail I raised, what are the "a bit trickier" 
details you are referring to?

- Mark

> -Original Message-
> From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Mark 
> Pizzolato
> Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2019 1:31 PM
> To: Jonathan Welch 
> Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Vax.exe emulator and Multinet network 
> configuring
> 
> On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 9:54 AM, Jonathan Welch wrote:
> > I just moved to a wired connection and now am having success.  Good 
> > point about walking before running.
> >
> > I'm on npcap 0.994 current as of last night.
> >
> > I turned off DECNET to eliminate one source of possible trouble.  It 
> > would be nice to have it on at some point in the future.
> 
> As I suggested, without DECnet, you should probably get success with a 
> NAT connection using either a wired or a wireless host network.
> DECnet over wireless probably isn't going to be achievable since many 
> WiFi environments are particularly IP centric and don't pass arbitrary 
> other packets, and even if they did, you would have to convince the 
> host NIC to use a DECnet MAC address for everything.  There probably 
> isn't a way to set the host network device's MAC address so that won't get 
> you there.
> 
> - Mark
> 
> > sim> sho ver
> > MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Current
> > Simulator Framework Capabilities:
> > 64b data
> > 64b addresses
> > Threaded Ethernet Packet transports:PCAP:NAT:UDP
> > Idle/Throttling support is available
> > Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) support
> > RAW disk and CD/DVD ROM support
> > Asynchronous I/O support (Lock free asynchronous event queue)
> > Asynchronous Clock support
> > FrontPanel API Version 12
> > Host Platform:
> > Compiler: Microsoft Visual C++ 15.00.30729.01
> > Simulator Compiled as C arch: x86 (Release Build) on May  1
> > 2019 at 23:0
> > 0:06
> > Memory Access: Little Endian
> &g

Re: [Simh] Vax.exe emulator and Multinet network configuring

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

(It's been a long time since I've played with SMAC on wireless. I did get it to 
work, but it wasn't worth the pain to me, so I upgraded to DECNET/OSI 
non-compatibility mode.)

IIRC, when you start DECNET IV, it sends a broadcast packet to see if there is 
an address collision with the hard-coded DECNET IV address before it changes 
the MAC to the DECNET IV MAC. I seem to remember that after using SMAC to set 
the hard DECNET IV address on the wireless card, that I had to start DECNET, 
then stop it, because it errored out on a duplicate address, and then manually 
start DECNET IV again. Or maybe the process was start DECNET, stop DECNET, run 
SMAC, and then start DECNET.

Unless you put something into the Ethernet base code that prevents a DECNET IV 
collision error to avoid the DECNET start/stop/start sequence?

SMAC success with DECNET IV presumes that your wireless router and wireless NIC 
will pass non-IP packets. If they won't pass non-IP packets, your only wireless 
option if you want DECNET is to upgrade to DECNET/OSI in non-compatibility (IP 
only) mode, or get different wireless components that will pass non-IP packets. 
Non-IP wireless components do exist, it's just tough to identify them.

David

-Original Message-
From: Mark Pizzolato [mailto:m...@infocomm.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:21 PM
To: Hittner, David T [US] (MS) ; Jonathan Welch 

Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :RE: [Simh] Vax.exe emulator and Multinet network configuring

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 11:14 AM, David T Hittner wrote:
> > There probably isn't a way to set the host network device's MAC 
> > address so
> that won't get you there.
> 
> If you are privileged enough, SMAC can set the MAC address on Windows.
> Google "smac change mac address".


Thanks for that tidbit.

> Changing the MAC address to the DECNET address does make it a bit 
> trickier to start up DECNET though.

Meanwhile, beside the other detail I raised, what are the "a bit trickier" 
details you are referring to?

- Mark

> -Original Message-
> From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Mark 
> Pizzolato
> Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2019 1:31 PM
> To: Jonathan Welch 
> Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Vax.exe emulator and Multinet network 
> configuring
> 
> On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 9:54 AM, Jonathan Welch wrote:
> > I just moved to a wired connection and now am having success.  Good 
> > point about walking before running.
> >
> > I'm on npcap 0.994 current as of last night.
> >
> > I turned off DECNET to eliminate one source of possible trouble.  It 
> > would be nice to have it on at some point in the future.
> 
> As I suggested, without DECnet, you should probably get success with a 
> NAT connection using either a wired or a wireless host network.  
> DECnet over wireless probably isn't going to be achievable since many 
> WiFi environments are particularly IP centric and don't pass arbitrary 
> other packets, and even if they did, you would have to convince the 
> host NIC to use a DECnet MAC address for everything.  There probably 
> isn't a way to set the host network device's MAC address so that won't get 
> you there.
> 
> - Mark
> 
> > sim> sho ver
> > MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Current
> > Simulator Framework Capabilities:
> > 64b data
> > 64b addresses
> > Threaded Ethernet Packet transports:PCAP:NAT:UDP
> > Idle/Throttling support is available
> > Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) support
> > RAW disk and CD/DVD ROM support
> > Asynchronous I/O support (Lock free asynchronous event queue)
> > Asynchronous Clock support
> > FrontPanel API Version 12
> > Host Platform:
> > Compiler: Microsoft Visual C++ 15.00.30729.01
> > Simulator Compiled as C arch: x86 (Release Build) on May  1
> > 2019 at 23:0
> > 0:06
> > Memory Access: Little Endian
> > Memory Pointer Size: 32 bits
> > Large File (>2GB) support
> > SDL Video support: SDL Version 2.0.8
> > PCRE RegEx (Version 8.36 2014-09-26) support for EXPECT commands
> > OS clock resolution: 1ms
> > Time taken by msleep(1): 1ms
> > OS: Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
> > Architecture: x86 on AMD64, Processors: 8
> > Processor Id: Intel64 Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7, GenuineIntel, 
> > Level:
> >  6, Revision: 2a07
> > git commit id: ab3e07a4
> > git commit time: 2019-05-01T22:56:54-07:00
> > sim>
> >
> > On 5/9/19, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:
> > > On Thursday, May 9, 2019 a

Re: [Simh] EXT : RSTS V10.1 doesn't like QNA

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Yes. I had quite a few problems with RSTS and the DEQNA/DELQA(xq) and 
DEUNA/DELUA(xu) network cards while writing the xq and xu code.
RSTS is the only operating system that attempts to verify the network card 
functionality by doing some deeper testing rather than just checking for 
expected register behavior during initialization and ring buffer setup as 
others do.

Both cards were debugged and initialize on RSTS. Look at the comments in the C 
files for which version of RSTS was qualified, and/or what was fixed to make 
RSTS initialize properly.

The best way to find the problem is to look through the RSTS network card 
sources for the probing during initialization at the fault exit, or if you 
don't have the RSTS sources, turn on all of the debugging in the xq or xu 
device and see what is being probed at the time of the fault and check against 
the controller specifications for the expected behavior.

I don't think any of the network cards can pass full diagnostics on every OS, 
but they can pass most of the diagnostics.

David Hittner

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Paul Koning
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 3:32 PM
To: SIMH 
Subject: EXT :[Simh] RSTS V10.1 doesn't like QNA

I never realized that the SIMH xq device defaults to LQA-T, so I just booted a 
RSTS 10.1 system with xq set to DEQNA mode.

RSTS is unhappy:

Device XH0: internal micro-diagnostic failure, code 001004 - device disabled.

I'll dig into that, but does this ring any bells with anyone?

paul

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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: winpcap problem

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Due to subtle differences in Windows drivers, sometimes WinPcap can't see a NIC 
unless it has an IP address assigned to it (or some other protocol - that is, 
that the NIC should appear to be "active" to the host). Also, certain version 
of WinPcap had issues adding NICs, and the solution was to remove WinPcap and 
re-install it to allow the installation procedure to generate the correct 
registry entries for the new NIC during the installation. Note that depending 
upon the Windows driver, sometimes the NIC had to be "active" before the 
WinPcap installation procedure could see the NIC to generate the correct 
registry entries.

WinPcap has very limited support for a long time, and suggests use of the NPcap 
product in this post from the WinPcap home page (https://www.winpcap.org/):


15 September 2018

WinPcap, though still available for download (v4.1.3), has not seen an upgrade 
in many years and there are no road map/future plans to update the technology. 
While community support may persist, technical oversight by Riverbed staff, 
responses to questions posed by Riverbed resources, and bug reporting are no 
longer available.
Gordon Lyon, Nmap project founder, has created Npcap, a packet capture library 
for Windows, that includes WinPcap compatibility and may be a suitable 
replacement for WinPcap and WinPcap Pro. Information can be found at 
https://nmap.org/npcap/.


-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of gérard Calliet
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 5:15 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] winpcap problem

Hello,

I used the recommended tool windump -D and it doesn't see the new NICs. 
So it is a pure problem of compatibility between Winpcap and the new NICs.

Did anyone see a similar problem? Are there somewhere WinPcap gurus?

Gérard Calliet


Le 11/04/2019 à 09:42, gérard Calliet a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> I tried a reboot of the host. Same problem. Is it possible there are 
> NICs not compatible with WinPcap? or some bizarre configuration to do 
> on the NIC?
>
> Gérard Calliet
>
> Le 05/04/2019 à 02:19, Mark Pizzolato a écrit :
>> On Tuesday, April 2, 2019 at 1:42 PM, gérard Calliet wrote:
>>> I have some trouble using winpcap (on windows) with simh.
>>>
>>> I added a NIC (intel ethernet server adapter i350-t2), I can see it 
>>> on the windows configuration panel, but I don't see it using simh 
>>> "sho eth"
>>> command, which uses winpcap (version 4.1.3). The other NICs are seen 
>>> by the same command.
>>>
>>> Any help?
>> Winpcap has a problem with detecting newly installed network devices 
>> that weren't present when the system was booted.  Try rebooting the 
>> system and see if you continue to see the same problem.
>>
>> - Mark
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: some performance issues

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

So from a performance analysis perspective, what are the VUPS ratings of the 
VS4000-90 and the SIMH VAX running on the RX2800?
That's (more or less) the Integer performance rating.

David

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of gérard Calliet
Sent: Wednesday, March 6, 2019 1:11 PM
To: Pontus Pihlgren 
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] some performance issues

Hi,

We had a VAX Station 4000-90 128M Memory.

We have a RX28000 9520 8G Memory.

Gérard Calliet

Le 06/03/2019 à 10:57, Pontus Pihlgren a écrit :
> Hi
>
> I'm having trouble understanding your question. Are you comparing 
> CPU-time of a real VAX(which model?) to emulated CPU-time on an 
> Itanium machine(which one?).
>
> Emulation will have an associated overhead. If you are compareing a 
> fast VAX to an emulation on a slow Itanium... well, Itanium is hard to 
> optimize for.
>
> /P
>
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2019 at 03:13:53PM +0100, gérard Calliet wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Again I have some performance issues with simh.
>>
>> I built it  on OpenVMS Itanium. It runs on a process with enought 
>> memory, it takes 1 of the 8 CPU Itanium with 100%, no page faults, 
>> and 100 BIO by second.
>>
>> On the emulated VAX we are running processes CPU intensive (old Ada 
>> compiler), they take 100% of the CPU, also very few page fault, very 
>> few IO.
>>
>> And the CPU time is about 2 or 3 times the CPU time on the hardware, 
>> and so elapsed time 3 or 4 times. (For my understanding, it is 
>> difficult to think the same stream of instructions can use different 
>> CPU times between hardware and SIMH).
>>
>> Where can I do something to improve performance? Are there parameters 
>> (or constant in compilation) in SIMH which could help?
>> And the specific context is processes doing almost only CPU 
>> computing.
>>
>>
>> my configuration, and what commit I use
>> on error continue
>> load -r ka655x.bin
>> attach NVR ka655.nvr
>> set cpu 512m
>> set cpu conhalt
>> set RL disable
>> set LPT disable
>> set TQ disable
>> set -L rq0 rauser=1800
>> attach rq0 datauser2.dsk
>> set xq mac=08-00-2B-3C-96-75
>> attach xq eth0
>> dep bdr 0
>> b cpu
>>
>>
>> $ run vax-i64
>> MicroVAX 3900 simulator V4.0-0 Beta    git commit id: 8810571d
>> sim>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Gérard Calliet
>>
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Re: [Simh] EXT : simh not loading the video driver when compile with libcbl-dev

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

@sys$startup:decw$startup

Put it in systartup.com if you want it every boot.

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Phil King
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2018 1:03 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] simh not loading the video driver when compile with 
libcbl-dev

Is there anything i need to do to get openvms to load the video driver it is 
compile with with the proper dev lib

Phil
thanks in advance

Philip King 4681 Carr Rd Hillsboro Ohio 45121 9374421909 
pr...@yahoo.com


On Thursday, May 10, 2018, 7:50:52 PM EDT, 
> wrote:


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Today's Topics:

  1. Re:  Problems running simH in Android (Gene Irwin)


--

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 10 May 2018 16:51:28 -0700
From: Gene Irwin >
To: Mark Pizzolato >
Cc: Ray Jewhurst >,  
"simh@trailing-edge.com"
>
Subject: Re: [Simh] Problems running simH in Android
Message-ID:

Re: [Simh] EXT : Alpha ES40 emulator

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

The ES40 emulator does have some issues, and development has been discontinued. 
From the ES40 home page:  http://es40.org/Homepage
Discontinuation Notice

ES40 emulator development has virtually been halted since 2009. The lead 
developer of ES40, Camiel Vanderhoevenis developing both Freeware and 
Commercial Alpha and VAX emulators for Migration Specialties.

FreeAXP is the Freeware Alpha emulator from Migration 
Specialties.

Avanti is the Freeware 
Alpha emulator from Migration Specialties.


I (and the ES40 author) would highly recommend that you use Migration 
Specialties's FreeAXP emulator instead of ES40 if you are just looking to 
successfully run OpenVMS on an Alpha emulator. FreeAXP is a stable and 
supported Alpha emulator for both OpenVMS and TRU64 and is available at no cost.

http://www.migrationspecialties.com/FreeAXP.html

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Tim Stark
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2018 8:33 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Alpha ES40 emulator

Folks,

While I am waiting for SIMH version of Alpha emulator, I tried ES40 emulator 
from Sourceforge.net.  I converted ES40 repo to git repo and uploaded it into 
my github.

I tried to compile but got many errors.  I figured them out and applied SMR11's 
sources to my git repo and successfully compiled it on Ubuntu 17.10.  You have 
to execute reconf first to rebuild autoconf files to be compitable with Ubuntu 
17.10's autoconf packages.  I updated it on git repo done.   I found SMR11's 
video clips for how to install OpenVMS Alpha 8.4 system on YouTube.

I tried to configure NIC on es40_cfg but it crashed after I selected 'nic'.  I 
have to manually enter nic block into es40.cfg.  I tried to started es40 
emulator and it crashed after I selected one of NIC adaptors. I got opening 
adaptor error.

I have some trouble with finding cl67srmrom.exe through Internet.  I tried 
cl67srmrom.exe from V61.iso but it did not work so well.  It crashed after 
printed PALcode message.

I searched for good version of cl67srmrom.exe through Internet and got binaries 
from Sourceforge.net and replaced it.  I successfully booted SRM firmware into 
POO>>> prompt.

I tried cl67srmrom.sys and it failed to boot.  I examined its executable file 
and it looks like MOP header.  Does anyone know any MOP header specs? Look at 
first 256 bytes of cl67srmrom.sys:

: A8 00 30 00 44 00 58 00-00 00 00 00 30 32 30 35  |..0.D.X.0205|
0010: 01 01 00 00 FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF 00 00 00 00  ||
0020: 20 00 00 01 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  | ...|
0030: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ||
0040: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ||
0050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-03 4D 4F 50 00 00 00 00  |.MOP|
0060: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ||
0070: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ||
0080: 04 56 31 2E 30 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.V1.0...|
0090: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-05 30 35 2D 30 35 00 00  |.05-05..|
00A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-10 00 87 15 00 00 00 00  ||
00B0: 80 00 00 00 02 00 00 00-00 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF  ||
00C0: FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ||
00D0: FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ||
00E0: FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ||
00F0: FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  ||

With good version of cl67srmrom.exe, I successfully booted into POO>>> prompt.

I successfully loaded and run OpenVMS Alpha 8.4 and followed installation 
prompts.

During installation, it crashed system with access violation error.  I think 
that ES40 still have some bugs with some opcodes and NIC configuration.

Does anyone have any HCORE tests for Alpha processors?  I am looking for it in 
long time!

Thanks,
Tim
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: DEC Alpha Emulation

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

The Alpha target is the Digital Personal Workstation (PWS) 500au [codename: 
Miata], which qualifies as a single user workstation from a minimum licensing 
perspective.

Bob Supnik had one in his possession, and gave it to me to do comparisons. The 
Miata has both ARC and SRM firmware "full-flash", but the initial goal is to 
get SRM firmware to run OpenVMS and TRU64 using the serial console. Planned PCI 
boards are: DE500 ethernet, KZPAA(narrow) and KZP??(wide) SCSI disk/tape 
controllers, and the Digital PCI-to-PCI bridge which are all supported by every 
OS.  If someone writes a VGA controller in the future, it should be one 
supported by every OS, like the fairly basic S3 TRIO32/64+.

Windows NT support on ARC firmware could come later, but would require the VGA 
card emulation, unless you wanted to run NT "headless" over the serial port, 
which is allowed by the NT specification. ARC firmware is much harder due to 
having an x86 register emulator, and an INT 10 BIOS emulator, as well as 
running everything in 32-bit mode.

Yes, I would appreciate it if you would put something on your web page to have 
interested coders contact me. I could use the help.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Zane Healy [mailto:heal...@avanthar.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 2, 2018 1:50 PM
To: Hittner, David T [US] (MS) <david.hitt...@ngc.com>
Cc: "Vorländer, Martin" <m...@pdv-systeme.de>; SIMH <simh@trailing-edge.com>
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] DEC Alpha Emulation

Thanks for the information Dave!  I’m glad to hear it’s still being worked on.  
I can well imagine what a pain the firmware is, especially if you’re trying to 
support both the SRM and ARC firmware.  I wish I could help.  From my 
standpoint, getting SIMH to boot OpenVMS would be a big deal.  

Are you working to support a specific platform?  I’m curious since not every 
system supports SRM or ARC, and many of the PCI boards were only supported by 
Windows NT.

Would you like me to put a note on the webpage for anyone interested in helping 
to contact you via the SIMH mailing list?

Zane


> On Feb 2, 2018, at 10:01 AM, Hittner, David T [US] (MS) 
> <david.hitt...@ngc.com> wrote:
> 
> Well, Migration Specialties is where the developer of ES40 went, anyway. :-)
> 
> I'm working on the SIMH Alpha simulator. It is quite a complex beast, where 
> the firmware required to power up the system to the chevrons (>>>) is an 
> operating system of small Linux complexity even before you can try to boot 
> OpenVMS, TRU64 or WinNT.  I think the simulation currently runs some 56 
> billion instructions before encountering a missing hardware simulation, and 
> it's nowhere near the chevrons - and hasn't even built the OS interface block 
> or the FW-level device tables yet.
> 
> If anyone would like to help with the Alpha development, I wouldn't say no. 
> It takes a long time to figure what the RISC firmware is trying to 
> accomplish. :-)
> 
> Dave
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Vorländer, 
> Martin
> Sent: Friday, February 2, 2018 3:16 AM
> To: 'SIMH' <simh@trailing-edge.com>
> Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] DEC Alpha Emulation
> 
> Zane,
> 
> just had a look at your Alpha page, and noticed that you missed an emulator:
> FreeAXP / Avanti from Migration Specialties, 
> http://www.migrationspecialties.com/
> This is where the ES40 emulator went, AFAIK.
> 
> cu,
> Martin
> 
> -Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
> Von: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] Im Auftrag von Zane Healy
> Gesendet: Freitag, 2. Februar 2018 05:56
> An: SIMH <simh@trailing-edge.com>
> Betreff: [Simh] DEC Alpha Emulation
> 
> I'm in the process of slowly updating my DEC Emulation website, which has 
> been largely stagnant since 2007.  The first page I'm spending some 
> significant time on is the DEC Alpha page, as I'm curious to see what the 
> current options are.  In reviewing things, I notice that Alpha emulation was 
> worked on at some point for SIMH (probably around 2006).  What is the current 
> state of that work?  I had a quick google, and the most popular hit seems to 
> be mirrored copies of my site. 
> 
> http://www.avanthar.com/healyzh/decemulation/Alpha.html
> 
> Thanks,
> Zane
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Simh] DEC Alpha Emulation

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Well, Migration Specialties is where the developer of ES40 went, anyway. :-)

I'm working on the SIMH Alpha simulator. It is quite a complex beast, where the 
firmware required to power up the system to the chevrons (>>>) is an operating 
system of small Linux complexity even before you can try to boot OpenVMS, TRU64 
or WinNT.  I think the simulation currently runs some 56 billion instructions 
before encountering a missing hardware simulation, and it's nowhere near the 
chevrons - and hasn't even built the OS interface block or the FW-level device 
tables yet.

If anyone would like to help with the Alpha development, I wouldn't say no. It 
takes a long time to figure what the RISC firmware is trying to accomplish. :-)

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Vorländer, 
Martin
Sent: Friday, February 2, 2018 3:16 AM
To: 'SIMH' 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] DEC Alpha Emulation

Zane,

just had a look at your Alpha page, and noticed that you missed an emulator:
FreeAXP / Avanti from Migration Specialties, 
http://www.migrationspecialties.com/
This is where the ES40 emulator went, AFAIK.

cu,
Martin

-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
Von: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] Im Auftrag von Zane Healy
Gesendet: Freitag, 2. Februar 2018 05:56
An: SIMH 
Betreff: [Simh] DEC Alpha Emulation

I'm in the process of slowly updating my DEC Emulation website, which has been 
largely stagnant since 2007.  The first page I'm spending some significant time 
on is the DEC Alpha page, as I'm curious to see what the current options are.  
In reviewing things, I notice that Alpha emulation was worked on at some point 
for SIMH (probably around 2006).  What is the current state of that work?  I 
had a quick google, and the most popular hit seems to be mirrored copies of my 
site. 

http://www.avanthar.com/healyzh/decemulation/Alpha.html

Thanks,
Zane



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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VAX Tape Emulation?

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

You are not alone. I thought that myself the first time I saw it in GitHub.   
;-)
Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Zane Healy
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 2:46 PM
To: Paul Koning 
Cc: simh ; Mark Pizzolato 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VAX Tape Emulation?

>> 
>> As far as I can tell, the GITHUB repository lacks such files.
>> https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/
> 
> No, it's right there.  Remember that Github displays are case sensitive, so 
> all the machine directories (being upper case, apart from "alpha") come 
> first, then the lowercase ones such as "doc".  

I’m laughing at myself.  Not sure about 3.9, as I’m not at that computer, but 
just checked GitHub.  I saw the doc directory and mistakenly thought it was 
HP3000 specific.  I should have clicked on it and checked.

Thanks!
Zane


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Re: [Simh] External bus interface

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

I suspect that you could create a cross-simulator "bus" using some common I/O 
carrier between simulators to allow them to communicate the bus state. As Bob 
states, it would be simulator-specific.

If the simulators are running on the same OS host, a common bus could be 
simulated using a memory structure (like a Fortran COMMON) to transmit bus 
state variables. If you are running multiple simulators on different hosts 
across the network, you could use the network as the common bus by sending 
specifically-encoded packets using some arbitrary TCP/IP protocol number to 
transmit the bus state variables to the other side(s).

I've thought a bit about these techniques for intra-simulator connects between 
multiple threads for multiple CPUs, and for simulating a multi-initiator SCSI 
bus, Digital CI, or Memory Channel for OpenVMS cluster communications between 
multiple SIMH simulators.

As a practical example of running a simulated bus over a different transmission 
medium to achieve the goal, I think that the parallel network I/O interface 
card simulators on the PDP-11 and PDP-10 simulate parallel transmission by 
transmitting serialized packets over standard Ethernet rather than over a 
physical parallel connection. 

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Bob Supnik
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2018 6:37 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] External bus interface

Lars,

SimH knows nothing of the internal structure of simulators, so I'm skeptical of 
a SimH-level solution. However, a simulator-specific interface can be built.

As an example, I am finishing up the UC15, which is exactly what you describe - 
a PDP11 that is connected to the memory of a PDP15 and controlled via a 
cross-connected paralllel link. The PDP11 acts as an IO processor for the PDP15.

I have not solved all the problems. The solution requires a multi-core (or 
other kind of SMP) system, with one core per simulator. It probably depends on 
in-order writes and strong cache consistency semantics. And it definitely 
depends on tight polling, which causes the cores to run flat out (unsuitable 
for mobile devices).

Bob

On 1/18/2018 5:29 AM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 10:12:13 +
> From: Lars Brinkhoff
> To:simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: [Simh] External bus interface
> Message-ID:<7wtvvjearm@junk.nocrew.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> Hello,
>
> I wrote a GitHub issue about this, but maybe it's better to bring it up
> for discussion on the mailing list.  So I'll copy the text here:
>
> Richard Cornwell's KA10 simulator is getting ready.  At MIT, there were
> PDP-11s connected to the PDP-10 memory and I/O busses.  The 11s acted as
> dedicated I/O processors.  Some of us are interested in recreating
> configurations similar to this.  For example, MIT-AI had a PDP-11
> connected to control a number of graphical terminals called Knight TVs.
> And another PDP-11 for CHAOS networking.
>
> To hook up separate simulator processes this way, I suppose there should
> be some kind of bus interface for SIMH.  The interface would have to
> support memory transfers, interrupt signals, etc.
>
> Would it be feasible to create such a bus interface?
>
> Best regards,
> Lars Brinkhoff
>

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Re: [Simh] EXT : Problem using a real VT terminal with simh

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

It sounds like the serial port is trying to autobaud to determine the 
transmission speed. I would set the port forcibly to 9600 8N1 before connecting.
SIMH does not set the baud on the real physical port AFAIK, it just interprets 
the characters 7b/8b.

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Peter Allan
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2017 12:56 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Problem using a real VT terminal with simh

I am trying to get a real VT420 terminal working with a simulated micro VAX 
3900. However, I am having problems getting text displayed on the screen of the 
VT420.

The host for simh is a standard PC running CentOS 6.9.

I am connecting the VT420 to the PC using the 25-pin RS232 connector at the 
back of the VT420, going via a 25-pin to 9-pin adaptor, to the 9-pin RS232 
connector on the PC. I am convinced that the physical connection is correct 
since I can start an agetty process at boot time and log into CentOS from the 
VT420. Everything works and displays as I would expect.

For what follows, I have removed the starting of the agetty process so that 
nothing is controlling the /dev/ttyS0 device before I start simh.

The simulated microVAX 3900 is running VMS 7.3 from an RA92 disk. This 
configuration has been running successfully for a long time and I am only now 
trying to add the connection of a physical terminal.

In the vax.ini file, I have added the lines

SET DZ LINES=4
ATTACH DZ LINE=0,CONNECT=SER0

Once the microVAX has booted, if I hit Enter on the VT420, then I can see that 
a login process starts on the simulated microVAX, but all I see on the screen 
of the VT420 is a few garbage characters. Despite that, when I type a username 
and a password, I do get logged into the simulated microVAX. Any commands that 
I type on the keyboard of the VT420 appears on the screen of the VT420 (except 
the password, of course), but anything that the microVAX is sending to the 
VT420 appears as garbage. There are recognisable characters, but if I TYPE a 
file, even a small one, what appears seems to be every 7th character from the 
file starting with the first character. The output of commands such as DIR 
appear to have the same problem.

Furthermore, when I log into the microVAX, the VT420 goes through a reset, as 
though I had turned it off and on. I think this is because the login sequence 
does a SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE since if I type that command, exactly the same 
thing happens. This seems particularly odd since I have used that command many 
times with a real computer (although admittedly not with this particular 
terminal) and I have never seen this happen before.

The VT420's RS232 port is set to a speed of 9600, with 8 bits and no parity and 
the TTA0: device on the microVAX also gets set to this combination.

Hopefully I am just doing something wrong, but I can't see what that might be. 
Can anyone help with this please?

Peter Allan

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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: C9.io

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

You could also look at running a super-efficient 24x7 server at home to 
minimize your electric costs.

In my last computer build where I was trying to maximize performance with 
minimal power use, I put together an E3 Xeon Server with ECC memory that pulls 
an average of 35W running a SIMH VM with idle enabled.
It’s all based on buying power efficient equipment. It runs near noiseless and 
cool also.

Intel Xeon E3-1275v3 3.5GHz 4C with Integrated graphics (which is fine for a 
server). Max 84W.
32GB ECC memory (overkill for SIMH, but I do other things with the server  :-)
500GB M.2 NVME SSD
1TB 2.5” HDD
5.25” BLU-Ray ODD
80+ Gold PSU
Windows 10 Pro OS (for host)
VMware Workstation for virtualization, although you could use the built in 
Windows 10 Hyper-V virtualization for free

2.5” disk drives and SSDs pull a lot less power than their rotating 3.5” 
equivalents. So does using Integrated graphics vs. discrete video cards if the 
performance is OK.

Your point about having others manage the network security is pretty darn valid 
though !!

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Joseph Oprysko
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2017 2:37 PM
To: Dan Gahlinger 
Cc: simh 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] C9.io

Dan, it is easy peasy, but not quite free, as if you want 24/7 access to the 
box, you have to keep the system running 24-7, so electricity costs. Plus, I’m 
planning on having others log in as well, thus I don’t want to open up my 
network like that. That’s why I’m looking for a free hosted/Cloud solution. 
That way someone else can deal with the rest of the network security. I do 
enough of that for work anyway, don’t want to have to monitor my home network 
as thoroughly.

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 1:12 PM Dan Gahlinger 
> wrote:
A Linux box running simh bridged with nat
Easy peasy and free

Get Outlook for iOS

From: Simh 
> on 
behalf of Joseph Oprysko >
Sent: Friday, December 1, 2017 1:09:37 PM
To: Ray Jewhurst
Cc: simh
Subject: Re: [Simh] C9.io

Well, running from inside a house and making accessible from the outside is 
easy. But most ot my computers at home generally don’t run 24/7.

Mainly what’s needed for what we both want to be able to do isn’t really a 
shell account on a shared machine, but literally a dedicated VM instance, but 
we need to be able to access that instance through a public IP address.

On a home network, a private IP Address (192.168.x.x, 172.x.x.x ‘actually I 
don’t think it’s the whole 172 network’, or a 10.x.x.x) it’s easy enough to 
setup port forwarding to make it accessible. But on the Cloud based VM’s, I 
don’t know if there is a way to do it. Well, I know there ARE ways, usually 
involves paying for the instance, an external address, and possibly the amount 
of traffic.

Actually, I know Bluehost (is it still a thing?) used to  give you a VM with 
public address in combination with their hosting/domain name service.  But I’m 
hoping to find one that will not cost me anything.

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 12:21 PM Ray Jewhurst 
> wrote:
I have been trying to figure out a solution for something similar to that. I 
want to be able to run a PDP-11 outside of my house for Fortran development. I 
would be running it on my Android phone.

On Dec 1, 2017 12:11 PM, "Joseph Oprysko" 
> wrote:
Does anyone know if I can use the Cloud9 IDE to host a simh System emulation?

I know I’m able to build and execute it in the environment, but what I’d really 
like to achieve is to have a system (or several) running on various instances. 
And be able to connect to them from an external IP address, I believe I am able 
to SSH into an instance, or access it through the web based IDE.

An example might be better. Say I setup an HP system running Time-Share Basic. 
Would I be able to telnet to the TSB instance from various computers?

Thank you,

Joe
--
Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot.
Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do.
Normal Person: So you go surfing?
Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot...
Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level.
Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?

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Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot.
Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do.
Normal Person: So you go surfing?
Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot...
Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level.
Normal Person: Huh? Huh? 

Re: [Simh] Any chance of AXP for SIMH ?

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

I'm actually working on the Alpha implementation right now, during my 
not-as-free-as-I-would-like time.

Why is it taking so long?
---
The Alpha is amazingly complex, as you have to simulate the entire set of PC 
devices (JDEC memory, RT Clock, APICs, Serial Ports, etc.) and buses (PCI, ISA, 
EISA, SCSI, USB, etc.) that have not been developed for SIMH yet. I have 
recently found almost all of the needed PC device simulation logic in the QEMU 
code base, and might be able to port that logic into the SIMH simulator to 
speed up the development process. Driving the SCSI bus state transitions will 
be particularly time consuming without the real dedicated SCSI processors which 
were on every SCSI device and host card.

I have the Alpha simulator booting and running some 68 million instructions 
before it gives up due to a "fatal hardware error", but it hasn't gotten up to 
the firmware chevrons (>>>) yet, as I haven't simulated most of the required 
hardware devices yet. The Alpha Firmware itself is a very complex OS, 
initializing and testing the hardware, and setting up all of the in-memory data 
structure required by the Alpha Architecture manual, before running the 
interactive console chevron dialog.

What about JIT?

The emulator is also amazingly slow compared to real hardware due to the sheer 
number of emulated instructions executed and the emulation overhead. JIT would 
be a wonderful thing, but it's more important to get the emulation right than 
to make it work faster, as (theoretically) newer host hardware will eventually 
"catch up" to the emulation overhead. That said, the TCG (Tiny Code Generator) 
component of QEMU has made me think that we could "do some JIT" in SIMH, either 
at the single instruction level or at the block level. The primary impact of 
adding JIT to the emulator is that it throws the emulated clock off - SIMH 
time, IO, and polling works by counting emulated instructions, and if the 
emulation instruction count "jumps"  because you executed a large block of JIT 
code, it could significantly delay or miss the response required for SIMH 
polling and simulated clock interrupts. It is unlikely that a SIMH Alpha 
emulation will ever hit the speeds of the commercial emulators, since SIMH is 
designed be portable, and the commercial emulators are tweaked for specific 
host platforms. Note that SIMH VAX has never hit the speeds posted by 
commercial VAX emulators, but runs on almost anything. It is probable that JIT 
would only be possible on specific host processors or host OS's, requiring that 
the emulator be capable of both JIT and non-JIT operation.


If anyone would care to help in the Alpha development process, I can start 
checking my code in to allow other developers to assist. If you are interested 
in helping, send me an email.

In the meantime, if you just want to run a free Alpha emulator, the FreeAXP 
emulator from MSI is and will continue to be available.

David Hittner

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Paul Koning
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2017 8:58 AM
To: Gordon Miller 
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Any chance of AXP for SIMH ?



> On Nov 20, 2017, at 12:07 AM, Gordon Miller  wrote:
> 
> Hi guys
> 
> I'm the new kid here, despite my grey hair.
> 
> Anyway, what I'm quite interested in, is any kind of Alpha AXP support for 
> SIMH.

Take a look at the current code, there is an "alpha" subdirectory.  I don't 
remember the status of that, probably quite preliminary but there are at least 
some pieces in place.

paul


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

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

So two follow on action items, now that the problem seems to be solved:

1) How can we work with this Linux vendor to provide a baseline SIMH 4.0 
package instead of the older SIMH 3.8-1 package?

2) Should the instructions for downloading and building the latest SIMH that 
Mark provided be included in the FAQ (under Linux hosts)?

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Gary Lee 
Phillips
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2017 11:12 AM
To: Mark Pizzolato 
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] OpenBSD on Simh VAX 3.8-1 - Segmentation fault

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...

> The ethernet connection itself seems to be working. Telnet
> connections function normally, and ftp or sftp will pass directory
> information and accept commands, but file transfers fail.
>
> I guess I could try another version of OpenBSD. Upgrading SimH
> is also possible but a bit more daunting since 3.8 is what is offered
> as current on my Linux distro. (Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" 64 bit generic
> 4.4.0-97)

It really isn't particularly daunting:

First, you'll need the following:

$ sudo apt install libpcap-dev
Then:
$ wget https://github.com/simh/simh/archive/master.zip
$ unzip master.zip
$ cd simh-master
$ make vax
$# Start the newly built simulator:
$ BIN/vax


If you see any sort of segmentation fault, there is a problem that needs
fixing, and I'll be glad to address it.   If you have a problem please create
an issue at https://github.com/simh/simh/issues

- Mark

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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: OpenVMS 7.3 and Python

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

If you can’t find Python satisfaction with OpenVMS VAX, you could try OpenVMS 
Alpha using the free Alpha emulator FreeAXP 
(http://www.migrationspecialties.com/FreeAXP.html) since your real Alphas are 
too noisy/hungry. You can either use the Alpha licenses from your hardware 
Alphas or get new Hobbyist Alpha licenses.

Good luck with finding a version of Python that works for you!

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Gary Lee 
Phillips
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2017 10:32 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] OpenVMS 7.3 and Python

Thanks to Dave L and Dave H for the suggestions.
Yes, I see python 1.4 (or maybe 1.5, the notes are not clear) on the decus 
disks. That might do, though I was rather hoping for a 2.x version. Python 2.5 
appears on the next decus distribution, but only for Alpha and Integrity, so 
that upgrade must have been where the port to VAX failed.
I have two hardware Alphas here, but they are in a closet and not in use 
because of the fan noise and high current consumption. As my usage is purely 
hobbyist now, I generally use SimH VAX instead.
I'll see if the 1.4 version will work for me.
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: OpenVMS 7.3 and Python

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

I agree with Dave L that your best bet is to search the Freeware CDs, 
particularly the earlier ones that were less Alpha/Itanium centric.

Since I was the head of the DECUS Library for a time, I know that Python for 
VAX VMS was offered at one point, but I also remember that when the maintainer 
tried to upgrade the working Python to a later Python version on VAX VMS that 
they found that the VAX C environment had a few issues compiling the code and 
that it would take quite a bit of work to get the later Python version running. 
I don't recall whether GNV was part of the porting mechanism at that time, 
however.

If you really want the latest version of Python on VAX VMS, your best bet would 
be to contact vmspython.org and offer to help with a back-port to VAX VMS. Or 
upgrade to an Alpha or a free Alpha emulator to run the latest Python that 
vmspython.org offers. I would not expect back-port Python performance to be 
real spectacular on the VAX. The real question for you would be: What would be 
the added value of porting the latest version of Python to VAX VMS? Is the 
added value worth the porting cost?

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Dave L
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2017 3:42 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] OpenVMS 7.3 and Python

Tried the freeware discs?

The freeware v5 has Python 1.5 on it, may do what you require

http://www.decuslib.com/freeware/freewarev50/python/


HTH


On Fri, 03 Nov 2017 19:01:41 -, Gary Lee Phillips 
> wrote:

Does anyone know of a version of Python for OpenVMS 7.3 on VAX?
I have seen the versions for Alpha and IA64, and remarks stating that the C 
runtime library on the 32 bit version of OpenVMS is "hostile" to Python. 
However, I have seen Python (perhaps not the latest and greatest, but certainly 
Python) on 32 bit Linux machines. Could the 32 bit open source Python not be 
ported to VAX OpenVMS?
I have not personally had much luck with GNV or other porting mechanisms, but 
I'm really not a C programmer either. I can work in several languages but not C.
Thanks for any information.
--Gary


--

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[Simh] VAX 11/780 Model

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

It would be spectacular to see a printable model of the 11/780.

It would be particularly amazing if the 11/780 model was a self-contained unit 
for the Pi Zero and have the board mounted internally in such a way that the 
external connectors for power, console serial adapter (DB9 or MMJ?)), Ethernet, 
and SD card placed such that you can access them through the outside “skin” of 
the model. It would be amusing if you could insert the SD card through a slot 
on the 11/780’s “removable disk drive”, but that layout may not be possible.

Can’t you just see it as a giveaway at a VSI Boot Camp?

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Wilm Boerhout
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 5:04 AM
To: Luca Sironi 
Cc: simh 
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VMS 1.5 installable?

Luca Sironi schreef op 18-10-2017 om 10:36:
2017-10-17 23:42 GMT+03:00 Wilm Boerhout 
>:

See also my blog on 
https://vxcompany.com/2016/02/13/a-working-vax-11780-revisited/http://ro.sironi.tk

do you have a 3d model for that awesome VAX-11/780 model case ?



Alas, no. It is one of few made dozens of years ago. I'm thinking of starting a 
kickstarter for 3D-print of same...



/Wilm
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Problems with telnet and TOPS-10

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

You might even try setting the DZ to 7P (printable characters only).

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Jordi 
Guillaumes i Pons
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2017 8:39 AM
To: Ray Jewhurst
Cc: simh
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Problems with telnet and TOPS-10

Hello,

Try to set the DZ to 7 bit mode:

set dz 7b

Jordi Guillaumes Pons


El 16 abr 2017, a les 3:38, Ray Jewhurst  va escriure:
> I thought it would be neat to connect my cell phone to simh.  I thought I 
> would start off with something relatively easy like TOPS-10.  Here's my 
> problem:  I connect alright it says "Connected to the PDP-10 simulator DZ 
> device, line 0" but then it shows nothing but gibberish.  I am using a client 
> called Termius.  Is there a better free client out there? At least until 
> payday so I can get a Google Play card.  Here's my config:
> 
> set dz 8b
> set tim y2k
> att rp0 dskb.dsk
> att rp1 dskc.dsk
> att lp20 printer.out
> att -am dz 2001
> boot rp
> 
> This is all new to me so I'm sure it's some stupid rookie mistake.  
> 
> Thanks
> Ray
> ___
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VT240, VT340 and DS200/300 HW specs info

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

Richard,

You weren't very clear identifying the objects of the "What are these?" 
question.

I'll define all of the terms for clarity.

DS200 - Digital DecServer 200, an old terminal server with 8x 25-pin RS232 
serial ports with modem control
DS300 - Digital DecServer 300, an later model terminal server with both modem 
control and non-modem control variants
DS500 - Digital DecServer 500 and 550, a much later and larger terminal server 
that could serve more serial lines (32+), using both modem control and 
non-modem control cards
68000 - Motorola 68000 processor
68020 - Motorola 68020 processor
KDJ11-SD - Digital KDJ11-SD processor, which is a later PDP-11 processor; the 
KDJ11 processors are also known as the J-11 series chips
AM7990 (LANCE) - AMD Ethernet chip, commonly called the LANCE Ethernet 
controller in documentation
TC23SC241AP - Toshiba Ethernet chip, higher performance than the LANCE
2681 DUART - Philips Dual Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (DUART) , 
a serial (RS232) chip
CXA16/CXB16 - a Digital 16-port serial board that plugs into Digital Q-BUS and 
S-BUS based systems (VAX, PDP11, and DecServer 5xx)

Dave


-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Richard
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2017 5:26 PM
To: SIMH
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VT240, VT340 and DS200/300 HW specs info

In article <01d2b0ef$c2cd4330$4867c990$@verizon.net>,
"Tim Stark"  writes:

> DS200 uses 68000 processor with AM7990 (LANCE) and 4 2681 DUARTs. 
> 
> DS300 uses 68020 processor with TC23SC241AP and 8 2681 DUARTs.
> 
> DS500 uses KDJ11-SD processor (11/53) with CXA16/CXB16 devices. 

What are these?
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book 
The Terminals Wiki 
 The Computer Graphics Museum 
  Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) 
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[Simh] VAX 730 Console Tapes [was: VAX 8200]

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

> What I started with, though, was managing 11/730s in the mid-80s and was 
> optimizing the order of files on the console tape to be in the order they 
> were requested, so a 30-minute boot process fell to under 5 minutes... nearly 
> all the time spent was doing serial transfers with far, far less tape motion. 
>  -ethan

What always surprised me was that Digital provided VAX 730/750 Console tapes 
"Out Of Order" (alphabetically) which caused slow cold boot times, and YOU had 
to create an optimized version of the tape if you wanted a faster boot time. 
And as Ethan said it really made a difference in the cold boot time.

.. What a pain that was. I guess they never cold-booted the internal 
development console-tape systems enough to get annoyed enough to optimize the 
tapes for the customers. I spent a lot of time making boot-optimized console 
tapes also.

Dave
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: CI Code Released

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

If you want to run your MV3100 licenses on the SIMH VAX, set the SIMH VAX to be 
a VAXserver3900 (see SIMH FAQ), which lowers the licensing requirements.

OR you can get the VAX Hobbyist licenses which have unlimited license units.

Dave 

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Paul (lists) 
Hardy
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2017 4:09 AM
To: 'Matt Burke'; 'Simh Trailing-Edge Mailing List'
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] CI Code Released

Matt Burke said:
>> There are more simulations in the pipeline (HSC70, VAX 8200, VAXstation 
>> 2000, VAXstation 3100...).
>> Hopefully I'll get these released soon too.

I'm particularly interested in the VAXStation 3100 (and MicroVAX 3100) - I'm 
trying to ressurect an old LAVC system for history archiving, and the original 
licences are for 3100s so insufficient units for the MicroVAX 3900 simulation.

I'm also very interested in the VAXstation aspects - did you get any further 
with the QDSS colour graphics emulation?

I'd be happy to take part in any testing and debugging.

Regards,

-- 
Paul  Hardy
Email:   paul at the paulhardy.net domain, web: www.paulhardy.net

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Re: [Simh] EXT : VAX SDL support?

[Hittner, David T [US] (MS)]

The Qbus-based VAXen support the QVSS (black-n-white) video module cards, which 
were the basis of the original VaxStation I and were also compatible with 
VaxStation II's, III's, and 4000's. The SIMH QVSS uses SDL for visualization.

This is a native DecWindows interface.

To be honest, it's just as easy to start DecWindows headless on any VAX and 
connect to the headless DecWindows from your PC via X or X over SSH.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Sampsa Laine
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2017 1:43 PM
To: SIMH
Subject: EXT :[Simh] VAX SDL support?

Quick question - I saw SDL graphics support mentioned somewhere and wondered 
which emulators have graphics support? Do any of the VAX ones?

Can I run native DECWindows on any of them?

sampsa


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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: alpha emulator

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

To answer the OP:
The SIMH VAX simulator will correctly run OpenVMS, as will the commercial and 
free simulators noted.
The commercial Alpha products support OpenVMS and TRU64 Unix.
I don’t know if any commercial Alpha emulators support Windows/Alpha (retired), 
Red Hat Linux/Alpha (retired), or xBSD/Alpha Unix (2 still support Alpha).

I am currently slowly developing the SIMH Alpha emulator in my [very] spare 
time.
Bob Supnik created the original Alpha EV56 processor simulation, but it 
included no other supporting hardware.
I have the SIMH Alpha to the point where it starts to run the POST diagnostics, 
but it still needs a lot of the hardware emulation written before it can even 
get up to the SRM chevrons (>>>), after which it could potentially boot an OS.
The major change for SIMH is the incorporation of industry-standard components 
(PCI, ISA, SCSI, SOC), which have not been previously developed. SIMH has 
already incorporated the Ethernet framework.

The SIMH Alpha [Miata(=Personal Work Station 500au)] simulator requires :
   Alpha EV56 chip (complete)
   Motherboard + PCI hose (Alpha-specific Pyxis chip – in work)
   PCI framework (nearing completion)
ISA framework (limping)
SCSI framework (not started)
Ethernet framework (complete)
   PCI ISA bridge (just enough to pass through to SOC)
   PCI Ethernet card (just enough to register framework)
PCI SCSI card (just enough to register framework)
PC System-On-Chip (SOC) components:
Clock (in-work)
2 Serial Ports (not started)
Parallel port (optional)
2 IDE ports (optional)
2 Floppy ports (optional)
Keyboard/Mouse ports (optional)
ESS Sound (optional)
PCI bridge (optional)
Video card (optional – not technically required for any OS - even Windows/Alpha 
can run serial-based)

I would be happy to let anyone help out with the SIMH Alpha project. Contact me 
and Mark Pizzolato if you’d like to help with development.
I’ve recently found that the QEMU project has already worked out the logic for 
a many of the industry-standard hardware simulations in C, which could help to 
speed up development.

David Hittner

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Jason Stevens
Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2016 4:17 AM
To: Jeremy Begg
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] alpha emulator

Oh wow, I wondered what happened.. Es40 was too promising to just evaporate. 
Thanks for the update
On 02 October 2016 3:25:57 PM GMT+08:00, Jeremy Begg 
> wrote:

Hi,

Es40 was another
http://www.es40.org/Homepage

Discontinued in 2009.

On 02 October 2016 3:13:15 PM GMT+08:00, Cory Smelosky 
> wrote:

There is also alphavm-free unless that's just a different name

AlphaVM-Free is discontinued, according to their web site,

FYI the creator of the ES40 project went on to write the Avanti/FreeAXP
emulator mentioned earlier.  He now works for VMS Software Inc, working
on the next release of OpenVMS.  Last week I saw him give a very interesting
presentation comparing the VAX, Alpha, Itanium and x86 architectures.

Regards,

 Jeremy Begg


On Oct 1, 2016, at 20:54, Jeremy Begg < 
jer...@vsm.com.au
 > wrote:



Hi Bill



 Ok since I have been told the alpha simh emulator isn't booting yet. I


guess I have two questions:





o does anyone know when it should be complete or what's going on? Maybe
I


should check the main page or something.



I suspect there is no activity.



o And two, is there any emulators that can be used until then?
Something
to


run openVMS on.



There are at least three commercial Alpha emulators, and two of those
have
free versions which run under Windows:

* Charon-AXP
* FreeAXP

They both restrict the emulated system RAM and disk configuration but
are
enough to run OpenVMS.  (The paid-for versions are somewhat more
realistic
in the configuration of the emulated hardware.)

The third one is "vtAlpha" made by AVTware.  I don't think they have a
free
version.  Unlike the other two, vtAlpha does not require a full Windows
or
Linix host operating system; instead, it has basic Linux kernel which
boots
the x86-84 CPU and starts the emulator.

Regards,

  Jeremy Begg

+



+
|VSM Software Services Pty. Ltd.  |
|  http://www.vsm.com.au/ 
|
|



|
| P.O.Box 402, Walkerville, |  E-Mail:   
jer...@vsm.com.au
  |
| South Australia 5081  |   Phone:  +61 8 8221 5188   |
|---|  Mobile:  0414 422 947  |
|  A.C.N. 068 409 156   | FAX:  +61 8 8221 7199   |
+



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Re: [Simh] MAC

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

This might be a good new FAQ item: how to find and search the SIMH Mailing List 
archives.

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Mark Pizzolato
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 1:10 PM
To: Timothe Litt; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] MAC

On Friday, September 23, 2016 at 10:06 AM, Timothe Litt wrote:
> On 23-Sep-16 12:57, Mark Pizzolato wrote:
> > The header of every list message contains this line:
> > List-Archive: http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/pipermail/simh/
> >
> > And that gets you to the archive which, sadly, doesn’t seem to have 
> > a search interface.
> >
> Of course it does.  Sorta.  This works:
> 
> google
>  rsts archive -V9 site:mailman.trailing-edge.com/pipermail/simh/
> 
> This finds all messages containing "rsts" "archive" but not "V9".
> 
> You can also click the gear on Google, and select advanced search, enter
>mailman.trailing-edge.com/pipermail/simh/
> In the "site or domain" box.
> 
> This is more powerful than the typical string search offered by 
> website "search" boxes.

Excellent info about this general purpose Google resource!!

Thanks.

- Mark

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Re: [Simh] EXT : Integrity

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

There is no Integrity [aka Itanium or IA-64] simulation in SIMH. You will have 
to use real hardware for your Hobbyist PAK.

The Alpha simulator is in development and does not boot yet.

The VAX simulation (and variants) are the only ones that can currently run VMS.

Sorry,
David Hittner

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Bill Cunningham
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2016 1:56 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Integrity

What simh emulator is the "Integrity"? I have a VMS hobbyist PAK for it 
from HP.

Bill

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Re: [Simh] simh on OpenVMS

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Hello Gerard,

1)  The original OpenVMS PCAP did not have packet send ability, so the PCAP-VMS 
package was developed to provide the packet transmission capability, as well as 
better packet filtering features. As HP and VSI have improved PCAP for OpenVMS, 
they may have overwritten your PCAP-VMS libraries, or broken some linkage that 
PCAP-VMS depends upon. It would be much better in the future if VSI was willing 
to merge the PCAP-VMS functionality into the built-in PCAP libraries, so that 
we don't need the PCAP-VMS for Itanium (and/or Alpha, if VSI decides to support 
it). You might check to see which libraries are actually installed/used on your 
system.

2) I don't think your i2 vs. i7 performance experience is unique. I've never 
been able to get any of my OpenVMS IA-64 systems (rx2600 through BL860c i2) to 
run SIMH anywhere near as fast as Windows/Linux on i7. HP/UX running SIMH 
performs much better than OpenVMS. OpenVMS has different memory access and IO 
models than the other operating systems.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of gérard Calliet
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2016 11:51 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] simh on OpenVMS

Hello,

simh on OpenVMS again.

1) with the help of an Lan expert of VSI, I could use pcap on VMS on an Itanium 
i4... some time and it is again impossible. I will meet the VSI expert on 
OpenVMS bootcamp in Boston next week, anf I hope we will address this issue 
again. Any idea welcomed, of course. (It seems PCAP on VMS does'nt like larger 
frame with i4, because it is the only diference I can see between i2 and i4 
Itanium servers, and it works on i2).

2) there is a very bad performance issue: same batch on a windows10 / i7 
platform six times faster than on an i2 / OpenVMS platform. I don't think it's 
a normal issue of windows or x86 being better than OpenVMS / italium i2. 
Something goes wrong somewhere. I gave a huge working set to the host process, 
and it is not doing paging, I tried Decram to avoid physical I/O, asynchronous 
I/O is enabled for simh (and the simh configuration is  the same on windows and 
on OpenVMS).

Any help will be welcomed: ideas, tools for tracking,...

Best regards,

Gérard Calliet



---
L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel 
antivirus Avast.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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[Simh] VAX 11/782 simulation [was: :Re: Pdp8 terminals]

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Wasn't the VAX 11/782 and the Asymmetric model de-supported at some point 
during the life of VMS?

I seem to remember hearing (at a DECUS Symposium?) that existing 11/782 
customers would have to separate them into two 11/780's and then cluster them 
to upgrade to the latest version of VMS.

Dave


-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2016 2:55 PM
To: Ray Jewhurst
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Pdp8 terminals

Hi.

On 2016-09-07 19:00, Ray Jewhurst wrote:
> My apologies. To be honest I am very ignorant about of the science of 
> computers. I am disabled, cannot work but I am a total computer 
> history buff. I want to learn and know and experience as much as I can 
> and Simh is a major part of that. I  want to help where I can so 
> please excuse my occasionally confusion.

No worries. You never learn if you are afraid of making mistakes. 
However, if you are not rather experienced writing code, I think that 
implementing something like the VAX-11/782 might be quite a task... Not to 
mention that I don't know where you'd find a version of VMS that would support 
the machine.

Maybe find something a little simpler to start with? Like the talk about 
expanding the PDP-8 to more generic support for devices than the current 
implementation.

Johnny

>
>
> On Sep 7, 2016 12:46 PM, "Johnny Billquist"  > wrote:
>
> The 11/782 are no more asynchronous than any multiprocessor system.
>
> The A in ASMP stands for assymetric. As in, the second processor did
> not run any kernel code, but is a slave processor to the primary
> processor. It gets scheduled with user-land code to run, but any
> trapping to the OS means it interrupts the main processor, who do
> all the work.
>
> Johnny
>
> On 2016-09-07 18:23, Ray Jewhurst wrote:
>
> I think you are like I am. I would like to see every DEC simulator
> possible. Right now I am doing some preliminary research into the
> feasibility of a VAX 11/782 which is an asynchronous dual processor
> 11/780.  I will need help because I am not a real experienced coder.
>
>

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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Ultrix 4.0 and DEQNA-LOCK

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

FWIW, A dated comment from someone at Digital indicating that Ultrix 4.3 treats 
DELQA and DELQA-Plus as DEQNA, and it is unlikely to ever change.
http://www.verycomputer.com/7_50c10d446aeab2b0_1.htm

I also see other posts showing Ultrix 4.5 also running in DEQNA-LOCK mode. 
Maybe Ultrix was never upgraded to use the DELQA and DELQA-Plus enhancements.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Cory Smelosky
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 10:37 PM
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Ultrix 4.0 and DEQNA-LOCK

On Wed, 31 Aug 2016, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Hi.
>
> On 2016-08-31 17:40, Cory Smelosky wrote:
>
>>> Cory, could you post the output from showing the device in simh?
>>> I wonder if there might be some confusion about how to turn off lock 
>>> mode. I've never even tried modifying that. By default, I would 
>>> assume it would be correctly configured, meaning it should work 
>>> right if you don't try to "fix it".
>> 
>> I am doing SET DEQNALOCK to OFF, and SHOW XQ (in my initial posting 
>> shows that IIRC) with it in DELQA mode, and later on after probing 
>> and initialising it, despite DEQNALOCK set to OFF and showing as OFF, 
>> SHOW XQ shows it has reverted to being in DEQNA mode.
>
> No. You initial posting showed the dmesg output, but not the simh 
> input or output, unless I'm very confused.
>
>   Johnny
>

set xq en
set xq deqnalock=off
set xq type=delqa
at xq vde:/tmp/vde

(BOOT/R5:0 DUA0
Simulation stopped, PC: 2004CBD9 (CMPW (R5)+,28(SP))
sim> show xq
XQ  address=20001920-2000192F, no vector, MAC=08:00:2B:6D:9C:95
 type=DELQA, polling=disabled, sanity=OFF
 throttle=disabled, DEQNALock=OFF, leds=(ON,ON,ON)
 attached to vde:/tmp/vde

sim> c
[...]
qe0: DEC DELQA Ethernet Interface DEQNA-lock Mode, hardware address
08:00:2b:6d:9c:95
dz0 at uba0 csr 160100 vec 300, ipl 17
dz1 at uba0 csr 160110 vec 310, ipl 17
dz2 at uba0 csr 160120 vec 320, ipl 17
dz3 at uba0 csr 160130 vec 330, ipl 17

Simulation stopped, PC: 80003551 (BEQL 800034F0)
sim> show xq
XQ  address=20001920-2000192F, vector=3F4*, MAC=08:00:2B:6D:9C:95
 type=DELQA, mode=DEQNA, polling=disabled, sanity=OFF
 throttle=disabled, DEQNALock=OFF, leds=(ON,ON,ON)
 attached to vde:/tmp/vde

--
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Contributing to SimH

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Tim,

We should hook up together for the Alpha.
I'm working on finishing up Bob's unfinished Alpha, using his vision and 
documentation for a Miata (Alpha PWS 500au).

Dave Hittner

>I just started to work on my own new emulator from scratch right now. I am now 
>Working on Alpha emulateion for AlphaServer 400/600/800 (Advanti chipset).
>Also I am now using git repository files and plan to set up Github repo page 
>some day.  I have FreeAXP emulator and successfully loaded and run OpenVMS 
>Alpha.

>Thanks!
>Tim Stark

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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: RSTS and slow DECnet operation in SIMH

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Many of the older OS systems create rather small buffers for Ethernet packets, 
and do not handle the fast real-time receive rates of 100Mbps and 1000Mb 
Ethernet in the simulators very well.

This was due to:
1) the OS expectation of being able to service the (maximum, never 
seen) Ethernet 10Mbps/sec buffered packets within the time frame allowed
2) the OS expectation that packets not buffered (dropped) would 
eventually be retransmitted at some point by delivery protocols, which have an 
implied ACK/NACK delay
3) Limited physical memory was available for Ethernet packet buffering.

Simulator speeds (for PDPs and VAXen) and modern network speeds are so fast 
compared to the original hardware that frequently the OS Ethernet buffers are 
just too small for efficient network packet processing. OS-side inefficiency 
can be addressed by patching the OS with larger Ethernet buffers. Emulator-side 
inefficiency can be fixed by "limiting" the Ethernet emulation speed by 
throttling it down to a speed more appropriate to the OS buffer processing 
rates. But this may cause extra dropped packets, which will likely be "fixed" 
by protocol retransmission.

The goal of early networking was to send and receive packets, not network 
efficiency. It wasn't until near-line-rate 10Mbps Ethernet and 100Mbps Fast 
Ethernet that network drivers started to think about efficiency by creating 
larger buffers, and network efficiency wasn't really fully implemented until 1G 
Ethernet became supported by (some) OSs, because it forces much larger buffers 
and better processing algorithms.

Later model network cards started implementing Early Receive and Early Transmit 
Interrupts, so that the card could "help" the OS understand that the buffers 
were almost exhausted and needed to be processed immediately .

C-Kermit was able to solve a lot of the synchronous packet transfer 
inefficiency by creating asynchronous "sliding window" transmission 
acknowledgements for both serial and network communications, which replaced the 
synchronous send-ACK/NACK cycle with asynchronous 
send1-send2-send-3/ACK-1/send-4/NACK-2/send-2(retransmit)/ACK-3/send-5, etc. 
sliding window scheme. It was astounding how much faster the sliding window 
algorithm was than the original Kermit. Note that some network protocols also 
have a similar asynchronous ACK/NACK processes.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Paul Koning
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2016 1:38 PM
To: SIMH
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] RSTS and slow DECnet operation in SIMH


> On Apr 19, 2016, at 2:46 PM, Paul Koning  wrote:
> 
> With help from Mark Pizzolato, I've been looking at why RSTS (DECnet/E) 
> operates so slowly when it's dealing with one way transfers.  This is 
> independent of protocol and datalink type; it shows up very clearly in NFT 
> (any kind of file transfer or directory listing) and also in NET (Set Host).  
> The symptom is that data comes across in fairly short bursts, separated by 
> about a second of pause.
> 
> This turns out to be an interaction between the DECnet/E queueing rules and 
> the very fast operation of SIMH on modern hosts.  DECnet/E will queue up to 
> some small number of NSP segments for any given connection, set by the 
> executor parameter "data transmit queue max".  The default value is 4 or 5, 
> but it can be set higher, and that helps some.
> 
> The trouble is this: if you have a one way data flow, for example NFT or FAL 
> doing a copy, the sending program simply fires off a sequence of send-packet 
> operations until it gets a "queue full" reject from the kernel.  At that 
> point it delays, but the delay is one second since sleep operations have one 
> second granularity.  The other end acks all that data quite promptly, but 
> since the emulation runs so fast, the whole transmit queue can fill up before 
> the ack from the other end arrives, so the queue full condition occurs, then 
> a one second delay, then the process starts over.
> 
> This sort of thing doesn't happen on request/response exchanges; for example 
> the NCP command LOOP NODE runs at top speed because traffic is going both 
> ways.
> 
> I tried fiddling with the data queue limit to see if increasing it would 
> help.  It seems to, but it's not sufficient.  What does work is a larger 
> queue limit (32 looks good) combined with CPU throttling to slow things down 
> a bit.  I used "set throttle 2000/1" (which produces a 1 ms delay every 2000 
> instructions, i.e., roughly 2 MIPS processing speed which is at the high end 
> of what real PDP-11s can do).  Those two changes combined make file transfer 
> run smoothly and fast.
> 
> Ideally DECnet/E should cancel the program sleep when the queue transitions 
> from full to not-full, but that's not part of the existing logic (at least 
> not unless the program explicitly asks for "link status notifications").  I 
> could probably add 

Re: [Simh] Way out idea for simh

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

If Kermit does not work on SIMH emulated RTE-6/VM, but works on the real 
hardware, then I’d say there’s a BUG in the emulator that needs fixing. Derp.

Ø  Kermit cannot be made to work reliably on RTE-6/VM under simh.

Ø  At least I was never able to make it work.

Ø  Not to mention that trying to use an emulator other than QCTerm (which 
doesn't do Kermit) with RTE is a major PITA.

Ø  I used Kermit extensively on real RTE systems to transfer files to a variety 
of systems.

Another option is to start a file creation in the emulation from the serial 
port and use a terminal emulator to cut and paste (slowly) the ascii or 
hexified file in for you (hopefully with a windows cut/paste), or type(cat) the 
file to the terminal emulator and select/copy the text out to a host file. 
Attachmate has worked well for me as a slow cut/paste terminal emulator. 
Hexifying binaries is a tried-and-true serial copy method when flow control is 
non-existent or suicidal, and there are quite a few tools to hexify/unhexify 
data streams.

There’s also lot of tools available for file conversion (mangling), and Kermit 
is supported on many platforms. Look at the older Kermit-16 and Kermit-32 if 
you want a simpler Kermit.

If you want to write a universal file transfer tool for ALL of the hosts and 
emulators SIMH supports, AND write in the OS support drivers for it on ALL of 
the emulated OS’s, then go for it. But it’s a lot more work than you might 
think, for very minimal gain.

If it was , and I was having problems with file transfers to a  
emulator/OS combination, I’d look to find a solution for that specific platform 
problem, and not try to solve all of the SIMH host file transfer problems with 
a universal solution. You’re looking for a universal solution to 50+ years of 
device and filesystem incompatibility. Most people agree that Kermit is the 
most universal file transfer solution available.  :-S

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Ken Cornetet
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 4:15 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Way out idea for simh

I guess I need to shout this:

*** KERMIT DOES NOT WORK ON SIMH EMULATED RTE-6/VM 

Kermit does not exist (and probably couldn’t feasibly exist) on any earlier 
versions of RTE.

Also, people keep reminding me that some simh guest OSes  don’t’ have the 
ability to read raw disks. Well, I’d venture to say that even more simh guest 
OSes lack a working Kermit.

Even if Kermit does exist for a guest OS, you may not have a binary available, 
nor the compiler needed to compile it.

Yes, Kermit is wonderful. I used it extensively in the days when I worked on a 
real RTE system. Unfortunately, it is not a generally useful option for simh 
users. The fact that much of the traffic on this list is “how do I get files in 
and out of guests” is pretty well proof of that.

What I’m trying to do is come up with something that would be relatively easy 
to implement in simh, and be useful in as many of the emulated machines as 
possible.






From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Kevin Handy
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 3:58 PM
To: Paul Koning >
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] Way out idea for simh

I think you are trying to over-engineer this file transfer stuff.
Instead of creating new devices for the transfer to operate over, why not use 
something that already exists on most of the simulators, like a serial port.
 Instead of building all this code into simh to convert from one disk file
 format to another. inside the simulator, use a progrm attached to the serial 
port which handles the hosts file access. You will still need a program on the 
simulated system to handle it's side of the transfers. W can give the whole 
setup a common name, like "kermit".
Most of this stream just seems to me to re-inenting Kermit in one way or 
another. It might be fun/interesting but doesn't seem to gain anything beyond 
what Kermit already does.
All this stuff has been hashed over many times when the hardware was actually 
in use, and solutions were devised then to handle the
numerous problems. Creating new interfaces, new instructions, etc. and 
modifying OS's just to re-implement kermit in another way seems to be a lot of 
overkill to me., but most of these messages seem to have no advantages to just 
using existing kermit capabilities.
If you want shares access the host filesystem, look to 'nfs'. If the emulated 
system doesn't already have shared filesystem already, you are probably going 
to be fighting such things as the disk caching code. File system corruption is 
very likely to occur.
A lot of the simulated OS's have more basic problems that just making the raw 
data available to the host OS. VMS doesn't store anything, including text 
files, in a "stream of byte" form. Others have 6 or 9-bit bytes. Then 

Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: MicroVAX II time across boots

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

VMS checks the base time stamp time written in OS files vs. the clock during 
boot. If the time is too far off, you will be prompted to enter the system time.

Once a year or so, you have to issue a “$ SET TIME” command in VMS with no 
parameters to cause VMS to rewrite the base time stamp in the OS file.
The next reboot should not prompt for system time.

Dave


From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Wilm Boerhout
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2016 9:23 AM
To: Anders Magnusson; SIMH Mailing List
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] MicroVAX II time across boots

From simh VAX/vax630_defs.h:

#define NVRBASE 0x200B8000  /* NVR base */

so that appears to be implemented in the simh "nvr" device. My ini file 
attaches that device to a file, so I would expect that this file acts as a 
battery-operated nvr chip. Still, after closing simh, and restarting, VMS still 
asks for the time. Not so on a reboot of VMS within the simh instance.

Time to file a bug?

/Wilm

Anders Magnusson schreef op 11-4-2016 om 15:13:
It has a clock chip at 0x200b8000 from where it reads current time, similar to 
a PC.
The console mailbox is also in that chip.

-- R

Den 2016-04-11 kl. 14:33, skrev Wilm Boerhout:

How does a real MicroVAX II preserve its time across boots?

How is this implemented in simh MicroVAX II? i.e. what virtual device should I 
attach to a file so that the time is preserved in VMS?
My configuration (below) does not preserve the time (VMS V7.3 fully patched)

Thanks,
/Wilm

--- simh config ---
; unused devices:
set cr disable
set lpt disable
set rl disable
set tq disable
set ts disable

att nvr /opt/simh-master/BIN/nvram.bin

set cpu 16M conhalt idle=VMS
set rom nodelay
set qba autoconfig

; DZ11
set dz enable
set dz lines=4
att dz 1

; DUA controller
set rq0 autosize
att -e rq0 /vdisk/PAGESWAP.vdisk
set rq1 disable
set rq2 disable
set rq3 disable

; Ethernet
set xq mac=08:00:2B:17:08:58
att xq tap:tap0

boot cpu
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Re: [Simh] EXT : simh on openvms (to get a VAX on top of an OpenVMS Itanium) >> network issue

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

There was an early restriction on PCAP-VMS where the host had to assign a 
TCP/IP address to the host interface(s) being used for PCAP-VMS, even if you 
aren’t planning on using that host address, in order to “bind” PCAP-VMS on that 
interface. I don’t know if the TCP/IP address restriction was ever lifted.
Thus, PCAP-VMS probably won’t work in startup_p1 “MIN” mode, unless you 
manually start TC/IP networking and assign a TCP/IP address to the host 
interface(s).
Dave
From: gérard Calliet [mailto:gerard.call...@pia-sofer.fr]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2016 11:22 AM
To: Hittner, David T (IS); simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: EXT :[Simh] simh on openvms (to get a VAX on top of an OpenVMS 
Itanium) >> network issue

Thanks a lot for these precisions.
I have just contacted VSI, and we will see what they say.
If anyone thinks he could help on the very difficult subject of VMS internals 
involved here, and has not an i4 on OpenVMS 8.4-1h1 in his laboratory, he 
should contact me and use my environment by vpn.

Gérard Calliet
Le 28/03/2016 15:44, Hittner, David T (IS) a écrit :
PCAP-VMS is kind of strange software.
OpenVMS provides a PCAP library, which is not a full or complete implementation 
of the PCAP functionality found on other platforms. It is good enough for 
Ethernet packet dumping, but was not good enough for full—featured PCAP, which 
is why PCAP-VMS was written. PCAP-VMS is unsupported software that was written 
by a Digital/Compaq/HP OpenVMS engineer and depends on some undocumented 
interfaces in the OpenVMS network drivers to implement functionality. If VSI 
changed those undocumented APIs, it may have broken PCAP-VMS. You may need to 
contact VSI support and ask them if any of the network interfaces has changed 
that might break PCAP-VMS, and what might need to be fixed in PCAP-VMS to work 
with VSI OpenVMS.
You might also ask them to support a full-featured PCAP library in the future, 
so that we don’t need PCAP-VMS any more. ☺
Just as a guess, does the newer rx2800 use TOE (TCP Offload Engine) network 
cards or use jumbo packets? That could change the “standard” Ethernet packet 
behavior enough that PCAP-VMS may no longer work.
Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of gérard Calliet
Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2016 6:37 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com<mailto:simh@trailing-edge.com>
Subject: EXT :[Simh] simh on openvms (to get a VAX on top of an OpenVMS 
Itanium) >> network issue

Hello,
I need help for pcap-vms. I use (vax-)simh on top of OpenVMS (VSI) Itanium i4.
I tested vax-simh (simh 4.0 beta) and pcap-vms on OpenVMS on an Itanium rx2660, 
and it worked fine.
On OpenVMS i4 (rx2880), with exactly the same configuration, and images, I can 
see my NICs from the simh prompt (sho eth), I can attach a device (attach xq0 
ethn), assign it a mac address, and my VAX-VMS on top of simh sees the emulated 
device, can send data, but does not receive anything.
Can you give me advice, way of tracing the problem, hypothesis ?
I tried to boot the OpenVMS host in startup_p1 MIN, to test if I get the same 
problem when there is no network software on the host (like DecNet, or Tcpip), 
and the problem remains.
I rebuilt the pcap-vms from scratch on the i4 host, and the problem remains.
Do you think there could be an hardware issue, like the NIC which cannot work 
in promiscuitus mode ?
Any help should be welcomed,

Gérard Calliet

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Re: [Simh] EXT : simh on openvms (to get a VAX on top of an OpenVMS Itanium) >> network issue

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

PCAP-VMS is kind of strange software.
OpenVMS provides a PCAP library, which is not a full or complete implementation 
of the PCAP functionality found on other platforms. It is good enough for 
Ethernet packet dumping, but was not good enough for full—featured PCAP, which 
is why PCAP-VMS was written. PCAP-VMS is unsupported software that was written 
by a Digital/Compaq/HP OpenVMS engineer and depends on some undocumented 
interfaces in the OpenVMS network drivers to implement functionality. If VSI 
changed those undocumented APIs, it may have broken PCAP-VMS. You may need to 
contact VSI support and ask them if any of the network interfaces has changed 
that might break PCAP-VMS, and what might need to be fixed in PCAP-VMS to work 
with VSI OpenVMS.
You might also ask them to support a full-featured PCAP library in the future, 
so that we don’t need PCAP-VMS any more. ☺
Just as a guess, does the newer rx2800 use TOE (TCP Offload Engine) network 
cards or use jumbo packets? That could change the “standard” Ethernet packet 
behavior enough that PCAP-VMS may no longer work.
Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of gérard Calliet
Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2016 6:37 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] simh on openvms (to get a VAX on top of an OpenVMS 
Itanium) >> network issue

Hello,
I need help for pcap-vms. I use (vax-)simh on top of OpenVMS (VSI) Itanium i4.
I tested vax-simh (simh 4.0 beta) and pcap-vms on OpenVMS on an Itanium rx2660, 
and it worked fine.
On OpenVMS i4 (rx2880), with exactly the same configuration, and images, I can 
see my NICs from the simh prompt (sho eth), I can attach a device (attach xq0 
ethn), assign it a mac address, and my VAX-VMS on top of simh sees the emulated 
device, can send data, but does not receive anything.
Can you give me advice, way of tracing the problem, hypothesis ?
I tried to boot the OpenVMS host in startup_p1 MIN, to test if I get the same 
problem when there is no network software on the host (like DecNet, or Tcpip), 
and the problem remains.
I rebuilt the pcap-vms from scratch on the i4 host, and the problem remains.
Do you think there could be an hardware issue, like the NIC which cannot work 
in promiscuitus mode ?
Any help should be welcomed,

Gérard Calliet
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Re: [Simh] EXT : Alpha under SIMH

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Not correct. Migration Specialties offers FreeAXP, which is a reduced 
performance Alpha.
I don't know if StromaSys still offers Personal Alpha or not.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Zane Healy
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 1:05 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] EXT : Alpha under SIMH

Am I correct that none of the Commercial solutions offer a “Hobbyist” emulator 
for the DEC Alpha anymore?

Zane



> On Feb 19, 2016, at 9:42 AM, Hittner, David T (IS) <david.hitt...@ngc.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> No. SIMH Alpha is just the CPU, no system (motherboard) and no peripherals. 
> It is not in a runnable state.
> 
> Alpha emulations are available commercially from multiple sources:
>   Migration Specialties
>   SRI (Charon)
>   AVTware
>   etc.
> 
> Dave Hittner
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Robert Thomas
> Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 12:13 PM
> To: simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: EXT :[Simh] Alpha under SIMH
> 
> We are on the verge of having to retire our AlphaStation XP1000.  We have 
> experimented with some of the commercial emulators, but based on very 
> positive experience with the VAX emulation under simh are wondering if the 
> AXP EV5 emulation that is hinted at on the simh web site is available and 
> functional?
> 
> Sincerely,
> Robert F. Thomas
> 
> 44 Industrial Way 
> Norwood, MA USA 02062
> N  Office Phone - (781) 329-9200
> O mail to: r...@asthomas.com
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Simh] EXT : Alpha under SIMH

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

No. SIMH Alpha is just the CPU, no system (motherboard) and no peripherals. It 
is not in a runnable state.

Alpha emulations are available commercially from multiple sources:
Migration Specialties
SRI (Charon)
AVTware
etc.

Dave Hittner

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Robert Thomas
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 12:13 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Alpha under SIMH

We are on the verge of having to retire our AlphaStation XP1000.  We have 
experimented with some of the commercial emulators, but based on very positive 
experience with the VAX emulation under simh are wondering if the AXP EV5 
emulation that is hinted at on the simh web site is available and functional?

Sincerely,
Robert F. Thomas

 44 Industrial Way 
Norwood, MA USA 02062
N  Office Phone - (781) 329-9200
O mail to: r...@asthomas.com
 


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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VAX/VMS

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

This is the beauty of the SIMH VAX and VAX780. The simulators allow running 
much larger resource capacities than were affordable at the time. And run it 
faster.

While it is possible to run VMS 7.3 on the resource constrained 11/725, 11/730, 
MicroVAX I, and MicroVAX 2000 systems, the challenge is getting it there in the 
first place. Memory limits can be addressed by SYSGEN tweaks, disk limits can 
be addressed by installation tailoring and having multiple or external disks, 
but it's still hard to load the OS on resource-constrained hardware.

My company bought one of the backplane-epoxied MicroVAX I's to "double" the 
processing power of our production 11/730, by getting the programmers and our 
"damn compiler runs" off of the main production system. This MicroVAX I system 
was extremely resource-limited with 2MB memory and a 31MB disk drive. But it 
ran VMS well enough for two programmers.  When the MicroVAX II came along, the 
11/730 was replaced and moved from the shop floor to the office space. This 
allowed us to upgrade the file transfer between the systems from serial Kermit 
to always-up Asynchronous DECnet. When the programmers complained about the 
relative speed of the MicroVAX I vs. the MicroVAX II, the MicroVAX I got a few 
upgrades: an un-epoxied backplane to allow more boards, an RQDX3/RD54 
controller/disk combination, and the maximum 4MB memory. Eventually, it was 
upgraded to a MicroVAX II board and memory, and an Ethernet controller was 
added to both systems to allow a small VAXCluster as incremental funding became 
available.

As a Digital VAR, my company always faced the resource-constrained limits when 
selling. Most manufacturing companies buying our package couldn't afford really 
good systems, and settled for resource-constrained versions.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Ethan Dicks
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 2:18 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VAX/VMS

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 1:57 AM, Wilm Boerhout  wrote:
> More precisely, V7.3 will run on *any* VAX, including the primal VAX-11/780.
> This level of backwards compatibility is unique.

I'm sure 7.3 has a very broad list of what it runs on, but (considering I own 
the hardware in question), does it run on the smallest of the small?  
VAX-11/725?  MicroVAX 2000?  In the case of the 11/725 (and the 11/730), 
minimum memory requirements come to mind.
They are limited to 5MB (the MicroVAX 2000 can take far more memory than that 
and is not a problem there)  The 11/725, by default, comes with the RC25 as its 
disk, but you can stick a different disk controller on the Unibus (a SCSI 
controller does nicely if you can find an affordable one, but an SMD controller 
is easier to locate), and I do know someone who did some sheetmetal cutting and 
added an external BA11 to their 11/725 where they could put any number of 
Unibus disk interfaces.  In the case of the MicroVAX 2000, it's a busless 
design and comes with the equivalent of an RQDX3, so is limited to one internal 
RD54 and one external RD54, though you could give it a go to MOP boot it via 
Ethernet.  The MicroVAX I also has its place on the small end, with Qbus memory 
and 4MB max, but at least you can toss a Qbus SCSI controller in one and not 
suffer with the limitations of its RQDX1.

So if 7.3 fits on a ~150MB disk and in 4MB or 5MB of RAM, it'll fit on any of 
these except perhaps an unexpanded 11/725 (but to be fair, not much fit on an 
RC25, even when it _was_ on the supported list).

I'm not decrying 7.3 at all, but having tried to shoehorn 6.2 on a standard 
MicroVAX II (9MB RAM, 154MB RD54), I do wonder about the small, 
hardware-constrained machines.  For my own collection, I tend to run whatever 
was common in the day for that specific hardware, anywhere from MicroVMS 
4.whatever through VMS 4.7 through VMS 5.5 or so.  Again, nothing wrong with 
6.x or 7.x if you have memory and disk to handle it, but not having some of the 
more expandable models, I didn't do much with the more recent versions and the 
VAX (but plenty with more recent versions and Alpha.  Talk about needing more 
RAM!)

-ethan
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: simh on RaspBerry Pi

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

This is not a standards issue. The SIMH FAQ has a more detailed write-up of 
wireless Ethernet.

Wireless Ethernet routers are allowed to do ANYTHING they want to conserve 
wireless bandwidth.
Almost ALL wireless network card drivers and routers drop non-IP packets to 
conserve bandwidth, and reject "unregistered" MAC addresses.
Very few wireless devices will work with non-IP protocols (DECNET IV, LAT, 
Appletalk, etc.)  unless the device has bridge mode enabled and supports non-IP 
protocols in bridge mode.

Regarding your (later) question of LAN bridges: It's the same as the LAT 
question. The device either has to support bridge mode, or you have to fake it 
by tunneling it over the wireless IP connection.

Dave


From: Paul Koning [mailto:paulkon...@comcast.net] 
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2016 1:54 PM
To: Hittner, David T (IS)
Cc: Zane Healy; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: simh on RaspBerry Pi


> On Feb 15, 2016, at 1:48 PM, Hittner, David T (IS) <david.hitt...@ngc.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> LAT runs fine over the (wired) Ethernet port.
> LAT doesn’t run over wireless Ethernet without major help from the wireless 
> hardware or unless it’s tunneled over IP.

I'm still baffled.  Why doesn't it?  802.11 has the same MAC layer service as 
Ethernet -- broadcast, multicast, unicast, 48 bit addresses, etc.  What 
specifically does LAT do that doesn't work on 802.11?  Is it a standards issue, 
or a case of defective implementations?

paul


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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: simh on RaspBerry Pi

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

LAT runs fine over the (wired) Ethernet port.
LAT doesn’t run over wireless Ethernet without major help from the wireless 
hardware or unless it’s tunneled over IP.

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Zane Healy
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2016 12:23 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] simh on RaspBerry Pi


On Feb 15, 2016, at 7:13 AM, Wilm Boerhout 
> wrote:

Zane Healy schreef op 15-2-2016 om 16:08:

On Feb 15, 2016, at 12:47 AM, Wilm Boerhout 
 wrote:



Please check out my post on running a VAXcluster on Raspberry Pi's



https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vaxcluster-raspberry-pi-wilm-boerhout



/Wilm

There are a couple things that I find interesting about this, and I find myself 
wondering, what real VAXen does the level of performance you’re getting with 
the various RPi models, compare to?
The simh VAX gets about 4 VUPs on the 1GHz Raspberry Pi 2 and the Pi Zero, and 
about 3 VUPs on the older original Raspberry Pi which runs at about 600MHz.

But is is 5V, 1A compared to the original VAX-11/780 at 240V 3-phase, 32A. Let 
alone the physical dimensions...

/Wilm

It looks like a good replacement for my VAXstation 3100, but not such a great 
one for the VAXstation 4000/60.  OTOH, the reduced power, size, and noise make 
this an attractive idea.  I’ve been meaning to try the original for emulating a 
PDP-10 and PDP-11 for a couple years, just never have the spare time.

Any issues with LAT?  With something like this, I’d just as soon use my 
DECserver 90 TL and a VT420. :-)  I’ve never actually gotten VAX/VMS fully 
running on SIMH.  I think I tried it out as far as starting an install on my 
Mac a few years ago.

Zane



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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: 8-bit pseudocolor on modern Windows PC?

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Pathworks 32 7.4 was the last published version and is certified for WinXP; the 
Pathworks 7.2 eXcursion X server never ran quite right on WinXP due to the 
screen driver changes.
Pathworks 32 7.4 also ran well on Win7 at least in basic mode - it was a bit 
weird with Aero themes or transparency enabled - I think I may have had to 
tweak the application video compatibility.
I haven't tried Pathworks 32 7.4  on Win10. 

I left the unsupported Pathworks 32 environments for the supported Attachmate 
terminal emulator and Xwindow server.

FWIW, I seem to remember someone saying that PuTTY can do X pretty well with 
the free XMing X Server.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Robert Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2016 1:55 PM
To: 'Paul Hardy 2'; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] 8-bit pseudocolor on modern Windows PC?

It is part of the OpenVMS distribution at least through VAX and AXP V7.3.  It 
should be part of the hobbyist program.

It is a retired and unsupported product.  HP never made any changes to it at 
least through V7.2.  I seem to remember that V7.3 was under development but 
never completed.

Sincerely,
Robert F. Thomas

 44 Industrial Way 
Norwood, MA USA 02062
N  Office Phone - (781) 329-9200
O mail to: r...@asthomas.com
 


-Original Message-
From: Paul Hardy 2 [mailto:paulhar...@btinternet.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2016 12:12 PM
To: 'Robert Thomas' ; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: RE: [Simh] 8-bit pseudocolor on modern Windows PC?

>> Robert Thomas said
>> Have you investigated using eXcursion?  It was provided with VMS/OpenVMS 
>> distributions on the Pathworks CD.
>> ...

Sounds interesting, but as a hobbyist, how can I get hold of the Pathworks CD, 
or a download of the eXcursion component from it?

Regards,

-- 
Paul  Hardy
Email:   paul at the paulhardy.net domain, web: www.paulhardy.net



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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: On {O,D}DDT

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

That was awesome, Tim. Thanks for the historical perspective on the removed 
pesticide disclaimer.  ;-)

And for certain systems, DDT was also the “DIBOL Debugging Tool”.

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Timothe Litt
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2016 2:27 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] On {O,D}DDT

On 21-Jan-16 11:53, Paul Koning wrote:




On Jan 21, 2016, at 10:58 AM, Ethan Dicks 
 wrote:



On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 8:37 PM, Johnny Billquist 
 wrote:

ODT actually stands for On-line Debugging Tool, not Online Debugging

Technique.



I recall Octal Debugging Technique.  Anyone else remember that definition?



Things get interesting...



The name ODT was derived from the TOPS-10 debugger DDT -- an obvious name in 
that era for something that gets rid of bugs, but officially it stood for 
"Dynamic Debugging Technique".



ODT was much simpler, not offering symbolic debugging for one thing.  So it got 
a different name, and since its I/O was pretty much just octal numbers, 
replacing "dynamic" by "octal" made sense.



Then again, the DOS V9 manual says it's "On-line debugging technique".  So do 
several RT11 manuals.  Hm.  Now I'm puzzled.  I clearly remember "octal" and 
don't remember ever seeing "on-line".  And sure enough, the header of the 
source code for RSTS "monitor ODT" (the kernel debugger) says "Octal debugging 
tool".



So it looks like DEC wasn't consistent.  On-line in some places, octal in 
others, and "technique" in the official documents I remember but "tool" at 
least internally (a more obvious word to use, certainly).



paul




Besides multiple technical writers, editors and product managers: there were 
multiple implementations - including some for non-DEC machines.  I had a small 
part in DDT-11, and also implemented an ODT-clone on 8 and 16-bit uPs.  ODT 
was, IIRC originally called Octal Debugging Technique, in a nod to DDT.
Actually, there are two DDT-11s; one that runs on the -11 (used in ANF-10 
network nodes), and one that lives on a -10 (or -20) and remotely debugs the 
-11, and/or the 11's crash dumps.  In fact, DDT-11 can be booted in exec mode 
on a KS10, and run PDP-11 diagnostics under simulation against real hardware.  
(Yes, I did that.)

Of course, DDT was also an octal debugger (unless you changed the input or 
output radix) - and more capabie as it could deal with symbol tables, paging, 
and so forth.  But ODT was only capable of debugging in octal.  (A consequence 
of the PDP-11's 4KW minimal and 28K maximum memory size.)  So that's what it 
was called.  Someone in marketing decided that octal was too geeky, and that 
'on-line' would sell better.

Engineers being what we are (many students of human, as well as computer 
languages), pointed out that "technique" is how one uses a tool.  But it's a 
stretch to call a tool a technique, at least in ordinary usage.  So 'tool' was 
floated, but by that time ran against the couple of decades of established 
culture.  (A very long time in technology-years.)

An early DDT manual (~ 1970, but I've lost the colophon page) explains the DDT 
situation thusly:
INTRODUCTION
DDT-10 (for Dynamic Debugging Technique) *  long page

In very small print, smaller than I can reproduce here:
*Historical footnote: DDT was developed at MIT for the PDP-1 computer in 1961.  
At that time DDT stood for "DEC Debugging Tape".  Since then, the idea of an 
on-line debugging program has propagated thoroughout the computer industry.  
DDT programs are now available for all DEC computers.  Since media other than 
tape are now frequently used, the more descriptive name "Dynamic Debugging 
Technique" has been adopted, retaining the DDT acronym.  Confusion between 
DDT-10 and another well-known pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane 
(C14H9Cl5) should be minimal since each attacks a different, and apparently 
mutually exclusie, class of bugs.

Oddly enough, this paragraph subsequently caught the attention of folks who had 
power, but not much humor.  So it was removed.  But it stuck with me, and is 
one of the few chemical formulae that I always have instantly to hand.

We also had *DDT products for various high-level languages, among them ALGDDT 
(Algol), PASDDT (Pascal), COBDDT (COBOL), FORDDT (FORTRAN) and SIMDDT (SIMULA). 
 But none retained the marvelously efficient, if not obvious at first glance, 
command syntax.  They all used DCL-like syntax, though they were long before 
that standardization effort: "examine", "break", etc.  I still think '/' is the 
obvious way to examine a variable... and $B to set a breakpoint.  My  fingers 
still rebel at verbose commands and carriage-returns when debugging on 'modern' 
machinery.

The other somewhat amusing thing is that DDT's adoption of the  (echoed as 
'$') key required a lot of explanation in the manuals, as various models of 

Re: [Simh] The minutiae of hardware/software interactions affecting SIMH

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Great questions. You have spotted the main differences between community code 
projects and managed/professional code projects.

Ideally, the requirements, primary sources, and any deviant behavior from the 
primary sources should be documented in the source code base. However, this 
depends upon the diligence and understanding of the coders in an open source 
community model. The best answer is "coders try to document what seems 
important at the time, unless it appears obvious [to them]".

However, one of the main problems with "completing" the source documentation in 
this way is that most of the deviant behaviors are found experimentally. It is 
then difficult for the code maintainer to document the deviant (undocumented)  
behavior, only that the patch  "works". And thus "lore" is born.

We could potentially solve some of the source code quality with a source code 
template, but practically, coders copy an existing source code file that is 
similar and modify it. So we'd really need to upgrade the existing modules to 
the "source code standard" before being able to ensure that future coders do it 
the right way. Or else have the project introduce the additional management 
overhead of explicitly defined coding standards, checklists, and gatekeeper 
code reviews. :-) Both are a lot of work, so in community projects source code 
improvement tends to happen with slow code evolution. Volunteers for source 
code improvement are always welcome.

Hardware/software interactions are never ending issues in hardware simulation, 
primary sources, and OS use of the real and simulated hardware. Bob Supnik has 
an excellent series of papers discussing many of these discovered 
hardware/software interaction issues on the SIMH papers page.
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/papers.html

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Armistead, 
Jason BIS
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2016 10:13 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] The minutiae of hardware/software interactions affecting 
SIMH

On the topic of Configuring DMC11 Devices, while discussing wait delays Mark 
Pizzolato recently wrote:

> Sounds reasonable.  I've got to see if I can find the reason the delay was 
> initially added and make sure a change like this is compatible.

What is the "SIMH strategy" for documenting such requirements ? i.e. where does 
this behavior get called out in the source code (or elsewhere) in a way that 
will allow future generations of SIMH users and maintainers to understand "why 
things are the way they are" or "why things need to be the way they are" ?

There is one reference to the DDCMP protocol manual in the source of 
pdp11_dmc.c, but that's about it.  Should references to other documents be 
added ?

Reconstructing and understanding history is easy when people familiar with the 
subject matter (especially those who lived it, in this case, at DEC) are still 
around to ask, but gets progressively harder as years go by without leaving a 
good trail of "breadcrumbs" for others to follow.

PS: I am constantly amazed at the sheer volume of knowledge and resourcefulness 
that contributors to this list have, which is one of the reasons I'd love to 
see as much of it preserved directly in the SIMH code base !!!


Jason

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Re: [Simh] MicroVax 3900 Networking on a Macbook Air

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

As Johnny pointed out, Wireless Ethernet isn't Ethernet.  Many "Ethernet" 
principles are discarded or bent to maximize bandwidth over the small wireless 
spectrum.

To conserve wireless bandwidth, most Wireless routers will only forward 
wireless IP packets that contain the exact source/destination MAC address of 
the wireless device that has "registered" with the wireless router.

So if your wireless adapter MAC address is 00:01:02:03:04:05, that's the only 
address that will be sent over the wireless spectrum.
The virtual VAX by default is 08:00:2b:aa:bb:cc - since it isn't the same as 
the registered MAC address, the packets usually are ignored and dropped.

At the cost of some poor network performance, you can try setting the VAX's MAC 
address to be the same as the MAC address of the hardware wireless device (set 
xq mac=00:01:02:03:04:05).
Assuming that PCAP is allowing promiscuous mode and passing through all 
packets, they should be transported over the wireless link.
The different IP addresses of the host system and the VAX TCPIP should allow 
the two systems to sort out who gets which IP packet.

This technique will NOT work with DECNET IV, which has a different packet type 
- most wireless routers are optimized to only pass IP traffic - DECNET V 
without compatibility mode works fine. If you manage to find a wireless router 
and device combination  which passes all packet types, you can reverse the MAC 
alignment scenario for DECNET and set the MAC of the host device to be the 
target DECNET address (aa:00:04:xx:yy:zz) of the VAX, and then manually 
start/stop DECNET on the VAX to deal with the DECNET panic when it sees a 
duplicate DECNET address on the wire. If you are really careful, it is possible 
to find wireless routers and devices which will pass all packet types and MAC 
addresses in "bridge" mode, so you don't have to use the duplicate MAC trick - 
but they are few and far between, and their performance is generally not as 
good.

In summary: If you want to use SIMH networking, use a hard wire - wireless is a 
pain.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Mark Pizzolato 
- Info Comm
Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2015 5:29 AM
To: Zachary Kline; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] MicroVax 3900 Networking on a Macbook Air

On Friday, October 2, 2015 at 5:21 PM, Zachary Kline wrote:
> I was wondering if anybody could give me some tips on networking with 
> my MacBook air. I used to run a virtual VMS system a few years back, 
> but that was on Windows and/or Linux, with access to “real,” ethernet devices.
> I’ve since switched to the wifi-only Macbook Air, and it isn’t 
> cooperating very well. My copy of TCPIP services fails to get a DHCP lease.
> I know that bridging with wifi adaptors is problematic, but I built 
> with the OS X native LibPcap support, and I thought it might help.
> 
> Here is my simh version info
> 
>   Simulator Framework Capabilities:
>   64b data
>   64b addresses
>   Ethernet Packet transport:PCAP:UDP
>   Idle/Throttling support is available
>   Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) support
>   Asynchronous I/O support
>   FrontPanel API Version 1
>   Host Platform:
>   Compiler: GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 7.0.0 (clang-
> 700.0.72)
>   Simulator Compiled: Sep 30 2015 at 21:53:11
>   Memory Access: Little Endian
>   Memory Pointer Size: 64 bits
>   Large File (>2GB) support
>   SDL Video support: No Video Support
>   RegEx support for EXPECT commands
>   OS clock tick size (time taken by msleep(1)): 2ms
>   OS: Darwin Zacharys-MacBook-Air.local 15.0.0 Darwin Kernel 
> Version 
> 15.0.0: Tue Sep 22 20:33:10 PDT 2015; root:xnu-
> 3247.10.11.1.1~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
> 
> git commit id: c3a879da
> 
> Show xq eth:
> 
> ETH devices:
>  eth0 en0  (No description available)
>  eth1 awdl0(No description available)
>  eth2 bridge0  (No description available)
>  eth3 en1  (No description available)
>  eth4 udp:sourceport:remotehost:remoteport (Integrated UDP bridge
> support)
> 
> en0 is the wifi adaptor I’m interested in, and bridge0 is an OS 
> X-provided THunderbolt Bridge, which doesn’t seem particularly useful for my 
> purposes.

Johnny's comments and suggestions are right on.  

One way to help get you there might be to use VDE networking. Some folks have 
used vde for various purposes.  If someone who uses VDE networking provides 
some guidance we can add more vde specific information to 0readme_ethernet.txt.

- Mark
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: TU58 device for PDP-11s

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

What PDP-11 used TU58’s, and what controller did the drive connect to?

Dave

From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Bill Cunningham
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2015 1:14 PM
To: Hans-Ulrich Hölscher; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] TU58 device for PDP-11s


- Original Message -
From: Hans-Ulrich Hölschermailto:hoelscher-kirchb...@freenet.de
To: simh@trailing-edge.commailto:simh@trailing-edge.com
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2015 12:56 PM
Subject: [Simh] TU58 device for PDP-11s


Am I right that there is currently no TU58 device available for the PDP-11 
series of computers?



If so, would someone be so kind as to implement it?



Thanks in advance to all programmers who ponder on evetually doing it!



Regards,



Ulli



I don't know about simh, but there are several simulators out there. There is 
something for linux too. But it sounds like a worthy cause.

Bill

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Re: [Simh] Reduce CPU usage

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

And what version of VMS are you running? Different versions of VMS have 
different idle characteristics..

Dave

From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 8:26 AM
To: Priya Chincholikar; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] Reduce CPU usage

Hi Priya,

This is one of those it works for me cases.  Idling works fine for a VMS 
guest on my fc18 x86 test system.

What is the output of SHOW VERSION done at the sim prompt?
What does your configuration file look like?


-  Mark

From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.commailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com 
[mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Priya Chincholikar
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 3:40 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.commailto:simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: [Simh] Reduce CPU usage

Hi,

The cpu usage while running the emulator is shown as 97% to 99%. Is there a way 
to reduce this?
And I tried setting the cpu idle but no use. CPU utilization is still high.

sim show cpu
CPU idle disabled, model=VAXServer 3900 (KA655), NOAUTOBOOT
64MB, HALT to console
sim SET CPU IDLE=VMS
sim show cpu
CPU idle=VMS, idle enabled, model=VAXServer 3900 (KA655), NOAUTOBOOT
64MB, HALT to console

Host OS used is Linux. fc18.

Thanks,
Priya


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Re: [Simh] EXT : Network Problem

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Rerun @SYS$MANAGER:TCPIP$CONFIG to fix your TCPIP hardware interface 
definitions.
The error is telling you that it can't find the VAX hardware device (no such 
device SE0) to attach (on the 4th line).

The MicroVAX 3900 in the SIMH VAX does not have an SE0 interface, it has a QNA 
interface.
I think SE0 was the built-in MicroVAX/VAXstation 3100 interface.
Was this system disk originally used by a different VAX emulator (like 
Charon/SRI) or a different model of real VAX?

Dave

From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Priya Chincholikar
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2013 7:53 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Network Problem



Hi,

I am trying boot a vax disk on SIMH and it keeps getting hung while starting 
network like TCP/IP.
I have the required lipcap packages. My host is RedHat VM. The simulator was 
built with network support.


***INTERnet Started**

%UCX-I-DEFINTE, Defining interfaces
%UCX-E-INVINTER, Error defining interface: SE0
-UCX-I-ACPQIO, Failure on Internet ACP QIO
-SYSTEM-W-NOSUCHDEV, no such device available
-SYSTEM-W-NOSUCHDEV, no such device available
%UCX-E-INVINTERNAM, Invalid interface name
-UCX-I-DRIVERQIO, Failure on Internet driver QIO
-UCX-E-INVNETMASK, Invalid network mask
%UCX-E-DELINTER, Error deleting interface: SE0
-UCX-I-ACPQIO, Failure on Internet ACP QIO  gets hung here
usr/local/vax/bin/vax.ini-47 boot cpuname

Simulation stopped, PC: 8358DF47 (BBC #3,26C(R3),8358DF9B)
sim

This is the build:

root@dt558 simh-master]# make vax
lib paths are: /lib/ /usr/lib/ /usr/lib/qt-3.3/lib/ /usr/lib/sse2/
using libm: /usr/lib//libm.so
using librt: /usr/lib//librt.so
using libpthread: /usr/lib//libpthread.so /usr/include/pthread.h
using libdl: /usr/lib//libdl.so /usr/include/dlfcn.h
using libpcap: /usr/local/lib/libpcap.a /usr/local/include/pcap.h
*** Warning ***
*** Warning *** vax Simulator being built with networking support using
*** Warning *** libpcap components from www.tcpdump.orghttp://www.tcpdump.org.
*** Warning *** Some users have had problems using the 
www.tcpdump.orghttp://www.tcpdump.org libpcap
*** Warning *** components for simh networking.  For best results, with
*** Warning *** simh networking, it is recommended that you install the
*** Warning *** libpcap-dev package from your Linux distribution
*** Warning ***
*** Warning *** Building with the components manually installed from 
www.tcpdump.orghttp://www.tcpdump.org
*** Warning *** is officially deprecated.  Attempting to do so is unsupported.
*** Warning ***
*** Warning ***
*** Warning *** vax Simulator are being built with
*** Warning *** minimal libpcap networking support
*** Warning ***
*** Warning *** Simulators on your Linux platform can also be built with
*** Warning *** extended Ethernet networking support by using VDE Ethernet.
*** Warning ***
*** Warning *** To build simulator(s) with extended networking support you
*** Warning *** should read 0readme_ethernet.txt and follow the instructions
*** Warning *** regarding the needed libvdeplug components for your Linux
*** Warning *** platform
*** Warning ***
***
*** vax Simulator being built with:
*** - compiler optimizations and no debugging support. GCC Version: 4.1.2.
*** - networking support using libpcap components from 
www.tcpdump.orghttp://www.tcpdump.org.
*** - Local LAN packet transports: PCAP TAP
***
*** git commit id is 86e342501deaec3df79b31c13dd6d622938176e2.
***
mkdir -p BIN
gcc -std=c99 -U__STRICT_ANSI__  -O2 -finline-functions -fgcse-after-reload 
-fno-unsafe-loop-optimizations 
-DSIM_GIT_COMMIT_ID=86e342501deaec3df79b31c13dd6d622938176e2 
-DSIM_COMPILER=GCC Version: 4.1.2 -I . -D_GNU_SOURCE -DUSE_READER_THREAD 
-DSIM_ASYNCH_IO  -DHAVE_DLOPEN=so -DHAVE_GLOB  sim_BuildROMs.c -o BIN/BuildROMs
BIN/BuildROMs
rm -f BIN/BuildROMs
mkdir -p BIN
gcc -std=c99 -U__STRICT_ANSI__  -O2 -finline-functions -fgcse-after-reload 
-fno-unsafe-loop-optimizations 
-DSIM_GIT_COMMIT_ID=86e342501deaec3df79b31c13dd6d622938176e2 
-DSIM_COMPILER=GCC Version: 4.1.2 -I . -D_GNU_SOURCE -DUSE_READER_THREAD 
-DSIM_ASYNCH_IO  -DHAVE_DLOPEN=so -DHAVE_GLOB  VAX/vax_cpu.c VAX/vax_cpu1.c 
VAX/vax_fpa.c VAX/vax_io.c VAX/vax_cis.c VAX/vax_octa.c  VAX/vax_cmode.c 
VAX/vax_mmu.c VAX/vax_stddev.c VAX/vax_sysdev.c VAX/vax_sys.c  VAX/vax_syscm.c 
VAX/vax_syslist.c PDP11/pdp11_rl.c PDP11/pdp11_rq.c PDP11/pdp11_ts.c 
PDP11/pdp11_dz.c PDP11/pdp11_lp.c PDP11/pdp11_tq.c PDP11/pdp11_xq.c 
PDP11/pdp11_vh.c PDP11/pdp11_cr.c PDP11/pdp11_io_lib.c scp.c sim_console.c 
sim_fio.c sim_timer.c sim_sock.c sim_tmxr.c sim_ether.c sim_tape.c sim_disk.c 
sim_serial.c sim_video.c -DVM_VAX -DUSE_INT64 -DUSE_ADDR64 -I VAX -I PDP11 
-DUSE_NETWORK -DHAVE_PCAP_NETWORK -isystem -I/usr/local/include/ 
/usr/local/lib/libpcap.a -DHAVE_TAP_NETWORK -o BIN/microvax3900 -lm -lrt 
-lpthread -ldl
cp BIN/microvax3900 BIN/vax


Show version and show ethernet :

KA655-B V5.3, VMB 2.7
Performing normal system tests.

Re: [Simh] EXT : [simh] testing simulated CPUs

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

An interesting read. I might delve into this further and read the articles 
cited by this article.

I'm somewhat disappointed that the authors only discussed user-mode defect 
identification, and failed to discuss the behavioral differences by the various 
physical implementations of the CPU architectures themselves. However the 
defect identification techniques described seem reasonable.

They assume a single de facto behavioral standard by the physical CPU. 
However, as we all remember from the notorious Pentium bug, different physical 
CPUs within the same class (IA32, VAX, etc..) can and do behave differently.

If you read Bob Supnik's articles about some of Digital's CPUs deviating from 
the expected behavioral standard, you'll get a better idea of the how fuzzy 
this behavior matching and the original CPU specifications really are.

Perfect emulation probably won't happen until a CPU specification is designed 
with the express purpose of perfect emulation in mind.

Dave Hittner

-Original Message-
From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Nelson H. F. Beebe
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 2:27 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Cc: be...@math.utah.edu
Subject: EXT :[Simh] [simh] testing simulated CPUs

This new journal article may be of interest to some simh-list readers:

@String{j-TOSEM = ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and
   Methodology}

@Article{Martignoni:2013:MTC,
  author =   Lorenzo Martignoni and Roberto Paleari and Alessandro
 Reina and Giampaolo Fresi Roglia and Danilo Bruschi,
  title =A methodology for testing {CPU} emulators,
  journal =  j-TOSEM,
  volume =   22,
  number =   4,
  pages =29:1--29:??,
  month =oct,
  year = 2013,
  CODEN =ATSMER,
  DOI =  http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2522920.2522922;,
  ISSN = 1049-331X (print), 1557-7392 (electronic),
  ISSN-L =   1049-331X,
  bibdate =  Wed Oct 30 12:18:03 MDT 2013,
  bibsource =http://www.acm.org/pubs/contents/journals/tosem/;
 http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/tosem.bib;,
  abstract = A CPU emulator is a software system that simulates a
 hardware CPU. Emulators are widely used by computer
 scientists for various kind of activities (e.g.,
 debugging, profiling, and malware analysis). Although
 no theoretical limitation prevents developing an
 emulator that faithfully emulates a physical CPU,
 writing a fully featured emulator is a very challenging
 and error prone task. Modern CISC architectures have a
 very rich instruction set, some instructions lack
 proper specifications, and others may have undefined
 effects in corner cases. This article presents a
 testing methodology specific for CPU emulators, based
 on fuzzing. The emulator is ``stressed'' with specially
 crafted test cases, to verify whether the CPU is
 properly emulated or not. Improper behaviors of the
 emulator are detected by running the same test case
 concurrently on the emulated and on the physical CPUs
 and by comparing the state of the two after the
 execution. Differences in the final state testify
 defects in the code of the emulator. We implemented
 this methodology in a prototype (named as EmuFuzzer),
 analyzed five state-of-the-art IA-32 emulators (QEMU,
 Valgrind, Pin, BOCHS, and JPC), and found several
 defects in each of them, some of which can prevent
 proper execution of programs.,
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
  articleno =29,
  fjournal = ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and
 Methodology,
}

---
- Nelson H. F. BeebeTel: +1 801 581 5254  -
- University of UtahFAX: +1 801 581 4148  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCBInternet e-mail: be...@math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233   be...@acm.org  be...@computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USAURL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
---
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Re: [Simh] EXT : Questions regarding future simulator development

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

-Original Message-
From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Timothe Litt
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 8:13 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] EXT : Questions regarding future simulator development


I was going to mention the security issues with using telnet for anything - 
but I've caused enough trouble.

So was I, but Bob Supnik has already explained why we don't provide SSH 
connections in the code base (export restrictions, two competing SSH standards, 
etc..).
The official SIMH solution to the security issue is tunnel your telnet - 
maybe we can revisit this later.

Dave
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: VMS on SIMH/VAX on FreeBSD 9.0 (Lennert Van Alboom)

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Mark, can we FAQ this idling topic?

Idling issues seem to come up fairly frequently in the mailing list.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Lennert Van Alboom
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 1:44 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] VMS on SIMH/VAX on FreeBSD 9.0 (Lennert Van Alboom)

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 12:33:11PM -0400, Bob Supnik wrote:
In sim_timer.c, locate this routine (there are several versions, look 
for the last one, which is for UNIX systems):

uint32 sim_os_ms_sleep_init (void)
{
uint32 i, t1, t2, tot, tim;

for (i = 0, tot = 0; i  sleep1Samples; i++) {
t1 = sim_os_msec ();
sim_os_ms_sleep (1);
t2 = sim_os_msec ();
tot += (t2 - t1);
}
tim = (tot + (sleep1Samples - 1)) / sleep1Samples;
if (tim  SIM_IDLE_MAX)
tim = 0;
return tim;
}

If you are running with gdb, place a breakpoint on the line

if (tim  SIM_IDLE_MAX)

and see what the value of 'tim' is. Otherwise, insert the following 
before the if statement:

printf (Calculated minimum sleep time = %d\r\n, tim);

and see what gets printed out.

We seem to have a winner:
  
 Calculated minimum sleep time = 20


After a tip from zoran at #vms, I checked the FreeBSD host clock settings:

 [alver@bsd ~]$ sysctl kern.clockrate
 kern.clockrate: { hz = 100, tick = 1, profhz = 8128, stathz = 127 }


This was a tad too slow - 100 ticks per second. I changed it to 1000 ticks per
second in /boot/loader.conf:

 kern.hz=1000


After rebooting, the clockrate was adjusted to this:

 [alver@bsd ~]$ sysctl kern.clockrate
 kern.clockrate: { hz = 1000, tick = 1000, profhz = 8128, stathz = 127 }


And lo, behold: 

 Calculated minimum sleep time = 2

 VAX simulator V3.9-0
 sim SHOW CPU
 CPU, idle=VMS, idle enabled, stability wait = 20s, 64MB, HALT to console


So it's working as expected now.


Thanks everyone for the assistance! Now back to clustering VAXen over an
openvpn L2 link... :-)


Lennert

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Re: [Simh] EXT : LK461 keyboard

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Have a look at this article under Keyboard Mapping.
http://support.hoffmanlabs.com/node/134

Dave

From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Peter Allan
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 3:28 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] LK461 keyboard

I am trying to set up a system that gives me the VAXstation experience using 
simh on a computer running Linux. Everything works fine except the keyboard, 
which is an LK461 - essential to have the proper keypad and function keys!

What I have is:
- A computer with an LK461 keyboard connected via a PS/2 style connector, Dell 
flat screen monitor and a three button Compaq/Logitech mouse.
- I am running CentOS 5.7 (a free rebuilt version of RedHat 5).

I am using simh 3.8 to emulate a microVAX 3900 running VMS 7.3 and 5.5-2.

I boot Linux in console mode, start up simh and boot VMS, then connect to the 
emulated microVAX with the command

   X -query name_of_emulated_computer -from name_of_real_computer

This starts X and brings up an xdmcp login screen which lets me log into the 
emulated microVAX and have the full DECwindows experience - session manager, 
DECterm and anything else I care to start up.

The only problem is that the keypad and function keys on the LK461 keyboard do 
not work. Does anyone know how to make them work just like a proper VAXstation 
running VMS?

I have been reading around the Linux setxkbmap command and associated fiiles, 
but it looks like a lot of work to set things up from scratch. I know about the 
existence of the digital_vndr/lk files, but my attempt to use these have only 
made the keyboard unusable. No doubt this is me getting things wrong, but I am 
rather stuck at present. I have googled things like lk461 linux vms which 
gives some interesting results, but nothing that has answered my question of 
how to make the LK461 keyboard work properly with VMS when connected via X. I 
have also seen statements along the lines of recent versions of Fedora will 
recognise an LK keyboard. However, I have tried them and, with my setup at 
least, they don't.

Has anyone else done this or feels they can point me in the right direction?

All help gratefully received.

Peter Allan
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: rasberry pi

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

How much of the 256MB memory was still available to give to the VAX?

Dave

-Original Message-
From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Jan-Benedict Glaw
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 4:19 PM
To: Villy Madsen
Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] rasberry pi

On Wed, 2012-03-07 17:41:21 +0100, Jan-Benedict Glaw jbg...@lug-owl.de wrote:
 On Tue, 2012-03-06 19:21:13 -0700, Villy Madsen villy.mad...@shaw.ca wrote:
  Anyone given any thoughts to migrating Sim-H to the raspberry pi 
 
 The Raspberry is just an ARM-based system, isn't it? If anybody is 
 interested, I'd provide access to a PogoPlug running Arch Linux, or 
 even to two of them.

At least, SIMH compiles without any problem and the VAX emulator starts. 
However, I don't currently have set-up enough to test it for real.

MfG, JBG

-- 
  Jan-Benedict Glaw  jbg...@lug-owl.de  +49-172-7608481
Signature of:  The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty 
the second  : decreases.  (Thomas Jefferson)
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: PDP-11 oddity

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

There was no mention in the 3.8-2 RC1 release notes of a 6800 emulator.
However, Bob hasn't released the final 3.8-2 kit yet.

1.3 3.8-2

1.3.1 1401

- Added no rewind option to magtape boot.

1.3.2 PDP-11

- Added RD32 support to RQ
- Added debug support to RL

1.3.3 PDP-8

- Added FPP support (many thanks to Rick Murphy for debugging the code)

Dave

-Original Message-
From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Bill Beech (NJ7P)
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 4:05 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :Re: [Simh] PDP-11 oddity

Ok.  How do I get 3.8-2?  Web site still holds only 3.8-1.  I want to 
see if my 6800 emulator made it in.

Thanks!

Bill

On 06/15/2011 01:10 PM, Bob Supnik wrote:
 It's a bug, and it's fixed in 3.8-2:

05-Jan-11RMS Fixed bug in deposit stride for numeric input 
 (John Dundas)

 If you want to edit the code, the fix is in dep_addr:

 GET_RADIX (rdx, dptr-dradix);
 if ((reason = parse_sym (cptr, addr, uptr, sim_eval, sim_switches))  
 0) {
 sim_eval[0] = get_uint (cptr, rdx, mask, reason);
 if (reason != SCPE_OK)
 return reason;
 reason = dfltinc;  add this line 
 }
 count = (1 - reason + (dptr-aincr - 1)) / dptr-aincr;

 --
 Message: 1
 Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:47:37 -0500
 From: Jon Elsonel...@pico-systems.com
 To: simh@trailing-edge.com
 Subject: [Simh] pdp-11 id command quirk
 Message-ID:4df8d419.7060...@pico-systems.com
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

 Hello,

 I want to use the pdp-11 sim of simh to teach my kids some
 machine-language programming.
 I have it compiled and running on a Linux system.  When using
 interactive deposit
 in the PDP-11 simulator, it increments by single byte addresses, so you
 get :

 PDP-11 simulator V3.8-1
 sim  id 1000-1004
 1000:   1234
 1001:   2345
 1002:   3456
 1003:   4567
 1004:   5670
 sim  e 1000-1004
 1000:   002345
 1002:   004567
 1004:   005670
 so, you see that only every other deposit address actually wrote to
 memory, and the examine
 command properly increments by words. If there is a by-word switch to
 the id command, I couldn't
 figure it out from the source or help text. (I do see that id -c writes
 2 ASCII characters to even addresses,
 and writing assembler mnemonics also works, but numeric values increment
 by one.)

 I tried the same thing on the vax780 sim, and it works fine, depositing
 32-bit values on longword
 addresses, and then examining them just fine.

 If there is an option switch that makes it work correctly, I was unable
 to find that by inspecting the source
 or the documentation, or searching the simh archives.

 Thanks,

 Jon


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Re: [Simh] EXT : Unable to connect to ethernet

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

If the standard XQ MAC of 08-00-2b-aa-bb-cc is used, and the virtual NIC is 
attached to a wireless controller, then any packets which are not addressed 
to/from your registered PC's wireless MAC address may be legally dropped out 
by the wireless router to conserve bandwidth.

The only way to debug a wireless router connection to run WireShark on the host 
PC and watch the packet traffic, while also running WireShark on a wired PC on 
the network to see if you see all the packets traversing the wireless link 
correctly. It almost never does what you think it will, because wireless 
routers are allowed to drop non-essential packets to conserve bandwidth, and 
non-TCP protocols tend to get axed, because home routers usually don't need to 
deal with non-TCP packets.

You can 'fake' the simulated NIC's MAC to be the same MAC as the PC's wireless 
NIC MAC to fool the wireless packet dropping, but this will only work if you 
are not running decnet phase IV or decnet phase V in compatibility mode, since 
decnet phase IV forcibly changes the hardware MAC to a decnet-encoded value. 
This technique will always work if you're only running TCP/IP on the simulated 
system, since the simulated NIC will see all the (matching MAC) IP packets, and 
throw out the incorrect IP-addressed packets. If you're running decnet phase V 
not in compatibility mode, this technique will still work, but decnet phase V 
will eject a lot of unknown protocol messages to the console - just set term 
opa0: /nobro/perm to shut it up, or use NCL to disable the warnings.

Some router/wireless card combinations will work flawlessly to route 
non-registered MAC addresses, most won't.

Wireless Ethernet looks like Ethernet .. but it isn't Ethernet.

Dave

-Original Message-
From: Robert F. Thomas [mailto:r...@asthomas.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 8:53 AM
To: Hittner, David T (IS); simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: RE: EXT :[Simh] Unable to connect to ethernet

I thought that I had.  I did make many attempts.  The host system adapter's
MAC address was specified as the XQ0 MAC address, etc.

Sincerely,
Robert F. Thomas

 355 Providence Highway 
Westwood, MA USA 02090
(  Office Phone - (781) 329-9200
* mail to: r...@asthomas.com
 
-Original Message-
From: Hittner, David T (IS) [mailto:david.hitt...@ngc.com] 
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 3:40 PM
To: Robert F. Thomas; simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: RE: EXT :[Simh] Unable to connect to ethernet

You need to *carefully* read the SIMH FAQ section regarding wireless
Ethernet.

SIMH wireless networking is a lot harder to configure correctly than wired
Ethernet because it just looks like Ethernet, and because many wireless
routers suppress unregistered simulated MAC addresses to control
bandwidth.

Dave Hittner

-Original Message-
From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com]
On Behalf Of Robert F. Thomas
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 3:04 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Unable to connect to ethernet

I omitted vax.inc:

set rq0 ra90
set rq1 cdrom
att rq0 vms.dsk
att rq1 vax071.iso
att xq0 eth1
set cpu 128M

Sincerely,
Robert F. Thomas

 355 Providence Highway 
Westwood, MA USA 02090
(  Office Phone - (781) 329-9200
* mail to: r...@asthomas.com
 


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Re: [Simh] EXT : Unable to connect to ethernet

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

You need to *carefully* read the SIMH FAQ section regarding wireless Ethernet.

SIMH wireless networking is a lot harder to configure correctly than wired 
Ethernet because it just looks like Ethernet, and because many wireless 
routers suppress unregistered simulated MAC addresses to control bandwidth.

Dave Hittner

-Original Message-
From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of Robert F. Thomas
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 3:04 PM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Unable to connect to ethernet

I omitted vax.inc:

set rq0 ra90
set rq1 cdrom
att rq0 vms.dsk
att rq1 vax071.iso
att xq0 eth1
set cpu 128M

Sincerely,
Robert F. Thomas

 355 Providence Highway 
Westwood, MA USA 02090
(  Office Phone - (781) 329-9200
* mail to: r...@asthomas.com
 


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[Simh] Request for PDP-10 help for DEUNA validation

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

I'd like to finally validate the functionality of the DEUNA Ethernet controller 
with the PDP-10.
It's been rumored to work, but I don't have PDP-10 experience to validate it by 
myself.

Could someone in the SIMH community who is familiar with the PDP-10 environment 
provide me with:
  1) Locations of an OS kit and a DECNET kit with DEUNA support?
  2) Instructions for configuring SIMH PDP10 with a DEUNA or a configuration 
file?
  3) Instructions for loading the OS and DECNET kits?
  4) Basic instructions for running the OS, starting DECNET, and command 
prompts to transfer files over to another DECNET node?

Thanks!
Dave Hittner
SIMH Ethernet developer (one of them :-)

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Re: [Simh] EXTERNAL: Question about changing the simulator from a VAXserver 3900 to a MicroVAX 3900

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

You can use a hex editor to change byte 4 in ka655x.bin from 2 to 1.

 

Dave

 

From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On 
Behalf Of norman lastovica
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 5:37 AM
To: simh@trailing-edge.com
Subject: EXTERNAL:[Simh] Question about changing the simulator from a VAXserver 
3900 to a MicroVAX 3900

 

Within http://simh.trailing-edge.com/pdf/simh_faq.pdf 
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/pdf/simh_faq.pdf  ( SIMH FAQ 07-Sep-2005) there 
is an example of how to change the firmware to indicate that the emulated 
system is a microvax (vs a vaxserver) as follows:


4.6 How do I change the simulator from a VAXserver 3900 to a MicroVAX 3900? 


The system type is controlled by a magic byte in the CPU's boot ROM. By 
default, the system type is a VAXserver 3900. To change the type to a MicroVAX 
3900, patch the boot ROM as follows: 

sim set ptr ena 

sim att ptr ka655x.bin 

sim ie ptr 4 

4: 2 1 

sim det ptr 

and reboot the simulated VAX.

 

With 3.8-1 this sequence doesn’t work.  Is there a new way of doing this?

 

Thanks!

norm

 

-- 
Oracle http://www.oracle.com/ 
Norman Lastovica | Senior Managing Engineer
Phone: +17193396749 tel:+17193396749  
Oracle Development
9500 County Road 175 | Salida, Colorado 81201 

Green Oracle http://www.oracle.com/commitment 

Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that help protect the 
environment

 

 

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Re: [Simh] Questions on SIMH VAX

[Hittner, David T (IS)]

Be careful if you are using the wireless NIC of the netbook. Read the
SIMH FAQ about wireless Ethernet, particularly the info about Decnet
Phase IV compatibility, and be prepared to adjust cluster timeouts as
required; significant delays can occur during wireless disruptions.

As to VUPs, the netbook can't be worse than a VAX-780 :-)

Dave

 -Original Message-
 From: simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-
 edge.com] On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy
 Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 4:56 PM
 To: Marc Chametzky
 Cc: simh@trailing-edge.com
 Subject: Re: [Simh] Questions on SIMH VAX
 
 
 
 On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, Marc Chametzky wrote:
 
  I can give some input from my experience on a few of these things...
 
 Thank you, it tends to indicate what I am considering is doable.
 
  Does anyone happen to know what kind of performance this would
give?
  How many VUPS would such a setup offer?
 
  I don't know how it would perform on your system as I'm not familiar
 with the
  performance characteristics of the Atom processor. On my SIMH setup,
 which is
  a virtualized Linux system running on an ESXi host using an AMD
 Phenom II X3
  710 processor (limited to 2 GHz on a single processor), I get 13
VUPs
 (using
  SRI's PT_VAX.EXE).
 
 I've no idea what that CPU is, as I'm not familiar with AMD products,
 but a
 quick google would seem to indicate that's more than 3x the CPU power.
 Of
 course the Atom isn't designed for this sort of workload.  Even if it
 isn't
 practical to run WASD, I could still do pretty much everything else on
 SIMH.
 
  I will note that I got better idle handling once I started running
 DECnet. I
  think that SIMH dealt better when there was some occasional activity
 (such as
  handling network packets) rather than a truly idle system.
 
 It would definitely be running DECnet Phase IV, as I'd want to be able
 to
 talk to my PDP-11's, and have it on HECnet.
 
  I assume that Volume Shadowing is supported, so that I can place
 disk
  images
  on seperate physical hard drives and turn on shadowing?
 
  That should work just fine. There might be an issue with SIMH
working
  properly if one of its virtual drive volumes becoming unavailable,
 though, so
  an advantage of volume shadowing (system reliability) probably goes
 away.
 
 My thought was to have redundancy should I loose a physical HD.  Which
 is
 why I use Volume Shadowing on my Alpha.
 
   What about
  clustering with real physical VMS systems if I desire it?
 
  I've done it in the past using SIMH VAX clustered with a hardware
 Alpha box.
  It worked just fine.
 
 Perfect, as if I were to use it, I'd want to be able to cluster with a
 MicroVAX III and an Alpha at a minimum.
 
  How large of
  virtual disks does SIMH support?
 
  Big. :-) Using a command like set rqb0 rauser=N in vax.ini, I'm
 able to use
  large drives including one that's 15 GB. I did need to tweak my
 sources in
  order to get large volumes working properly at some point in the
past
 (an
  issue with the large file APIs), but that was some time ago and I
 don't
  recall whether it was still needed with the current sources.
 
 My Alpha currently runs with 3 36GB drives, and 1 50GB drive.  Though
I
 could trim down the required space.
 
 Zane
 
 
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