Re: [Simh] Disk Errors

[Kevin Handy]

patrick renouvel wrote:
> God morning,
>
> After migration from physical machine to SimH we have a lot of errors 
> on a disk:
>
> $> analyze/disk/norepair SVLPPCD5:
> Analyze/Disk_Structure for _$1$DUB0: started on 16-FEB-2010 08:20:23..54
>
>
...
>
> I did copy this disk on a scratch one, did a ana/repair and all errors 
> disappeared (with 12 files :-((( )
>
> The same ana/disk/norepair on physical machine gives no errors at all...
>
> Did anybody had this kind of trouble before ?
>

Usually this kind of thing means that there was a problem with
generating the image copy somewhere along the line.


1. How did you create the image file? If you did it on a live system,
you may have had the directory structure changing while the
copy was occurring, thus giving you inconsistent results.

2. Did you copy it from the file that created the image to another?
There are many ways for that to cause problems, such as not
copying in binary format.

3. Anything else done with the original image? Compression (zip,
tar, etc)?

4. What system is simh running on? Linux, Windows, etc.
Windows sometimes likes to play magic tricks. When was the last
time you did a diskscan? Could it be mangled by drive problems
on the host system?

Usually there are few problems with disk images, and under Linux,
at least, you can point at the raw access to a CD in the derive, and it
works just as it should (point it to /dev/cdrom for example).

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Re: [Simh] Installing layered products on RSTS/E 10.1

[Kevin Handy]

Michael Richter wrote:
OK, thanks for the reply and I apologize for my tardiness in getting 
around to this.


Well, I've got the following in my .ini file (eliding the unnecessary 
stuff):


set tu enable
set tu tm03
...
set tu1 format=tpc
attach -er tu1 tapes/ro/BASIC-PLUS-2-V2.6.TPC
...


When I fire up RSTS/E 10.1 I do the following:

$ mount mm1
%Device is write protected
Density is 800
Tape is in ANSI format
Label:   bp2
$ dir mm1:
 Name .TypSizeName .TypSizeName .Typ  
 Size   MM1:
INSTAL.BCK* 97 P BP2REL.BCK* 26 P BP2   .BCK*  
1856 P

PBLT  .BCK*728 P
Total of 2707 blocks in 4 files in MM1:


So now I run @[0,1]instal layered_products and select BP2 when given 
the opportunity.  It goes through the usual questions: mount device, 
target account, etc. and then, after collecting all that information 
asks me if I'm ready to proceed.  When I answer "yes":


  RSTS/E V10.1-L Software Installation Procedure  
 20-Feb-11 01:08 AM


  Build Phase

Restoring BP2 update components from the Installation kit
Please mount volume 2 on _MM1:.
Press RETURN to continue : 

I'm just at a loss here.  The tape is mounted.  It looks perfectly 
fine when I take a directory of it.  What's weirder is that I can't do 
anything with MM1: once I've run instal.  The device is offline and I 
can't for the life of me figure out how to do anything with it after 
that.  set device mm1: /enable doesn't do the trick nor does anything 
else I can find.



Just a possibility, but did you rewind the tape after you did the 
directory? It's been a long time but, I think install sometimes did odd 
things when it wasn't at the front of the tape.


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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Questions regarding future simulator development

[Kevin Handy]

Instead of supplying an entire command/response process, you could just
grab characters sent to the port, anf then push the line through the simh
command processer whenever a return was seen. The time required to process
a command should be minimal so the emulation shouldnt slow down that much,
and wouldnt require threads. Do you really need interactive operation?

This would be like an automatic ctrl/e, followed by a simh command,
followed by a resume. The commands would come from inside the simulation,
so it wouldnt help if your OS was locked up, but for changing media you
could just copy a simh script to that port.

Just dont let two people throw stuff at the port at the same time.
On Apr 10, 2013 5:10 PM, "Matt"  wrote:

> On 10/04/2013 22:07, Hittner, David T (IS) wrote:
> > Matt,
> >
> > How does this serial solution address changing the removable media when
> your administrators need to connect to the sim> prompt from a continent
> away?
> > I would think that the solution really should be network-based rather
> than serial.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
> I think there is some confusion here. When I say serial I am referring
> to a serial port of the guest system not the host system (for example a
> DZ11). In the Simh ini file you would nominate one of the serial ports
> eg dz4 to act as the interface to SCP. When you are then connected to
> the guest operating system via whatever means (telnet, TMXR etc) then
> you can use a terminal emulator to connect to this serial port. An
> example session with a VMS guest would look like this:
>
> $ SET HOST /DTE TTA4:
>
> %REM-I-TOQUIT, connection established
>
> Press Ctrl/\ to quit, Ctrl/@ for command mode
>
> sim> det rq3
> sim> att rq3 newimage.rx33
> sim>^\
>
> %REM-S-END, control returned to node SIMVAX
> $
>
> This is a similar approach to that proposed by Dell, but does not
> require any special software on the guest system other than a terminal
> emulator.
>
> This implementation would not do any checking of what is being
> detached/attached, but then neither does the existing SCP.
>
> Hope this explanation makes sense.
>
> Matt
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[Simh] Windows8

[Kevin Handy]

I want to get simh (vax vms) running on a Windows8 machine. I don't have
much experience with Windows8.

I have simh installed, everything configured, and it will boot to a user
login prompt.

However, there are a lot of problems.
1. Terminal is awful. No VT emulation at all. I set up the Dz to port 4000,
(ATT DZ 4000)  and have tried to attach to it using Kermit95, but it can't.
I need to have a VT terminal emulation to be able to run my programs.
2. Whenever I try to start up networking withing VMS (decnet or tcpip), it
completely locks up. It hangs when it accesses the network interface.
Control/E does nothing at that pont. Letting it sit for a while does
nothing.

The Windows machine can access the internet. I have installed  WinPCAP
Versio 4.31.3 (latest version). Attached is a startup script close to what
I'm using (modified on win8 machine to have c:/simh/ where appropriate)

Is there some documentation on getting simh working on Windows8 somewhere?
It's useless without being able to attach a VT terminal emulator to it
somehow.


vms
Description: Binary data
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Re: [Simh] Simh for testsuite usage

[Kevin Handy]

I think that adding all of this complexity to simh to handle one load type
might be a bit overkill. After adding elf support, you will probably need
to add VMS, RT11, RSX, etc... support.

I think that it would be better to create external utilities that would
convert the onject format to a simpler format that "load" understands. If
you then had simh call that utility a part of a "load" command (popen?) you
would be able to create any number of loaders with little increase in the
complexity and size of simh. It would also make the utilities availabe
outside of simh itself. It would probably also be much simpler to debug

Tools like this might be of interest to others outside of simh. For
example, someone might want to be able to load an elf binary on real
hardware without an OS..

Just my thoughts on the matter.


On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Maciej W. Rozycki 
wrote:

> On Mon, 21 Jul 2014, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm wrote:
>
> > > I just attended the GNU Tools Cauldron 2014 meeting, where we
> discussed to
> > > use Simh for testing produced code for VAX and PDP processors. While
> Simh
> > > isn't The Real Thing, it would probably work quite well.
> > >
> > >   On a first glance, there are some issues that I'd like to discuss.
> > > First of all, a given testcase needs to be loaded. (Usually, this
> > > would be a small binary calling abort() or returning with zero from
> > > main(). We would just supply a fake libc that sets r0 to zero /
> > > nonzero and calls HLT.)
> > >
> > >   Here's the first problem: The PDP11 simulator seems to LOAD a file
> > > with kind of a load address -- content --- load address -- content ...
> > > scheme, while the VAX simulator loads a raw byte. Instead of these
> > > ad-hoc formats, our impression is that it would be nice to have an ELF
> > > and/or a.out loader for a static binary. Either a minimal one, or one
> > > using libelf. Would a patch for this be accepted?
> >
> > Changes which implemented:
> >   sim> LOAD -A a.out.binaryfile
> > and/or
> >   sim> LOAD -E elf.binaryfile
> >
> > if you do this, then you should consider the inverse operations as well:
> >   sim> DUMP -A a.out.binaryfile
> > and/or
> >   sim> DUMP -E elf.binaryfile
> >
> > these would be accepted for the VAX and PDP simulators as long as it
> > worked on all the simh host platforms and therefore didn't depend on an
> > external library.  Depending on an external library would probably be
> > extra tricky due to the endian-independent memory reference model in the
> > simulators anyway.
>
>  Libelf is widely available, any system that had to do anything with SVR4
> (where this file format has originated from) will have it.  A free
> implementation is also available:
>
> http://www.mr511.de/software/english.html
>
> and the *BSD systems have their replacement too.  If your host doesn't
> have a binary readily available (that'd only be more exotic ones I
> suppose, such as MinGW perhaps), then you should be able to build your
> own.
>
>  Libelf is endianness-agnostic and will present ELF file data structures
> in the host endianness regardless of what the endianness of the file being
> processed is, in fact one of the purposes of the library is to relieve the
> app using it from having to byte-swap data explicitly.  It's been a while
> since I poked at libelf and I don't remember offhand whether it does the
> swapping thing automatically on opening a file; either way there are
> function calls provided in the API to do that explicitly, both ways
> (file->host & host->file).  You need this data in the host endianness as
> you'll be making calculations on them to process the file.  Raw loadable
> segments are of course passed unchanged and all DEC processors are
> little-endian I believe so I don't see a problem here.
>
>  Of course you can do without libelf, especially in loading an executable
> only, where what you need to process are only the file header and the
> program headers (the latter providing information about loadable segments
> present in the file), and no such more complicated stuff as symbols or
> relocations.  If dumping is implemented, then using the library will be
> especially beneficial, as it'll sort out some of the details needed to
> produce a valid ELF image itself.
>
>  However in my opinion avoiding code duplication has a value in itself,
> starting from  that's extensive, and then including all the
> low-level processing stuff.  I think writing Yet Another ELF Loader would
> be more appropriate for a bare-iron environment, such as for a boot loader
> included with a console monitor or a piece of firmware of similar kind,
> whereas in a fully-hosted environment it makes sense to use what the
> environment already provides rather than reinventing the wheel.
>
>  Of course you may disagree and may have arguments against this approach;
> I'd be happy to discuss them.
>
> > > An alternate route could be to put some helper
> > > scripts and converter programs

[Simh] Feature request

[Kevin Handy]

 inor feature request.Can the configuration (command) line assume tht any
line starting with a pound sign  is a comment?
 This would be useful for several reasons. I don't think it is necessary to
allow comments anywhere in a line like most other shells, just at the front.
.
Under Linux/Unix, if you place a line like '#!/usr/bin/vax' at the start of
the script, and mark the script as executable (chmod +xmyvax), you
can start the simultor ssimply by eecuting the script './myvax'. This works
right now, but it displays an error message about that first line.

It would also be nice to be able to leave notes/reminders in the scripts
telling what the script is about or what it is doing at a specific point.

It would also be nice for disabling sections of the script emporarely while
debugging things. This might be doable with an 'if' statement, but for
quick games the '#' is nice.
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Re: [Simh] Simulating the PDP-15/76 Unichannel

[Kevin Handy]

Try again (stupid tablets)

Allocate the shared memory inside the emulation like is done with device
registers. Capture the memory locations and handle them spedially. When
that area of shared memory is read or written to, you can use simh code to
access the actual mapped memory, doing any 16/18 bit conversions, etc.

The linked simulators will have to agree on how the mapped memory is laid
out (16/18 bit), but the conversions would be invisible to the emulated
machine. And since they are directly accessing the shared memory, many
problems would disappear.


On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:49 AM, Phil Budne  wrote:

> Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > There is a problem in that different emulators might use a different
> > layout for memory, that you somehow need to overlap when you come here.
> > And that layout can become rather weird, and how do you actually figure
> > this out.
>
> If all simulated memory access is wrapped in C macros, you can hide
> most of the ugliness, assuming you don't mind a special build of the
> simulators for each multi-processor system.  You might end up with
> four or more builds of the PDP-11 simulator: uniprocessor, 11-only
> multiprocessor, PDP-15 + PDP-11, PDP-10 + PDP-11.
>
> Since we have CPU cycles to throw away, a "memory server" process
> could solve the cache coherency problems...
>
> phil
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[Simh] dps8m

[Kevin Handy]

List has been quiet lateky, so curious about this simh based emulayor on
sourceforge (dps8m)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/dps8m/

Doesn't appear yo be 100% functional yet, but boots to admin mode if you
download the disk image as described in the file MR12.3_install.notes.txt

If you delete the final 'quit' and the last two ;autoinput' lines from
rulez.ini, it stops ay  command prompt.

Having never used this os, but hearing about it frequently, I thought
others on this list might like to look at it.
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[Simh] OS development

[Kevin Handy]

Reading through the copyright discussion, I started wondering why noone
has started a development project for the ols OS's like tops-10 and tops-20
as well as others where the original sources are available.
It seems like there are a lot of patches being passed around, and new code
to work in the internet environment, but it's not coordinated.
It seems like a user project to create a new version that works on the
simulators and actual hardware would be beneficial to many. Collecting all
the patches and updates together.
Would there be legal problems in doing this, 8-bitness of giy/subversion,
too much missing code, or other problems?
Just curious.
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[Simh] simh tools

[Kevin Handy]

Some time ago, I wrote a DecMate II word processing conversion to Word
Perfet converter. I was wondering if it should be included in the simtools
distribution, before it disappears entirely off the net.

It origanally ran unger MSdos, and is written in C. This was a complete
reverse engineering job, so it may have a lot of prblems. It had some
conversion issues (DecWord and WordPerfect had different ideas on
formatting), but it got the text out.

Modified/pdated versions of it is at

ftp://ftp.pdp8online.com/software/wps/

as decmate.tar and dmdos.tar

If I remember correctly, the license on it is "use at your own risk".

It might be able to read simh floppy disk images as is, but I don't have
any to try it on now.
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Re: [Simh] C64 and C128

[Kevin Handy]

The C64 did not run cp/m out of the box, because it did not have any kind
of Intel 8080 based processor. You could buy a cartridge (iirc) that would
allow you to run cp/m, but it was basically bolting a cp/m machine onto the
side of the C64.

The C128 had both the C64 processor, and a Z80 processor built in, and it
could run cp/m. The floppy drive speed was really lousy though (300 baud
serial bus iirc).

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 5:21 PM, Bill Cunningham 
wrote:

>  Did the C64 not run CP/M? I know the 128 did. It had a 8502
> processor and Z80A processor I believe. One was for CP/M. What good is a
> commodore machine without CP/M ;)
>
> Bill
>
>
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[Simh] Kaypto II

[Kevin Handy]

I've been playing with the altairz80 emulation to see how close I could get
to a Kaypto2 emulation. Attached is my config file so far, and it's about
as fat as I can go without changing any code.

A couple of issues came up about the emulated hardware, and I thought I'd
ask preferences before modifying anything.

1. What are some of the source file (.c, .h) marked executable>
2. The flexwriter is similiar to yj kp2 display, except that the fw has a
80x24 mapped into memory as a 80x24 array. The kp2 has an 80x25 display
mapped into a 128x25 array (memory between 81 and 128 is unused). Should I
make a new kp2 display device, or add parameters to the fw code?
2. the wd179x device is the right chip for the kp2, but it is single sided
and different tracks/sectors. The side is controlled by an external ioreg.
Modify the driver, or seperate it out?
... Probably more if I get more time to play.


kp2
Description: Binary data
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Re: [Simh] Booting the vax750 simulator.

[Kevin Handy]

It would be interesting to know what R0 is trying to point to.

Is it just a bad value, memory that should be mapped, a device, ...

Source would be helpful, if you could figure out what the source is (likely
compiled C, since it;s Unix).

Since the simh code for the devices are mostly the same (?I think?) between
the VAX processors, could this be a bug in memory management? Does the 730
have a unique MMU? Anyway, it seems to be something different in simh
between the 730 ans the other VAX processors it boots fine on.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Ethan Dicks  wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 3:41 PM, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm
>  wrote:
> > Hi Mattis,
> >
> > I’m working with the disk image you provided.  I see the failure on the
> > VAX750 simulator.
> > Have you tried earlier versions of Ultrix on the 750 simulator?
> >
> > I initially look at the crash message:
> >
> > sim> b rq0
>
> In a similar vein, some months ago, I was trying to find why that
> wouldn't boot 4.3BSD on a Simh 11/730 RB730 disk and I got as far as
> tracing into BSD's driver rb.c since it was very early in the process
> that things went sideways.  I wouldn't be surprised if these two UNIX
> boot failures were related - differences/assumptions in how drivers
> will treat controllers in VMS that don't apply to UNIX.
>
> > machine check 2: non-existant reference error
> >sumpar  = 2
> > va  = 80001a90
> > pc  = 80087c61
> >
> > I note that the PC mentioned is: 80087c61.
> >
> > If I do the following:
> >
> >  sim> BRE 80087c61>
> >  sim> SET CPU HISTORY=300
> >  sim> B RQ0
> >
> > Execution flows up to the indicated address and if I single step from
> there,
> > the exception is taken.
>
> I at least had (still have) the source for 4.3BSD.  I did narrow
> things down quite a bit, but then I ran off to learn more about how
> the disk controller works and haven't put any time into it for a few
> months.
>
> -ethan
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[Simh] vector images

[Kevin Handy]

I was curious about the vector imges (for altairz80), but the only copy I
can find is in a Microsoft install format. However, I don't have a spare
windows machine to try unpacking this on. Anyone have copies that are not
embedded in a Microsoft install file?
I tried extracting them from the file, but ended up with a large number of
files with horrible names and no way to translate them.
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Re: [Simh] vector images

[Kevin Handy]

Yes, they are there, in a file called "setup.msi", and nowhere else.
So, as long as you ahve a windows machine that you don;t care if it
installs older file on top of newer ones,  I had to re-install too many
windows systems because of this, and finding all of the right install
pckges, and figuring out the proprt order to reinstall them to get a
working system was always a pain. msi is the old install format that
comonly had this problem.
However, I think I have come up with a painful, roundabout way to extract
the files, maybe. If not, I was just curious about its memory mapped video,
ans if the flexwriter emulation was useful enough to bother with. If this
doesn't work, I'll just have to give up on it.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Dennis Boone  wrote:

>  > Many companies builf computers that  used this operating system, like
>  > the altair, imsai, osborne, kaypro, and vector graPhics to name a
>  > few.  Many years later, the rimh altairz80 emulator was written with
>  > the abiliry ro emulate the vector graphic machines, but the only copy
>  > of the necessary config and disk images was wrapped up in a miceosoft
>  > install file called setup.msi.
>
> 1. Vector Graphic, no s.
>
> 2. Most of the stuff in the altairz80 kits is probably available from
> vector-archive.org.
>
> De
>
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Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator

[Kevin Handy]

I don't think DEC ever did a translator, only compilers.

There used to be a company that sold one, but is definately wasn't free.
Cannot remember their name.

I wrote a heafty part of a VaxBasic to C++ translater, but never handled
MAP's or their like very well. It is useful to do a preliminary conversion,
but then needs a lot of editing for most programs. Things like programd
from "101 Basic Computer Games" mostly work without any problems. Nut it's
been a while since I did anything with it.

Problems with the yranslations are mostly vaused by the way Basic handles
variables, especially strings. C++ hastwo types of string (char* and
std::string), but Basic has several different types mixed together. MAPs
want a fixed length fixed position string which may overlap other strings.
Normal nasic strings are variable length and variable position. FIELD
statements can change a string from one type to another. It gets quite
complicated without writing the DEC string library, which is quite complex.

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 9:52 AM, Dan Gahlinger  wrote:

> Does anyone have or know where I can get a copy of the Vax Basic
> translator?
> Especially for VMS or windows or something?
>
> I'd like to convert my old Vax Basic programs to something usable on
> modern systems,
> but while Vax Basic is simple enough there are a few things I have trouble
> with,
> such as MAP statements, records, etc.
>
> I've tried looking on the HP/etc sites and it seems it's been discontinued,
>
> does anyone have a copy I can use, or know where I can get one?
>
> I don't want to pay for a product, as this is just hobbyist use for
> personal programs I wrote
>
> thanks
>
> Dan.
>
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Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator

[Kevin Handy]

It won't help you. If you look at the section "U*ntranslatable Language
Features*" it specifically mentions that MAP, COMMON, and FIELD, and MAT
statements are not habdled.

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Tom Morris  wrote:

> If you want to target Python, you might look at using something like vb2py
> as a starting point.
> http://vb2py.sourceforge.net/
>
> Tom
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 3:34 PM, Dan Gahlinger 
> wrote:
>
>> I was thinking of this one:
>> http://h71000.www7.hp.com/commercial/basic/t12/t12_pro.html
>> so definitely there was one, it's discontinued though.
>>
>> I don't know what to do with MAP or MAT statements, otherwise I could do
>> most of it myself.
>>
>> C or C++ is not an ideal language, I was thinking of easier translations,
>> like say to freepascal or python, as they are most "basic like" in looks.
>> Strings as you say can be tough, but that's why pascal or even python is
>> good,
>> strings are just strings.
>> basic was great for string manipulation because you could do literally
>> anything.
>>
>> I was kind of hoping someone might have a copy of the HP/compaq product
>> listed above
>> I certainly don't want to buy it (though its discontinued so I can't)
>> just to translate a dozen programs
>> that I wrote myself back in the 80's.
>>
>> Update: it looks like I might be able to do it myself using this
>> reference document:
>>
>> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/vax/lang/basic/AA-HY15B-TE_VAX_BASIC_User_Manual_Feb90.pdf
>>
>> Dan.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2015 12:29:01 -0600
>> Subject: Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator
>> From: khandy2...@gmail.com
>> To: dgahl...@hotmail.com
>> CC: simh@trailing-edge.com
>>
>>
>> I don't think DEC ever did a translator, only compilers.
>>
>> There used to be a company that sold one, but is definately wasn't free.
>> Cannot remember their name.
>>
>> I wrote a heafty part of a VaxBasic to C++ translater, but never handled
>> MAP's or their like very well. It is useful to do a preliminary conversion,
>> but then needs a lot of editing for most programs. Things like programd
>> from "101 Basic Computer Games" mostly work without any problems. Nut it's
>> been a while since I did anything with it.
>>
>> Problems with the yranslations are mostly vaused by the way Basic handles
>> variables, especially strings. C++ hastwo types of string (char* and
>> std::string), but Basic has several different types mixed together. MAPs
>> want a fixed length fixed position string which may overlap other strings.
>> Normal nasic strings are variable length and variable position. FIELD
>> statements can change a string from one type to another. It gets quite
>> complicated without writing the DEC string library, which is quite complex.
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 9:52 AM, Dan Gahlinger 
>> wrote:
>>
>> Does anyone have or know where I can get a copy of the Vax Basic
>> translator?
>> Especially for VMS or windows or something?
>>
>> I'd like to convert my old Vax Basic programs to something usable on
>> modern systems,
>> but while Vax Basic is simple enough there are a few things I have
>> trouble with,
>> such as MAP statements, records, etc.
>>
>> I've tried looking on the HP/etc sites and it seems it's been
>> discontinued,
>>
>> does anyone have a copy I can use, or know where I can get one?
>>
>> I don't want to pay for a product, as this is just hobbyist use for
>> personal programs I wrote
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Dan.
>>
>> ___
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator

[Kevin Handy]

C++ hs std::string which handles most of the basic strings, except for
those in maps and other such structures.
It also has GOTO, and you can implement GOSUB without too much trouble You
just hve to be careful about jumping over definitions..


On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 3:04 PM, Ken Cornetet <
ken.corne...@kimballelectronics.com> wrote:

> Well, perl is often described as a write-only language. Perfect as the
> output of a translator!
>
>
>
> *From:* Dan Gahlinger [mailto:dgahl...@hotmail.com]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 04, 2015 4:59 PM
> *To:* Ken Cornetet; simh@trailing-edge.com
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator
>
>
>
> Per is not a usable language. Lol
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
>
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Ken Cornetet 
> Date: 08-04-2015 4:55 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: simh@trailing-edge.com
> Subject: Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator
>
> Perl has goto. Just sayin’
>
>
>
> Writing a VAX basic to perl translator sounds like fun, and when you are
> done, you’d have learned a usable language.
>
>
>
> *From:* Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com
> ] *On Behalf Of *Dan Gahlinger
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 04, 2015 4:38 PM
> *To:* Kevin Handy; Tom Morris
> *Cc:* simh@trailing-edge.com
> *Subject:* Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator
>
>
>
> Then I'll have to do it myself by hand, which from the manual doesn't look
> that bad.
> I'll test the vb2py script but I won't hold my breath.
> I'm not going to write my own to translate a paltry dozen or so programs
> (even if some of them are long).
>
> I shudder at having to translate "goto" :)
> But from the manual link I provided on vax basic, it doesn't look terribly
> bad.
> I'll probably convert to freepascal which has portability to many
> platforms, and is the one I'm most familiar with.
>
> Vax Basic was probably one of the easiest languages I've ever had to
> learn, in hindsight it was probably a bad idea to learn it
> so early on, should have learned C instead...
>
> Dan.
> --
>
> Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2015 14:29:49 -0600
> Subject: Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator
> From: khandy2...@gmail.com
> To: tfmor...@gmail.com
> CC: dgahl...@hotmail.com; simh@trailing-edge.com
>
> It won't help you. If you look at the section "U*ntranslatable Language
> Features*" it specifically mentions that MAP, COMMON, and FIELD, and MAT
> statements are not habdled.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Tom Morris  wrote:
>
> If you want to target Python, you might look at using something like vb2py
> as a starting point.
>
> http://vb2py.sourceforge.net/
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 3:34 PM, Dan Gahlinger 
> wrote:
>
> I was thinking of this one:
> http://h71000.www7.hp.com/commercial/basic/t12/t12_pro.html
> so definitely there was one, it's discontinued though.
>
> I don't know what to do with MAP or MAT statements, otherwise I could do
> most of it myself.
>
> C or C++ is not an ideal language, I was thinking of easier translations,
> like say to freepascal or python, as they are most "basic like" in looks.
> Strings as you say can be tough, but that's why pascal or even python is
> good,
> strings are just strings.
> basic was great for string manipulation because you could do literally
> anything.
>
> I was kind of hoping someone might have a copy of the HP/compaq product
> listed above
> I certainly don't want to buy it (though its discontinued so I can't) just
> to translate a dozen programs
> that I wrote myself back in the 80's.
>
> Update: it looks like I might be able to do it myself using this reference
> document:
>
> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/vax/lang/basic/AA-HY15B-TE_VAX_BASIC_User_Manual_Feb90.pdf
>
> Dan.
>
>
> --
>
> Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2015 12:29:01 -0600
> Subject: Re: [Simh] off-topic basic translator
> From: khandy2...@gmail.com
> To: dgahl...@hotmail.com
> CC: simh@trailing-edge.com
>
>
>
> I don't think DEC ever did a translator, only compilers.
>
> There used to be a company that sold one, but is definately wasn't free.
> Cannot remember their name.
>
> I wrote a heafty part of a VaxBasic to C++ translater, but never handled
> MAP's or their like very well. It is useful to do a preliminary conversion,
> but then needs a lot of editing for most programs. Things like programd
> from "101 Basic Computer Games" mostly work wi

Re: [Simh] Problem with default builds

[Kevin Handy]

The current macro has some masth in it rihgt now, but would the 1st
proposed fix for this (with the ?: macros) work any better than the 'index;
(or whatever was used) work any better on all C compilers? It seems that
the compiler must be able to resuce simple expressions into a constant, but
how fat can you sucessfully push it and still work with most C compilers?


On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm <
m...@infocomm.com> wrote:

> Sorry folks.  The problem occurs anywhere the SWMASK is used in a static
> initializer.  I’ve reverted the recent change.
>
>
>
> The change was initially thought to be benign and attempted to allows for
> the simh source to be useful on systems with other than ASCII character
> sets (i.e. EBCDIC).  There are other issues with simulators running on
> hosts with EBCDIC character sets which are unrelated to the source code.
> If/when those are also addressed, we’ll revisit how to solve the non ASCII
> source code issue as well.
>
>
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> *From:* Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] *On Behalf Of *
> khandy21yo
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 6, 2015 8:24 PM
> *To:* Alan Frisbie ; SIMH@trailing-edge.com
> *Subject:* Re: [Simh] Problem with default builds
>
>
>
> Wasnr rgere a recent change to tge SWMASK macro,
>
> Gcc peobably optimizes this reference, but dev c must not.
>
>
>
>
>  Original message 
> From Alan Frisbie 
> Date: 08/06/2015 8:53 PM (GMT-07:00)
> To SIMH@trailing-edge.com
> Subject [Simh] Problem with default builds
>
>
> Another build error.   Unfortunately, I do not have the knowledge
> to fix it myself.
>
> Today, 6-Aug-2015, I downloaded the current simh-master.zip from
> github.
>
> My host is an Alpha XP1000 running VMS v8.4
>
> Using MMK from the VMS Freeware 8 CD, I tried to do a default
> build of all SIMH simulators.   All went well until the build of
> ID16-AXP.OLB Library.   At that point I got the error:
>
> { "DP", SWMASK ('F'), 9, 0x32, o_DP0, o_DPF },
> ^
> %CC-E-NEEDCONSTEXPR, In the initializer for dboot_tab[1].sw,
> "sim_swmask(...)" is not constant, but occurs in a context that requires a
> constant
> expression.
> at line number 318 in file
> DKA200:[FRISBIE.SIMH.SIMH-MASTER.INTERDATA]ID16_DBOOT.C;4
> %MMK-F-ERRUPD, error status %X10B91262 occurred when updating
> target SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB]ID16-AXP.OLB
>
>
> The log of the build (with lots of successful stuff snipped)
> follows below.
>
> Thanks,
> Alan Frisbie
>
> --
>
> $ unzip simh-master.zip
> Archive:  DKA200:[FRISBIE.SIMH]SIMH-MASTER.ZIP;5
> 7c7b44e409f05751c960a614dbb1e2abde22da60
> replace [.simh-master].gitattributes? [y]es, [n]o, [A]ll, [N]one,
> [r]ename: A
>
>   inflating: [.simh-master].gitattributes
>   inflating: [.simh-master].gitignore
>   inflating: [.simh-master]0readmeAsynchIO.txt
>   inflating: [.simh-master]0readme_39.txt
> ...
>   inflating: [.simh-master.swtp6800.swtp6800]swtp6800mp-a2.ini
>   inflating: [.simh-master.swtp6800.swtp6800]swtp_defs.h
>   inflating: [.simh-master.swtp6800.swtp6800]swtp_swtbug_bin.h
> $
> $ set default [.simh-master]
> $ $ set file/attri=rfm:stm makefile,*.mms,[...]*.c,[...]*.h,[...]*.txt
> $
> $ mmk
> $!
> $! Building The SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB]SIMH-NONET-AXP.OLB
> Library.
> $!
> $ CC/DECC/PREF=ALL/DEBUG/OPT=(LEV=5)/ARCH=HOST
> /NEST=PRIMARY/NAME=(AS_IS,SHORT)/DEF=("_LA
> RGEFILE","SIM_ASYNCH_IO=1")  /OBJ=SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB.BLD-AXP]
> SYS$DISK:[]SIM_CONSOLE.C
>
> ,SYS$DISK:[]SIM_SOCK.C,SYS$DISK:[]SIM_TMXR.C,SYS$DISK:[]SIM_ETHER.C,SYS$DISK:[]SIM_TAPE.C,
>
> SYS$DISK:[]SIM_FIO.C,SYS$DISK:[]SIM_TIMER.C,SYS$DISK:[]SIM_DISK.C,SYS$DISK:[]SIM_SERIAL.C,
> SYS$DISK:[]SIM_VIDEO.C
> $ IF (F$SEARCH("SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB]SIMH-NONET-AXP.OLB").EQS."")
> THEN  LIBRARY/CREATE SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB]SIMH-NONET-AXP.OLB
> $ LIBRARY/REPLACE SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB]SIMH-NONET-AXP.OLB
> SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB.BLD-AXP]*.OBJ
> $ DELETE/NOLOG/NOCONFIRM SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB.BLD-AXP]*.OBJ;*
> $!
> $! Building The SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB]ALTAIR-AXP.OLB Library.
> ...
> ...
> $! IBM1130 done
> $!
> $! Building The SYS$DISK:[.BIN.VMS.LIB]ID16-AXP.OLB Library.
> $!
> $ CC/DECC/PREF=ALL/DEBUG/OPT=(LEV=5)/ARCH=HOST
> /NEST=PRIMARY/NAME=(AS_IS,SHORT)/INCL=(SYS
> $DISK:[],SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA])/DEF=("_LARGEFILE","SIM_ASYNCH_IO=1")
> /OBJ=SYS$DISK:[.BIN.
> VMS.LIB.BLD-AXP]
> SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID16_CPU.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID16_SYS.C,SYS$DISK:
>
> [.INTERDATA]ID_DP.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID_FD.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID_FP.C,SYS$DISK:[.I
>
> NTERDATA]ID_IDC.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID_IO.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID_LP.C,SYS$DISK:[.INT
>
> ERDATA]ID_MT.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID_PAS.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID_PT.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTER
>
> DATA]ID_TT.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID_UVC.C,SYS$DISK:[.INTERDATA]ID16_DBOOT.C,SYS$DISK:[.IN
> TERDATA]ID_TTP.C
>
> { "DP", SWMASK ('F'), 9, 0x32, o_DP0, o_DPF },
> ^
> %CC-E-NEEDCONSTEXPR, In the initia

Re: [Simh] fprint_sym and parse_sym limitation

[Kevin Handy]

Doxygen has some limitations, it is more of a reference than a tutorial for
example, but it does have a lot of useful features when done properly.
- It generates LaTeX, HTML, and RTF from the sources, and other formats are
available from these (like ps and pdf).
- If you copy one source file as the basis for annother device for ecample,
the documentation is already mostly done for you.
- The documentation keeps up with the source better than seperate files.
Software developers never seem to update the documentation unless it's
staring them in the face as they make their changes.
- References to structures in a parameter list are automatically cross
linked.

As documentation for how to write code, it isn't that great because it's
mostly just a list of available functions, but does give you several views
of what edists. including links to the source code.

I don't think it works as the sole source of documentation, but it does
provide a lot of useful information even if you don't have any comments
coded in.

(I just tried playing with it) As a first try at using it. just install
doxygen (and graphviz for extra credit), type 'doxygen -g' ay the top level
simh directory, edit the generated 'Doxygen' configuration file, and list
all of the subdirectories under the 'INPUT' option (along with a '.' for
the top level directory), and then run 'doxygen'. Point your browser to
'./html/index.html' and brouse around. With the Graphviz, you also get
relationship diagrams for structures.

On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove <
captainkirk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 14 September 2015 at 14:34, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm
>  wrote:
> > That said, I've got a back-burner project which will migrate most of the
> simulator specific documentation to a more generic format which can
> leverage various display/output formats.  When that finally sees the light
> of day, we'll look at the remaining documents.
> >
> I know the discussion mentioned doxygen; but I'd been feeling it might
> be "nice" to transfer the SIMH documentation to LaTeX. Especially
> since it works very nicely with a version control system. And the
> documentation is kept separate from the source code.
>
> Then again, doxygen is a de facto standard in documenting software
> with annotated source code, but would require a large scale project to
> add all that information into the sources.
>
> Regards,
> Christian
> --
> Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove
> STCKON08DS0
> Contact information available upon request.
> ___
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>
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[Simh] Another way to get files into simh

[Kevin Handy]

Here's another way for you to get files into a simh emulator

I have a rough tool for Linux to create ansi tape images from a list of
files.

git clone https://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools.git

It's under the ansitpc subdirectory.

It's really rough at the moment, so don't expect not to have problems. No
checks are done for lengths of names, for example. It still needs a lot of
work.

VMS will only read the first file in the tpc image, but RSTS/E sees all of
them. I don't know why yet.

Run it in the same directory that the files exist in using only bare names,
no paths, otherwise it will want to put the path names in the filename on
the tape.
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Re: [Simh] Simh Digest, Vol 144, Issue 19

[Kevin Handy]

Updated ansitpc with Larry's version.
VMS is much happer with the tapes created.
I haven't had a ot of time to analyze the changes so I just updated to his
version, which seems to work well with VMS.

git clone https://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools.git


On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 7:49 PM, Larry Baker  wrote:

> Kevin,
>
> On 6 Jan 2016, at 8:04 AM,  <
> simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com> wrote:
>
> Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 07:36:20 -0700
> From: Kevin Handy 
> To: "simh@trailing-edge.com" 
> Subject: [Simh] Another way to get files into simh
> Message-ID:
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Here's another way for you to get files into a simh emulator
>
> I have a rough tool for Linux to create ansi tape images from a list of
> files.
>
> git clone https://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools.git
>
> It's under the ansitpc subdirectory.
>
> It's really rough at the moment, so don't expect not to have problems. No
> checks are done for lengths of names, for example. It still needs a lot of
> work.
>
> VMS will only read the first file in the tpc image, but RSTS/E sees all of
> them. I don't know why yet.
>
> Run it in the same directory that the files exist in using only bare names,
> no paths, otherwise it will want to put the path names in the filename on
> the tape.
>
>
> Try the attached to see if it fixes the problem of reading ansitpc tapes
> on VMS.  I can't compile it and test it because I don't have your popt
> library on my Mac.
>
> Larry Baker
> US Geological Survey
> 650-329-5608
> ba...@usgs.gov
>
>
>
>
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[Simh] RX50 disks

[Kevin Handy]

I have found some old RX50 disks from DecMate II's, and from MicroPDP11's.

I have used putr to create images of these disks, which should be bootable,
but havent been able to boot simh under either system.

The disks were created from a MSDOS system running  putr using

mount b: /foreign
copy /device /file b: .dsk

The pdp-11 disks appear to have valid text strings (Linus command 'strings
.dsk' shows expected stuff), and the DecMate document disks can be
exctracted using my dmprocess program.

Does the pdp-8 simulator handle Decmate bootable system disks? I tried the
DecMate WPS system disk, and an os278 disk.neither worked. What
command/device to attach them to?

The PDP-11 wouldn't boot the rt11 disks. Version of simh doesn't seem to
matter. pb01x.dsk is a rt11 bottable disk (according to the label).

PDP-11 simulator V3.8-1
sim> set rq0 rx50
sim> att rq0 pb01x.dsk
sim> b rq0

Trap stack push abort, PC: 14 (SUB #162745,-(R5))
sim> exit
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Re: [Simh] OSs with accessible documentation

[Kevin Handy]

I believe that VMS is probable the only one of DEC's Operating Systems that
is likely to have machine readable documentation (Both PDF and HTML iirc.).

All of the other OSs were mostly out of production by the time that HTML
and PDF's became popular, and I don't believe that DEC ever gave away their
documentation in source form.

Non-DEC OS's, such as Unix, are more likely to have such documentation
available. But Unix is also available for the VAX, which doesn't have the
same memory limits as the PDP11 does and was under development more
recently, so that might be more interesting to work on (NetBSD for example).

I'm not sure how MUMPS documentation was, or if that OS is even available
to hobbyest usage.

I think there was also a PDP11 version of a Pascal OS (??name forgotten at
the moment), and several FORTH systems too.
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Re: [Simh] Sounds

[Kevin Handy]

I worked at a timesharing sevice that has a computer room with a PDP-11/34,
a ODO-11/70, both with tape drives and RP06. Also included in the mix was a
large air conditioner, and a humidifier. When backup to tape was being run,
the total noise level was incr4edible. The humidifier wasd necessary
because otherwise the static would build up so high you couldn;t touch
anything without causing sparks.

The 11/70 had a remote diagonisyic cpmsole, so no blinkenlights. It finally
had a problem where it would frequently crash, and field service couldn't
find the problem, so it was replaced with an 11/83 with a TSV05 taoe. The
sound level dropped by an amazing amount.

Nowodays, many people haven't even heard a dot-matrix printer grinding
away, let alone the huge mass of fans that seemed to make up most of an
11/70. Daisy weel printers are also extremely rare now. Line printers
(drum, chain, printronix) seem to be nonexistant any more, but were how
most of us thought about computers.

At college, I had classes that used a VAX 780 VMS, but ut had so many users
on it that it could take 15 minutes just to log in.  Great fun when you had
an assignment due the next day.


On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 9:05 AM, Bailey, Scott  wrote:

> I was fortunate to have gotten "on the inside" quite early in my career,
> and
> reading this thread really has brought back a wave of nostalgia for the
> sights, sounds, and feel of old machine rooms.
>
> And that's scratching the surface (pardon the pun). I managed a lonely
> trio of
> Xerox 8010 servers that lasted into the late 1990s, and of course there was
> really no hardware or software support of any kind for those dinosaurs.
> They
> had huge (by today's standards) internal disks that were rotated by an
> external motor and drive belt. I recall vividly that following power
> outages
> (for whatever reason), one of the servers required you to remove the side
> panel and "jump start" the disk by rotating the spindle manually -- the
> belt
> was a little too worn/loose for the system to spin up the disk from a
> standing
> start!
>
> When I started at Xerox in 1985, there were 6085s all over the place and we
> used them for everything. Well, everything that didn't involve the VT100
> sitting next to mine. ;-)
>
> Actually (he says plaintively) a 8010 or 6085 emulator would be a great
> SimH
> fodder -- certainly they were important computing artifacts, and I regret
> in
> hindsight that the systems I supported -- with their accompanying
> materials --
> were long ago consigned to the dumpster. :-(
>
> (shakes head and returns to the real world)
>
> Scott
>
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Re: [Simh] Fwd: Assembler programming under Unix - was VAX/VMS

[Kevin Handy]

Any more, with the optimizing compilers we have today, it doesn't make much
sense to use machine language for most program development.
1. The compilers often produce better code that the average programmer
would produce, and often better than a good one would produce. The
optimizer doesn't care about making readable code, so it can do aggressive
things to the code that a human wouldn't wnt to. LLVM is even working with
optimizations across compilation units.
2. Portability issues. If you write in machine language on a VAX/VMS, that
is all it will run on. Porting it to VAX/Unix
 might be possible, put with the differing system interfaces, not easy.
3. Ease of development. Developing in a higher level language is usually
faster than in a machine language environment. It is also often easier for
others to quickly comprehend. One line in high level code, "a=b*c+d*e",
verses numerous lines of assembly code.
4. What do you do if your platform suddenly gets new opcodes. This happened
with the Alpha, Intel x86, and many others. Update your code, or leave it
the same so it can still run on older hardware?

There are some places where hand-coded machine code is useful, but its use
isn't as necessary as it used to be. It can be interesting to know some of
the details.


On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 1:47 PM, Mark Wickens 
wrote:

>
>
>
>  Forwarded Message 
> Subject: [Simh] Assembler programming under Unix - was VAX/VMS
> Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2016 20:46:46 +
> From: Mark Wickens  
> To: Clem Cole  
>
> On a related note,
>
> Programming in assembly language for modern Unix always seemed a bit
> haphazard to me and the assemblers a bit non-standard and poorly
> documented, but maybe I have a skewed view.
>
> Does programming the VAX under Unix fair any better in terms of assembler
> quality and documentation?
> I appreciate that assembler programming for Unix may be frowned upon given
> the C heritage.
>
> Feel free to tell me I'm wrong... about anything!
>
> Regards, Mark.
>
> On 15/02/16 17:21, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> below...
>
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 12:14 PM, Will Senn  wrote:
>
>> What is a good source to learn a bit about VAX/VMS and the relationship
>> of the VAX and PDP-11 architectures and programming differences?
>
>
> ​ Hmm probably this list😈​
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> I looked at the Wikipedia article. I'm not sure it is entirely accurate
>> and it is sketchy on particulars.
>>
> Which one - the VAX/VMS article?
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Also, can the Vax run v6 or v7?
>>
> ​32V is the original V7 to the 780.​
>
> Nothing there much that you will learn that you can not learn from V7 on
> the 11/70.  It does have a newer compiler.
>
> If you want to see UNIX on an 780, start with BSD 4.1
>
>
>
>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Will
>>
>
>
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Re: [Simh] Reading directly from console in RT-11

[Kevin Handy]

You might want to look at the simh commands 'i -m' and 'ie -m' if you want
to play with the "raw metal".

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 3:13 PM, Will Senn  wrote:

> Timothe,
>
> Thanks for responding. This sounds reasonable. I'm ok with using the
> .TTYOU and .TTYIN macros which call EMT's for actual programs in RT-11.
> But, while learning, there are some things like this that I want to do that
> may be tricky/ill advised to do in RT-11.
>
> What do you think the easiest way is to load a program like this directly
> onto the bare hardware (simulated, of course)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Will
>
>
>
> On 2/19/16 4:01 PM, Timothe Litt wrote:
>
> The console terminal driver won't like you touching the device registers.
>
> Don't do that.  Use the RT-11 syscalls instead.
>
> Or load your program into the (emulated) bare hardware, and have fun.
>
> This communication may not represent my employer's views,
> if any, on the matters discussed.
>
> On 19-Feb-16 16:58, Will Senn wrote:
>
> Given the following test program that I wrote (GETC.MAC):
>
>.title getc
>
> .mcall.exit
>
> TKS = 177560
> TKB = 177562
> ;TPS = 177564
> ;TPB = 177566
>
> begin:
> incTKS;set the ASR read enable bit
> getc:
> tstbTKS;is a character available?
> bplgetc;loop until there is
>
> movbTKB,R0;put the character into register 0
>
> .exit
>
> .end begin
>
> I would expect the console to wait until I typed a single character
> and then for the program to exit. What is happening is that the
> program appears to accept any number of characters and only ends when
> I type CTRL-C twice.
>
> Here are some questions that arise:
>
> 1. Is it reasonable to expect to be able to read directly from the ASR
> Keyboard buffer while running RT-11 in SimH or does this somehow
> compete with the running OS? (I can print characters using the ASR
> Punch Buffer just fine)
> 2. Is there a flaw in the program? (Nevermind that it doesn't do
> anything much with the character).
> 3. Is this a totally abnormal way to read a character?
> 4. What's up with needing to hit CTRL-C twice?
>
> Answers to any of the above would be appreciated or if you have
> something else, that's fine too.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Will
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Re: [Simh] Reading directly from console in RT-11

[Kevin Handy]

You also have the option of running on the "bare" metal of the simh
emulator.

PDP-11 simulator V3.8-1
sim> ie -m 0-16
0:HALTinc 177560
4:HALTtstb 177560
10:HALTbpl 4
12:HALTmovb 177562,r0
16:HALThalt
sim> run 0

HALT instruction, PC: 20 (HALT)
sim>

Used halt instead of ,exit because not macro library here.

You also have "macro11" in simtools to assemble things. Don't know if there
is any way to feed its output directlt into simh though.


On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Paul Koning 
wrote:

>
> > On Feb 20, 2016, at 12:25 PM, Will Senn  wrote:
> >
> > Great answer and helpful. I'll give both approaches a shot. If I
> understand my environment correctly, RT-11 is single user, single job
> (well, most of the time anyway). So, it oughta be safe enough to try this
> without messing things up beyond needing to restart if I have logic errors?
> That is, the file system isn't involved or caching or anything that would
> cause inconsistency as a result of an infinite loop or crash? Not that I
> would ever code such things :)!
>
> RT comes in several flavors, of which I know the SJ and FB
> (foreground/background) flavors, V2 specifically.  Both are unprotected
> operating systems, so you can play with I/O devices at will.
>
> Also, in those there definitely is no caching in the file system.  For
> that matter, the file structure is simple enough that there really isn't
> anything to go "inconsistent".  A crash in mid-operation might cause a file
> not to be there if it was being written, but that's about it.  The only
> exception I can think of is the file system defrag operation, but then
> again that one may be written in a fault tolerant manner, I don't know.
>
> paul
>
>
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Re: [Simh] Intel's PL/M-86, ASM86 and iAPX-86 Utilities source code

[Kevin Handy]

The "Unofficial CP/M web site" has a PL/M compiler. I don't know if it's
close to anything you're looking for.  it'S  listed with the following
description

Here is the source to the Intel PLM compiler. It is written in Fortran
(66), and is supposed to be pretty clean.
It compiles correctly with gcc's g77 on Linux. However, it is not the
version required to compile CP/M 2.2 or 3.0. It works well, but lacks
support for external definitions and some PLM constructs, as required by
the DR source.


On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 9:04 AM, Clem Cole  wrote:

> below
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Armistead, Jason BIS <
> jason.armist...@otis.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry for this off-topic posting, but with all the recent talk about
>> Intel’s history of x86 development, I was wondering whether there are any
>> “Intel connected” people around here who might know what happened to the
>> source code for Intel’s PL/M-86, ASM86 and iAPX-86 Utilities (LINK86,
>> LOC86, LIB86, CREF86 and OH86).  The manuals for many of these are on
>> Bitsavers.
>>
> ​I've wondered the same.​
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> PL/M-86 was never (to my knowledge)
>>
> ​I thought Seattle Computer ​products used it to write some of DOS-86,
> which they later sold to Gates (which became DOS).
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> We also used PL/M-80 under ISIS-II on Intel’s iPDS and MDS-80 development
>> workstations, PL/M-80 under iSIM85 ISIS-II emulator on DOS/Windows
>> 16/32-bit, as well as PL/M-51 under DOS/Windows 16/32-bit.  There were also
>> PL/M-286 and PL/M-386 varieties, and possibly PL/M-48 (?) though I never
>> personally used them.
>>
> I believe that all of the Intel tools were in FTN in those days - the
> assembler, tools and PL/x.
> I once had some of them I looked a while ago, but I have long lost track
> of the sources.​
>
>
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Re: [Simh] Intel's PL/M-86, ASM86 and iAPX-86 Utilities source code

[Kevin Handy]

A deeper look at the site "http://www.cpm.z80.de/"; shows other PL/M
sources, such as a "VAX PL/M", ans a PL/M to C translator.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Kevin Handy  wrote:

> The "Unofficial CP/M web site" has a PL/M compiler. I don't know if it's
> close to anything you're looking for.  it'S  listed with the following
> description
>
> Here is the source to the Intel PLM compiler. It is written in Fortran
> (66), and is supposed to be pretty clean.
> It compiles correctly with gcc's g77 on Linux. However, it is not the
> version required to compile CP/M 2.2 or 3.0. It works well, but lacks
> support for external definitions and some PLM constructs, as required by
> the DR source.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 9:04 AM, Clem Cole  wrote:
>
>> below
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Armistead, Jason BIS <
>> jason.armist...@otis.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry for this off-topic posting, but with all the recent talk about
>>> Intel’s history of x86 development, I was wondering whether there are any
>>> “Intel connected” people around here who might know what happened to the
>>> source code for Intel’s PL/M-86, ASM86 and iAPX-86 Utilities (LINK86,
>>> LOC86, LIB86, CREF86 and OH86).  The manuals for many of these are on
>>> Bitsavers.
>>>
>> ​I've wondered the same.​
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> PL/M-86 was never (to my knowledge)
>>>
>> ​I thought Seattle Computer ​products used it to write some of DOS-86,
>> which they later sold to Gates (which became DOS).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> We also used PL/M-80 under ISIS-II on Intel’s iPDS and MDS-80
>>> development workstations, PL/M-80 under iSIM85 ISIS-II emulator on
>>> DOS/Windows 16/32-bit, as well as PL/M-51 under DOS/Windows 16/32-bit.
>>> There were also PL/M-286 and PL/M-386 varieties, and possibly PL/M-48 (?)
>>> though I never personally used them.
>>>
>> I believe that all of the Intel tools were in FTN in those days - the
>> assembler, tools and PL/x.
>> I once had some of them I looked a while ago, but I have long lost track
>> of the sources.​
>>
>>
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Re: [Simh] Watch

[Kevin Handy]

His nvr file is in /opt/???. Could it be caused by some file protection
problems? If the nvr isn't available because of protections, shouldn't it
print an error message? Does the file even exist on his system?

On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Bob Supnik  wrote:

> Sigh... just looked through ka630_* modules.
>
> Anyway, the byte access/word addressing is in the spec. So the code is
> allowing writes to bytes that don't exist. Further, it is trying to deal
> with lengths other than byte or word, and the access and control paths
> don't exist in the hardware.
>
> VMS uses strictly byte reads and writes to access the watch registers. I
> don't know what the console ROM might be doing; sources are not available.
>
> /Bob
>
> /* NVR: non-volatile RAM - stored in a buffered file */
>
> int32 nvr_rd (int32 pa)
> {
> int32 rg = (pa - NVRBASE) & ~01;  /* force even; ignore odd bytes */
> int32 result;
>
> if (rg < 14) /* watch chip */
> result = wtc_rd (pa);
> else
>result = nvr[rg];
>
> sim_debug (DBG_REG, &nvr_dev, "nvr_rd(pa=0x%X) returns: 0x%X\n", pa,
> result);
>
> return result;
> }
>
> void nvr_wr (int32 pa, int32 val, int32 lnt)
> {
> int32 rg = (pa - NVRBASE) & ~01;
>
> if (rg < 14) /* watch chip */
> wtc_wr (pa, val, lnt);
> else
> nvr[rg] = (uint8) val;
>
> //  sim_debug (DBG_REG, &nvr_dev, "nvr_wr(pa=0x%X,val=0x%04X,lnt=%d)
> nvr[%02X] was %04X now %04X\n", pa, val, lnt, rg, orig_nvr, nvr[rg] |
> (nvr[rg+1] << 8));
> }
> }
>
> /* NVR examine */
>
> t_stat nvr_ex (t_value *vptr, t_addr exta, UNIT *uptr, int32 sw)
> {
> uint32 addr = (uint32) exta;
>
> if ((vptr == NULL) || (addr & 01))
> return SCPE_ARG;
> if (addr >= NVRBASE+NVRASIZE)
> return SCPE_NXM;
> *vptr = nvr[addr];
> return SCPE_OK;
> }
>
> /* NVR deposit */
>
> t_stat nvr_dep (t_value val, t_addr exta, UNIT *uptr, int32 sw)
> {
> uint32 addr = (uint32) exta;
>
> if (addr & 01)
> return SCPE_ARG;
> if (addr >= NVRBASE+NVRASIZE)
> return SCPE_NXM;
> nvr[addr] = (uint8) val;
> return SCPE_OK;
> }
>
> Note also that the specification of NVR as "4, 16, 32" should be "2, 16,
> 16". It's a byte-wide memory, but because odd addresses don't work, it has
> to be specified this way for save/restore.
>
> /Bob
>
> On 4/11/2016 12:00 PM, simh-requ...@trailing-edge.com wrote:
>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 08:51:08 -0700
>> From: Mark Pizzolato
>> To:"simh@trailing-edge.com"  
>> Subject: Re: [Simh] MicroVAX II time
>> Message-ID:
>> <
>> 03006e3fc39b5a48ab9dbccc101090a82dd620f...@redroof2.alohasunset.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>
> Actually, the watch chip is implemented it is implemented as a separate
>> module
>> and DEVICE in VAX/vax_watch.c.
>>
>> The nvr initializes the valid bit in the watch check when the NVR is
>> attached and
>> clears it when NVR is detached.
>>
>> Well, I didn’t check the details about 16bit or byte access, but the
>> watch chip
>> works correctly for me if I use Wilm's config and point it at my generic
>> test disk.
>> I get prompted for time IF I don't attach the NVR and don't if I do.
>>
>>
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Re: [Simh] Way out idea for simh

[Kevin Handy]

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
there is ASCII (multiple variants) EBCDIC (multiple variants), BAUDOUT, etc.

I think it would be more advantageous to write disk image manipulation
routines to insert/extract files to the simulated disk images (while
simulator is not running).


On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 1:14 PM, Paul Koning  wrote:

>
> > On Apr 20, 2016, at 3:08 PM, sky...@sky-visions.com wrote:
> >
> > OS's don't support foreign file systems. What they do is provide the
> ability to access a drive that does not have what they believe to be a
> valid file system.
>
> Not necessarily.  RSTS does in the latest versions, but not in early
> versions.  For example, RSTS V4A has no raw disk API, and gives you no
> access to any disk except via the RSTS file system.  The same goes for some
> other operating systems; I don't know of raw disk access on CDC NOS either,
> for example.  (Well, not unless you write a PPU program; if you don't mind
> doing that, the job is easy.)
>
> paul
>
>
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[Simh] Compiler differences

[Kevin Handy]

Has anyone done a comparison (benchmarks) between simh emulators compiled
with g++ verses clang?

clang seems to me to run quite a bit faster than gcc, but I haven't run any
actual comparisons between the two so it is completely subjective.

A full 'make' seems to build faster with clang than gcc.

Just curious. I recently noticed bthe clang stuff in the makefile, so I
thought I'd try it out.
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[Simh] Makefile

[Kevin Handy]

Bug in current makefile in git?

make: *** No rule to make target 'Intel-Systems/common/i8253.c', needed by
'BIN/isys8030'.  Stop.
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Re: [Simh] Looking for a milestone

[Kevin Handy]

How close are the simh emulators to the real hardware's floating point? How
exct is the emulation of FPU's?
Does simh emulate the real hardware close enough that you can use it to
analyze the original hardware floating point processors? (For those that
actually had FPUs instead of doing it in software).
Or does it do it using "modern" methods (IEEE style FPUs) that could
calculate different results than the original hardware did?

It;s probably not a big deal for most users, but if the simh FPU hardware
 might operate any different;y than the real hardware it should at least be
documented somewhere.

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 1:50 PM, Leo Broukhis  wrote:

> Dijkstra is above reproach; I try to compare the averages.
>
> Having eps^2 = eps is cute, but, given that the idea didn't spread to
> other pre-IEEE f.p. implementations nor to IEEE (it is possible to
> iteratively square a number x with 0 < abs(x) < 1 down to 0, given enough
> iterations, denormals or not), it appears that the Electrologica floating
> point turned out to be impractical.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Paul Koning 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> > On Oct 17, 2016, at 2:26 PM, Leo Broukhis  wrote:
>> >
>> > > I think that the same answer applies to your narrower question,
>> though I didn't see it mentioned specifically in the documents I've read.
>> >
>> > That's somewhat comforting; I'd hate to think that the BESM-6
>> programmers were substantially sloppier than their Western colleagues. :)
>>
>> As you probably know, Dijkstra was a whole lot more disciplined than the
>> vast majority of his colleagues.
>>
>> > > For example, the treatment of underflow and very small numbers in
>> Electrologica was novel at the time; Knuth specifically refers to it in a
>> > > footnote of Volume 2.  The EL-X8 would never turn a non-zero result
>> into zero, for example.
>> >
>> > For most but not all values of "never", I presume. What was the result
>> of squaring the number with the least representable absolute value?
>>
>> The least representable positive value.  See the paper by F. E. J.
>> Kruseman Aretz that I mentioned.
>>
>> >
>> > > I think IEEE ended up doing the same thing, but  that was almost 20
>> years later.
>> >
>> > Are you're thinking about denormals?
>>
>> I think so, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't really know
>> floating point.
>>
>> paul
>>
>>
>
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Re: [Simh] Looking for a milestone

[Kevin Handy]

It varies from 16 bits to 256 bits.

Go to the wikipedia.org article on "IEEE floating point" for an overview.


On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 3:30 PM, Ray Jewhurst 
wrote:

> Just out of curiosity how many bits does the IEEE standard require for
> floating point?
>
> On Oct 17, 2016 3:51 PM, "Leo Broukhis"  wrote:
>
>> Dijkstra is above reproach; I try to compare the averages.
>>
>> Having eps^2 = eps is cute, but, given that the idea didn't spread to
>> other pre-IEEE f.p. implementations nor to IEEE (it is possible to
>> iteratively square a number x with 0 < abs(x) < 1 down to 0, given enough
>> iterations, denormals or not), it appears that the Electrologica floating
>> point turned out to be impractical.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Paul Koning 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> > On Oct 17, 2016, at 2:26 PM, Leo Broukhis  wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > I think that the same answer applies to your narrower question,
>>> though I didn't see it mentioned specifically in the documents I've read.
>>> >
>>> > That's somewhat comforting; I'd hate to think that the BESM-6
>>> programmers were substantially sloppier than their Western colleagues. :)
>>>
>>> As you probably know, Dijkstra was a whole lot more disciplined than the
>>> vast majority of his colleagues.
>>>
>>> > > For example, the treatment of underflow and very small numbers in
>>> Electrologica was novel at the time; Knuth specifically refers to it in a
>>> > > footnote of Volume 2.  The EL-X8 would never turn a non-zero result
>>> into zero, for example.
>>> >
>>> > For most but not all values of "never", I presume. What was the result
>>> of squaring the number with the least representable absolute value?
>>>
>>> The least representable positive value.  See the paper by F. E. J.
>>> Kruseman Aretz that I mentioned.
>>>
>>> >
>>> > > I think IEEE ended up doing the same thing, but  that was almost 20
>>> years later.
>>> >
>>> > Are you're thinking about denormals?
>>>
>>> I think so, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't really know
>>> floating point.
>>>
>>> paul
>>>
>>>
>>
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[Simh] experimental simulators

[Kevin Handy]

I notice that there re several experimental simulators in the git
distribution.

There doesn't seem to be a list of all the experimental versions..

Could a make target be added to build them, like 'make experimetal'. Would
make it easier to see if the code gets broken, if nothing else.
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Re: [Simh] 32V on SIMH

[Kevin Handy]

>
>
> Which brings up networking.  No one to my knowledge at AT&T ported an IP
> stack, although it does come with uucp.   So, setting up Taylor uucp on a
> UNIX host side and running through the virtual serial port you can network
> V7 style to 32V.   All the basic uucp tools are there and should “just
> work.”   Although, since this is the original uucp implementation, you want
> to hunt around and update the scripts to make it easier to manage and use,
> as the original uucp had some rough edges and compared to what you will see
> in the Taylor package, the 32V implementation may seem pretty crude.
>
>
>
> As other folks have noted the BBN and BSD support for IP/TCP/Ethernet for
> VAX UNIX would not be available for a few years. What is interesting is
> that the 3Com UNET was written for pure V7 as Paul has recently noted.   If
> we can manage to dig up the UNET sources and get it released from 3Com, it
> might actually be a reasonable IP/TCP stack for V32 since its needs are
> small and much of it is actually is user space.Technically, besides the
> obvious thing of UNET having not been released on the VAX to my knowledge
> [Tek had an 11/70 and IIRC Borden and Shaw were using a 11/45], the biggest
> issues is getting UNET to work for you will be that you will need an
> Ethernet driver for 32V that talks to simh.  Greg Shaw wrote a V7 driver
> for the 3Com 3Cx01 series Unibus board which should be in the UNET sources,
> but alas I do not believe simh has support for it.  Also, if I find UNET
> for Paul in my archives, I should also have Steve Glaser’s HyperChannel
> driver in the same sources. So, it should be possible to look at Greg’s and
> Steve’s drivers, and the try to write one for one of the DEC supported
> Ethernet controllers of the 780 that simh supports.  Anyway, putting that
> all together, might give you ftp and telnet – but such a project is going
> to take a lot of work and I wonder if it worth it.
>
>
>
>
>
> Which brings me to point #2.   What’s missing on 32/V.   As I said, a
> number of folks have pulled together different tools for V7 from 1BSD,
> 2BSD, the Harvard Tapes, USENIX tapes *etc. *so you can have an editor
> besides *ed* and the like.  Google in your friend here.  But you are
> likely to want to build up the toolkit a bit.  And this opens up the first
> big can of worms.   The problem is that V7 that C (and UNIX) changed over
> time.  So you will have to be careful about which versions you can move.
> V7 C is “white book” K&R – which is good, much of the either code from
> 1BSD, Harvard et al, is before that, so the compiler does supports the
> standard I/O library and most basic language features accept for function
> prototypes that are needed; although the libraries may not be as
> complete.So, this is where, looking what people have done in making V7
> more comfortable will be a huge help – it should tell you the types of
> things that you will need and where to grab them to build some of the
> simpler tools.
>
>
>
>
>
> The final point is moving code from the new world to the old world.
> Function prototypes is just the beginning; whole subsystems will be
> missing.   Warren has probably taken this the farthest with xv6-freebsd [
> https://github.com/DoctorWkt/xv6-freebsd] work – the key point is that
> you are likely to unhappy with the tools as is.  So how much do you need?
>

Depending on why you are running 32V, putting current software on it
probably defeats the reasons you are running it. If you want to see what
Unix was like back when, replacing all the old stuff with current stuff
wouldn't make sense. You might as well just run a current BSD in that case
and avoid the hassels of updating everything to make 32V look more current.

If you're running it just to have a VAX Unix, then NetBSD (or similar)
would be a better starting point for something more modern. More tools are
already in the distribution, as well as more current C compilers and
libraries.

If you are just playing around, it doesn't matter what  you do. Some things
are just for the entertainment value.

It really depends on why you are running such an old version.
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[Simh] panda dist

[Kevin Handy]

Don't know theproperplace to ask ths, so thought I'd ask here.

Does this indicate aproblem with panda-dist, klh10, ornormal behaviour? I'm
asking about the "ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION" message. Seems to not have caused
any problems, but...


@log operator
@enable
$terminal vt100
$basic

READY
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 END
LIST

NONAME.B20
Wednesday, April 5, 2017 00:17:22

00010 PRINT "HELLO"
00020 END

READY
RUN

NONAME.B20
Wednesday, April 5, 2017 00:17:29

HELLO


Compile time: 0.004 secs
Run time: 0.004 secs Elapsed time: 0:00:00

READY
SAVE TEST.BAS

READY
OLD TEST.BAS

? ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION EXECUTED
? INTERNAL ERROR AT PC 15636
? Proceed at your own risk...

READY
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Re: [Simh] DECserver (terminal server) emulation?

[Kevin Handy]

A simh VMS system should work like the real thing. Just cnfigure it as you
would for a real decserver, and it should work just fine. I think I did
this for a Decserver-200 once so I could test to see if the 200 worked.

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 3:47 PM, Cory Smelosky  wrote:

> Does anyone have DECserver firmware source listings I wonder?
>
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Re: [Simh] DEC VT emulators on MAME

[Kevin Handy]

A quick look at the schematics around the connector for this card, there
are two sets of address/data lines. I'm guessing that one of the chips is
for the character rom,and the other 4 are for the program. I haven't looked
closer (using a tablet that's really painful with PDF's), so not 100%
certain of the split.
Thus the CS/OE is sufficient to handle the 4 program chips, and the other
doesn't need any chip .selection lines.

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 9:12 AM, Timothe Litt  wrote:

> That part is easy - the high address (and bank) bits are probably
> controlled by a hardware register.  Likely the lowest block (perhaps
> 8/16/32K) is not bank switched (so the bank switch code has a place to
> live).
>
> The rest is switched by writing the desired bank into the register.  But
> there's also a 27256 on the terminal board, which may be the static block.
> In that case, all the ROM cartridge is likely bank switched by the register.
>
> The part Malcom needs to figure out is how the 5 hardware chips are
> organized into chip selects onto the 2 address and 2 data buses that come
> out from the connector.  This is a separate issue from the logical banking.
>
> There are 2 bank selects and one excess address bit.  Encoded, that would
> give you 8 chips.  But that would require decoding hardware on the
> cartridge.
>
> Without a decoder, each chip has a CE and and OE.  So if a bank select
> line goes directly to 2 roms' common CS, the extra address bit can control
> output enable.  That scheme can work for 4 ROMs.  But there are 5...
>
> So either I missed a select line on the connector, or there's a decoder on
> the ROM cartridge.
>
> It's possible that the 5th ROM was a late addition (programmers always
> need more code space), so an extra select line might have a different name
> on the terminal control schematics.  (Renaming a signal can have all kinds
> of ripple effects.)
>
> Anyhow, I hope Malcom is successful.
>
>
> On 18-Apr-17 10:59, Tim Stark wrote:
>
> Ok, I now get it.  Since that it total 160K ROM space, 8031/8051 can only
> access 64K space with 16-bit address lines. Let’s figure out how to access
> them  with bank select lines and write down which chip is on specific bank
> number.
>
>
>
> Tim
>
>
>
> *From:* Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com
> ] *On Behalf Of *Timothe Litt
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 18, 2017 10:42 AM
> *To:* simh@trailing-edge.com
> *Subject:* Re: [Simh] DEC VT emulators on MAME
>
>
>
> You can remove the ROMs (EPROMS) nondestructively with hot air.  But an
> easier approach would be to tack some wires onto the connector & wire them
> to a 28 pin DIP header.  Then your existing programmer can read them.
>
> The schematics don't seem to contain the ROM module, but one can infer a
> lot from the connector.
>
> It looks like there are 2 banks of ROMs on the cartridge; there are also 2
> select lines.  Address bits go to A15; the 27c256 uses a0-a14.
>
> So there are probably 2 chips on one bank, 3 on the other.  Since they
> don't write the EPROMs (they'e windowless, so OTP), they probably use A15
> for OE and the bank lines for CS.  It's not obvious how the 5th chip is
> selected - perhaps there is a decoder on the card.  A couple of NAND gates,
> or perhaps a decoder to decode the 2 bank selects?  I didn't backtrack
> through the schematics to find out how the selects are generated.
>
> In any case, some time with an ohmmeter should let you figure it out.  At
> worst you'd need 2 headers (1/bank), but most ROM programmers have strong
> drivers (address), and even 5 chips in parallel should be OK for the data
> bus.  So you can probably get by with 1, and some jumpers (or a dipswitch)
> to set A15/the BS for dumping each one.
>
> DEC ROMs should have a checksum (or more likely, CRC), so you can verify
> that you dumped them correctly.  This would usually be in the last byte(s)
> of each chip - except where booting starts at the highest address.  (E.g.
> some Intel CPUs).  Then look at the beginning :-)
>
> Have fun.
>
> On 18-Apr-17 09:25, malc...@avitech.com.au wrote:
>
> Just a quick update: I've broken open the VT340 ROM cartridge.  Inside are 5 
> x surface-mount N27C256 ROMs.
>
>
>
> Some pictures of the ROM cartridge are now included on this page -> 
> http://avitech.com.au/?p=1818
>
>
>
> Is there anyone who has the tools, time and interest to remove these ROMs and 
> dump the contents?  If so, please let me know and I will pay the cost of 
> shipping to get this cartridge to you.
>
>
>
> Malcolm.
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Simh] DEC VT emulators on MAME

[Kevin Handy]

Looking at the schematic of the terminal from
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/terminal/vt340/K-TC-VT340_Schematic_Feb87.pdf,
it appears that there are two 8031 processors. One (E57) uses the 'P1 AA'
bus and has the 51x8 nvrom, the other (E24) uses the 'P2 BA' bus.

64Kx8 ram seems to be shared between them.

1st guess, E57 does most of the heavy work (serial, uart, keyboard, etc),
and the other E24  handles the display.

Also, for chip select,there is a 'P1 AA15 H' and a'P1 AA15 L' on the
connector which should help with the chip selection logic. (ie. the
inverter is inside the terminal, not on the card).




On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 2:39 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

> Ok, looked at the schematics now.
>
> On 2017-04-18 21:53, Timothe Litt wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Since they're windowless, they are not EPROM (remember what the E
>>> stands for), but plain ROMs.
>>>
>> Nope.  I meant exactly what I wrote.
>>
>
> [...]
>
> Good point about it being the same chip. I hadn't considered that
> possibility. I know that for some 27-series proms, there were certainly
> both mask programmable as well as EPROM versions, where the mask
> programmable was more persistent safe. EPROMs have a risk of loosing their
> content eventually, even if not exposed to UV light.
>
> As for which signal you use for what - it doesn't matter.  OE puts the
>> chip into a low power state just as effectively as CS - assuming that
>> the part isn't in programming or ID mode.  Since the part is never
>> written (in the terminal), this effectively gives you 2 CS pins
>> (effectively ANDed), and thus decoding requires at most an inverter.
>>
>
> Not entirely true.
> OE should timing wise be done after CS and addresses have been stable for
> a certain time. And power consumption of the chip is related to the control
> of CS, and is not related to OE.
>
> While power consumption might not be a problem, and the timing can be
> solve, it does mean that driving CS and OE cannot be done identically. If
> you use OE as a CS, you should make make sure the address is stable some
> time before you activate OE, and if you use CS, you need to still drive OE
> at a point later in time, and not just tie them together or something.
>
> The 27C256 is a 32K x 8 part; it has no A15 (but the cartridge socket
>> does.)
>>
>
> Yes, that was obvious.
>
> Keven pointed out that the odd chip is probably the character generator
>> ROM - thus the separate address and data bus - and it doesn't need a CS
>> or OE.  It's always reading something.
>>
>> As I've written before, rather than guessing, a few minutes with an
>> ohmmeter can sort all this out.
>>
>> I'm leaving that - and further exploration - as an exercise to the reader.
>>
>
> I seriously doubt it's a character generator ROM in the normal sense of
> the word. The VT340 do not generate character output in hardware.
> It's a graphic terminal, which stores the text in the the bitmap, as far
> as I remember (I seem to remember being able to go into graphics mode and
> affect text already written). Also, you have soft definable characters, so
> the CPU need to have access to the same memory the character generator
> would use anyway, and it has to contain some RAM, minimum. So it needs to
> be in the normal memory space of the CPU.
>
> But there is indeed two address and databuses, so I think it's fair to say
> the two select lines are only used for a subset of the PROMs.
>
> There might be data in one ROM that is copied into RAM at startup.
> Character definition tables, for example, I could imagine.
>
> Anyway, most things can be worked out my doing the measurements you
> suggest, yes.
>
>
> Johnny
>
> --
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>   ||  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] 8" Floppy disk image getting HALT error

[Kevin Handy]

If it is readable as text, it probably isn't wps-8. At least the 5-1/4"
formar was encoded into 12 bit words, and weren't directly readable.

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 5:01 PM, Tom Morris  wrote:

> In addition to everything mentioned by everyone else, you might want to
> take into account the type of "report" that you saw. If it's more a
> document type report than a line printer listing report, you might have a
> diskette from a DEC WPS-8 word processing system.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS-8
>
> Tom
>
> On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 4:10 PM, Walker Sampson <
> walker.samp...@colorado.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>>
>>
>> Let me preface this by saying that I’m unfamiliar with the original PDP
>> machines. I work as a digital archivist and have received 8” floppy disks
>> from which I need to recover data.
>>
>>
>>
>> I believe I have recovered at least partial data from these disks; I’ve
>> connected a Y-E Data 8” floppy drive to a KryoFlux floppy disk controller
>> and gotten positive sector results setting the format to a DEC RX02 sector
>> image. When I investigate the resulting disk image in a hex editor, I am
>> seeing clearly a report document, so I don’t believe I have a false
>> positive.
>>
>>
>>
>> Outside of observing in a hex editor however, I don’t know how to access
>> the disk or its contents. Using SIMH, I haven’t gotten the virtual machine
>> to boot the floppy disk image.
>>
>>
>>
>> Commands “AT RK01 ” and then “BOOT RK01” give me a “HALT
>> instruction, PC: 02 (HALT)” message for the PDP-11 program. The PDP-8
>> stalls indefinitely and the PDP-10 outputs “Non-existent device” as well.
>>
>>
>>
>> I can’t go back to the donors and ask what machines these 8” floppies
>> were used with, so I’m not sure how to begin troubleshooting.
>>
>>
>>
>> Any advice in that area is much appreciated!
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
>> Walker
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [Simh] 8" Floppy disk image getting HALT error

[Kevin Handy]

Just did a little research on WPS-8 floppy format, just to satisfy my
curiosity.

WPS-8 stores data on an RX-50 as a series of 12-bit words, using two bytes
on the floppy to store a word. The low 8 bits goes into the 1st byte, and
the upper 4 go into the second btype.  4 bits in the secnd byte are unused.

It stores two 6-bit characters in each word. To convert it to asCII, mask
off the 6 bits and add 31. Character 63 (ASCII 94) is a command character,
and following character(s) specify the command. Some other characters are
also special '[' and ']'  toggle upper/lower case.

Looking at a WPS-8 floppy in raw mode on a PC would not display anything
readable, so this guys floppy is obviously not wps-8,and if all pdp-8s
systems handled floppies the same way (as 12 bit words), it probabl isn't
from any psp-8.



On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 4:33 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:

> On 2017-07-12 02:04, Timothe Litt wrote:
>
>> On 11-Jul-17 18:02, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>
>>> On 2017-07-11 21:09, Timothe Litt wrote:
>>>
 VMS mount /over=id /foreign is the quickest way to identify files-11 and
 RT disks.  FILES-11 can be read directly; use EXCHANGE for RT-11.  Once
 you have the disk mounted on VMS, you can network it to wherever you
 like.

>>>
>>> Similar story if you have RSX. I might have forgotten a thing or two
>>> about VMS here, but I would have thought /OVER=ID/FOREIGN would not
>>> then let you access the disk in the direct way if it is Files-11.
>>>
>> I was suggesting the easiest way to IDENTIFY the media.  /FOREIGN will
>> dump the filesystem type when it looks for a HOM block.  Once you know
>> that, you use the appropriate command / utility to access that type.
>>
>> To access FILES-11 on VMS, you don't use /FOREIGN, just mount (though
>> /over=id will allow a private mount without knowing the volume label.)
>>
>
> Ok. Fair enough. I thought you meant that you'd mount it that way, and
> then go at it.
>
> MOUNT and EXCHANGE details are available from HELP and the manuals.
>>
>> VMS has, arguably, the most filesystem support and tools for this.  But
>> OS choice is a religion.  Use whatever you believe in & have available;
>> there is no point in arguing religion.
>>
>
> True. And, as with any religion, there is no point of even having an
> argument. Whatever works is good enough.
>
> Of course, if the OP is more interested in the result than the process,
>> he can probably get one of us to extract the one file for him...
>>
>
> Also true. I'm sure plenty of people would help, if asked.
>
>
> Johnny
>
> --
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>   ||  on a psychedelic trip
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Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Kevin Handy]

Ok, I already have a tool to convert old "noextend" basic+ to the newer
"extend" format.

It is 'b1filter.cc' in the src directory of

git clone http://github.com/khandy21yo/btran.git

it handles the end-of-line stuff as well as the '&' for print.  There are
some things it doesn't handle, like missing semi-colons in PRINT statements.

There are some of the '101 basic ganmes' in the 'examples' directory, as
well as a 'unbac' which might be useful for some.


On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 6:58 PM, khandy21yo  wrote:

> Rsts basic+ has two modes. Extend and noextend,
>
> Noextend is the original mode, where 'line continues with a linseed and
> ends with a return. The & character works as a shortcut for print.
> Statements were separated with a colon :
>
> Extend mode was changed things around. It was a later addition. 'line
> continues used the &, statement separator was the /, and shortcuts were
> gone.
>
> Put a line at the front of the code like '1 noextend and they may work
> fine as is.
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
>
>  Original message 
> From: Clem Cole 
> Date: 1/25/18 6:15 PM (GMT-07:00)
> To: Johnny Billquist 
> Cc: Simh 
> Subject: Re: [Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for
> public access)
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:23 PM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
>
>>  I thought Dave Ahl didn't come from that environment.
>
>
> I'm pretty sure Ahl was in Education System's group, which I thought at
> one point was in MRO (Marlboro).Small-systems was in the Mill.  MRO was
> 36-bit land.   So he would have had access to the 10s, but I note you're
> right there had been many 8s in the Education stream.
>
> That said, few HSs could even afford them.  Folks in HS's  (like my father
> who was teaching Math in a HS outside of Philadelphia during that time
> period) were most likely running on remote timesharing systems via dial-up
> lines - with GE(Honywell)/Mark-IV being the giant in that business (my own
> entry in the computers with him in '67 was on the Mark-II and Mark-III).
> DEC's customers that were trying to get into that business were mostly
> supported by PDP-10s, not small systems.
>
> RSTS Basic is a late entry, the language support for it, originally came
> from the compiler group which again was originally PDP-10 based (also
> remember the PDP-11 BLISS compiler needed a 10 to run it).
>
> I can not look in my own archives from the time, my only PDP-10
> documentation I have left from the early 70s, is the white monitor 'phone
> book.'  I do have later (circa '78) PDP-10/20 docs but that would have be
> after the book described was published.
>
> Clem
>
>
> ᐧ
>
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Re: [Simh] Crowther's Adventure game

[Kevin Handy]

Then, adventure was converted to many other languages by thousands of fans.
Numerous basic, C, zil,  etc. versions exist. Probably the most cloned
program of all time.

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 3:42 PM, Carey Tyler Schug 
wrote:

> Whoops, memories are slowly coming back, I think.  Adventure was always
> Fortran.  It was Zork that was originally written in the proprietary list
> processing language.
>
>
>
> On 02/02/2018 01:07 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>
>> Carey Tyler Schug wrote:
>>
>>> I had always been told it was first written in some proprietary DEC
>>> list processing language, and only later converted to FORTRAN.  Is
>>> this the original conversion?
>>>
>> They are the oldest files that have been found, as far as I know.
>> According to Woods, they are the Crowther version.
>>
>> Did anybody suggest the following fix to put a blank in the carriage
>>> control position??
>>>
>>> 998 FORMAT(1H ,20A5)
>>>
>> Thanks, that did the trick!
>>
>> I see that the data file from which the strings are read do prefix all
>> strings with a space character.  So it looks like the intent is that
>> FORMAT(20A5) should do the right thing.
>>
>> Maybe the root cause is in the code reading the data file.  But your
>> suggestion is a good workaround.
>>
>>
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Re: [Simh] Cluster communications errors

[Kevin Handy]

When you are looking for packet loss/errors, are you just looking inside
the simulator, or are you also checking the host machine?
Your host OS may be hiding errors, giving you "cleaned up" traffic.

On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 3:36 PM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:

> On Wednesday, July 18, 2018 at 2:32 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
> > > On Jul 18, 2018, at 5:27 PM, Mark Pizzolato  wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wednesday, July 18, 2018 at 2:19 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
> > >>> On Jul 18, 2018, at 5:03 PM, Hunter Goatley 
> > wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> On 7/18/2018 3:38 PM, Hunter Goatley wrote:
> >  I know it's currently as set to autosense. I'll try forcing the
> >  speed and duplex.
> > 
> > >>>
> > >>> I was told:
> > >>> The router is reporting that the port auto-sensed 1Gbit duplex, but
> > >>> I just manually forced it to that to be sure.
> > >
> > > It might be better to hard set the Linux simh host system's port to
> > > 10Mbit on the switch.  That would help with the potential for
> > > overrunning the original DEC hardware...
> >
> > DEC hardware tends to handle line rate traffic; a lot of other Ethernet
> > hardware does not, especially not earlier models.  I remember arguing
> with the
> > DECnet/DOS folks that no, we would not modify the DECnet architecture to
> > handle the single buffer "design" of the 3c501.
> >
> > But if you have speed mismatches, you're likely to have congestion loss,
> unless
> > the bursts are less than the switch buffer quota.  Some switches have
> > thousands of buffers; other (inexpensive) ones have only a surprisingly
> small
> > number and can easily give you congestion loss.
>
> Well, not all systems and hardware can actually handle back to back
> packets even at 10Mbits.   The XQ THROTTLING is based on the throttling
> that
> Johnny Billquist implemented in his bridge which was needed to allow his
> physical systems to be able to communicated with simulated systems without
> crazy packet loss...
>
> - Mark
>
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Re: [Simh] tty magic(?) for talking to bootloaders?

[Kevin Handy]

You may also want to look at the git repository at
https://github.com/PDP-10/its.git
to se how someone else handles this sort of thing.

On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 1:13 AM Mark Pizzolato  wrote:

> On Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 9:45 PM, Tom Perrine wrote:
>
> > Thanks!  That's the boost I needed. It didn't help that I am running
> SIMH 4.0
> > but was using the SIMH 3.20 manual.  DOH!
>
> Docs for the latest version are located in the doc/ directory of the
> source repo.
>
> - Mark
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Re: [Simh] Unattended background SIMH process

[Kevin Handy]

The best way is probably to pass a power-fail interrupt to the emulated OS,
and have it set up to deal with that. I'm now sure how many of the OS's
available under simh emulation have such facilities.

An option would be to have a simh command, like
ONSHUTDOWN 
where a simh script is executed when a shutdown interrupt occurs on the
host OS. This may nor be as useful, as the consol may not be in a state to
handle command input at any moment (not logged out, or sitting at a shell
prompt).

Most of the time, though, I don't get any warning anyway (someone trips
over the power cord).


On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 10:54 PM Supratim Sanyal 
wrote:

> My SIMH VAX is behind a reliable IDS/IPS, so I wrote a stupid program to
> do a "RUN SYS$SYSTEM:OPCCRASH" when a TCP connection is made to a specific
> port. It's at QCOCAL::REMOTE-SHUTDOWN-LISTENER.ZIP if you are on HECnet. An
> obvious minimum improvement would be to support some sort of port-knocking.
>
> Best,
> Supratim
>
> On 11/29/2019 12:38 AM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
>
> Seth J. Morabito wrote:
>
> Has anyone got a clean solution for running a background SIMH process
> that doesn't involve `screen` or `tmux`?
>
> I have also been in search of a solution for this.  I'm OK with using
> screen if necessary.
>
>
> I would like to create an init script or systemd module that will kick
> off a simulator as a daemon process that can start up on host boot, and
> shut down on host shutdown.
>
> It's the shutting down part that's the problem for me.  The operating
> systems I'm interested need to have a user login and type a command to
> shut down cleanly.  This is hard to do reliably.
>
> Possible workarounds for this include abusing the hardware power fail
> interrupt to initiate shutdown, or listening for a signal from the
> network.
>
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>
> --
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>
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Re: [Simh] Unattended background SIMH process

[Kevin Handy]

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 Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 7:52 PM Jeremy Begg  wrote:

> Hello Jim,
>
> >   Hello Jeremy ,  You call a /home/eric/stop_eric.sh in your systemd
> >procedure ,  But forgot to insert the contents of the file in your
> missive .
>
> That's because I never wrote the 'stop_eric.sh' script.  Apologies for not
> saying so in my posting!  The other postings in this discussion have given
> me some ideas I might persue but for the time being it's not a critical
> item
> for me.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jeremy Begg
>
> >On Fri, 29 Nov 2019, Jeremy Begg wrote:
> >> Hi Seth,
> >>
> >>> Has anyone got a clean solution for running a background SIMH process
> >>> that doesn't involve `screen` or `tmux`?
> >>
> >> My solution is pretty clean and doesn't require any kind of virtual TTY.
> >>
> >> I have SIMH running under Ubuntu Linux 18.04 on an Intel i3 NUC box.
> >> It took a little trial and error to get it all working (mostly due to
> >> Ubuntu's use of 'netplan' and 'systemd') but it works well enough for
> me.
> >>
> >> It's configured so that my SIMH VAX starts up when Linux starts up.
> >> I don't have it configured to shutdown VAX/VMS or SIMH when Linux is
> >> shutting down, but for my purposes it doesn't need to.  (Or I just
> haven't
> >> gotten around to it yet; the machine is only rebooted when I want it
> to.)
> >>
> >>
> --
> >> # /etc/systemd/system/simh-eric.service
> >> # Starts SIMH at system boot to run ERIC the Half-a-VAX
> >> # Created 21-Jul-2019 by Jeremy Begg
> >>
> >> [Unit]
> >> Description=ERIC the half-a-VAX
> >> Requires=network-online.target
> >> After=network-online.target
> >>
> >> [Service]
> >> User=eric
> >> ExecStart=/home/eric/start_eric.sh
> >> ExecStop=/home/eric/stop_eric.sh
> >> RemainAfterExit=yes
> >>
> >> [Install]
> >> WantedBy=multi-user.target
>
> >--
> >+-+
> >| James   W.   Laferriere| SystemTechniques | Give me VMS |
> >| Network & System Engineer  | 3237 Holden Road |  Give me Linux  |
> >| j...@system-techniques.com | Fairbanks, AK. 99709 |   only  on  AXP |
> >+-+
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[Simh] load

[Kevin Handy]

I was watching some youtube videos about the PiDP-11, and they all seemed
to end up typing in a hand-assembled program into the emulator.

It got me  to thinking about the macro11 assembler in simtools, however
that program only appears to output object files, not binary ones. simh
appears to only accept binary filesm not object files.

Is there some way to bridge the gap? Is there some method to bridge he gap?
marco11 to output binary files, a linker to convert object files to binary
ones, or simh to accept object files.

For the PiDP-11 users, they could prooblbly work from a listing where a
hard-coded base address is given, but others might want to try something
that is too long to want to key it in.

If this is already possible, some documentation on the process would be
useful. This would also make simtools more useful.

This applies to all the other emulations that have assemblers available
also.
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Re: [Simh] load

[Kevin Handy]

Ok, I have looked at the link11 code, and after a lot of fuzzing around,
got it to compile under Linux. Attached is that code. It compiles without
errors using 'make', and I haven't tried -Wall yet.

I left it as mostly K&R, but I needed to stuff in a lot of prototypes to
quieten warnings, nor did I remove 'register' or 'auto' from definitions.
There was a lot of 'auto x' instead of 'auto int x' also.

However, it does not like the object files I threw at it, from the macro11
package on simtools, nor from object files from a RSTS/E system. It just
says 'not an object file'.

Haven't had a lot of time to play with it lately, so here it is if anyone
else wants to tplay with it. I don't think I broke anything, so it may be
something like '16 bit int' expectations in the code, or maybe it is
looking for a different object format.


On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 12:04 AM Lars Brinkhoff  wrote:

> Paul Koning wrote:
> > For running parts of the GCC test suite for the PDP11 target, I wanted
> > to be able to run its output on SIMH.
>
> A very convenient but probably less accurate way to run PDP-11 a.out
> programs is to use Warren Toomey's apout emulator.
>
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l11.tgz
Description: application/compressed-tar
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[Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

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[Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

I've been playing with the link-11 code from  the Unix archive, but came up
on the problem that simtools/macro11 creates RSX style object files, while
link-11 wants RT11 format files.

Looking at the macro11 source code, I noticed that it could create RT11
format files if you compiles it with RT11 macro defined.

This wasn't an optimal solution to me, so I changed the '#if RT11' code to
'if (rt11)', and added a couple of command line options (-rt11, and -rsx)
so that both formats were available without a recompile.

I have not modified the 'dunpobj' program yet, time constraints, but
thought  I'd pass on what I have in case anyone was interested.
<>
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

Go ahead and use it as you want. I think it would be great to have it in
the mainline. Attribute it as you wish, as it is such a simple change.

I didn't reformat the code as I wanted the changes to be minimal, and easy
to diff. Reformatting it for mainline would be good.


On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 1:32 PM Rhialto  wrote:

> On Sat 29 Feb 2020 at 12:54:55 -0700, Kevin Handy wrote:
> > This wasn't an optimal solution to me, so I changed the '#if RT11' code
> to
> > 'if (rt11)', and added a couple of command line options (-rt11, and -rsx)
> > so that both formats were available without a recompile.
>
> Is it ok if I put those changes (slightly cleaned up) at the macro11
> version at git://github.com/Rhialto/macro11.git ? How shall I attribute
> it?
>
> The simtools version used git-subtree to incorporate that into simtools;
> I'll have to look up how to update it :)
>
> -Olaf.
> --
> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
>
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

Also, dumpobj should get the same treatment, but it doesn't have a command
line parser, so it needs more work than macro11. I might get to it later if
no one else does, but it might take me a while.

On Mon, Mar 2, 2020 at 4:37 PM Kevin Handy  wrote:

> Go ahead and use it as you want. I think it would be great to have it in
> the mainline. Attribute it as you wish, as it is such a simple change.
>
> I didn't reformat the code as I wanted the changes to be minimal, and easy
> to diff. Reformatting it for mainline would be good.
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 1:32 PM Rhialto  wrote:
>
>> On Sat 29 Feb 2020 at 12:54:55 -0700, Kevin Handy wrote:
>> > This wasn't an optimal solution to me, so I changed the '#if RT11' code
>> to
>> > 'if (rt11)', and added a couple of command line options (-rt11, and
>> -rsx)
>> > so that both formats were available without a recompile.
>>
>> Is it ok if I put those changes (slightly cleaned up) at the macro11
>> version at git://github.com/Rhialto/macro11.git ? How shall I attribute
>> it?
>>
>> The simtools version used git-subtree to incorporate that into simtools;
>> I'll have to look up how to update it :)
>>
>> -Olaf.
>> --
>> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
>> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
>> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
>>
>
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

Just had a short time to  play with is, but ...

dumpobj has a little bit of a problem with the command line

If i do 'dumponj xxx.obj -rt11' it dumps the data, but it also creates a
file called '-rt11'.

If I do 'dumpobj -rt11 xxx.obj', it failes because the file '-rt11' doesn't
exist.

The code to handle the file names on the command line needs some chaning.
It is hardcoded to argv[1] and argv2].

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 3:02 PM Rhialto  wrote:

> On Mon 02 Mar 2020 at 16:41:59 -0700, Kevin Handy wrote:
> > Also, dumpobj should get the same treatment, but it doesn't have a
> command
> > line parser, so it needs more work than macro11. I might get to it later
> if
> > no one else does, but it might take me a while.
>
> I've committed your changes to the assembler, and I made similar changes
> to dumpobj. See here: https://github.com/Rhialto/macro11/commits/master
> Can you give it a try to check if it works for you? Then we can declare
> it a new release, or at least give it a new tag.
>
> -Olaf.
> --
> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

Ok, here is a version with somewhat better handling of the filenames.

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 5:01 PM Kevin Handy  wrote:

> Just had a short time to  play with is, but ...
>
> dumpobj has a little bit of a problem with the command line
>
> If i do 'dumponj xxx.obj -rt11' it dumps the data, but it also creates a
> file called '-rt11'.
>
> If I do 'dumpobj -rt11 xxx.obj', it failes because the file '-rt11'
> doesn't exist.
>
> The code to handle the file names on the command line needs some chaning.
> It is hardcoded to argv[1] and argv2].
>
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 3:02 PM Rhialto  wrote:
>
>> On Mon 02 Mar 2020 at 16:41:59 -0700, Kevin Handy wrote:
>> > Also, dumpobj should get the same treatment, but it doesn't have a
>> command
>> > line parser, so it needs more work than macro11. I might get to it
>> later if
>> > no one else does, but it might take me a while.
>>
>> I've committed your changes to the assembler, and I made similar changes
>> to dumpobj. See here: https://github.com/Rhialto/macro11/commits/master
>> Can you give it a try to check if it works for you? Then we can declare
>> it a new release, or at least give it a new tag.
>>
>> -Olaf.
>> --
>> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
>> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
>> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
>>
>
/* Dump and interpret an object file. */

/*
Copyright (c) 2001, Richard Krehbiel
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:

o Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
  notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

o Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
  documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

o Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its
  contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
  this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS
OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR
TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE
USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

*/

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

#include "rad50.h"

#include "util.h"

#define WORD(cp) ((*(cp) & 0xff) + ((*((cp)+1) & 0xff) << 8))

#define NPSECTS 256

int psectid = 0;
char   *psects[NPSECTS];
FILE   *bin = NULL;
int badbin = 0;
int xferad = 1;

char   *readrec(
FILE *fp,
int *len,
int rt11)
{
int c,
i;
int chksum;
char   *buf;

chksum = 0;

if (rt11) {
while (c = fgetc(fp), c != EOF && c == 0) ;

if (c == EOF)
return NULL;

if (c != 1) {
fprintf(stderr, "Improperly formatted OBJ file (1)\n");
return NULL;   /* Not a properly formatted file. */
}

chksum -= c;

c = fgetc(fp);
if (c != 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "Improperly formatted OBJ file (2)\n");
return NULL;   /* Not properly formatted */
}

chksum -= c;   /* even though for 0 the checksum isn't changed... */
}

c = fgetc(fp);
if (c == EOF) {
if (rt11) {
fprintf(stderr, "Improperly formatted OBJ file (3)\n");
}
return NULL;
}
*len = c;

chksum -= c;

c = fgetc(fp);
if (c == EOF) {
fprintf(stderr, "Improperly formatted OBJ file (4)\n");
return NULL;
}

*len += (c << 8);

chksum -= c;

if (rt11) {
*len -= 4; /* Subtract header and length bytes from length */
}

if (*len < 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "Improperly formatted OBJ file (5)\n");
  

Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

I really have no idea what the output file from dumpobj is for. I haven't
dug into the code enough to figure that out. I originally thought it was
for the dumped text, but it does appear to be an object file.
I assume that it must have some purpose, because if it is just a copy of
the original file, you can just use the 'copy' command from a shell much
easier.
I have no idea what purpose it serves, at the moment.

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 11:45 AM Rhialto  wrote:

> On Tue 03 Mar 2020 at 17:50:40 -0700, Kevin Handy wrote:
> > Ok, here is a version with somewhat better handling of the filenames.
>
> Thanks! I added it.
>
> I hadn't really looked before at this output file that dumpobj can
> create, but it looks like another object file, from a cursory look.
> Does it seem useful to you? Is it more or less a copy of the input or is
> something interesting happening to it?
>
> The object file format here should maybe also be changed by the rt11/rsx
> option. Do you think it makes sense to use the same value as for the
> input, the opposite (so it can be used as a converter or something), or
> have a separate option? Since I haven't looked at it carefully yet, I
> have not yet formed an opinion really.
>
> -Olaf.
> --
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> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

Ok, brief lookover of the code...

It looks like the output file is in some sort of loader format. All of the
program text/code segments are written out using a specific format.

I don't know which one it is designed for. This is probably used to bypass
'link' and convert an object file into a loadable file.  .

It might even be in rsx executable format, or in some bootloader format.
Not sure.



On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 2:58 PM Kevin Handy  wrote:

> I really have no idea what the output file from dumpobj is for. I haven't
> dug into the code enough to figure that out. I originally thought it was
> for the dumped text, but it does appear to be an object file.
> I assume that it must have some purpose, because if it is just a copy of
> the original file, you can just use the 'copy' command from a shell much
> easier.
> I have no idea what purpose it serves, at the moment.
>
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 11:45 AM Rhialto  wrote:
>
>> On Tue 03 Mar 2020 at 17:50:40 -0700, Kevin Handy wrote:
>> > Ok, here is a version with somewhat better handling of the filenames.
>>
>> Thanks! I added it.
>>
>> I hadn't really looked before at this output file that dumpobj can
>> create, but it looks like another object file, from a cursory look.
>> Does it seem useful to you? Is it more or less a copy of the input or is
>> something interesting happening to it?
>>
>> The object file format here should maybe also be changed by the rt11/rsx
>> option. Do you think it makes sense to use the same value as for the
>> input, the opposite (so it can be used as a converter or something), or
>> have a separate option? Since I haven't looked at it carefully yet, I
>> have not yet formed an opinion really.
>>
>> -Olaf.
>> --
>> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
>> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
>> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
>>
>
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

A quick fix to make PAGE a no-op, would be to add a line in assemble.c
right after the line
   case P_PRINT:
and add the line
   case P_PAGE:

I don't think that much of the listing ops really work anyway.

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 7:45 PM Ethan Dicks  wrote:

> Hi, Kevin, Rhialto,
>
> This thread gave me a good reason to check out cross-compiling some
> macro-11 code and I threw the first thing in my PDP-11 projects
> directory at it, and got this...
>
> $ macro11  DQ614P.MAC
> DQ614P.MAC:53: ***ERROR Unimplemented directive .PAGE
> DQ614P.MAC:133: ***ERROR Unimplemented directive .PAGE
> DQ614P.MAC:403: ***ERROR Unimplemented directive .PAGE
>
> I know this has nothing to do with the rt11/rsx11 changes but I
> thought I'd bring this up since, as they say, the hood is open.
>
> I was kind of surprised this would be an issue - back when we
> typically printed listings out on greenbar paper, we used .PAGE
> directives for a fresh page.  I guess it matters less when we just
> look at the output on gargantuan bitmapped displays.
>
> -ethan
>
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

There are a lot of missing features in this macro11 already that are
handled as no-ops, mostly regarding the listing. To do this properly would
require implementing much of the missing listing functionality like paging,
page titles, etc.

I think the first step is to make it not fail on existing code, then worry
about the listing after that.

The parser knows most of the directive names, but is not designed to do
anything about them. For example, it parses the ".page" command, but then
doesn't handle doing anything with it, which is what causes the error
mentioned above. Telling it that it is a no-op for now allows programs to
be compiled, but since there isn't any paging being done in the listing,
there is nothing for it to do right now.

The '.rept 0' thing is obviously a difference in how things are done
differently in the real macro11 and this re-implementation that should be
addressed. I don't know how the code for that works right now, so I don't
know how hard it would be to fix it.

I started playing with this to get example code to run on bare hardware,
since macro11 exists under the actual OS's, so sample code that runs on the
bare hardware would be useful to this, and also to the PiDP11 folks as well
as those with real PDP11's. Is there a repository of such code already?

On Fri, Mar 6, 2020 at 1:10 PM Rhialto  wrote:

> On Thu 05 Mar 2020 at 17:10:29 -0700, Kevin Handy wrote:
> > A quick fix to make PAGE a no-op, would be to add a line in assemble.c
> > right after the line
> >case P_PRINT:
> > and add the line
> >case P_PAGE:
> >
> > I don't think that much of the listing ops really work anyway.
>
> Indeed. And the exact layout of the listing differs in details from the
> RSX version too. But maybe it makes sense to add a one-time warning for
> this kind of unimplemented but not vital directives?
>
> -Olaf.
> --
> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
>
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Re: [Simh] OpenVMS Hobbyist Program

[Kevin Handy]

With VMS only available for obsolete hardware, the  main people keeping the
knowledge alive is the hobbyests. With the loss of the hobbyist program,
there's going to be a lot of hard feelings left behind. IWon't that cause
VSI problems when the finally get an X86 version going? The VMS supporters
are going to feel like they've been burned too many times Why would someone
choose VMS, who keep dropping out, over Linux or Windows, which seems to be
taking over in the area's VMS used to hold.
It just seems to be a bad deal for VSI's future.

On Sun, Mar 8, 2020 at 10:39 AM Hunter Goatley 
wrote:

> On 3/8/2020 8:57 AM, Craig Berry wrote:
> > HPE does not need to be selling or supporting the software in order to
> collect royalties from those who do, and I suspect the commercial emulator
> vendors have the ability to issue PAKs for new and transferred VAX
> licenses, and make money for themselves and for HPE when they do so.
>
> Good point. I had assumed HPE was the only entity doing that, but that
> may not be the case.
>
> Hunter
>
>
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

I grabbed the link11 source from the unix archive, mentioned earlier in
this thread, and got them to compile. They don't work well, but they do
compile. I added '-Wall' to the compile, and cleaned that up, but still
doesn't work right. It seems to only read in one block of data, then gets
lost. I haven't had a whole lot of time to play with it, but if anyone
wants to look at what I have, it lies within this stuff
https://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools
under link11. Did.t make a new git for this by itself, since I didn't know
if it was what it sounded like it was.


On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 10:56 AM Don North  wrote:

> On 2020-03-06 07:48 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
>
> Thanks, Olaf, for the updates.  macro11 is working pretty well now.
>
>
>
> Is there a a path from macro11 .obj files to absolute memory images,
> preferably in -11 absolute loader paper tape image format, that I can
> transfer to a real -11?
>
>
>
> Did someone say that there’s link11 as well?  Or a task builder?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bob Armstrong
>
>
>
> A while back I was looking to do the same thing (assemble macro11 files
> into .bin images loadable into, for example, simh) but never found a
> solution like the sources for a linker outside of a DEC O/S.
>
> So I built this:  https://github.com/AK6DN/obj2bin
>
> And use it like this in my Makefile (under cygwin on windows):
>
> *# makefile for pdp11 bin code*
>
> *.PRECIOUS: %.obj*
>
> *MACOPT ?= -d md -d me -e bex -yus -rt11*
> *OBJOPT ?= --debug --verbose*
>
> *%.obj : %.mac*
> *macro11 $< $(MACOPT) -l $*.lst -o $@*
>
> *%.bin : %.obj*
> *obj2bin.pl  $(OBJOPT) --binary --log
> $(@:.bin=.log) --out $@ $+*
>
> *# all the files to be made*
> *BIN=memx.bin echo1.bin echo2.bin dl11.bin*
>
> *all : $(BIN)*
>
> Besides linking multiple .obj into a single .bin, it can also generate
> M9312 compatible boot and console PROM hex image files.
>
> Don
>
>
>
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

Ok, I got link11 from the Unix archive doing something. It takes in RT11
object files, and creates a .out file (don't know what it formatted for).
Some commands seem to work, some segfault. haven't traced that out yet.

I ran it on code from the simtools macro11, and a couple from a RSTS/E
system.  Nothing that was actually runnable. It could still be very broken,
but it might be a starting point for something.

Available within this pile of code on github under the subdirectory link11

https://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools



On Sun, Mar 8, 2020 at 2:52 PM Rhialto  wrote:

> On Sat 07 Mar 2020 at 09:55:39 -0800, Don North wrote:
> > A while back I was looking to do the same thing (assemble macro11 files
> into
> > .bin images loadable into, for example, simh) but never found a solution
> > like the sources for a linker outside of a DEC O/S.
>
> There is 2.11BSD's l11, which I have included in my macro11 in
> tests/2.11BSD/l11 (because the m11 there is written in m11 and I'm using
> it as regression test). But I haven't tried to use it; I suspect it
> works with (at least as output) Unix executable format.
>
> > So I built this: https://github.com/AK6DN/obj2bin
>
> I like it :) I'm subtree-ing it into the macro11 repo, so people have it
> available.
>
> -Olaf.
> --
> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
> ___
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Re: [Simh] HPE has started emailing the final hobbyist licenses

[Kevin Handy]

I remember trying to find pricing for a tcpip/ucx license for a MicroVax
3100 shortly after Compaq bought out EC. After three days of phone tag, and
frequent "Which version of Windows doed VMS run on", I finally managed to
get someone who left a quote on my answering machine.

$3000 per user.

I tried calling back to find out more info about this quote the next day
using the provided phone number, but was told that that individual no
longer worked there, and they had no idea what this VMS thing was.

Could never find any path to the VMS people after that. Ended up hacking
something less useful using a variety of hacks, mostly involving ckermit
and a serial line. Not as fast or reliable as it could have been.


On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 12:13 PM Dan Gahlinger  wrote:

> check your emails and spam folders.
>
> final license will expire in 2021.
>
> That's all folks
>
> Dan
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Re: [Simh] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

link11 now seems to work on rt11 object files.
I fixed several bugs, including the -ls crash.
The obint program also compiles.
In addition to the original makefile is a cmake build file.
The cmake build can also create a .deb package.

It's only been tested to create linked .out images,
but I don't know if they actually run.


On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 9:24 PM Kevin Handy  wrote:

> Ok, I got link11 from the Unix archive doing something. It takes in RT11
> object files, and creates a .out file (don't know what it formatted for).
> Some commands seem to work, some segfault. haven't traced that out yet.
>
> I ran it on code from the simtools macro11, and a couple from a RSTS/E
> system.  Nothing that was actually runnable. It could still be very broken,
> but it might be a starting point for something.
>
> Available within this pile of code on github under the subdirectory link11
>
> https://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 8, 2020 at 2:52 PM Rhialto  wrote:
>
>> On Sat 07 Mar 2020 at 09:55:39 -0800, Don North wrote:
>> > A while back I was looking to do the same thing (assemble macro11 files
>> into
>> > .bin images loadable into, for example, simh) but never found a solution
>> > like the sources for a linker outside of a DEC O/S.
>>
>> There is 2.11BSD's l11, which I have included in my macro11 in
>> tests/2.11BSD/l11 (because the m11 there is written in m11 and I'm using
>> it as regression test). But I haven't tried to use it; I suspect it
>> works with (at least as output) Unix executable format.
>>
>> > So I built this: https://github.com/AK6DN/obj2bin
>>
>> I like it :) I'm subtree-ing it into the macro11 repo, so people have it
>> available.
>>
>> -Olaf.
>> --
>> Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert -- rhialto at falu dot nl
>> ___  Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on
>> \X/  no account be allowed to do the job.   --Douglas Adams, "THGTTG"
>> ___
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>
>
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[Simh] hp alternatives

[Kevin Handy]

Since GP is exiting the VMS arena, and dropping the hobbyist licenses, I
was wondering about alternatives for running old VMS code.

There are plenty of C, FORTRAN, etc compilers on Linux/etc, but if there
were comparable VMS libraries (open source) for things like RMS, SMG, LBR,
etc, then many programs culd be run on other platforms.

I know there are commercial products like these, BUT The licensing doesn't
help hobbyist who want to share code.

Are there any of these available? I've done a few functions to convert VMS
calls to Linux calls before, but only for a few functions.

I just thought it would be another way to simulate some of VMS st another
level than simh/vax/vms.
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Re: [Simh] hp alternatives

[Kevin Handy]

Porting VAX Basic... Sort of...

I have a program that does a bunch of the work to conovert VaxBasic to C++,
but it doesn't do everything.  There's a lot of stuff that just doesn't
exist on other OS's, like the SMG, RMS, LBR, etc.

https://github.com/khandy21yo/btran.git

there are probably lots of bugs, and you may need to reformat your source
slightly (add some spaces in confusing parsing conditions for example). You
may also need to edit the generated C++ to get it right.




On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 8:20 AM E J Jaquay  wrote:

> I have been able to replace RMS indexed files with BerkelyDB without many
> issues so that is one alternative.  Just have to replace I/O statements
> with functions that do the appropriate calls.
>
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 20:10 Dan Gahlinger  wrote:
>
>> is there a way to port vax basic?
>> please dont say visual basic, it's awful.
>>
>> heck even vax Pascal is vastly different from free Pascal.
>>
>> dcl? nothing remotely like it really, bash?
>>
>> how about indexed files?
>> rdbms is a poor man's alternative.
>>
>> vax vms is truly unique.
>> and will always be my favorite.
>>
>> Dan
>>
>> Try: https://www.grammarly.com
>>
>> --
>> *From:* Simh  on behalf of Kevin Handy <
>> khandy2...@gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 18, 2020 6:44:53 PM
>> *To:* Simh 
>> *Subject:* [Simh] hp alternatives
>>
>> Since GP is exiting the VMS arena, and dropping the hobbyist licenses, I
>> was wondering about alternatives for running old VMS code.
>>
>> There are plenty of C, FORTRAN, etc compilers on Linux/etc, but if there
>> were comparable VMS libraries (open source) for things like RMS, SMG, LBR,
>> etc, then many programs culd be run on other platforms.
>>
>> I know there are commercial products like these, BUT The licensing
>> doesn't help hobbyist who want to share code.
>>
>> Are there any of these available? I've done a few functions to convert
>> VMS calls to Linux calls before, but only for a few functions.
>>
>> I just thought it would be another way to simulate some of VMS st another
>> level than simh/vax/vms.
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Releasing terspy.mar - vax/vms terminal spy program

[Kevin Handy]

I found a program on an old gcc distribution called gcobs.mar. Dom't know
why they had it on there. but...

It allows you to spy on another terminal, and if you type a ^\ (iirc) you
can interact with that terminal. The only authorship message I can see is
;Last Modified:   6-SEP-1988 14:19:55.00, By: RLB
I know nothing of its licensing, I just have this one file. It worked
great. Not sure what privs are required either.

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 9:04 AM Hittner, David T [US] (MS) <
david.hitt...@ngc.com> wrote:

> 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. L
>
>
>
> 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. J
>
>
>
> 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] macro11

[Kevin Handy]

I've been working on the linker, and found that it doesn't work, probably
never did. At least not the version I have been working on. I git it to
compile,and run through pass 1, then loses it.
.
It looks like the author copied over another linker, and started to modify
it, but never finished it. It refers to the internal 'object type' using
two different sets of numbers. One for pass 1, and another for pass2 which
don't match. It also never seems to write out the original binary code, it
only tries to apply the relocations to it. Very weird, but I' slowly
diffing through it. If anyone wants to help, it suffed into
https://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools
under the link11 subdirectory. Haven't had much time to work with it lately
(corona shutdowns didn't help any)


On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 3:27 PM Bob Eager  wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA256
>
> On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 17:32:06 +0100
> Rhialto  wrote:
>
> > Speaking of macro11: since there were no changes for two weeks, I
> > made a release (called it v0.5).
> >
> > -Olaf.
>
> Can you remind us where it (and the linker) are, please?
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
>
> iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEVgdI2KeVldPAhUYaKBdf2az8e6gFAl5/wRoACgkQKBdf2az8
> e6ifpgf/Vbi5dELyBhwn0fnTAkwlB3/ABgPnbT91/Ify8FA50JD3W7/IqA2W6hOz
> KyvuQxiCObPf6akkhGA80QsrujVRopBM5ynKRiejpcg4h1qnd8WxcFR11HQyUcit
> tVTI24uhlmr1jLW1Hh5EFFAFNtKg+8UJ3D18Cn7dPbhjpUmIdVGhsi+bYPCIZZI+
> 1hRR++ptmLeNDOFPUn1gswHrTMBksmQlDDmquQPErloxn/2Mw7wYejOxw2mP/lgp
> Woo9eiqaIf84HGzwsWd4229LlIih19IDYy60O+VWjqOX+hWHcIt2Y4vFlkdssgqJ
> P5Flv+yF+8FaLDT3H1apILm2iQ0g2w==
> =uzid
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
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Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Releasing terspy.mar - vax/vms terminal spy program

[Kevin Handy]

2nd try.
This is what I have. you need to set up a DCL command along the lines of

$ GCOBS :== "$GCOBS.EXE"

then start it something like

GCOBS tta9:

There is one keystroke tp exit the program, and another to swap
Been a while since I last used it. but(?) ^Z to exit, ^\ to switch



On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 12:44 AM Dan Gahlinger  wrote:

> can you share it? I'd love to take a look at it
>
> Dan.
>
> --
> *From:* Simh  on behalf of Kevin Handy <
> khandy2...@gmail.com>
> *Sent:* March 30, 2020 2:17 AM
> *To:* Hittner, David T [US] (MS) 
> *Cc:* simh@trailing-edge.com 
> *Subject:* Re: [Simh] EXT :Re: Releasing terspy.mar - vax/vms terminal
> spy program
>
> I found a program on an old gcc distribution called gcobs.mar. Dom't know
> why they had it on there. but...
>
> It allows you to spy on another terminal, and if you type a ^\ (iirc) you
> can interact with that terminal. The only authorship message I can see is
> ;Last Modified:   6-SEP-1988 14:19:55.00, By: RLB
> I know nothing of its licensing, I just have this one file. It worked
> great. Not sure what privs are required either.
>
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 9:04 AM Hittner, David T [US] (MS) <
> david.hitt...@ngc.com> wrote:
>
> 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. L
>
>
>
> 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. J
>
>
>
> 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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> Simh@trailing-edge.com
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>
>


gcobs.mar
Description: Binary data
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Re: [Simh] Has anyone contacted VSI directly about Hobbyist Licenses ?

[Kevin Handy]

If they do not include VAX, then maybe that will encourage the alpha
simulator to get worked on.

On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 1:22 AM Vesko Kenashkov  wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I pinged them yesterday on FB congratulating them about rolling out v9.0
> on VirtualBox and inquired about Hobbyist program and they confirmed there
> will be one for sure before the end of the HPE's one. So good news for us
> all!
>
> Vesko Kenashkov
>
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 2:43 AM Arthur Krewat  wrote:
>
>> Wow, that is awesome news!
>>
>>
>> On 4/26/2020 7:00 PM, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
>>
>> On 4/26/2020 5:27 PM, James W. Laferriere wrote:
>>
>> Hello Anyone ,  Has anyone contacted VSI directly about Hobbyist
>> Licensing ie: sa...@vmssoftware.com ?
>>
>> While they see we have no $'s invested in their products ,  They
>> should see a PR function in this arena .
>>
>> Actually hoping that someone has done so .
>> Hthfys ,  JimL
>>
>> VSI is way ahead of you.  Posted April 22nd on their "News" page:
>>
>> VSI announces community license
>>
>> You may be aware that HPE have announced they are “concluding the
>> HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program in alignment with the HPE
>> OpenVMS support roadmap” which essentially means that the Hobbyist
>> program as you know it ceases at the end of 2020.
>>
>> GOOD NEWS: There has been speculation that VMS Software, Inc.
>> would take over this program, so let us end the speculation and
>> say categorically that VMS Software, Inc. is bringing out a
>> replacement program for the HPE Hobbyist license program. It will
>> be called the “OpenVMS Community License Program”, and we are
>> currently in the process of working out all the details, which
>> will be available well before the end of the HPE Hobbyist license
>> program.
>>
>> https://vmssoftware.com/about/news/
>>
>>
>> It was at the top of the page, but now it's been replaced by news of the
>> EAK V9.0 kit and you have to scroll down a ways to find it. However, we are
>> assuming that it will only address Alpha, Integrity and x86 licenses.
>> Unless HPE changes their agreement with VSI (we assume) that they won't be
>> able to issue "Community Licenses" for the VAX platform.  But that may
>> change by the end of the year.  Only HPE and VSI know.
>>
>>
>> In the meantime, if you haven't, get your HPE Hobbyist license(s) as they
>> are counting the number of participants which may go to VSI.  The new
>> license will not expire until January 1, 2022.
>>
>> --
>> John H. Reinhardt
>>
>>
>> ___
>> Simh mailing 
>> listSimh@trailing-edge.comhttp://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> Simh@trailing-edge.com
>> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
>
>
>
> --
> Vesko Kenashkov
> Developer at AzonMedia  and Guzaba Framework
> 
>
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Re: [Simh] Has anyone contacted VSI directly about Hobbyist Licenses ?

[Kevin Handy]

As I understand it, it is not an automated process. It can take a few days
for it to be processed.

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 2:32 PM Mike Stramba  wrote:

> Hmm,  ~ 16 hours after submitting , and still no reply / license info
>
> How long does license issue  usually take ?
>
> Mike
>
>
> On 4/28/20, Steven M Jones  wrote:
> > On 04/28/2020 15:00, Richard wrote:
> >> In article <581a87f9-4be6-7bde-badb-30b563a01...@thereinhardts.org>,
> >>  "John H. Reinhardt"  writes:
> >>
> >>> In the meantime, if you haven't, get your HPE Hobbyist license(s)
> >>> as they are counting the number of participants which may go to VSI.
> >>> The new license will not expire until January 1, 2022.
> >> I've been lax with my VAXen.  How do I do this again?
> >
> >
> > Should be able to do that here:
> > https://www.hpe.com/h41268/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548
> >
> > You'll need to be affiliated with a group in their list. I recommend
> > DECUServe, my understanding is they don't have any geographic
> > requirements. You can do that by telnet or ssh to eisner.decuserve.org,
> > username REGISTRATION (no password, just hit Return), and follow the
> > prompts. It'll take some time for the data to propagate to HPE if you
> > have to create an account, measured in days not weeks.
> >
> > "Share & Enjoy!"
> > --S.
> >
> >
> > ___
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> > Simh@trailing-edge.com
> > http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
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Re: [Simh] Printing to a pdf

[Kevin Handy]

If you can get it to a text file, there is always the enscript program
under Linux. L
ots of options available for dormatting. number of columns. Font. See 'man
enscript' for a long list of options.

On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 4:42 PM J. David Bryan  wrote:

> On Monday, May 25, 2020 at 11:37, Johan wrote:
>
> > Is there a way to print to a pdf ?
>
> I use Tim Litt's nifty "lpt2pdf" program:
>
>   https://github.com/tlhackque/simh
>
> ...as a post-processor for SIMH-generated line printer text files.  The
> two
> "lpt2pdf.[ch]" files will compile into a standalone executable if you
> define the "PDF_MAIN" symbol on the compiler invocation command line.
>
>   -- Dave
>
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[Simh] link11

[Kevin Handy]

Something to play with.

I have the beginning of a pdp11 linker to go with the macro11 simh tool. It
is in an early version, and many things don't work yet, but it can handle
some simple programs, like the hello world program included in the test
subdirectory. It needs a lot more work to handle larger, more complicated
programs.

It is quite limited currently, and has little error checking code, I only
coded the parts necessary to build the hello program, but it should be a
decent starting point.

Some limitations include:
- psects of 256 bytes or less.
- only handles a few of the relocations (1-4, but not 5-17)
- only produces an lda or a simh script
- no common psects
- only handles rt11 object files
- does not handle object libraries
- many more.

It's part of 'http://github.com/khandy21yo/emutools.git', in the link11
subdirectory. It is coded in C++, and uses cmake to build. It includes the
source of the 'unix archive' linker in this subdirectory, but that one is
far from working.

The documentation is quite lacking at the moment. It only started working
right yesterday for my test program.


~/emutools/link11/test$ ls *.obj
hello.obj  putconch.obj
~/emutools/link11/test$ ../link11 hello.obj putconch.obj -lda hello.lda
:~/emutools/link11/test$ pdp11

PDP-11 simulator V4.0-0 Currentgit commit id: f95ac7dd
sim> load hello.lda
sim> g
Hello world!
HALT instruction, PC: 001040 (ADD (R5)+,(R0))
sim> exit
Goodbye
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Re: [Simh] FW: pdp 11 timing

[Kevin Handy]

RSTS/E likes to send a MSCP command packet to request a disk block, and
after that it will then set the interrupt flag for when the read completes.
The original implementation of MSCP was instantaneous reads, so the read
completed before the interrupt was set. RSTS then sat around waiting for
the interrupt. which would never come. This is the reason that delays were
added to simh device emulations.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 7:37 PM Johnny Billquist  wrote:

> RT11 distribution comes with (uncommented) sources.
>
>Johnny
>
> On 2020-07-21 00:31, Paul Moore wrote:
> > At the moment my ambitions are very lightweight. A pdp 11/20 with a
> cassette drive (why that? cos CAPS11 is the first sw listed on the simh sw
> kit page). And next is an RK11 with rk05. So I can run RT11 (the second
> thing on that page).
> >
> > The point that I am hearing is that, in general , the PDP11 sw doesn’t
> rely on timing , there are a few corner cases tho. Contrast this with other
> systems where precise knowledge of video flyback times are built into the
> core of the OS for example. Or timing is achieved by looping instruction x
> n times to produce an exact delay.
> >
> > BTW - does anybody have the source of the RT11 on the simh kit site? I
> got the source of CAPS11 from Lou Ernst and it was a life saver. I could
> not have progressed without it.
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Simh  On Behalf Of
> s...@swabhawat.com
> > Sent: Monday, July 20, 2020 3:14 PM
> > To: Simh@trailing-edge.com
> > Subject: [Simh] FW: pdp 11 timing -->anf10 workstation on pdp11 with
> throttling
> >
> >
> >
> > L.S.
> >
> > Actually where this is important, is when using Pdp11 based ANF10
> workstations in the Tops10 realm.
> >
> > When starting up, the Anf10 software on the pdp11 sim test various
> devices for functionality thereby using instruction count based loops etc.
> > When all the devices necessary (paper tape reader/punch, incremental
> plotter interface, DZ and DH multiplexors, DMS and DUP/KDP devices and DL11
> interfaces) are properly verified, it cranks up the communication
> configuration with  scanning the network for active Pdp10 Tops10 host
> systems.
> > The throttling of the pdp11 should be carefully selected to let this
> function.
> >
> >
> > Reindert
> >
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Simh [mailto:simh-boun...@trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Johnny
> Billquist
> > Sent: Monday, 20 July, 2020 23:20
> > To: Paul Moore ; simh@trailing-edge.com
> > Subject: Re: [Simh] pdp 11 timing
> >
> > Instruction timing as such is not relevant. Different implementations
> had very different timings, not to mention that speed of memory also makes
> a difference.
> >
> > Devices basically do not have a strict timing either, but yes, there is
> plenty of software that assumes that an interrupt does not happen before a
> single instruction have been executed after the previous interrupt, from
> the same device, for example.
> > On real hardware that was just an absurd case that lots of code never
> considered, since it wasn't really physically possible for it to happen.
> >
> > The throttling in simh is because some people want the emulation to
> somewhat mimic the real thing. For some people, that experience of slowness
> is desirable.
> >
> > Johnny
> >
> > On 2020-07-20 23:10, Paul Moore wrote:
> >> (I am writing my own emulator just because I have never done that
> >> before, and the PDP 11 is such a pivotal system in the history of
> >> modern computing it seemed worth learning about, and what better way
> >> to learn than to emulate it )
> >>
> >> So how important is timing of instruction execution and device response?
> >>
> >> The PDP 11 docs go  to great length giving instruction timing. But the
> >> fact that there is a % throttle in simh suggest that’s not important.
> >> I assume that turning that throttle up and down makes the emulated CPU
> >> go faster and slower. I have seen code using simple counters as delays
> >> but I assume that if you want precision you use the Kw11.
> >>
> >> With regards device responses I have found that going ’too fast’
> >> upsets code. If they do something that triggers an interrupt (set ‘go’
> >> for
> >> example) and the interrupt arrives too soon (like before the next
> >> instruction) they get surprised and can misbehave (you could argue
> >> that’s a bug, but that’s irrelevant). So always wait a few beats. But
> >> I assume there is no reason to try to precisely emulate the timing of
> >> , say, a disk drive. (The early handbooks state how awesome the async
> >> nature of the IO subsystem is cos you can swap out old for new and
> >> things just go faster).
> >>
> >>
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