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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave

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

I guess I need to shout this:

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

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

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

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

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

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






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

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

> On Apr 20, 2016, at 3:08 PM, 
> sky...@sky-visions.com<mailto: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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