There are copies of WordPerfect for Solaris currently available on ebay UK.
I asked the question about WordPerfect for VMS on comp.os.vms - turns out there is a company still selling it. However, when I mentioned I was a hobbyist the communications went silent.
Mark.
Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 4:40 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 06/07/2012 11:37 PM, Boyanich, Alastair wrote:
> There was wordperfect on VMS? Wow.
>
> I used to use the shared version of it on SCO in the early 90's. I
> didn't know there was a VMS version. That'd be interesting to see.
There was even a version for SunOS, with a fairly respectable WYSIWYG
GUI. I used that quite a bit Back In The Day(tm). I think I still have
it somewhere.
Those binaries will likely run under current Solaris on UltraSPARC;
I've been amazed at the degree of both architectural and ABI
compatibility between BSD-based SunOS 4 and SysV-based Solaris.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 8 Jun 2012, at 08:23, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
I haven't tried cleaning TK50 heads in years, but I will (now that I
have a more respectable workspace) start trying that. I will let you
know how things go. I'll probably start digging into those within the
next month or two. Thank you for the suggestion!
I take it TK50 tapes won't read in a later drive?
--
Mark Benson
http://markbenson.org/bloghttp://twitter.com/MDBenson
On 06/08/2012 03:17 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Ok. The next obvious thing is just cleaning. As with all tape drives,
the heads needs cleaning once in a while. Get isopropanol, some cotton
heads, and just clean them.
If things still fails after that, then I don't have any more quick
fixes. :-)
But next to the pickup, the cleaning have fixed countless of them for me.
I haven't tried cleaning TK50 heads in years, but I will (now that I
have a more respectable workspace) start trying that. I will let you
know how things go. I'll probably start digging into those within the
next month or two. Thank you for the suggestion!
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 2012-06-08 09:12, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/08/2012 03:09 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
The most common problem with the TK50 is that the tape pickup gets off
the holding arm. Easy to fix if you are comfortable with a screw driver.
I've had one or two TK50 go bad in other ways, but in my experience it's
pretty uncommon for them to really break.
It's almost always that pickup. Let me know if you need help
understanding that.
The "tongue"? Been fixing that problem for years. At one point I
ordered a box of (I think) ten of those while DEC was still selling them
as repair parts, but they're all gone now. Eventually the little
grabber end breaks off due to plastic fatigue.
The drives whose tongues are intact simply refuse to read and cause
device timeouts. I have at least 7 or 8 in that condition, with no
obvious mechanical flaws. I haven't dug into them very deeply.
Ok. The next obvious thing is just cleaning. As with all tape drives, the heads needs cleaning once in a while. Get isopropanol, some cotton heads, and just clean them.
If things still fails after that, then I don't have any more quick fixes. :-)
But next to the pickup, the cleaning have fixed countless of them for me.
Johnny
On 06/08/2012 03:13 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
But reading it through now, I see that there was one implicit assumption
in my text which I could have pointed out.
If you need to share the device with the system, while using a different
MAC address, you need to place the device in promiscuous mode. And such
is the case if we talk DECnet, since DECnet requires that you use a
specific MAC address which is not the same as the default MAC address of
a device.
In the case of Linux DECnet, it actually changes the "main" MAC
address of the interface, it doesn't add another one.
Right. And in that case, you don't need promiscuous mode.
We could go on about details, corner cases, other systems, potential
network problems, and so on... But I think we both know what we're
talking about, and I doubt we need to drag this any further. Contact me
directly if you want us to continue. :-)
I think what we need to do is convince Chrissie to continue working on
her DECnet implementation. =)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 2012-06-08 09:07, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/08/2012 02:00 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
But reading it through now, I see that there was one implicit assumption
in my text which I could have pointed out.
If you need to share the device with the system, while using a different
MAC address, you need to place the device in promiscuous mode. And such
is the case if we talk DECnet, since DECnet requires that you use a
specific MAC address which is not the same as the default MAC address of
a device.
In the case of Linux DECnet, it actually changes the "main" MAC
address of the interface, it doesn't add another one.
Right. And in that case, you don't need promiscuous mode.
We could go on about details, corner cases, other systems, potential network problems, and so on... But I think we both know what we're talking about, and I doubt we need to drag this any further. Contact me directly if you want us to continue. :-)
Johnny
On 06/08/2012 03:09 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
The most common problem with the TK50 is that the tape pickup gets off
the holding arm. Easy to fix if you are comfortable with a screw driver.
I've had one or two TK50 go bad in other ways, but in my experience it's
pretty uncommon for them to really break.
It's almost always that pickup. Let me know if you need help
understanding that.
The "tongue"? Been fixing that problem for years. At one point I
ordered a box of (I think) ten of those while DEC was still selling them
as repair parts, but they're all gone now. Eventually the little
grabber end breaks off due to plastic fatigue.
The drives whose tongues are intact simply refuse to read and cause
device timeouts. I have at least 7 or 8 in that condition, with no
obvious mechanical flaws. I haven't dug into them very deeply.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 2012-06-08 09:04, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/08/2012 07:48 AM, Peter Lothberg wrote:
I will set it aside if I find it, and make sure to image it.
Image all your TK50's with distribution stuff on drop Al K a copy.
I definitely will, if I can keep a drive working long enough. I have
probably fifteen TK50 drives here...most of which are dead. Although it
was the forerunner of the rather marvelous DLT, the first generation
really was a crappy design. :-(
The most common problem with the TK50 is that the tape pickup gets off the holding arm. Easy to fix if you are comfortable with a screw driver.
I've had one or two TK50 go bad in other ways, but in my experience it's pretty uncommon for them to really break.
It's almost always that pickup. Let me know if you need help understanding that.
Johnny
On 06/08/2012 07:14 AM, Peter Lothberg wrote:
Can you talk to sol::
I can't seem to get to it from my Linux desktop machine, no, but I can
SET HOST to it from my Alpha running VMS. (which I'm reaching from the
aforementioned Linux machine!)
It seems that off-net DECnet routing isn't happening from the Linux
machine..? What's up with this, does anyone know?
Is it connetivity (routing), or the fact that the linux implementation
only speaks VMSnet?
That I do not know.
Does the linux box talk to stupi::
No, it times out. :-(
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 06/08/2012 02:00 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
But reading it through now, I see that there was one implicit assumption
in my text which I could have pointed out.
If you need to share the device with the system, while using a different
MAC address, you need to place the device in promiscuous mode. And such
is the case if we talk DECnet, since DECnet requires that you use a
specific MAC address which is not the same as the default MAC address of
a device.
In the case of Linux DECnet, it actually changes the "main" MAC
address of the interface, it doesn't add another one.
And to make a correction to your text, when not in promiscuous mode,
your ethernet controller will filter out packets that do not have your
MAC address, and packets that don't have the multicast bit set (possibly
you can also get it to filter more specific on multicast ethernet
packets, but multicast is a separate story from unicast packets on
ethernet controllers anyway).
Oh yes, I'm sorry for my omission.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA