-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Paul_Koning at Dell.com
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2012 20:58
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] Speaking of IDLE
On Jun 4, 2012, at 6:22 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2012-06-04 13:52, Brian Hechinger wrote:
Anyone know how it works? I'd really like to get it
working on Solaris.
Simple. For a VAX, simh tries to detect the instruction
sequence that the OS do in the idle loop. That's why it
depends on which OS you are running on the emulated machine.
For a PDP-11 it is (supposedly) simpler, since hopefully
the idle loop
of the OS uses the PDP-11 WAIT instruction, but that
actually depends
on which OS we're talking about. Not sure that RT-11 do,
for instance.
(I have some vague memory of discussing this with someone a
few years
ago, and coming to the realization that not all PDP-11
software might
be using the WAIT.)
For other hardware and OS combinations, the answers might
differ even more.
The doc says that RT and Unix do it differently (no WAIT). I
haven't seen the Unix code but I did see the one for RT (F/B
version), and indeed, no WAIT instruction there. I'm not
sure why not. RT11 S/J seems to just be full of spin loops,
no central idle of any kind that I can see.
paul
Paul,
I think that depends on whether or not the idle loop pattern (for the
console light display) is being used. The lights pattern most certainly
makes use of the WAIT instruction. The SJ monitor is a completely
different beast than FB and friends - no question about it!
-Steve
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 06/04/2012 12:13 PM, Brian Hechinger wrote:
SIMH 3.9 somehow kernel paniced my solaris server!
Wow.
-brian
ps: it's older solaris, but stil!
Holy cow! I have NEVER seen that happen. (which is why I run it!)
How the heck did you do that?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Hello!
I agree. I have my site (website http://www.gregg.levine.name )
running there because its a lot more sturdy then a peripatetic Linux
system who has other issues.
However I take it back, you're right Brian. The release you're running
is old by design, the literal information that uname told me confirmed
that the kernel (as such) is definitely part of the Sol11 release
cycle, but from that time period.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On Jun 4, 2012, at 6:22 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2012-06-04 13:52, Brian Hechinger wrote:
Anyone know how it works? I'd really like to get it working on Solaris.
Simple. For a VAX, simh tries to detect the instruction sequence that the OS do in the idle loop. That's why it depends on which OS you are running on the emulated machine.
For a PDP-11 it is (supposedly) simpler, since hopefully the idle loop of the OS uses the PDP-11 WAIT instruction, but that actually depends on which OS we're talking about. Not sure that RT-11 do, for instance. (I have some vague memory of discussing this with someone a few years ago, and coming to the realization that not all PDP-11 software might be using the WAIT.)
For other hardware and OS combinations, the answers might differ even more.
The doc says that RT and Unix do it differently (no WAIT). I haven't seen the Unix code but I did see the one for RT (F/B version), and indeed, no WAIT instruction there. I'm not sure why not. RT11 S/J seems to just be full of spin loops, no central idle of any kind that I can see.
paul
On 06/04/2012 12:13 PM, Brian Hechinger wrote:
SIMH 3.9 somehow kernel paniced my solaris server!
Wow.
-brian
ps: it's older solaris, but stil!
Holy cow! I have NEVER seen that happen. (which is why I run it!)
How the heck did you do that?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 06/04/2012 06:17 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
FYI - Update now have a Cisco box, which will be setup within a few days
to be able to route DECnet over IP, so that will become another options
to hook into HECnet at the Update site.
For people who don't need LAT and have a Cisco box, this is way better
than the bridge program.
(If you really want LAT with other parts of HECnet, then there is no
alternative to the bridge...)
One can also bridge LAT via a Cisco. And Cisco IOS also has a native
LAT-over-IP encapsulation implementation for doing exactly this. I hope
to work on that soon. I've had to drop out of sight for a bit lately in
order to get some work done (and working on getting some ham antennas up
on the roof!) but I'll be back in HECnet-hack-land soon.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 06/04/2012 06:15 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
VAX KA655X simulation is... sluggish. I'm used to running it on 1.xGHz
x86_64 CPUs (Atom or AMD) with fast hard drives or SATA SSD. The CPU
speed makes it slow but imagine it's as fast or faster than a real
late model VAX. It's by no means perishingly annoying, it just takes a
little thinking between operations. I think I may be spoilt as I've
never used a real VAX.
It would be interesting to hear of a comparison. The "newer" VAXen are
really not that bad. But of course, everything is relative...
Some of them are downright zippy. I'll have a VAX 7000 and a
4000-700a on HECnet soon! Zoom!
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
The problem isn't the "guest" OS (VMS in this case) it's simh and its interaction with Solaris.
I can enable idle detection just fine on other OSes but on Solaris I get an error when I try to enable it.
-brian
On 6/4/2012 8:21 PM, Boyanich, Alastair wrote:
G'day Brian,
There's idle detection time in SIMH for VMS.. it's quite picky though
about the OS chosen. "The Hoff" documents it well here:
http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/931
Al.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On
Behalf Of Brian Hechinger
Sent: Monday, 4 June 2012 9:26 PM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] Raspberry Pi + SIMH VAX?
Wouldn't it be easier (and more efficient) to use TAP interfaces?
That's what I'm going to do as soon as I have time. (Well, Crossbow on
Solaris
instead of TAP but same idea)
-brian
G'day Brian,
There's idle detection time in SIMH for VMS.. it's quite picky though
about the OS chosen. "The Hoff" documents it well here:
http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/931
Al.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On
Behalf Of Brian Hechinger
Sent: Monday, 4 June 2012 9:26 PM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] Raspberry Pi + SIMH VAX?
Wouldn't it be easier (and more efficient) to use TAP interfaces?
That's what I'm going to do as soon as I have time. (Well, Crossbow on
Solaris
instead of TAP but same idea)
-brian
On 6/4/2012 7:03 PM, Gregg Levine wrote:
Wow. Now I am impressed. You have managed to trigger a bug in Solaris... :-)
Send an SPR to Oracle... If they care...
I'm sure they don't. :)
Hello!
Oh they will. The big question is one of, what hardware is this
running on? And what build is this? That's easy to find out, use the
same command as on Linux.
No, the won't care. It's *really old* SXCE.
I need to upgrade this thing to current 11 anyway so that's the solution. :) (3.9 didn't crash the sol11 VM i have)
SunOS zaphod.4amlunch.net 5.11 snv_124 i86pc i386 i86pc
If that tells you anything. :)
-brian
On 6/4/2012 6:25 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2012-06-04 16:14, Brian Hechinger wrote:
On 6/4/2012 7:55 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
It detects the idle loop patterns in some OSs and throttles back the
simulator, so the host system isn't sitting there burning CPU to execute
the guest OS's idle loop.
Right, but I'm curious what it needs to know about the host OS to
accomplish that.
There is nothing that would be required that is special in the host OS. simh already needs to tweak things all the time to run. Just sitting still for a moment is what is needed. If one Unix can do it, so can all of them.
Hmmmmm.
I should look at the source but I'm not sure I'll know what I'm looking
at. :)
If you *really* want to know, I suppose I could go and dig through the code and locate the code...
Well it's not a huge deal although it would be nice. I'd be curious to know what it is that triggers this error on Solaris only.
-brian
