Sampsa:
Interesting. Be sure to set up the idle detection in the simh.ini for
your appropriate OS (netbsd/TheoLinux/VMS/Ultrix/etc..) or it'll run the
CPU flat-out all the time and potentially get hot. I'm really curious to
hear how 'hot' the R-Pi's get under load. Mine's still on order.
Beautiful idea.
Al.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On
Behalf Of Sampsa Laine
Sent: Wednesday, 2 May 2012 8:34 PM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: [HECnet] Raspberry Pi + SIMH VAX?
I'm toying with moving GORVAX onto a Raspberry Pi and SIMH? Anyone
played
with this yet? What's the performance like?
Sampsa
Its been a year or so since I've messed with the ARM, but I believe I just used NFS instead of transferring the disc image to the sd card.. I do recall that doing ANYTHING else during times of high SD activity was ill-advised.
On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Kevin Reynolds <tpresence at hotmail.com> wrote:
After I saw this message, I set up simh and put up simh with unix v6 using the provided pdp11 binary. I didn't notice a significant difference between running v6 on the pi from running it on a modern machine with real disk and ram. Everything seemed to work as expected.
I set up a vms configuration to test it out, and, disk acces from the sd wasn't so happy. Just transferring my disk images to the pi took forever at ~1.0MB/sec. This was with a class 10 card, so although its fast, alot of people say they are also buggy. I haven't had issues with reliability. If you do ANYTHING else on the pi during xfer, it slows even further. If you do any package management during transfers, the transfer will stall entirely. With the current operating systems, I think multi-function purposes of the pi are not very viable. The biggest limitation I believe is the SD card. This may get better with a disk hanging off of USB. I do not think there is a way to BOOT from usb and exclude sd entirely at this point. I may try to put swap on a USB disk, since I believe the SD is the primary hangup.
1) I used the debian OS provided by the pi foundation, as it was the most complete and reliable
2) simh is already in the armel package archives, and can be installed to the pi with "apt-get install simh"
If you dedicate your pi to simh, it probably won't cause you unhappiness.
Kevin
> From: sampsa at mac.com
> Subject: [HECnet] Raspberry Pi + SIMH VAX?
> Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 13:34:00 +0300
> To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
>
> I'm toying with moving GORVAX onto a Raspberry Pi and SIMH? Anyone played with this yet? What's the performance like?
>
> Sampsa
>
>
After I saw this message, I set up simh and put up simh with unix v6 using the provided pdp11 binary. I didn't notice a significant difference between running v6 on the pi from running it on a modern machine with real disk and ram. Everything seemed to work as expected.
I set up a vms configuration to test it out, and, disk acces from the sd wasn't so happy. Just transferring my disk images to the pi took forever at ~1.0MB/sec. This was with a class 10 card, so although its fast, alot of people say they are also buggy. I haven't had issues with reliability. If you do ANYTHING else on the pi during xfer, it slows even further. If you do any package management during transfers, the transfer will stall entirely. With the current operating systems, I think multi-function purposes of the pi are not very viable. The biggest limitation I believe is the SD card. This may get better with a disk hanging off of USB. I do not think there is a way to BOOT from usb and exclude sd entirely at this point. I may try to put swap on a USB disk, since I believe the SD is the primary hangup.
1) I used the debian OS provided by the pi foundation, as it was the most complete and reliable
2) simh is already in the armel package archives, and can be installed to the pi with "apt-get install simh"
If you dedicate your pi to simh, it probably won't cause you unhappiness.
Kevin
> From: sampsa at mac.com
> Subject: [HECnet] Raspberry Pi + SIMH VAX?
> Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 13:34:00 +0300
> To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
>
> I'm toying with moving GORVAX onto a Raspberry Pi and SIMH? Anyone played with this yet? What's the performance like?
>
> Sampsa
>
>
Ah very cool... should make the bridging easy...
The zipit is/was, I believe, 300MHz or so out of the box... but only 32MB of RAM if i recall. It was a bit slow perhaps, but certainly felt more like lower-end "real" hardware as compared to simh on a newer machine (which can obviously turn blazingly-fast "VAX" i/o in the right configuration).
I'd seen talk (perhaps by Sampsa in this group), of an fpga turned PDP, that sounded very interesting as well... I don't suppose anyone has seen this come about?
On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 10:01 AM, <Paul_Koning at dell.com> wrote:
On May 2, 2012, at 8:16 AM, Joe Ferraro wrote:
> I did the same with a zipit z2 (got them for $12USD), which is arm (I believe the pi is as well?!).. honestly, the performance felt much more realistic than the untuned linux/simh on a modern machine... and for around 100mW, it is / was hard to beat. The one issue I had was getting the bridge to work over wifi - I didn't have time (at the time) to tinker...
Yes, the pi is an ARM processor, with 256 MB of RAM. It doesn't have wifi, but it does (in the "B" model) have 10/100 Ethernet.
paul
On May 2, 2012, at 8:16 AM, Joe Ferraro wrote:
I did the same with a zipit z2 (got them for $12USD), which is arm (I believe the pi is as well?!).. honestly, the performance felt much more realistic than the untuned linux/simh on a modern machine... and for around 100mW, it is / was hard to beat. The one issue I had was getting the bridge to work over wifi - I didn't have time (at the time) to tinker...
Yes, the pi is an ARM processor, with 256 MB of RAM. It doesn't have wifi, but it does (in the "B" model) have 10/100 Ethernet.
paul
I did the same with a zipit z2 (got them for $12USD), which is arm (I believe the pi is as well?!).. honestly, the performance felt much more realistic than the untuned linux/simh on a modern machine... and for around 100mW, it is / was hard to beat. The one issue I had was getting the bridge to work over wifi - I didn't have time (at the time) to tinker...
All in all, the arm was well worth it and fun.
On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 6:34 AM, Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> wrote:
I'm toying with moving GORVAX onto a Raspberry Pi and SIMH? Anyone played with this yet? What's the performance like?
Sampsa
I'll tell you (all) when I ever get one of the blessed things. Looking like at least a month or two before either of my pre-orders arrive :\
I intend to build a mini VAX cluster using 3 or 4 Pis plus my existing low-power Atom x86 as the storage server.
--
Mark Benson
http://markbenson.org/bloghttp://twitter.com/MDBenson
On 2 May 2012, at 11:34, Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> wrote:
I'm toying with moving GORVAX onto a Raspberry Pi and SIMH? Anyone played with this yet? What's the performance like?
Sampsa
Hi Dave,
My IGS has even older software - 10.0(6) but it seems happy to accept
decnet configuration commands. It also allows me to configure a tunnel
interface so hopefully it will do the job. It seems to be running ok after
I reseated the SIMMs but I want to leave it on test for a while to make sure.
This is great news! They're good machines.
I'd be happy to do some tunnel testing with you if that would be helpful.
The IGS has behaved itself for several hours now. Peter Lothberg and I have
successfully set up a tunnel between us.
My ip address is decnet.beyondthepale.ie [213.94.231.131] - let me know what
your's is and I'll set up a tunnel to you.
I can't find any reference to the processor speed anywhere.
It;s not show anywhere except in data sheets .. -:)
I eventually found it written on the 68020 :-)
Assuming they're running it full-bore..
I could check with the oscilloscope but I'm happy to accept Alastair's word
that it runs at 16MHz :-)
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.
On 05/01/2012 08:49 AM, Peter Coghlan wrote:
My IGS has even older software - 10.0(6) but it seems happy to accept
decnet configuration commands. It also allows me to configure a tunnel
interface so hopefully it will do the job. It seems to be running ok after
I reseated the SIMMs but I want to leave it on test for a while to make sure.
This is great news! They're good machines.
I'd be happy to do some tunnel testing with you if that would be helpful.
I can't find any reference to the processor speed anywhere.
It;s not show anywhere except in data sheets .. -:)
I eventually found it written on the 68020 :-)
Assuming they're running it full-bore..
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
