From: Paul Koning <paul_koning at dell.com>
[MAIL-11]
That assumes you're not counting the earlier one that was used only
internally, written in TECO and distributed by some field office clown [...]
^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^
Wow! I am impressed/horrified.
OK I've had only minimal exposure to VHDL (I got a Q-bus DMA interface working
on a Spartan2 a few years ago but then got distracted by one customer emergency
or another and never came back, and have since forgotten everything) so I
should know better than to shoot my mouth off, but I've been thinking that
with the insane number of gates on modern FPGAs, it might not be all that
crazy just to do MSCP in hardware as an enormous hardcoded state machine?
Sure it'd be a *ton* of code but if it fits, who cares? This is how I ended
up with E11 -- just start work on a giant crazy project that couldn't be
useful today and see where the technology is by the time it's all finally
ready for testing.
John Wilson
D Bit
In software services, Real-Time Group (PKO2, Maynard) we used a "MAIL-11" app
that was written for RSTS/E (in BP2) by Steve Reilly (Software Services,RSTS/E,
MKO, Merrimack) and ported to RSX/IAS by Scott Blessley in our group. To the
average user it looked just like the mail on VMS and was pretty much
bug-for-bug compatible :-). It actually did quite a bit more than the VMS
version and turned out to me much easier to maintain as well. Advanced users
made heavy use of the extra "features"!
As a side note, Scott brought me into DEC right out of school, and Steve is my
neighbor (across the street). Small world...
-Steve
Paul Koning
On Aug 11, 2010, at 5:34 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Paul Koning wrote:
...
MAIL-11
MAIL-11 was written in Basic-Plus (or BP2) so it would work on =
non-FPP machines. That assumes you're not counting the earlier one that =
was used only internally, written in TECO and distributed by some field =
office clown who was fired for it...
=20
Yes. Inferred by the above.
*Sigh*
Sorry for the misinformation. My brain is playing tricks on me.
=20
I didn't know there was ever one written in TECO. Yikes... :-)
MAIL-11 started out as an internal tool written by Mark Goodrich. I'm =
pretty sure it was in TECO. It certainly was slow. But it worked; it =
gave us email connectivity to the rest of the engineering net, via =
DECnet.
At some point someone not connected to RSTS decided this should go out =
to the field, so he grabbed that code and just started distributing it, =
without even asking let along receiving permission. We put a stop to =
that quickly. But possibly as a result of that, a new mail program was =
created (again by Mark), written from scratch in Basic with good =
performance, which was suitable for outside use and indeed became a =
product.
paul
On Aug 11, 2010, at 3:14 AM, G ran hling wrote:
All of the interfaces "supported" are "oldish", i.e. they were implemented in TTL without any local "interface processor". Later interfaces were more or less all based on some embedded CPU to do the shuffling.
So, in taking this great work further, some suitable "soft processor hardware" needs to be implemented.
I realize there are several "commercial" alternatives, some supplied by chip vendors etc, some requiring costs, licensing etc... None of that is worthy to be a part of an open design, in my opinion...
Would it be more feasible to us in this community to use some design we already can master, and that we already have the tooling for? Should a PDP-11 be used for peripheral needs? If so, which model of the 11 should this "I/O-slave" be designed around?
Or is there already any "better" alternative (architecture so superior that it's worth learning/getting tools for) that I should put my eyes upon for this task?
opencores.org would be a good place to start. The "wishbone" open internal bus would be a logical part of this, as a way to tie the embedded interface processor to other things it would need (like an Ethernet core for a UNA emulation, or an IDE interface for a UDA). Then it becomes a matter of preferences along with the availability of supported programming tools.
Personally I like Forth, and not too long ago I started looking for a Forth processor. It turns out there were several. I think I dropped the idea before finishing the evaluation. At least one or two look like they are serious and should work; one is 16 bit and another 24 (!) bit. There is also one that was written in fake VHDL that doesn't actually work at all and never will...
Forth has the advantage of being a medium-high level language (not quite C but much higher than assembler), very compact and quite efficient. Its origin is real time control (astronomical telescopes) so the fit is good. I've used it in years past for pretty large projects; the "unsupported" interactive kernel dump analyzer "SDA" that's part of RSTS 10.1 is done that way.
paul
On Aug 11, 2010, at 5:34 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Paul Koning wrote:
...
MAIL-11
MAIL-11 was written in Basic-Plus (or BP2) so it would work on non-FPP machines. That assumes you're not counting the earlier one that was used only internally, written in TECO and distributed by some field office clown who was fired for it...
Yes. Inferred by the above.
*Sigh*
Sorry for the misinformation. My brain is playing tricks on me.
I didn't know there was ever one written in TECO. Yikes... :-)
MAIL-11 started out as an internal tool written by Mark Goodrich. I'm pretty sure it was in TECO. It certainly was slow. But it worked; it gave us email connectivity to the rest of the engineering net, via DECnet.
At some point someone not connected to RSTS decided this should go out to the field, so he grabbed that code and just started distributing it, without even asking let along receiving permission. We put a stop to that quickly. But possibly as a result of that, a new mail program was created (again by Mark), written from scratch in Basic with good performance, which was suitable for outside use and indeed became a product.
paul
Paul Koning wrote:
I think F4 don't need FPP, but might also be restricted to integer only if you don't have an FPP.
I think it simply worked fully even without FPP (or it might not ever use it even if one exists). F4 started in RT-11 which was aimed at small machines.
Hmm. I should probably check some documentation, but I think it can use
one if wanted.
That Basic+ can live without it don't surprise me, nor that it can use it if it do exist.
Having said that, the following do needs FPP, as far as I know:
Basic+2
No, definitely not. BP2 was used as the compiler for all RSTS utilities as pre-compiled by DEC (though B+ could be used by customers if desired).
Sigh. My memory once more plays tricks with me. BP2 can use FPP or not,
depending on which version of the library you install.
...
MAIL-11
MAIL-11 was written in Basic-Plus (or BP2) so it would work on non-FPP machines. That assumes you're not counting the earlier one that was used only internally, written in TECO and distributed by some field office clown who was fired for it...
Yes. Inferred by the above.
*Sigh*
Sorry for the misinformation. My brain is playing tricks on me.
I didn't know there was ever one written in TECO. Yikes... :-)
There was the one written in a mix of FORTRAN and BASIC, which was
distributed through DECUS. That should also be possible to use without
FPP then, I guess...
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
All of the interfaces "supported" are "oldish", i.e. they were implemented in TTL without any local "interface processor". Later interfaces were more or less all based on some embedded CPU to do the shuffling.
So, in taking this great work further, some suitable "soft processor hardware" needs to be implemented.
I realize there are several "commercial" alternatives, some supplied by chip vendors etc, some requiring costs, licensing etc... None of that is worthy to be a part of an open design, in my opinion...
Would it be more feasible to us in this community to use some design we already can master, and that we already have the tooling for? Should a PDP-11 be used for peripheral needs? If so, which model of the 11 should this "I/O-slave" be designed around?
Or is there already any "better" alternative (architecture so superior that it's worth learning/getting tools for) that I should put my eyes upon for this task?
A full 11/70 (for each interface) core feels just a little to much to myself. What about a 11/40 design??? Would 256 kB of (max) memory be to small to design an efficient Ethernet interface? Would the lack of separate I & D - space be to much of a problem. Or should a yet simpler design be enough. Not even implementing 18-bit MMU (thus max 64 kB of memory) should be enough to do several interfaces - just like DEC used 8080 on some boards (!?)
If such a design where used, should it be programmed upon RT-11? These "systems" should behave like embedded systems once finished, running from "PROM".
I have found a POP-11 online, that's seems to be open source, though not written in VHDL (that by the way also includes an IDE interface). Could this after all be a starting point?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on my ideas, even though I'll have to learn VHDL and get myself some hardware to get going - this is the starting-point I've been waiting for quite a while, dreaming of implementing like a 11/93-based system in FPGA. Beeing a spare-time dream, don't expect any of my dreams to come real "next week", though ;-)
/G ran
I think F4 don't need FPP, but might also be restricted to integer only if you don't have an FPP.
I think it simply worked fully even without FPP (or it might not ever use it even if one exists). F4 started in RT-11 which was aimed at small machines.
That Basic+ can live without it don't surprise me, nor that it can use it if it do exist.
Having said that, the following do needs FPP, as far as I know:
Basic+2
No, definitely not. BP2 was used as the compiler for all RSTS utilities as pre-compiled by DEC (though B+ could be used by customers if desired).
...
MAIL-11
MAIL-11 was written in Basic-Plus (or BP2) so it would work on non-FPP machines. That assumes you're not counting the earlier one that was used only internally, written in TECO and distributed by some field office clown who was fired for it...
paul
Joe Ferraro wrote:
Hi Johnny,
Please add snow:: to 20.513 at your convenience (VMS/IA64 8.4).
WOPR$ search MIM::[DECNET]NODENAMES.* snow
%SEARCH-I-NOMATCHES, no strings matched
Hi. Done.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Paul Koning wrote:
On Aug 10, 2010, at 5:23 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Zane H. Healy wrote:
On Tue, 10 Aug 2010, Brian Hechinger wrote:
On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 06:50:32AM -0400, Paul Koning wrote:
Yes, it should run most software just fine.
Excellent.
I'd personally be the most interested in RT-11 and RSTS/E. From the sound
of things, RT-11 at least should work.
RT-11 will probably be the best use of this in it's current form.
I think RSTS/E can run reasonably well without an FPP, but I'm sure Paul will correct me if I'm wrong.
RSTS doesn't much care if an FPP is present or not. Basic uses it if available, which makes float calculations significantly faster.
Same as RSX then, I'd say. Which is what I suspected.
Lots of layered products require the FPP though.
I remember being told that Fortran-4-Plus requires FPP, while everything else either doesn't care or can be configured either way.
F4+ out of the box requires the FPP. However, there was information in the manuals on how to get F4+ to run without FPP, with some restrictions. The same is true for F77, which later replaced F4+. (The restrictions basically being that you'lll be limited to integer operations only.)
I think F4 don't need FPP, but might also be restricted to integer only if you don't have an FPP.
That Basic+ can live without it don't surprise me, nor that it can use it if it do exist.
Having said that, the following do needs FPP, as far as I know:
Basic+2
C
COBOL-11, COBOL-81
DIBOL-11
Datatrieve-11
FMS-11
MAIL-11
PASCAL-11
Hmm, what else existed...? Can't remember offhand, but for some other products, FPP probably wasn't neccesary, while for some it is.
Then again, I must admit I don't know all that much about this. I've only rarely used FP myself...
I can't say I use it that often, since I mostly sit and hack in the kernel for RSX, or right next to it on my TCP/IP.
I do, however, implicitly use it a lot, since I occasionally play around in BASIC+2, F77 and C on my PDP-11s, and the FPP is involved even when I'm hardly aware of it. :-)
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Bob Armstrong wrote:
I'm not going to quote anybody's posting here, but there have been several
that motivated me to speak up. I have say that this is really pathetic. A
guy (Walter Mueller, the original author it looks like) does all the work to
implement a 11/70 in VHDL, gives it away to you _for free_, and all you guys
do is sit around and make lists of the stuff he didn't do. If you want an
FPU, write the VHDL for one. If you want an MSCP disk, then implement one.
Contribute. Help. Take some of that energy you use to write these emails
and use it to make the core better. That's what Open Source is all about,
guys.
</soapbox> Sorry. I see this attitude the time with Spare Time Gizmos
and I've become kind of sensitive to and intolerant of it. I'll go back to
sleep now.
Hey, I don't mind the discussion, and I understand where you come from.
It's always a problem. One the one hand, I suspect that you don't mind the interest generated, and the potential users discussing how something can be used. On the other hand, you can start to feel like people whine about something given free.
However, you should never forget that just because people might not know how to do one thing (like write VHDL) don't stop them from having opinions on what might be needed to make something someone else did being more useful. And wanting to provide feedback is not neccesaily the same thing as whining.
Take things for what they are. Peoples opinions. People who take an interest. I don't think that is bad. You just need to step back and take a deep breath sometimes when things might sound very negative, and try to look at things in a larger perspective.
Of course, you are free to disagree with me on this too, and I won't stop writing about things even if you do. I do, however, sincerely hope that people take what I write as more than just whinings... :-)
Oh, and I do use more of my energy to more than write emails. This whole list exist because I do so... :-) I just don't have time to go diving in yet another direction. I have enough with just doing stuff on HECnet, improving RSX in all corners I can think of, bugfixing and improving 2.11BSD, contributing to NetBSD, and keep my own machines up and running and providing help for others to keep their machines up and running.
Don't assume that all people do is write mails complaining about stuff, just because they think that something they see could be improved. :-)
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
