On Sep 29, 2013, at 9:18 AM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
On 2013-09-29 14:48, Sampsa Laine wrote:
I noticed that the SIMH PDP-11 distribution contains emulation of TC11/TU56 DECtape drives. My questions are:
- How hard would these be to port to the VAX SIMH emulation?
- Do modern VMS (e.g > 7.0) OSes support DECtapes?
I figure it would be a nice way to transfer files between a PDP-11 and VAX system for example..
VMS have never supported DECtape, as far as I know
Not officially. But I know it was done as a "midnight project", by Andy Goldstein if I remember correctly. That supposedly even included overlapped seek support, just as TOPS-10 did.
You might just turn it on and see if it works "out of the box".
I would assume the file structure used is the same as what RSX uses, whatever that is.
paul
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman- wrote:
Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> writes:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Mark Wickens wrote:
On 03/10/2013 03:01, Cory Smelosky wrote:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Dave McGuire wrote:
Sweet! :-)
I'm thinking I'll stick with VMS 6.2. With patches.
I like trying appropriate vintage VMS for the machines. It's weird how the
subtle differences creep in.
It's obvious at 6.1 how much TCP/IP, for example, is a 'bolt on'. Not
required for the OS. DECnet and underlying clustering protocols working just
fine on their own. Happy days.
I like appropriate vintage OSes for systems, too. 6.2 also seems a bit
lighter.
Lighter???
I have a different definition of "lighter" than others.
FWIW, you'd be much better off running the latest and greatest on your VAX
hardware to take advantage of the performance features contained within it.
The VAX processors, even in the latter generation VAX systems, are not very
fast by today's standards. If you believe that every little bit helps, then
you'd be running V7.3 to get every little bit of help you can get from VMS.
I need to get a compatible CD drive before I can do that. Until then I shall stick with 6.2
--
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects
On 2013-10-03 17:00, Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman- wrote:
Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> writes:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Mark Wickens wrote:
On 03/10/2013 03:01, Cory Smelosky wrote:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Dave McGuire wrote:
Sweet! :-)
I'm thinking I'll stick with VMS 6.2. With patches.
I like trying appropriate vintage VMS for the machines. It's weird how the
subtle differences creep in.
It's obvious at 6.1 how much TCP/IP, for example, is a 'bolt on'. Not
required for the OS. DECnet and underlying clustering protocols working just
fine on their own. Happy days.
I like appropriate vintage OSes for systems, too. 6.2 also seems a bit
lighter.
Lighter???
FWIW, you'd be much better off running the latest and greatest on your VAX
hardware to take advantage of the performance features contained within it.
The VAX processors, even in the latter generation VAX systems, are not very
fast by today's standards. If you believe that every little bit helps, then
you'd be running V7.3 to get every little bit of help you can get from VMS.
I remember when VMS V5 came out. It was a total dog. I think DEC started to work on improving performance in V6, but I would not be surprised to learn that V7 is much better for performance than V6...
Johnny
Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> writes:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Mark Wickens wrote:
On 03/10/2013 03:01, Cory Smelosky wrote:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Dave McGuire wrote:
Sweet! :-)
I'm thinking I'll stick with VMS 6.2. With patches.
I like trying appropriate vintage VMS for the machines. It's weird how the
subtle differences creep in.
It's obvious at 6.1 how much TCP/IP, for example, is a 'bolt on'. Not
required for the OS. DECnet and underlying clustering protocols working just
fine on their own. Happy days.
I like appropriate vintage OSes for systems, too. 6.2 also seems a bit
lighter.
Lighter???
FWIW, you'd be much better off running the latest and greatest on your VAX
hardware to take advantage of the performance features contained within it.
The VAX processors, even in the latter generation VAX systems, are not very
fast by today's standards. If you believe that every little bit helps, then
you'd be running V7.3 to get every little bit of help you can get from VMS.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman- wrote:
Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> writes:
On Wed, 2 Oct 2013, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 10/02/2013 06:57 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
Write it directly.
Backup can do that right? I don't have to right disk images to disk in
VMS too often. ;)
No. This is what I've done to write tape images to tapes:
$ INIT/ERASE MUA0: ""
$ MOUNT/FOREIGN/BLOCK=512 MUA0:
$ COPY <filename> MUA0:
$ DISMOUNT/UNLOAD MUA0:
Can anyone (Brian S?) say if this will work with disk as the
destination device as well? I'd guess yes, but I haven't done it
myself, at least not recently enough that I remember.
-Dave
Crap. My only good disk (the quantum was DEAD++ it seems) is just about
60M too small. Which is weird as the drive says it's 2G despite on the
casing.
Meaning I can either copy the files off manually to a blank disk...or I
can stick with VMS 6.3 instead of 7.3. ;)
ALl of VMS, even V7.3, fit on a single CD. That 600MB, give or take, and
should easily fit on a 1GB drive. So, if yours truly is a 2GB drive, more
is at work here.
7.3 is around 619M when burned to CD. My 1.05G drive is dead and the 2G drive (really, it's some bizarre size like 2296M...go IBM!) yet only shows up as around 550M. After checking jumpers there is nothing to indicate size settings and I can read from/write to the drive fine.
The drive that sounds like a bench grinder is just plain nonfunctional. ;)
--
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Mark Wickens wrote:
On 03/10/2013 03:01, Cory Smelosky wrote:
On Thu, 3 Oct 2013, Dave McGuire wrote:
Sweet! :-)
I'm thinking I'll stick with VMS 6.2. With patches.
I like trying appropriate vintage VMS for the machines. It's weird how the subtle differences creep in.
It's obvious at 6.1 how much TCP/IP, for example, is a 'bolt on'. Not required for the OS. DECnet and underlying clustering protocols working just fine on their own. Happy days.
I like appropriate vintage OSes for systems, too. 6.2 also seems a bit lighter.
It's also an excuse to break out the SPL and install some of the wonderful old tools and apps.
Yup. ;)
Regards, Mark.
--
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Projects
Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> writes:
=20
=20
(Seriously. I can't run unzip or tar...but I can run pico!)
=20
PICO? I wouldn't mind a copy of that for HILANT, it's a great little =
simple editor.
PICO can be found in the DECUS Library compendium which I maintain.
http://DECUSlib.com/DECUS/
Google: site:DECUSlib.com PICO editor
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.
Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> writes:
On Wed, 2 Oct 2013, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 10/02/2013 06:57 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
Write it directly.
Backup can do that right? I don't have to right disk images to disk in
VMS too often. ;)
No. This is what I've done to write tape images to tapes:
$ INIT/ERASE MUA0: ""
$ MOUNT/FOREIGN/BLOCK=512 MUA0:
$ COPY <filename> MUA0:
$ DISMOUNT/UNLOAD MUA0:
Can anyone (Brian S?) say if this will work with disk as the
destination device as well? I'd guess yes, but I haven't done it
myself, at least not recently enough that I remember.
-Dave
Crap. My only good disk (the quantum was DEAD++ it seems) is just about
60M too small. Which is weird as the drive says it's 2G despite on the
casing.
Meaning I can either copy the files off manually to a blank disk...or I
can stick with VMS 6.3 instead of 7.3. ;)
ALl of VMS, even V7.3, fit on a single CD. That 600MB, give or take, and
should easily fit on a 1GB drive. So, if yours truly is a 2GB drive, more
is at work here.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.
Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> writes:
On 10/02/2013 06:57 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
Write it directly.
Backup can do that right? I don't have to right disk images to disk in
VMS too often. ;)
No. This is what I've done to write tape images to tapes:
$ INIT/ERASE MUA0: ""
$ MOUNT/FOREIGN/BLOCK=512 MUA0:
$ COPY <filename> MUA0:
$ DISMOUNT/UNLOAD MUA0:
Can anyone (Brian S?) say if this will work with disk as the
destination device as well? I'd guess yes, but I haven't done it
myself, at least not recently enough that I remember.
Destination being a disk? Yes.
$ MOUNT/FOREIGN DUA0:
$ COPY <filename> DUA0:
$ DISMOUNT DUA0:
$ MOUNT [/OVERRIDE=IDENTIFICATION] [/SYSTEM] DUA0: [label]
The [] items are optional depending upon what you will do with the drive
after writing the image to it.
--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG
Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.
El 03/10/2013, a les 1:37, Ryan Blair <blairrya at cse.msu.edu> va escriure:
Since this has come up a few times as a recommendation (but without
details on how to do it), I figured I'd provide my [really terse
and unclean] notes on how to set up a SIMH/VAX image you can use
to temporarily satellite boot VAXen into a cluster just to lay a
fresh copy of VMS down onto them (and then on reboot have the
targets be standalone machines).
Please let me know if you have suggestions for cleaning this up!
I'd love feedback for this.
(...)
### installing VMS from a remote CD on a satellite-booted node:
$ mount/over=id $1$dua3:
(that's $ALLOCLASS$REMOTEDEVICE:)
$ MOUNT/FOREIGN DUA0:
$ backup $1$dua3:[000000]vms073.b/save_set dua0:/init /image/verify/list $
DISMOUNT DUA0:
$ MOUNT/OVER=ID DUA0:
$ COPY $1$dua3:[000000]vms073.* DUA0:[000000]
### if you want DECWindows you'll need DECW073.* too
$ DISMOUNT DUA0:
$ @SYS$SYSTEM:SHUTDOWN
(make sure to pick REMOVE_NODE)
SET BOOT DUA0:
BOOT
These download services are typically implemented using the host-based
InfoServer support.
### END
Wouldn't it be easier to use the "CREATE a duplicate system disk for XXXXX" of the config_cluster menu once you have setup the satellite? I mean, you could have a "clean" VMS install in a simh simulated VAX configured as a cluster boot server, then simply add any new machine as a satellite, configure the satelite so its own disk is visible from the boot node and then copy the clean system disk over the new machine. After that it is just question of updating MODPARAMS.DAT with the identifiers for your new system (and making it stand-alone if you don't want it to be clustered), clean up and initialize the DECNET databases and you will be done...
Jordi Guillaumes i Pons
jg at jordi.guillaumes.name
HECnet: BITXOV::JGUILLAUMES