On 2013-09-29 15:25, Sampsa Laine wrote:
VMS have never supported DECtape, as far as I know...
Oh, bummer, always wanted to play around with DECtape :)
So, get a real computer. :-)
And simh is not a DECtape.
The easiest way to transfer files between a PDP-11 and VAX would of course be DECnet, but in case you wanted to do it on a physical storage medium, the popular choices were RL02 or 9-track tape.
But potentially, RK06, RK07, RM02, RM03, RM05, RP04, RP05, RP06 and RA60 were also pretty usable.
Let's say I run RSX-11 on the PDP-11, what file system (I believe the PDP supports some level of Files-11) should I INIT the disks to? Can I INIT the disk on the RSX side and write to it on the VMS box?
I don't remember the invocations in VMS, but yes, RSX uses Files-11, just like VMS. But more specifically, RSX uses ODS-1, while VMS uses ODS-2 or ODS-5. I think only VMS on VAX supported volumes using ODS-1. But pretty much all you need is for the volume to have the file system set up. Once that it done, you just mount it like any other volume in VMS, and away you go.
You can initialize the file system on either RSX or VMS.
As for DECNET: Yes, that's obviously the sane way to do it. This is more of a "do it for the sake of doing it" type of an idea..
:-)
And don't forget floppies...
True. Are there any 8" floppy emulators available on SIMH? :) I don't want to use anything boring..
No idea. I don't really get the point if you are just going to simulate the hardware anyway. But that is just me. :-)
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
Clem Cole wrote:
I thought vms may have supported the funky cartridge tape unit on the 750
console.
That's a TU58 (I believe it was actually called "DECtape-II"). That's
supported by pretty much all versions of VMS. The driver was removed from
some of the recent versions, but it's easy to add back. The only special
hardware (on the VAX side) required by the TU58 was a serial port, though.
The traditional DECtape (those little reels of tape) was a different
thing.
Bob
On Sunday, September 29, 2013, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2013-09-29 14:48, Sampsa Laine
VMS have never supported DECtape, as far as I know...
sounds reasonable as I have forgotten but I thought vms may have supported the funky cartridge tape unit on the 750 console. I just remember it was a PITA to work with. I also remember b*tching about how brain dead it was in the lunchroom one day only to have the guy that wrote much if it sitting behind me - as Garrison Keiler says: "today's embarrassing moment is tomorrow's funny story. "
That said, I agree as my memory was that 9-track was the traditional sneaker-net medium.
--
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
Johnny Billquist wrote:
VMS have never supported DECtape, as far as I know...
Not officially, but there was a driver in DECUS. Sorry, I don't have it
though.
Of course the only way to connect a TU56 to a real VAX would be to have a
VAX model that supported a UBA (e.g. VAX-11/7xx, VAX-82/3xx, 86xx, and maybe
one or two others) and a TC11.
There wasn't a big demand for such a setup :-)
Bob
VMS have never supported DECtape, as far as I know...
Oh, bummer, always wanted to play around with DECtape :)
The easiest way to transfer files between a PDP-11 and VAX would of course be DECnet, but in case you wanted to do it on a physical storage medium, the popular choices were RL02 or 9-track tape.
But potentially, RK06, RK07, RM02, RM03, RM05, RP04, RP05, RP06 and RA60 were also pretty usable.
Let's say I run RSX-11 on the PDP-11, what file system (I believe the PDP supports some level of Files-11) should I INIT the disks to? Can I INIT the disk on the RSX side and write to it on the VMS box?
As for DECNET: Yes, that's obviously the sane way to do it. This is more of a "do it for the sake of doing it" type of an idea..
And don't forget floppies...
True. Are there any 8" floppy emulators available on SIMH? :) I don't want to use anything boring..
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...
The easiest way to transfer files between a PDP-11 and VAX would of course be DECnet, but in case you wanted to do it on a physical storage medium, the popular choices were RL02 or 9-track tape.
But potentially, RK06, RK07, RM02, RM03, RM05, RP04, RP05, RP06 and RA60 were also pretty usable.
And don't forget floppies...
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
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..
PPS: Arabic is a pain in the ass frankly, to write - each letter has up to FOUR versions, depending on its position in the word (initial, medial, final, by itself) and depending on the letter, it can either connect to previous and next letter or JUST the previous, which means that the next letter has to use the INITIAL form even though it's in the middle of a word...
BTW, this means that converting from UTF-8 to a non-smart terminal would require 28 x 4 (letters * positions) letters in a byte, plus maybe a control character to indicate that the text is to be printed right-to-left.
Looking at the code pages on my Mac, it seems that several of these were in fact in existence back in the day, but the Arabic keyboard on OS X only input Unicode.
Sampsa
I just realized I read a previous line of yours too quickly. I read "Both of the iTerm pass the preliminary VTTEST suites..." as "Both iTerm and Terminal.app pass...", which I couldn't get to fit with the fact that Terminal.app fail on DECCOLM.
Oh well. My fault.
Just ran VTTEST against the (admittedly old, the version has great code page support for PC / ANSI BBF 8-bit characters and other weird things I need occasionally) iTerm and it broke a lot more than Terminal.app..
Might install latest version of iTerm and run that as well.
But as I said, I have not come across any show stopping bugs in my use of Terminal.app, so until I do, I'll probably stick with it.
PS: iTerm couldn't display Arabic ligatures either :)
PPS: Arabic is a pain in the ass frankly, to write - each letter has up to FOUR versions, depending on its position in the word (initial, medial, final, by itself) and depending on the letter, it can either connect to previous and next letter or JUST the previous, which means that the next letter has to use the INITIAL form even though it's in the middle of a word...
It takes the average student about 5 weeks to figure this out. Don't get me started on the short vowel pointing system (long vowel are indicated by consonants (!) and you just have to know from context whether something is read as a YA or a long I sound), feminine nouns using Ta Marbuta (urgh) or Tanween (diacritics used to mark adverbs).
It's an insane writing system all in all, but I love it for some reason..:)
On 28 Sep 2013, at 20:47, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
On 2013-09-28 11:45, Sampsa Laine wrote:
On 28 Sep 2013, at 11:39, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se
<mailto:bqt at softjar.se>> wrote:
On 2013-09-28 11:33, Sampsa Laine wrote:
If I type the document locally and upload it via Kermit, it sort of
works.
Unfortunately it doesn't keep the ligatures which makes it more or
less useless for Arabic :)
How do you verify that it "works"? What does the document look like on
the Mac? I mean, if you really look at all the bytes. What did you use
to create it?
The letters are all there, but they're not correctly connected
(ligatures) - again, probably a Terminal.app problem, VMS is storing
them just fine.
That could be a question of fixed font width. Would they look ok if you types the same file in Terminal.app but running locally on the Mac?
When 'cat'd on the Mac, it looks the same as it does on the VMS system.
The text editor I used uses a fixed width font and draws the ligatures correctly (I suppose they make the horizontal base line shorter/longer as necessary).
In this case, until I get Terminal (it's broken in iTerm too, BTW) to display the ligatures correctly, I won't even worry about using the files on VMS.*
As for Hebrew, I know the alphabet but don't know more than a dozen words of the language. So technically possible I suppose but not very useful :)
If I remember correctly, the is a DW MOTIF for HEBREW license in the hobbyist PAK, wonder what that did? Right to left writing?
* Microsoft Word on Mac didn't unbreak the ligatures until about 2008. Never heard so much Arabic swearing as when somebody on a Mac gets sent an important but impossible to read document in MS DOC format :)
