AFAIK the only common thing was that both the TU56 and TU58 were block addressable tapes. Our PDP 11/40 ran RT-11 V 4. From an RK05 unless we expected visitors, then it ran V2 from DECtape I. Spinning reels always impressed them.
DECtape II has never impressed anyone at all, beyond the speed it could let seasoned system managers fall asleep...
Van: Clem Cole
Verzonden: zondag 29 september 2013 15:44
Aan: hecnet at update.uu.se
Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Cc: Sampsa Laine
Onderwerp: Re: [HECnet] Slightly OT: DECTape support in SIMH VMS?
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
On 2013-09-29 15:44, Clem Cole wrote:
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. "
You are right about that thing, but that was a "DECtape II". No relation to a DECtape. And yes, that device sucked in more ways than most.
That said, I agree as my memory was that 9-track was the traditional
sneaker-net medium.
Indeed.
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
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
