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Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2013-05-17 16:32, Bob Armstrong wrote: I thought the DELQA did? I don't think the DEQNA did, however. Also, the DEUNA and DELUA handles it, as far as I know. I thought I remembered that the Ethernet interfaces could do it, but how does that work? The DMR required that you have a M9312 with the appropriate boot ROMs - were there NI boot ROMS for the M9312 too? How did the DELQA do it (i.e. which QBUS PDP-11 CPU had an NI boot ROM)? Actually, this is a bit more complex, as well as me not being 100% sure about all the details. But essentially, yes, there are boot ROMs for the DEUNA/DELUA, but they are not involved when you do a trigger command. As for the Qbus machines, the 11/73/83/93 all can boot from ethernet with the standard boot roms, unless I remember wrong (you just need the right revision). However, I believe that these too are not used when you do a MOP trigger. As far as I remember (I seem to remember this being documented in the DEUNA and DELUA manuals), at a MOP trigger command, the ethernet card resets the bus, and then it forces the CPU to jump into boot code provided by the ethernet controller. This is done by forcing a different restart vector for the CPU. And yes, the controller have PDP-11 code in ROM, for booting. It just makes this code appear in the I/O page for the CPU to execute, at trigger time. The boot ROM is needed when you want to network boot from scratch, as there is no MOP trigger to activate the ethernet controller in that case. It's actually three ROMs for the M9312 to implement the NI booting. But for just the trigger boot, those ROMs are not used, or needed. Also, the DMR was smart enough to implement DDCMP in "hardware" and so it understood MOP at least well enough to detect the TRIGGER message. The DEUNA/DELUA/DEQNA/DELQA has no reason to implement DDCMP, although it certainly had enough local CPU power to do so. Did it still scan for MOP trigger messages anyway? Or was the Ethernet trigger implemented differently? Of course. DDCMP has nothing to do with this. MOP is defined over Ethernet as well. And yes, the controllers understand and handle some MOP packets internally in the controllers, if needed. Johnny

12 years, 4 months

Another sillyness. More information in the nodename database on MIM.

by bqt＠softjar.se

12 years, 4 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by gerry77＠mail.com

On Fri, 17 May 2013 06:49:40 -0700, you wrote: DECnet (NCP) has a TRIGGER command that sends a special MOP message to a remote machine, and that's supposed to force the machine to do a hard reset and the reboot, presumably via DECnet. It uses MOP, not DECnet. Although MOP is described among other DECnet standards and managed with NCP, it does not use DECnet protocols to do its thing. IIRC it does not even use NETDRIVER & Co. but its own NDDRIVER. :) The problem is that it doesn't seem like there are many PDP-11 or VAX communications interfaces that actually implement this. The DMR and DMC appear to, but as far as I can find those are the only ones. In particular there don't appear to be any QBUS interfaces that can do it. Have I missed any? Has anybody ever done this? What interface did you use? Years ago I made some experiments with CONNECT (and TRIGGER) and a DEC 3000 Alpha workstation. It worked (somewhat), but only if the host was waiting at the >>> prompt. If that was the case, it was possibile to connect to the SRM, type commands and receive responses. I do not remember if TRIGGER would start the boot process or if it did not work. I had the overall feeling that the DEC 3000 firmware code managing those functions was not very well tested and debugged as it locked the whole machine quite often... HTH, :) G.

12 years, 4 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bob＠jfcl.com

I thought the DELQA did? I don't think the DEQNA did, however. Also, the DEUNA and DELUA handles it, as far as I know. I thought I remembered that the Ethernet interfaces could do it, but how does that work? The DMR required that you have a M9312 with the appropriate boot ROMs - were there NI boot ROMS for the M9312 too? How did the DELQA do it (i.e. which QBUS PDP-11 CPU had an NI boot ROM)? Also, the DMR was smart enough to implement DDCMP in "hardware" and so it understood MOP at least well enough to detect the TRIGGER message. The DEUNA/DELUA/DEQNA/DELQA has no reason to implement DDCMP, although it certainly had enough local CPU power to do so. Did it still scan for MOP trigger messages anyway? Or was the Ethernet trigger implemented differently? Bob

12 years, 4 months

Another sillyness. More information in the nodename database on MIM.

by bob＠jfcl.com

12 years, 4 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2013-05-17 15:49, Bob Armstrong wrote: DECnet (NCP) has a TRIGGER command that sends a special MOP message to a remote machine, and that s supposed to force the machine to do a hard reset and the reboot, presumably via DECnet. It s for machines that are located in remote locations where there s no operator around to conveniently flip the RESTART toggle. The problem is that it doesn t seem like there are many PDP-11 or VAX communications interfaces that actually implement this. The DMR and DMC appear to, but as far as I can find those are the only ones. In particular there don t appear to be any QBUS interfaces that can do it. Have I missed any? Has anybody ever done this? What interface did you use? I thought the DELQA did? I don't think the DEQNA did, however. Also, the DEUNA and DELUA handles it, as far as I know. Johnny

12 years, 4 months

Which DECnet interfaces support remote, unattended, booting?

by bob＠jfcl.com

DECnet (NCP) has a TRIGGER command that sends a special MOP message to a remote machine, and that s supposed to force the machine to do a hard reset and the reboot, presumably via DECnet. It s for machines that are located in remote locations where there s no operator around to conveniently flip the RESTART toggle. The problem is that it doesn t seem like there are many PDP-11 or VAX communications interfaces that actually implement this. The DMR and DMC appear to, but as far as I can find those are the only ones. In particular there don t appear to be any QBUS interfaces that can do it. Have I missed any? Has anybody ever done this? What interface did you use? Thanks, Bob

12 years, 4 months

Russian Clones (was: Another sillyness. More information in the nodename database on MIM.)

by bob＠jfcl.com

Are there collectors there that collect the Soviet clones? I don't collect them specifically, but I have one of the Elektronika BK0010, just like the one in this picture - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bk0010-01-sideview.jpg The computer and keyboard is pretty nice, although the power supply is a bit klunky. The latter looks like it was made about 1965 instead of 1985. I also have a complete set of manuals for it, in Russian, if anybody is interested in translating them. They're print so I'll have to scan them, but I'm willing to do that. Bob

12 years, 4 months

Another sillyness. More information in the nodename database on MIM.

by Paul_Koning＠Dell.com

... Are there collectors there that collect the Soviet clones? I particularly wonder about the ones from STIMTI -- I have a scan of one of their marketing documents -- in 2 languages plus 2 more for summary. Unfortunately, I don't read either of the 2 main ones (Russian and Lithuanian). If anyone wants to see it I can send over the file. paul

12 years, 4 months

Another sillyness. More information in the nodename database on MIM.

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2013-05-17 10:18, Erik Olofsen wrote: Hi Johnny, These are the additional fields of my machines that are connected: RULCRI 28.1 ETM33-BD 5/366 OpenVMS 7.2 RULLF2 28.5 DEC 3000 Model 300 LX OpenVMS 6.1 RULLF 28.26 VAXStation 3100 VAX/VMS 5.5-2 RULLFS 28.41 SIMH VAX/VMS 5.5-2 These are located in Oegstgeest, The Netherlands. Thank you, Erik Thanks everyone. The database is slowly being populated. :-) To remind everyone - you can see how it looks at http://madame.update.uu.se/~bqt/nodedb Johnny On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 06:28:34PM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote: This is a totally volontary thing. I've finally come to the point where I think that there are a few more pieces of data on nodes that would be nice/useful to have from time to time. So I've extended the nodename database on MIM for this. The fields that I have added are CPU, OS and location. You can see an example of values by going to http://madame.update.uu.se/~bqt/hecnet?node=mim So, feel free to submit data to me for nodes you know. Or look up information. Or suggest interfaces that you'd like to get to extract this information, and I'll try and comply. :-) 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

12 years, 4 months

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