30 Apr
2015
30 Apr
'15
12:55 a.m.
Yeah... I sometimes wonder why BP2 is rather odd. It
uses its own installation procedures instead of the standard tools that most other layered
products use, and it also behaves rather different than any other tool (it don't exit
with any status for example, so you cannot tell if a compilation went ok or not
programatically).
It really would be great to have the source code for the layered products to be able to
fix issues like that.
Indeed! I wonder if the original tape that Tim Shoppa had still exists?
Nope. Or at least Tim don't have it. I asked several years ago, and he had returned
the tapes after dumping them, and this was close to 15 years ago...
I don't know if the guy he originally got the tapes from still have them. I'm not
sure Tim even have any contact with the person, or even remember who it was. Yes, as for KED, I heard it would be on some FMS
distribution, but all the ones I have lack it. Not that I've really been missing KED
in the first place. If I had some more time, I'd focus on getting AMIS working
instead. I have the sources, and it's a pretty decent EMACS clone. There is a version
working under RSTS/E, but that version sources seems to be lost. Newer version needs some
hacking, since it by default is just a bit too large.
(Written mostly in Pascal.)
I liked KED's learn mode and used it to quickly modify large ASCII data files
instead of writing code to do it for one time projects. I think the RT11 sources for KED
exists. I've wondered how difficult it would be to convert it to RSX, changing the EMT
traps etc.
EMACS would be nice but I haven't used it as much. It sounds like a chore to write
or modify an editor in Pascal.
>
> No worries. My fixes included making it all work correctly in I/D space, and then I
did a half-hearted attempt at adding a void datatype.
The I/D space fix for C would be great. Sometime ago I was trying to fix APL-11 to use
I/D space. A guy had done this and put it on one of the DECUS tapes, but it was linked to
an old FCSRES and when I tried to rebuild it, I got errors from TKB that I could not
figure out. That was one of the things I was working on in my guest account on MIM that
you graciously provided. Sometime I need to take another look at that. I think it is
probably a simply fix, but I don't understand .odl files so it hasn't gotten
fixed. In APL having I/D space is a big deal because it enlarges the available workspace
by two fold.
I can probably help with that, if you just can catch me when I have some time... >>> I should probably make a kit disk or
something available from MIM/Madame as well. If I only had time...
>>>
>>> Too bad noone is willing to pay for me doing this kind of work. I could spend
full time just fixing things for years... :-)
>> That is too bad. There are a number of things in RSX that I'm sure you could
improve. I really do appreciate what you've done on TCP/IP. Thanks!
>
> Plenty of work to do... So little time. :-)
> Anyway, it's great that people find TCP/IP useful...
> I think the FTP code is good enough to be left for a while now. Next for proper
telnet both in and out...
I have a nice terminal emulator on my iMac that works well with Simh telnet to DZ ports
but it would be great to telnet directly to the real PDP-11/83 system I have. The FTP file
access has been fantastic to great .dsk files over to the PDP-11/83. I use the SCSI2SD
device and a UC07 to have two pseudo RA92s that provide plenty of space and high
reliability.
By the way, you can also transfer TPC files. There is a slight trick to it, but it
works.
You need the TPC tool from the DECUS library, and also a tool called ATT.
Once you have them, run ftp on the RSX system, and fetch TPC files in block mode (really,
block mode, not binary mode). Once you have them on the RSX system, use ATT to change the
file attributes. The first two words should be 1002, leave all the other header words
alone.
After that you can use the DECUS TPC tool to read the file, and write it to a virtual
tape.
There are several versions of TPC around. Unfortunately, they all have small irritating
issues. I'm almost tempted to write a new version myself... The code is pretty ugly.
Johnny