29 Apr
2015
29 Apr
'15
4:11 a.m.
On 2015-04-29 02:37, Mark Matlock wrote:
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).
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.
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...
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.
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 Apr 28, 2015, at 11:55 AM, Johnny Billquist
<bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
It is really too bad that wasn't a BRU tape. On 2015-04-28 20:10, Mark Matlock wrote:
The BP2 tape is not a BRU tape. Had it been, I already have a fix. > On Apr 27, 2015, at 5:31 PM, Johnny Billquist
<bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
>
> On 2015-04-28 02:15, Mark Matlock wrote:
> BP2 with I/D space would be worth some effort to bring back from extinction. With
the high speed of Simh and E11 with modern CPUs, if one could figure out a way to
reassemble the tape blocks in the various combinations the see if BRU could read it
successfully or not in some automated way, then just let the CPU have at it. It can't
be worse than breaking the Enigma code in World War II.
A few thousand blocks. The number of permutations can be interesting... Also, it is not
totally trivial to see if you got it all right...
The process to see if you got the right combination of blocks is the key to whether an
automated process could be used. I guess you would have BRU try to read a virtual tape and
produce a listing, but the listing could be correct, but still have some blocks out of
order in some small file stored on the tape. It's a
plain DOS tape. DOS tapes are extremely stupid. Basically, anything goes. There is nothing
telling you if the data comes out right or not. It's essentially implied just by being
able to read the block.
(. Why would you ever get blocks in a different order than written? .)
Indeed! I wonder if the original tape that Tim Shoppa had still exists? > Also,
I meant to say that the PDP-11 C V1.2 is corrupt but the V1.1 is okay as I recall. Also,
DECUS C works quite well, but I don't recall which DECUS tape it is on.
I did some changes/improvements to DECUS C many years ago. I believe my changed version
should be available with ftp from Update.
I will need to look for your updated DECUS C on the Update ftp. Part of the challenge
from the DECUS tapes is determining if you have the latest version of a particular
software. Thanks for bringing your version of C to my attention. 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!