30 Sep
2021
30 Sep
'21
9:47 p.m.
After a prolonged outage Area 4 is now back on hecnet via a new Raspberry
Pi, so the archive on SLAVE:: is now available again (all the time the
windows vm that it is being emulated on is up) as well as a debian VM
hosted SIMH ORAC recreation.
I'm planning on using a (real) VAXstation during this years October
Retrochallenge (it starts tomorrow):
https://www.retrochallenge.org/
Twitter: @retrochallenge
After a shaky couple of retrochallenge I've decided to step in and help out
with this one, but will also be hopefully using it as an excuse to spend a
bit of time on DEC equipment.
Also please note that it is DEC Legacy in Windermere, UK in two weekends:
9th/10th October.
http://wickensonline.co.uk/declegacy/
Regards, Mark.
--
https://www.qrz.com/db/M0NOM/P
1 Oct
1 Oct
10 a.m.
Man I wish we weren't on the Amber list. Such a hassle to travel there
right now.
I should get simh fired up on the NUC. I'm thinking something PDP-11 and
then maybe..... RSX? I don't even know what I'd want to run.
Does the PDP-11 stuff properly do idle? The NUC is pretty powerful, why
not run several PDP-11s? :-D
-brian
On 30/09/21 20:47, Mark Wickens wrote:
After a prolonged outage Area 4 is now back on hecnet
via a new
Raspberry Pi, so the archive on SLAVE:: is now available again (all
the time the windows vm that it is being emulated on is up) as well as
a debian VM hosted SIMH ORAC recreation.
I'm planning on using a (real) VAXstation during this years October
Retrochallenge (it starts tomorrow):
https://www.retrochallenge.org/ <https://www.retrochallenge.org/>
Twitter:?@retrochallenge
After a shaky?couple of retrochallenge I've decided to step in and
help out with this one, but will also be hopefully using it as an
excuse to spend a bit of time on DEC equipment.
Also please note that it is DEC Legacy in Windermere, UK in two
weekends: 9th/10th October.
http://wickensonline.co.uk/declegacy/
<http://wickensonline.co.uk/declegacy/>
Regards, Mark.
--
https://www.qrz.com/db/M0NOM/P <https://www.qrz.com/db/M0NOM/P>
3:25 p.m.
On Oct 1, 2021, at 4:00 AM, Brian Hechinger <wonko
at 4amlunch.net> wrote:
Man I wish we weren't on the Amber list. Such a hassle to travel there right now.
I should get simh fired up on the NUC. I'm thinking something PDP-11 and then
maybe..... RSX? I don't even know what I'd want to run.
Does the PDP-11 stuff properly do idle? The NUC is pretty powerful, why not run several
PDP-11s? :-D
Yes for RSTS, I don't remember RSX, and I don't think so for RT11.
paul
10:51 p.m.
On Fri, 1 Oct 2021 at 23:27, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
For RSX, RSTS using the latest SIMH 4.0 from GitHub
set cpu idle
and when I run RT-11 I use
set cpu noidle
set throttle 10%
I run instances of SIMH pdp11 to run nodes RUSTY (RSX11M-Plus V4.6), DINGO
(RSTS/E V10.1) plus a vax780 instance EMU and the pydecnet router TNRTR on
a single RaspberryPi 3B. A good way to have such systems online all the
time with low power consumption.
Tony
--
Tony Nicholson <tony.nicholson at computer.org>
On Oct 1, 2021, at 4:00 AM, Brian Hechinger
<wonko at 4amlunch.net> wrote:
Man I wish we weren't on the Amber list. Such a hassle to travel there
right
now.
I should get simh fired up on the NUC. I'm thinking something PDP-11 and
then
maybe..... RSX? I don't even know what I'd want to run.
Does the PDP-11 stuff properly do idle? The NUC is pretty powerful, why
not run
several PDP-11s? :-D
Yes for RSTS, I don't remember RSX, and I don't think so for RT11.
paul
2 Oct
2 Oct
2:54 a.m.
On 21-Oct-01 15:25, Paul Koning wrote:
Also for RSX. Basically, they both use WAIT, and that's all that is
required from simh. RT-11 is busy-looping, though.
Johnny
On Oct 1, 2021, at 4:00 AM, Brian Hechinger
<wonko at 4amlunch.net> wrote:
Man I wish we weren't on the Amber list. Such a hassle to travel there right now.
I should get simh fired up on the NUC. I'm thinking something PDP-11 and then
maybe..... RSX? I don't even know what I'd want to run.
Does the PDP-11 stuff properly do idle? The NUC is pretty powerful, why not run several
PDP-11s? :-D
Yes for RSTS, I don't remember RSX, and I don't think so for RT11.
3 a.m.
On Oct 1, 2021, at 8:54 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt
at softjar.se> wrote:
On 21-Oct-01 15:25, Paul Koning wrote:
Also for RSX. Basically, they both use WAIT, and that's all that is required from
simh. RT-11 is busy-looping, though.
That's what I thought but that's only half correct. RT-11 SJ does busy looping;
RT-11 FB has an idle task that includes a wait instruction (which is how it gets the
rotating lights pattern -- the difference with other OSs is that it sets the pattern into
the display register rather than into R0).
; "A SOURCE OF INNOCENT MERRIMENT!"
; - W.S. GILBERT, "MIKADO"
; "DID NOTHING IN PARTICULAR, AND DID IT VERY WELL"
; - W.S. GILBERT, "IOLANTHE"
; "TO BE IDLE IS THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF THE BUSY"
; - SAMUEL JOHNSON, "THE IDLER"
10$: DEC (PC)+ ;THE RT-11 LIGHTS ROUTINE!
20$: 1
BNE 14$ ;NOT TOO OFTEN
ADD #512.,20$ ;RESET COUNT, CLEAR CARRY
16$: ROL 13$ ;JUGGLE THE LIGHTS
BNE 11$ ;NOT CLEAR YET
COM 13$ ;TURN ON LIGHTS, SET CARRY
11$: BCC 12$ ;NOTHING FELL OFF, KEEP MOVING
ADD #100,16$ ;REVERSE DIRECTION
BIC #200,16$ ;ROL/ROR FLIP
12$: MOV (PC)+,@(PC)+ ;PUT IN LIGHTS
13$: .WORD 0,SR
14$: MOVB #MXJNUM/2+200,INTACT ;DO A COMPLETE SCAN
EXUSLK: BR EXUSER ;BACK INTO LOOKFOR LOOP
paul
On Oct 1,
2021, at 4:00 AM, Brian Hechinger <wonko at 4amlunch.net> wrote:
Man I wish we weren't on the Amber list. Such a hassle to travel there right now.
I should get simh fired up on the NUC. I'm thinking something PDP-11 and then
maybe..... RSX? I don't even know what I'd want to run.
Does the PDP-11 stuff properly do idle? The NUC is pretty powerful, why not run several
PDP-11s? :-D
Yes for RSTS, I don't remember RSX, and I don't think so for
RT11. 
3 Oct
3 Oct
2:19 a.m.
I am trying to remember the lights on the 11's that I used; these are in
the 1978-1981 time frame.? WPI had an 11/45 with a (NICE!) GT40 in
mechanical engineering which ran RT-11.? I remember that busy looping.?
The computer science department had a (mighty) 11/05 which ran a couple
of things:
* RT, looping (lots of blinky)
* Unix, can't remember as we almost never ran it.? It was pretty much
a curiosity and the terminal handling of the time was thoroughly
despised.
* RSX, not so much blinky
Columbia had a very nice 11/45 which ran RSTS which didn't blink so
much.? 11/40's (which were the front-end's for the 20's) ran a version
of RSX called 20F (Johnny can speak to it better than I can).? For
Tops-20 3A, it didn't have much to do as the DH's handled a bit of the
buffering, so it didn't blink so much.? From version 4 on, it had to
handle smooth scrolling which broke everything; it had to do continuous
polling to looking for ^S's, which the hardware would not pause on.?
Lots of blinky, which was a shame because you used to be able to open
the door and could guess at how many users you had by looking at the
lights for 3A.
The DN20's ran either MCB (DECnet) or DN60 (IBM bisynch
communications).? However, these were 11/34's which couldn't even do
blinky.? I don't know how MCB idle's; I don't think we had source.
We did have source for the DN60, which I was responsible for being the
Galaxy dude.? The DN60 appears to be written from scratch, but some of
it strikes me as possibly being from RSX.? It had a three level
'friendly' round-robin scheduler (I.E., no preemption).? Basically, the
idle task either updates various clocks, checking for certain conditions
or it loops checking to see if any tasks can be run.? I would predict
that, were it to be run on something with a bit display, that there
would be a lot of blinky.
;
; SUBROUTINE CALLED BY THE DISPATCHER WHEN ALL TASKS ARE WAITING.
;
DSPIDL: INC???? DSPMTY????????? ;NOTE DISPATCHER IDLE CYCLE
??????? BVC???? 11$???????????? ;BRANCH IF NO OVERFLOW
??????? STOPCD? WDG???????????? ;CLOCK HAS STOPPED TICKING
11$:??? CMP???? DSPCLK,JIFCLK?? ;IS THE DISPATCHER CLOCK UP TO DATE?
??????? BNE???? 12$???????????? ;NO.
??????? RTS???? PC????????????? ;YES, CHECK ALL TASKS AGAIN.
Those quotes are great; I don't remember anything like that in DN60.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 10/1/21 9:00 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
That's what I thought but that's only half correct. RT-11 SJ does busy looping;
RT-11 FB has an idle task that includes a wait instruction (which is how it gets the
rotating lights pattern -- the difference with other OSs is that it sets the pattern into
the display register rather than into R0).
; "A SOURCE OF INNOCENT MERRIMENT!"
; - W.S. GILBERT, "MIKADO"
; "DID NOTHING IN PARTICULAR, AND DID IT VERY WELL"
; - W.S. GILBERT, "IOLANTHE"
; "TO BE IDLE IS THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF THE BUSY"
; - SAMUEL JOHNSON, "THE IDLER"
10$: DEC (PC)+ ;THE RT-11 LIGHTS ROUTINE!
20$: 1
BNE 14$ ;NOT TOO OFTEN
ADD #512.,20$ ;RESET COUNT, CLEAR CARRY
16$: ROL 13$ ;JUGGLE THE LIGHTS
BNE 11$ ;NOT CLEAR YET
COM 13$ ;TURN ON LIGHTS, SET CARRY
11$: BCC 12$ ;NOTHING FELL OFF, KEEP MOVING
ADD #100,16$ ;REVERSE DIRECTION
BIC #200,16$ ;ROL/ROR FLIP
12$: MOV (PC)+,@(PC)+ ;PUT IN LIGHTS
13$: .WORD 0,SR
14$: MOVB #MXJNUM/2+200,INTACT ;DO A COMPLETE SCAN
EXUSLK: BR EXUSER ;BACK INTO LOOKFOR LOOP
paul
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On Oct 1, 2021, at 8:54 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> Also for RSX. Basically, they both use WAIT, and that's all that is required from
simh. RT-11 is busy-looping, though.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> On 21-Oct-01 15:25, Paul Koning wrote:
>>
>> Yes for RSTS, I don't remember RSX, and I don't think so for RT11.
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> On Oct 1, 2021, at 4:00 AM, Brian Hechinger <wonko at 4amlunch.net>
wrote:
>>>
>>> Man I wish we weren't on the Amber list. Such a hassle to travel there
right now.
>>>
>>> I should get simh fired up on the NUC. I'm thinking something PDP-11 and
then maybe..... RSX? I don't even know what I'd want to run.
>>>
>>> Does the PDP-11 stuff properly do idle? The NUC is pretty powerful, why not
run several PDP-11s? :-D
945
days inactive
948
days old
6 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
bqt＠softjar.se -
mark＠wickensonline.co.uk -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
tommytimesharing＠gmail.com -
tony.nicholson＠computer.org -
wonko＠4amlunch.net