From erin at corliss.com Mon Jan 5 15:23:23 1998 From: erin at corliss.com (Erin Corliss) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 21:23:23 -0800 Subject: ... Message-ID: <34B06E4B.20CDBAA@corliss.com> Hello. I have a free operating system directory at: http://rio.com/~zomad I have a link to the PUPS home page for PDP-11 Unix & was wondering if you can add a link to my page. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA18889 for pups-liszt; Fri, 30 Jan 1998 15:40:48 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Fri Jan 30 14:40:50 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 15:40:50 +1100 (EST) Subject: Installing PDP-11 UNIX w. no tape - solution Message-ID: <199801300440.PAA04976@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Hi all, Last year I mentioned the idea of installing PDP-11 UNIX over a serial line, for those people who have real PDP-11s but no tape drives. I've written the code to do this over the past few days, and its time to pass it to someone who actually has a PDP-11 and no tape drive! The code is of course alpha-quality, but I'm using a PC running John Wilson's Ersatz to install 7th Edition on a simulated RK05 right now. I need someone who has a: + PDP-11 which _will_ run 7th Edition + Spare RK05, RP03, RP04, RP05 or RP06 disk + A DL/KL-11 serial port at vector 0176500 (i.e 2nd unit) + An RS-232 null modem with hardware handshaking lines + A machine running a 32-bit Unix to host the other end of the serial connection + Spare time, and a tendency for masochism :-) Someone who also has a PDP-11 running v7, and a source license would be a bonus, as they might be able to help with the debugging. I'm at the point where I can bring in the `boot' file (record 0) off the simulated UNIX install tape, load and run cat, mkfs, icheck and restor. I get some error messages with restor (``Missing address (header) block''), which I believe are to do with the 10,240 byte record requests from restor. My code expects 512-byte requests, and I'm doing 20 a time to fulfill the 10,240 request, but still problems. Once the code is solid, I'd like to add other disks (RL02s etc.), and write a user-mode program to read from the tape once UNIX has booted off disk. This will allow other tape formats (e.g tar) to be read in. If anybody would be willing to participate in getting this stuff to work well, could they e-mail me next week?! Thanks in advance, Warren wkt at cs.adfa.oz.au Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA20201 for pups-liszt; Sat, 31 Jan 1998 01:46:41 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f From allisonp at world.std.com Sat Jan 31 00:46:31 1998 From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 09:46:31 -0500 Subject: Installing PDP-11 UNIX w. no tape - solution Message-ID: <199801301446.AA19117@world.std.com> from Allison J Parent at "Jan 30, 98 09:46:31 am" Message-ID: <199801302206.JAA07375@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Allison J Parent: > > <10,240 request, but still problems. > > Try slowing down. You may be overflowing the input buffer. I found the problem - my dump image was corrupt :-). I now have a clean v7 dump of /, and there are no complaints from restor. I've had a few people volunteer to try out the code. I'll clean it up, finish off the docs, and put it up for ftp in a few days, with an email on the PUPS mailing list on how to retrieve it. Cheers, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA22547 for pups-liszt; Sat, 31 Jan 1998 16:52:16 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f From sms at moe.2bsd.com Sat Jan 31 15:36:05 1998 From: sms at moe.2bsd.com (Steven M. Schultz) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 21:36:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: Installing PDP-11 UNIX w. no tape - solution Message-ID: <199801310536.VAA23209@moe.2bsd.com> Hi - I thought I'd chime in with my experience with "high" speed serial transfers... > From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) > > Try slowing down. You may be overflowing the input buffer. This was > a common problem on TU58s hooked to the 2nd DL on some systems at speeds > above either 4800 or 9600. It only happend in the TU58 to host direction The TU58's lack of flow control (unless you were on the Vax-750 with something I believed was called the MRSP roms) made them all but useless except in a 'standalone' environment. As a boot device they were just "slower than molasses in January". As a data storage device to be used while the system was up and doing other stuff the TU58 was quite poor. I tried to use the TU58 on an 11/44 once and it just wouldn't work reliably when trying to transfer a file from TU58 to disk. The first time the system had to tape a couple milliseconds to write a block to disk you had a DL11 overrun and the transfer was corrupt. > (read) as the opposite path expected a handshake every 128 bytes(to allow > the tu58 to actually do the write to tape). It seems the tu58 would send > a 512byte block as 4 128byte packets at a sustained rate fast enough to > overrun the PDP-11 host input buffer; before it could be emptied. You The DL-11 to which the TU58 was attached (could it be hooked up to something a bit better? I would think so but don't know for sure) had no buffering/silo - at 9600 there was only 1 millisecond to get the character and that's cutting things a bit too fine on a ~.5 mips machine, especially if other things are going on at the same time. > may be emulating a similar problem. PCs do not service interrupts all > that fast and OS overhead can make that longer. Ummm, 'PC's I'm used to don't seem terribly upset at 10 or 20 thousand interrupts per second - that should be sufficient to handle any 9600 baud serial line I'd think. > Note PDP-11s can have enough overhead and higher priority stuff ahead of > the 2nd DL that it cannot take data at greater than 4800 baud (sustained Not 'overhead' as much as just 'slowness'. An 11/44 is about .6 mips (an 11/73 is about 15% less) - that's quite a bit less than even a 286. The biggest problem I ran into was the fact that the disk systems all used SPL-5 while the serial ports (DL11,etc) were at 4. A disk interrupt would (and did) come in and would delay things just enough that the DL running at 9600 with no flow control would overrun. > rate) without some kind of handshake to allow processing in between. > If the system is basically unloaded like my minimal 11/23 it can run at > 38.4! The most likely time when this overrun can happen is while doing If it's not doing too much else. I don't see an 11/xx handling high serial line rates without some form of RTS/CTS flowcontrol while a kernel recompile is going on ;-) If you're using a DHV-11 the data flow rate is quite a bit less than 38.4k - the bit timings are that fast but the board can't handle it and the effective rate is lower. A DHQ-11 is quite a bit better but all in all anything over 9600 requires hardware flow control, especially if the data has to make its way to disk. Steven Schultz Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA24275 for pups-liszt; Sun, 1 Feb 1998 05:19:03 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f From erin at corliss.com Mon Jan 5 15:23:23 1998 From: erin at corliss.com (Erin Corliss) Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 21:23:23 -0800 Subject: ... Message-ID: <34B06E4B.20CDBAA@corliss.com> Hello. I have a free operating system directory at: http://rio.com/~zomad I have a link to the PUPS home page for PDP-11 Unix & was wondering if you can add a link to my page. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA18889 for pups-liszt; Fri, 30 Jan 1998 15:40:48 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Fri Jan 30 14:40:50 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 15:40:50 +1100 (EST) Subject: Installing PDP-11 UNIX w. no tape - solution Message-ID: <199801300440.PAA04976@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Hi all, Last year I mentioned the idea of installing PDP-11 UNIX over a serial line, for those people who have real PDP-11s but no tape drives. I've written the code to do this over the past few days, and its time to pass it to someone who actually has a PDP-11 and no tape drive! The code is of course alpha-quality, but I'm using a PC running John Wilson's Ersatz to install 7th Edition on a simulated RK05 right now. I need someone who has a: + PDP-11 which _will_ run 7th Edition + Spare RK05, RP03, RP04, RP05 or RP06 disk + A DL/KL-11 serial port at vector 0176500 (i.e 2nd unit) + An RS-232 null modem with hardware handshaking lines + A machine running a 32-bit Unix to host the other end of the serial connection + Spare time, and a tendency for masochism :-) Someone who also has a PDP-11 running v7, and a source license would be a bonus, as they might be able to help with the debugging. I'm at the point where I can bring in the `boot' file (record 0) off the simulated UNIX install tape, load and run cat, mkfs, icheck and restor. I get some error messages with restor (``Missing address (header) block''), which I believe are to do with the 10,240 byte record requests from restor. My code expects 512-byte requests, and I'm doing 20 a time to fulfill the 10,240 request, but still problems. Once the code is solid, I'd like to add other disks (RL02s etc.), and write a user-mode program to read from the tape once UNIX has booted off disk. This will allow other tape formats (e.g tar) to be read in. If anybody would be willing to participate in getting this stuff to work well, could they e-mail me next week?! Thanks in advance, Warren wkt at cs.adfa.oz.au Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA20201 for pups-liszt; Sat, 31 Jan 1998 01:46:41 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f From allisonp at world.std.com Sat Jan 31 00:46:31 1998 From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 09:46:31 -0500 Subject: Installing PDP-11 UNIX w. no tape - solution Message-ID: <199801301446.AA19117@world.std.com> from Allison J Parent at "Jan 30, 98 09:46:31 am" Message-ID: <199801302206.JAA07375@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Allison J Parent: > > <10,240 request, but still problems. > > Try slowing down. You may be overflowing the input buffer. I found the problem - my dump image was corrupt :-). I now have a clean v7 dump of /, and there are no complaints from restor. I've had a few people volunteer to try out the code. I'll clean it up, finish off the docs, and put it up for ftp in a few days, with an email on the PUPS mailing list on how to retrieve it. Cheers, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA22547 for pups-liszt; Sat, 31 Jan 1998 16:52:16 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f From sms at moe.2bsd.com Sat Jan 31 15:36:05 1998 From: sms at moe.2bsd.com (Steven M. Schultz) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 21:36:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: Installing PDP-11 UNIX w. no tape - solution Message-ID: <199801310536.VAA23209@moe.2bsd.com> Hi - I thought I'd chime in with my experience with "high" speed serial transfers... > From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) > > Try slowing down. You may be overflowing the input buffer. This was > a common problem on TU58s hooked to the 2nd DL on some systems at speeds > above either 4800 or 9600. It only happend in the TU58 to host direction The TU58's lack of flow control (unless you were on the Vax-750 with something I believed was called the MRSP roms) made them all but useless except in a 'standalone' environment. As a boot device they were just "slower than molasses in January". As a data storage device to be used while the system was up and doing other stuff the TU58 was quite poor. I tried to use the TU58 on an 11/44 once and it just wouldn't work reliably when trying to transfer a file from TU58 to disk. The first time the system had to tape a couple milliseconds to write a block to disk you had a DL11 overrun and the transfer was corrupt. > (read) as the opposite path expected a handshake every 128 bytes(to allow > the tu58 to actually do the write to tape). It seems the tu58 would send > a 512byte block as 4 128byte packets at a sustained rate fast enough to > overrun the PDP-11 host input buffer; before it could be emptied. You The DL-11 to which the TU58 was attached (could it be hooked up to something a bit better? I would think so but don't know for sure) had no buffering/silo - at 9600 there was only 1 millisecond to get the character and that's cutting things a bit too fine on a ~.5 mips machine, especially if other things are going on at the same time. > may be emulating a similar problem. PCs do not service interrupts all > that fast and OS overhead can make that longer. Ummm, 'PC's I'm used to don't seem terribly upset at 10 or 20 thousand interrupts per second - that should be sufficient to handle any 9600 baud serial line I'd think. > Note PDP-11s can have enough overhead and higher priority stuff ahead of > the 2nd DL that it cannot take data at greater than 4800 baud (sustained Not 'overhead' as much as just 'slowness'. An 11/44 is about .6 mips (an 11/73 is about 15% less) - that's quite a bit less than even a 286. The biggest problem I ran into was the fact that the disk systems all used SPL-5 while the serial ports (DL11,etc) were at 4. A disk interrupt would (and did) come in and would delay things just enough that the DL running at 9600 with no flow control would overrun. > rate) without some kind of handshake to allow processing in between. > If the system is basically unloaded like my minimal 11/23 it can run at > 38.4! The most likely time when this overrun can happen is while doing If it's not doing too much else. I don't see an 11/xx handling high serial line rates without some form of RTS/CTS flowcontrol while a kernel recompile is going on ;-) If you're using a DHV-11 the data flow rate is quite a bit less than 38.4k - the bit timings are that fast but the board can't handle it and the effective rate is lower. A DHQ-11 is quite a bit better but all in all anything over 9600 requires hardware flow control, especially if the data has to make its way to disk. Steven Schultz Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA24275 for pups-liszt; Sun, 1 Feb 1998 05:19:03 +1100 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au: major set sender to owner-pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au using -f