TUHS February 2017

tuhs@tuhs.org

72 participants
92 discussions

PDP 11/34a Serial Communications Problem

by Mark Hare

Hello all, This is my first time emailing the list, so please let me know if this doesn't belong here of if I'm breaking any rules. A few months ago, I rescued a PDP 11/34a with 2 RL01 drives from the scrap heap. The unit appears to work fine based on my limited front-panel testing. I haven't gotten the drives running yet since someone cut the power cords when the cabinet was being removed. There is a DL11-W serial line unit/realtime clock (M7856) installed in the 11/34 that I want to use for serial input/output. I have configured the card for 9600 baud, 8N1. Using some jumper wires, I carefully connected the card to a serial cable and a computer running a terminal and I was able to send some characters back and forth successfully. For a more permanent solution, I designed a simple adapter board that connects to the BERG 40 connector on the DL11-W and converts it to a DB9 serial port (In restrospect, this product was already available at https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/uTMf3v08 but I didn't know about that at the time). I also ordered a 40-pin (non-IDE) ribbon cable to connect the DL11-W to my adapter. When I connected everything, the 11/34 would start but no lights would appear on the front panel. I tried disconnecting the adapter but leaving the ribbon cable plugged into the BERG connector, but the problem persisted. When I removed the ribbon cable entirely, the unit powered on with no problems. Since this is a straight-through ribbon cable, I don't see what could be causing this problem. I have checked the continuity of each wire in the cable, and there doesn't appear to be a problem. I'd appreciate any advice that anyone has to offer. Yours, Mark D. Hare markhare(a)buffalo.edu University at Buffalo B. S. Civil Engineering '16 M. S. Structural/Earthquake Engineering Student

7 years, 10 months

Re: [TUHS] Names of famous, historical UNIX machines?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > don't expect a lot of wild and crazy names Yeah, those arrived when places started to get lots of identical machines, and needed a theme to name them. So I remember MIT-LCS had VAX 750's called Tide, Borax, etc (cleaners); MIT-AI had Suns called Grape-Nuts, Wheaties, etc (cereals). I know other places had similar name sets, but I can't recall the themes of any of them - although looking at an old HOSTS.TXT, I see CMU had systems called Faraday, Gauss, etc, while Purdue had Fermat, Newton, etc; U-Texas had Disney characters, BBN had fish, U-Washington had South Pacific islands - the list just goes on and on. Google for a old Host file, that's a good source if you want to know more. Noel

7 years, 10 months

Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!

by Dave Horsfall

Co-inventor of Unix, he was born on this day in 1943. Just think: without those two, we'd all be running M$ Windoze and thinking that it's wonderful. -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

7 years, 10 months

Re: [TUHS] How Unix brings people together, or it's a small world

by Doug McIlroy

As a tourist in Christchurch NZ in 1982, I saw a notice of a student piano recital at the university. Free, why not? The fellow who sat next to me turned out to be a phyicist. On learning that I was a computer scientist, he proudly described his wonderful new computer and operating system--the first of its kind in the university, if I remember correctly. I let on that I was familiar with it, so we both left the recital with a small-world story to tell. Doug

7 years, 10 months

Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 15, Issue 13

by Doug McIlroy

Charmant. 75k more on your next Loire chateaux tour. Poor Margate Lucy, rooted in (mostly) one place for 135 years. d

7 years, 10 months

Re: [TUHS] Names of famous, historical UNIX machines?

by Rudi Blom

Slartibartfast brings back fond memories of THHGTTG. Of course those in IT simply know that with a Guide and a towel there's no need to panic :-) Cheers, rudi

7 years, 10 months

shared memory on Unix

by Paul Ruizendaal

The presence of some sort of shared memory facility in the BBN V6 Unix kernel got me thinking about the origins of shared memory on Unix. I had a vague recollection that primordial versions were present in either PWB or CB3, but a quick glance at the source indicates that this is not correct. What are the origins of shared memory on Unix, i.e. what came before mmap() and SysV IPC? Was the BBN kernel the first to implement such a facility on Unix? Paul

7 years, 10 months

Questions for TUHS great minds

by Robert Swierczek

Not so long ago I joked about putting a Cray-1 in a watch. Now that we are essentially living in the future, what audacious (but realistic) architectures can we imagine under our desks in 25 years? Perhaps a mesh of ten-million of today's highest end CPU/GPU pairs bathing in a vast sea of non-volatile memory? What new abstractions are needed in the OS to handle that? Obviously many of the current command line tools would need rethinking (ps -ef for instance.) Or does the idea of a single OS disintegrate into a fractal cloud of zero-cost VM's? What would a meta-OS need to manage that? Would we still recognize it as a Unix?

7 years, 10 months

Re: [TUHS] Names of famous, historical UNIX machines?

by Berny Goodheart

You might find this interesting reading: http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_netexplodes.htm <http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_netexplodes.htm> In particular inhp4. I used to have a UUCP map that linked me into this network back in the mid 80s. I was based in the UK doing some work for Henry Spencer at Microport Systems if any of you recall their iX286 System V port, which was pretty cool. Anyway, there are some interesting machine names mentioned. From: smb(a)ulysses.att.com Subject: Re: IHNP4 Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 20:48:42 EDT > Thus, ihnp4 was Indian Hill Network Processor #4 > mh was Murray Hill. ak was the Atlanta Wire Works, sb was Southern > Bell, cb was Columbus (Mark Horton was mark@cbosgd for a long time) > plus others. Yup, Columbus Operating Systems Group D, as I recall. > Then there were the machines in the lab that had (and have) names like > bonnie, clyde, ulysses, research, allegra, lento, harpo, chico, etc.

7 years, 10 months

Re: [TUHS] Names of famous, historical UNIX machines?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > my printers have often been named after chainsaws Yeah, MIT (or was it Proteon, I forget - a long time ago :-) had that theme going for a while for printers... > @ DEC we were pretty free to use what we wanted and some were themed, > most were boring. Hah! I do have a cosmically great computer naming story from DEC, though. So DECNet host names were limited to N characters (where N=8, or some such). So one day they get this complaint from some DEC user in the UK: "Grumble, grumble, grumble, N-character limit in DECNet host names, we want to name our host 'Slartibartfast'." So, this being before a certain radio play had hit the US from the UK, the people at DEC were like: "What's a 'Slartibartfast'???" Instantly, the reply shot back (and perhaps some of you saw this coming): "Boy, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your pants down fall down!" :-) :-) Noel

7 years, 10 months

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TUHS February 2017