TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

9 participants
6533 discussions

by Bill Cunningham

Actually what I meant Gregg was Jon Pertwee was the Doctor back in the '60s which is the time period you were referring to, and Troughton too I guess. That reminds me of an episode called "The time..." something or other with Roger Delgado. They were trying to do something with some type of computer obviously an old mini of some type and some anciet artifact. There were toggle switches and lights. Otherwise it certainly didn't look like and PDP that I've ever seen in pictures. Just to get close to one of those old things would be breathtaking. Before my time though. Bill

18 years, 11 months

Porting UNIX from a DEC PDP-11 family member to a DG (Data General) Eclipse family member

by Gregg C Levine

Hello! I have here a Doctor Who book which takes place during the early part of the computer revolution, about the time the whole of what's discussed here happened. The people concerned in the book have machines running UNIX. Some of these are indeed PDP-11s and there are also a few DG Eclipses. Now the question: How difficult would it to port UNIX V7 from the usual machine, probably a PDP-11/43 (But I might be wrong about the model!) to a DG Eclipse? Naturally since I don't have physical hardware here, the intended target would be a SIMH DG virtual Eclipse (Or even a Nova 4) and the one doing all the work would be a SIMH PDP-11. -- Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon(a)worldnet.att.net "The Force will be with you. Always." Obi-Wan Kenobi

18 years, 11 months

Re: [pups] V6 kernel compile help

by Wolfgang Helbig

Hi Bent Lee, you asked for help > >I need help with the V6 kernel compilation. I read the Unix setup guide >and the >file /usr/sys/run. I've seen one problem so far with the /usr/sys/run >file. That is >that the two lib files (lib1 & lib2) did not contain any symbols. > >When I ran: ># ar r ../lib1 >and ># ar r ../lib2 > >I got a string of error messages from ld. which error messages? > >But after I did this: ># ar r ../lib1 *.o >and ># ar r ../lib2 *.o This might have corrupted your lib files. These two lines are only meant as templates to replace some files in your archives, that is lib[12], if necessary. But replacing an object file is necessary only if you changed the corresponding source file and recompiled it. Here are the files supposed to be in lib1: # ar t lib1 main.o alloc.o iget.o prf.o rdwri.o slp.o subr.o text.o trap.o sig.o sysent.o clock.o fio.o malloc.o nami.o pipe.o sys1.o sys2.o sys3.o sys4.o > >I have these missing symbols ># ld -x l.o m40.o c.o ../lib1 ../lib2 >Undefined: >_end (defined by ld if successful) >_edata (same) >_iinit (from alloc.c) >_iget (from iget.c) replace lib1 and lib2 with the original files and it should work! You might want to consult http://www.ba-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/script/chapt1.1 for help installing V6. Regards, Wolfgang -- "Dijkstra is right, but you don't say such things!" (A less courageous programmer)

18 years, 11 months

[pups] V6 kernel compile help

by filter

Hi All I need help with the V6 kernel compilation. I read the Unix setup guide and the file /usr/sys/run. I've seen one problem so far with the /usr/sys/run file. That is that the two lib files (lib1 & lib2) did not contain any symbols. When I ran: # ar r ../lib1 and # ar r ../lib2 I got a string of error messages from ld. But after I did this: # ar r ../lib1 *.o and # ar r ../lib2 *.o I have these missing symbols # ld -x l.o m40.o c.o ../lib1 ../lib2 Undefined: _end _edata _iinit _iget _update _schar _namei _maknode _access _itrunc _iput _alloc _uchar _closef _getf Can anyone help me with this? (I saw that MIT athena has a V6 repository with a Makefile in it But I cannot access it at all. (-_-) ) thanks bent lee

18 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] weird problem with our Decwriter III terminal

by John Chung

I would start with the gears first. Stepper motor testing can be done by visual inpection by running through 1 character at a time. Mark each turn when moving to the next character. This requires diassembly of the casing and other visual blocking components. John --- tuhs-request(a)minnie.tuhs.org wrote: > Send TUHS mailing list submissions to > tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, > visit > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > or, via email, send a message with subject or body > 'help' to > tuhs-request(a)minnie.tuhs.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > tuhs-owner(a)minnie.tuhs.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it > is more specific > than "Re: Contents of TUHS digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. weird problem with our Decwriter III terminal > ... (asbesto) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 09:38:10 +0000 > From: asbesto <asbesto(a)freaknet.org> > Subject: [TUHS] weird problem with our Decwriter III > terminal ... > To: tuhs(a)tuhs.org > Message-ID: <20060621093810.GA24010(a)freaknet.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > Hi, > > maybe someone here can help us - our problem is that > the > decwriter terminal seem to "jump" in particular > positions > when printing > > we don't understand how to solve this problem - > maybe this is a > stepper motor problem, or another problem in > gears/transmission? > > the problem is evident in this image: > > http://dyne.org/museum/dec/terminals/la120/tn/dscn3488.jpg.html > > does someone have an idea about this problem? > tnx! > > :) > > -- > [ asbesto : IW9HGS : freaknet medialab : > radiocybernet : poetry ] > [ http://freaknet.org/asbesto > http://papuasia.org/radiocybernet ] > [ NON SCRIVERMI USANDO LETTERE ACCENTATE, NON > MANDARMI ALLEGATI ] > [ *I DELETE* EMAIL > 100K, ATTACHMENTS, HTML, > M$-WORD DOC, SPAM ] > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > TUHS mailing list > TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs > > > End of TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 15 > ************************************ > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years

weird problem with our Decwriter III terminal ...

by asbesto

Hi, maybe someone here can help us - our problem is that the decwriter terminal seem to "jump" in particular positions when printing we don't understand how to solve this problem - maybe this is a stepper motor problem, or another problem in gears/transmission? the problem is evident in this image: http://dyne.org/museum/dec/terminals/la120/tn/dscn3488.jpg.html does someone have an idea about this problem? tnx! :) -- [ asbesto : IW9HGS : freaknet medialab : radiocybernet : poetry ] [ http://freaknet.org/asbesto http://papuasia.org/radiocybernet ] [ NON SCRIVERMI USANDO LETTERE ACCENTATE, NON MANDARMI ALLEGATI ] [ *I DELETE* EMAIL > 100K, ATTACHMENTS, HTML, M$-WORD DOC, SPAM ]

19 years

[pups] Major/minor device numbers and device names for MSCP drives?

by Robert Armstrong

Probably this is documented somewhere, but I really need a pointer or a brief tutorial on the major/minor device numbers for mknod() and the device names for MSCP drives in 2.11bsd. If I have a really simple PDP with an RQDXn and one RDxx disk, then the device name is conventionally /dev/ra0x and the first partition, ra0a is (5,0), the second, ra0b, is (5,1), etc. Pretty easy. If I have two drives on my single RQDXn, then the second hard disk is /dev/ra1 and ra1a is (5,8), ra1b is (5,9), etc. I guess the offset of 8 must be the maximum number of partitions on a drive - OK, I'm still with you. But what if I have a second MSCP controller? Assuming that I've built the kernel to handle it and modified dtab to autoconfigure it, that is. What are the usual names and mknod() numbers for the drives on the second controller? Worse, what if the MSCP controller isn't a RQDX but is a real UDA/QDA ? Now the drives have their own MSCP unit numbers that can be anything from 0 to 250 - where does this figure in? Same question for TMSCP - what if I have more than one tape controller? This case is easier, though, since TMSCP controllers normally have only one drive associated with them. Thanks, Bob Armstrong

19 years

Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 10

by lm＠bitmover.com

> The bandwidth of a mouse and menus is not very high. The bandwidth of a > keyboard is a lot higher. I've long thought that what we needed was control panel which operated on revision controlled flat files in /etc. So you could write scripts to do the automated stuff but you could point and click to do the stuff that you forgot how to do. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com

19 years

[pups] bitsavers document

by Martin Lovick

whilst looking around the bitsavers.org pdf archive, I found a document called PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf. Having had a quick scan through, it contains a source code listing and some commentary (lions i hear you say). The strange thing is that all of the source code appears to be in assembler... whats this about? is it a comentary of PDP-7 unix? regards Martin __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years

[pups] bitsavers document

by Carl Lowenstein

On 6/15/06, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote: > On Wednesday, 14 June 2006 at 16:24:29 -0700, Martin Lovick wrote: > > whilst looking around the bitsavers.org pdf archive, I found a > > document called PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf. > > Can you give a full URL for this document? I've taken a brief look at > the list in http://bitsavers.org/pdf/, but nothing jumped out at me. < http://bitsavers.org/pdf/bellLabs/unix/PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocumen… > carl -- carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego clowenst(a)ucsd.edu

19 years

Re: [pups] bitsavers document

by dmr＠plan9.bell-labs.com

Martin Lovick remarked, > whilst looking around the bitsavers.org pdf archive, I > found a document called > PreliminaryUnixImplementationDocument_Jun72.pdf. > Having had a quick scan through, it contains a source > code listing and some commentary (lions i hear you > say). The strange thing is that all of the source code > appears to be in assembler... > whats this about? > is it a comentary of PDP-7 unix? It is a fairly early version, with commentary, of PDP-11 Unix (the kernel), indeed still in assembler. It is an interesting find, probably the earliest version yet unearthed. Kossow told me about it when he did (or got) the scan of the document. I can't remember receiving it at the time. It is clearly different from what we in the research group were running at the time--it has devices we didn't have, and I think by then we were on the 11/45. Dennis

19 years

NY Times article on Bell Labs Holmdel closure

by Jerry Peek

This is a long New York Times article with a lot of detail. They say there'll be at least one public open house before it's demolished. I think you can now read a limited number of NY Times articles without subscribing (they seem to count how many you read -- maybe with a cookie). Here's the URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/realestate/commercial/14bell.html Jerry -- Jerry Peek, jpeek(a)jpeek.com, http://www.jpeek.com/

19 years

Unix, eunuchs?

by Michael Welle

Hi, last week a work mate told us a tale about how Unix came to its name. He believes that Unix is named after the term eunuch (a homophone of (to?) unix in english language). One can see Unix as a castrated successor of Multics. Hmmm, I am interested in Unix history for several years now, but I haven't heard about that before. It is really a tale I guess. Any clear words about this topic? Michael -- biff4emacsen - A biff-like tool for (X)Emacs http://www.c0t0d0s0.de/biff4emacsen/biff4emacsen.html

19 years

Re: [TUHS] Unix, eunuchs?

by Michael Welle

Hi, "Bill Cunningham" <billcu1(a)verizon.net> writes: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Michael Welle" <m.welle(a)gmx.net> > To: <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org> > Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 9:57 AM > Subject: [TUHS] Unix, eunuchs? > > >> Hi, >> >> last week a work mate told us a tale about how Unix came to its >> name. He believes that Unix is named after the term eunuch (a >> homophone of (to?) unix in english language). One can see Unix as a >> castrated successor of Multics. Hmmm, I am interested in Unix history >> for several years now, but I haven't heard about that before. It is >> really a tale I guess. Any clear words about this topic? >> >> Michael >> > > I know Dennis have said pretty clearly that Unix is a pun on Multics > that the team really never got to start on because Bell changed there minds. > Ken continued with Unix which must've been his idea. In assembly first then > B. Dennis came up with C and its lasted down through the years. that sounds familiar to me. The same story is told in 'A quarter century of Unix' and other sources. VG hmw -- biff4emacsen - A biff-like tool for (X)Emacs http://www.c0t0d0s0.de/biff4emacsen/biff4emacsen.html

19 years

Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 8

by lm＠bitmover.com

> There's a reason Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson have been awarded > the U.S. National Medal of Technology (1998) and are fellows of the > Computer History Museum Online. Dave Cutler hasn't and isn't. > "You are not expected to understand this." And while I think this is a little unfair to Dave that's a great .sig It goes well with the recent post about Unix vs NT that concluded about NT "there is no there there". I live on both platforms and I couldn't agree more. Some day I'll post my view on this but here is the really short summary. There are two classes of people: those who derive answers and those who memorize them. As Mark Twain said, the latter group is much larger than the former. My claim is that Unix appeals to the first group - you can guess what it is going to do and you'll be right most of the time. Windows appeals to the other group. They don't have the ability to derive any answer and they are comfortable with a system that mostly works but has "no there there". They can't tell the difference. The sad part (and the good part!) is that all of us on this list are in the former group which is smaller. I think we (well, many of us) wish that more people thought like we do and figured stuff out for themselves but the reality is that most people aren't inclined to do that. So the good and bad part is that we're a small select group. Personally, I've come to accept that and like it. I've gotten to the point where I realize that people who can derive the answer are special, they are gift, and I consider myself lucky when I run into a concentrated group of them. Cough, cough, that would be you. :) -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com

19 years

[pups] PDP-11

by Bill Cunningham

Did these old minis use a teletype or a monitor as stdout? The pictures I've seen of them looks like they used a printout as stdout. Bill

19 years

Re: [TUHS] UNIX as literature

by bgoodheart

A great read Greg and so true too. Thanks for posting that. I particularly liked the bit about the overheard conversation in Palo Alto "there used to be a shrimp-and-pasta plate here under ten bucks. Let me see...cat menu | grep shrimp | test -lt $10..." though not syntactically correct (and less-than-scintillating conversation), a diner from an NT shop probably couldn't have expressed himself as casually. This reminded me of a time not so long ago when I was seated in Starbucks in Menlo Park enjoying my Caramel Macchiato Venti and overhearing a heated debate between 6 or 7 guys about the GUI vs. command line issue. It seemed to start when a couple of guys in one party, seemingly unknown to the other party, who were talking about kde, rudely butted in to their conversation. Anyway the debate got so verbal that in the end they were all ushered out of Starbucks in an effort to keep the peace. How funny it was. Cheers, Berny

19 years

Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 32, Issue 8

by lm＠bitmover.com

A somewhat different view on the Starbucks story: A friend of mine moved here from New Mexico (which is a fantastic place to live, amazing, I used to live there) and she said "It's unbelievable - you can watch people and realize that they are actually thinking before they are talking". Indeed. I'd rather be in the midst of rude people thinking than any sort of people not thinking. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com

19 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] UNIX as literature

by Norman Wilson

Berny: This reminded me of a time not so long ago when I was seated in Starbucks in Menlo Park enjoying my Caramel Macchiato Venti and overhearing a heated debate between 6 or 7 guys about the GUI vs. command line issue. It seemed to start when a couple of guys in one party, seemingly unknown to the other party, who were talking about kde, rudely butted in to their conversation. Anyway the debate got so verbal that in the end they were all ushered out of Starbucks in an effort to keep the peace. How funny it was. ======= The Linux crowd is indeed ruder and more argumentative than the hackers of my youth. Maybe it's because they hang out in Starbucks, rather than in all-night terminal rooms with Coke machines down the hall. Or maybe it's just my memory. Norman Wilson Toronto ON Somewhat more than 30 years into the disease

19 years, 1 month

address change

by Paul Osborne

Hi, I know that this mail is going to hit moderation. May work email address has changed from P.A.Osborne(a)ukc.ac.uk to P.A.Osborne(a)kent.ac.uk Consequently my posts are getting moderated. Can you update the list please? Many thanks Paul

19 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Unix, eunuchs?

by John Chung

> > 1. Re: Unix, eunuchs? (dmr(a)plan9.bell-labs.com) > 2. Unix V6 man pages (Wolfgang Helbig) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 22:32:46 -0400 > From: dmr(a)plan9.bell-labs.com > Subject: Re: [TUHS] Unix, eunuchs? > To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org > Message-ID: > <49d52b2057749338fb3bb8d01ec2ca7d(a)plan9.bell-labs.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" > > Andrzey wrote: > > >I have taken my info about unics from > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unics . > > > >Perhaps You could comment on this, because Your > person is mentioned there. > > > > Don't believe everything in a (or the) wiki. > > >BTW One cound abbreviate "Uniplexed Information and > Computer System" as > >UNIACS . > > One could, but wouldn't. > > Dennis > > Thanks for clearing it up Dennis. John __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] PDP-11/23 questions ...

by Pete Turnbull

On Jun 8 2006, 17:15, asbesto wrote: > > 1) we lack the power supply of the 11/23 cpu. From the > schematics, we see that only +5V, +12V and -12V are required, > so we will try to use a normal PC power supply for the QBUS > backplane; does somebody know about problems in doing this? Is it missing or just not working? It's hard to imagine a BA11-N box like the one in your picture without the PSU, since the screws that hold the front panel onto the backplane go through the PSU cover. If it's simply not working, it's not usually hard to repair. You will need to ensure that the BDCOK H (Bus DC OK, active high) signal is held high, also the BPOK H (Bus Power OK, active high, from the AC input) signal or the CPU won't run -- the normal PSU does this. "High" means tied to no less than 3.5V DC. The PSU also provides a mains-frequency square-wave at about 3.5V-4V which drives the BEVENT L line for a real-time clock interrupt, which Unix needs. One of the switches on the front panel can be configured to control this (there are times when you might want to switch it off). Note that devices that turn off BEVENT, including the switch on the front panel, or the DIP switch on the CPU card, do it by shorting that line to ground! The same switch that can be configured to stop the BEVENT signal, is also often used to control the rack's power controller via a 3-wire cable with a 3-pin AMP Mate-N-Lok connector on each end. The front panel with the three switches also has a flip-flop controlled by one of the switches, connected to the BHALT L line, and another connected by a flip-flop to BINIT L. The first halts the CPU when enabled (active low), the other provides a pulse to start it. The RUN light on the panel is driven by the SRUN L signal on the first slot in the backplane. Most of the signals I've mentioned are carried between the backplane and the panel by a narrow ribbon cable. The backplane pinout is shown in a PostScript file called QBusConnsBig.ps on my web page at http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/PDP-11/ QBusConns.ps is the same file, but actual size, if you want to hold it up against the backplane. > 2) what kind of UNIX can be run on an 11/23 using a RL02 disk > drive? (just one, unfortunately :!) Nothing later than about 7th Edition, because BSD needs separate I&D space, which an 11/23 doesn't have (2.9 BSD might work, I can't remember). BSD (any version) is much too big for a single RL02 anyway. 7th Edition works; my original PDP-11 Unix system is my second 11/23, still in its original condition, which looks rather like yours, except it has two RL02s and a slightly earlier front panel. Be aware that the RL11/RLV11/RLV12 driver was not a standard feature of 7th Edition, though. You ought to do an inventory of the cards. 7th Edition wants at least 256K of memory. You might also want to see what version of the CPU you have. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

19 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] PDP-11/23 questions ...

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

asbesto <asbesto(a)freaknet.org> wrote: > 1) we lack the power supply of the 11/23 cpu. From the > schematics, we see that only +5V, +12V and -12V are required, > so we will try to use a normal PC power supply for the QBUS > backplane; does somebody know about problems in doing this? Off the top of my head, two thoughts: 1. You need the DCOK and POK signals. 2. Do the math and make sure that your power supply provides enough amps -- a real computer needs quite a bit more juice than a sleazy PeeCee. MS

19 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] UNIX as literature

by Wolfgang Helbig

Greg, After I read all of it consulting my dictionary a lot one question remains: What are "Cliffs Notes"? Regards, Wolfgang -- Weniger, aber besser.

19 years, 1 month

PDP-11/23 questions ...

by asbesto

Hi dudes, We recovered an almost working pdp-11/23 and some other stuff for our computer museum. Some images are online at http://dyne.org/museum :) well, 2 questions: 1) we lack the power supply of the 11/23 cpu. From the schematics, we see that only +5V, +12V and -12V are required, so we will try to use a normal PC power supply for the QBUS backplane; does somebody know about problems in doing this? 2) what kind of UNIX can be run on an 11/23 using a RL02 disk drive? (just one, unfortunately :!) that's all folks! *:) -- [ asbesto : IW9HGS : freaknet medialab : radiocybernet : poetry ] [ http://freaknet.org/asbesto http://papuasia.org/radiocybernet ] [ NON SCRIVERMI USANDO LETTERE ACCENTATE, NON MANDARMI ALLEGATI ] [ *I DELETE* EMAIL > 100K, ATTACHMENTS, HTML, M$-WORD DOC, SPAM ]

19 years, 1 month

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