Hi,
A big thanks to all who replied to my request for takers for the old
PDP-11 systems I have. I'm afraid I haven't been able to respond to
everyone yet as there's been a lot going on but I appreciate the
enlightenment on some of the aspects of the machines.
To be honest I really know very little about the PDP-11 and I had
hoped to learn more though these, so my MicroVAX II was a best guess
based on trying to match the hardware up to images on the web.
I will try and get back to all who expressed an interest with more
detailed information on the configuration and better pictures.
> Of course a PDP-11 is not a MicroVAX, and vice versa.
>
> Looking at the pictures, the only thing really worth saving would be
> the chassis shown with a keyboard next to it. Â One can see a floppy
> disk drive, and a hole where a hard disk drive probably was once. Â If
> there is a nameplate on the front, it is not readable in the picture.
> A picture of the rear panel would help in further identification, as
> well as a reading of any nameplate data on the rear panel.
--
Regards,
Kevin Phair
Hey all,
Got an old PentiumPro AViiON DG/UX machine.
I was just wodering if anyone happens to have an old, unused machine like
that.
If so, please reply with details, as well as geographic location.
All shipping costs will be payed by me.
A cash reward is offered, if you are interested.
Thanks,
A'
Hi,
A number of years ago I diverted a couple of PDP-11 systems which were
on their way to a skip. I believe they were in working condition and I
had always intended to clean them up and get them set up and running
again to see what it was all about. This never happened and I no
longer have the space to store them. As a result I'm offering them to
anyone who's willing to pay the shipping. They are located in Dublin,
Ireland.
There is some mild corrosion on some of the metal chassis and the
paint on the VDU casings is peeling off in place but overall I think
they will clean up well.
I think they are the MicroVAX II model and the consist of the PDP-11
chassis unit with a Ramstar T-1500 VDU and keyboard. Each one also has
a power distrubution box and they are configured for 120VAC operation.
There are also power cables (amongst others). I don't know what boards
are installed in them, but they did originally have tape drives
connected and were used to drive an inkjet printing system, so I
expect there is at least a tape controller and serial/parallel
interface in each of them.
Photos of everything are up on
http://sites.google.com/site/kevinphair/old-electronic-equipment/PDP-11
but unfortunately the cabinet units are no longer available.
If anyone is interested in these please get in touch soon as I won't
be able to keep them for much longer. If there's no interest in the
complete units, I'd also be happy to consider donating parts from them
to help with restorations or upgrade projects. I'm also open to
putting them in storage if someone wants to arrange collection at a
later date and is willing to split the storage costs.
--
Regards,
Kevin Phair
If you used BSD before 1982, please let me know. Off-list is fine. I
have a few questions to ask to help provide examples in a history book I
am writing. Thanks.
I'm sorry if this has been done before, but I could find no indication
this was the case in the unix archive itself or in any of the months I
checked in the mailing list.
I have figured out what the first 50176 bytes of s1-bits are.
It is an "INIT Tape" as described in Dennis_v1 Boot Procedures(VII) and
Dennis_v3 bproc.8. It is apparently contemporary with s2 [all of the
files on it /etc/getty /bin/ls and so on match up exactly with their
counterparts on s2], and this would seem to make s2 the "/bin-/etc-/lib
tape" described in bproc.8.
Also - is there any other known copy of the "bos" bootloader? I'm
partway through hand-disassembling the one on the tape.
Anyone know how to get SIMH to send ^J for return?
Anyway - with the KE-11A enabled you need to use "d system sr" to set
the switch register [which must be set to 1 to cold boot, 73700 to come
up in single user mode, and any random value other than the special ones
0 57500 10 20 40 1 2 to come up normally]
The RF disk is not even large enough to contain the whole s2 tape, and
while even v1 supported mountable filesystems, there is no mkfs or mount
on the tapes.
I was looking at several NetBSD manual pages and saw that some HISTORY
sections had wrong .Bx or BSD reference like:
HISTORY
The xstr command appeared in 3.0BSD.
I looked at a few and saw this was in 4.4BSD manual pages. By the way,
when were these history sections added? (They aren't in 4.2BSD manual
pages. I should look at 4.3 before asking ...)
I didn't see any that refered to original Berkeley UNIX Software Tape
nor 2BSD.
But from looking at the 1BSD and 2BSD, I see:
apropos was in 2bsd
colcrt was in 1bsd but not in 2bsd
even though 2BSD iul, soelim, and ssp manuals referenced it
(why missing from 2BSD?)
colrm was in 1bsd but not in 2bsd
csh was in 2bsd (even 1bsd referenced the upcoming "csh")
ctags was in 2bsd, but as a shell script using ed
expand was in 1bsd and 2bsd
finger was in 2bsd
fmt was in 2bsd
from was in 2bsd
head was in 1bsd and 2bsd
lock was in 2bsd
last was in 1bsd and 2bsd
mkstr was in 1bsd and 2bsd
msgs was in 2bsd
printenv was in 2bsd
soelim was in first BSD and 2BSD
tset was in 1bsd and 2bsd
w was in 2bsd as finger -sf
whatis was in 2bsd
whereis was in 2bsd
xstr was in 2bsd
lastlog file format was in 1bsd and 2bsd (?? maybe different format??)
Any comments on the above?
Or is this simply because "2BSD" is not a operating system release per
se, so "3.0BSD" is correct?
But this makes me wonder if my 2BSD versions are newer than first
2BSD, so really 3BSD is correct for some of this.
I was going to ask a NetBSD list about this to fix these histories, but
decided to consult TUHS instead. Okay to change history to fix history?
:)
I don't know if this is interesting to anyone, but I thought I'd share that
386BSD will install on Bochs (although slowly, and it's prone to crashing),
however once the first patchkit is installed, it'll then run on Qemu!
(0.11.0, it seems the new bios layout of 0.12 is incompatible)
If anyone is interested, here is a link to a hard disk image that I've
prepared for Qemu:
http://vpsland.superglobalmegacorp.com/install/386BSD/bsd386.qcow2.gz
I run it like this:
qemu.exe -L pc-bios -hda bsd386.qcow2 -M isapc -net nic -net user -no-reboot
-m 256
And I can run lynx/irc as a test of the TCP/IP.
At any rate, I figure this kind of brings 386BSD back out of it's grave.
Is anything likely to happen to the status of various historical
Unices? Is Novell likely to keep the Ancient Unix license intact or
are they likely to lock things back up? Is there any chance that
SysIII and early SysV might finally get opened up? Does anybody have
any ideas here?
Mike
_______________________________________________
TUHS mailing list
TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org
https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
Hi, doesn't anybody know if there is a disk size limit on Unix 6? I wrote a
C program to create a file and it won't go above around 1.5Mb. It doesn't
crash or report any errors but the file size never exceeds around that size.
Maybe it's a disk size limitation?
Also, is it possible to add other devices? like using an ISO file perhaps.
Regards,
Andrew.
