All, I've just spent the week tidying up my Apout program. This runs PDP-11 user-mode programs (specifically 7th Edition binaries), and translates V7 syscalls to native syscalls. I've tidied the program up and optimised it a bit too. Over the summer break (it's summer down here) I want to add floating-point and start work on emulating 2.11BSD user-mode binaries. The program runs on FreeBSD 2.2.x and 3.0 systems: porting to other 32-bit little-endian Unix systems should be relatively easy. Porting to big-endian systems might be harder :-) I'll have a look at that too. Anyway, an alpha of the new 2.2 version is at: ftp://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/pub/PDP-11/Sims/Apout Cheers, Warren Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA24007 for pups-liszt; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:51:17 +1100 (EST) Received: from harrier.Uznet.NET (harrier.ml.org [193.220.92.194]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA23997 for <pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au>; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:50:45 +1100 (EST) Received: from dosdev (pm8-114.dial.qual.net [205.212.2.114]) by harrier.Uznet.NET (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id JAA06898 for <pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au>; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:48:58 +0500 Message-Id: <199812030448.JAA06898(a)harrier.Uznet.NET> From: Michael Sokolov <msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET> Date: 3 Dec 1998 04:48:30 GMT To: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Subject: Re: System Industries MSCP disk controller problem Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com> wrote: Quite possible, since this funny Xerox system has a lot of Sigma components. The outer box in which the BA23 is mounted is made by Sigma, the funny way the ESDI drives are mechanically mounted is clearly a Sigma invention, the card connecting the BA23 backplane to the expansion backplane in the outer Sigma box is made by Sigma, and so is another totally unmarked card of unknown purpose (its presence or absence appears to have absolutely no effect on anything). The system is not 100% Sigma, though. There also another 2-drive ESDI controller (that's the one that was at 172150 from the beginning) and a 9-track tape controller, both made by Emulex (QD21 and QT13, respectively) and both appear toast (I want to get rid of both). Before I got your E-mail, SW5 and SW8 were ON and the rest were OFF (don't remember if it was the original position). I also tried SW10 ON and the rest OFF. In both cases the effect is exactly the same. At power-up the CPU screams, but then gives the ">>>" prompt. Trying to read different locations with the E/P/W command (the Q-bus I/O page is mapped at 0x20000000 in the VAX address space), I see that the card responds somehow to 160334 and to 160400, but not to 172150. (I know that it's this card and not something else, since when I pull it out the CPU is happy and no one responds to these addresses.) I'm 99% sure that it's neither Dilog nor Emulex. I have seen quite a few Dilog and Emulex cards, and I think I should be able to detect them easily. This is a quad-height board. All components are thru-hole and all chips are in DIP packages. There are no 4-sided chips or surface-mounted components. Hold it with the component side up, the fingers to the right and the handles to the left. On the left (handle) side there is a row of shrouded header connectors. From top to bottom, they are: 10-pin (connected to something, but purpose unknown), 34-pin (ESDI control and status), 20- pin (drive 0 data), 20-pin (drive 1 data), 20-pin (drive 2 data). Directly behind the bottom 20-pin header there is another 20-pin header for drive 3 data. The biggest chip is a 48-pin DIP labeled DP8466AN (National Semiconductor as far as I can tell), and it's right behind the drive 3 data connector. There are two AM2901CPCs behind the 34-pin connector. There is one 28-pin EPROM right about in the center, shifted downward a little. The ROM size is obscured by the sticker saying "ESDI V2.41 9901-8918 REV.A". There is a stack of narrow 24-pin DIP chips going from the top of the board to right above the EPROM. All have stickers, suggesting that they are programmable. The stickers have different 6-character codes on them, all starting with "1583". Directly to the right from the last one there is one more such chip labeled "SYS IND 1583W3". Actually, I was wrong about there being 2 switch packs. There are 3 of them, one of 10 and two of 4. The 10-switch one is right above the chip labeled "SYS IND 1583W3". In the top right corner (right next to row A fingers) there is a 4-switch pack. All switches are ON. Directly behind it there is a 16-pin DIP chip labeled "1583I1" (the only chip with a sticker not mentioned before). At the top of the board directly to the left from the 10-chip stack there is a 10 MHz oscillator, the only clock on the board. Directly to the left from it there is the last 4-switch pack. All switches are ON. Finally, there are 3 LEDs between the top handle and the 10-pin header. The top one is red and the other two are green. What's the correct priority for disk MSCP? Should it be different between primary and secondary? The outer box is Sigma. It provides funny mounting for 4 ESDI drives, an expansion Q-bus backplane, and a big bay for a BA23. The BA23 contains the CPU, the memory, and all peripherals except the controller in question. First comes the KA650 CPU. Then two MS650 memory modules. Then DELQA, DZQ11, TQK50, and the Sigma Q-bus extender card. The latter takes the Q-bus into the expansion backplane, where the controller in question is the only device. It's in the expansion backplane instead of the BA23 because that's where the actual drives are. I have tried pulling the Sigma Q-bus extender card out and putting the ESDI controller right in the BA23 backplane, but this didn't change anything, so there is nothing wrong with the Q-bus expansion. You know what, I just looked a little closer and noticed that in this configuration (both 4-switch packs all ON, SW1-9 on the 10-switch pack OFF, and SW10 ON) the controller responds not only to 160334 and 160400, but to just about any address in the Q-bus I/O page (except 172150)! No wonder the CPU screams about it! What the hell is going on? How can it possibly do this? Is someone trying to port Plug-n-Pray to Q-bus? Is it something like KFQSA with a separate address for each drive and everything soft- configured? Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Cellular phone: 216-217-2579 ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov(a)harrier.Uznet.NET Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) id BAA25817 for pups-liszt; Fri, 4 Dec 1998 01:27:17 +1100 (EST) Received: from timaxp.trailing-edge.com (trailing-edge.wdn.com [198.232.144.27]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id BAA25812 for <PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU>; Fri, 4 Dec 1998 01:27:04 +1100 (EST) Received: by timaxp.trailing-edge.com for PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 9:25:04 -0500 Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 9:25:04 -0500 From: Tim Shoppa <SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com> To: PUPS(a)MINNIE.CS.ADFA.OZ.AU CC: SHOPPA(a)trailing-edge.com Message-Id: <981203092504.2de002c1(a)trailing-edge.com> Subject: Re: System Industries MSCP disk controller problem Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk I regularly work with "PDP-11 systems" now that don't have a single DEC component in them. CPU by Mentec ( http://www.mentec.com/ ), disk controller by Andromeda ( http://www.andromedasystems.com/ ), async and parallel I/O by the Logical Company ( http://www.logical-co.com ), etc. What else are commercial developers left to do now that DEC (after over a decade of trying to) has finally abandoned their PDP-11 product line? At least the other companies named are still doing active support and (at least in Mentec's case) development! You might be a bit hasty in casting these off, as you aren't having the best of luck with the rest of the peripherals, either! That clinches it - it's a Webster WQESD, running Wombat V2.41. 9901-8918 is evidently the SI part number for the complete system. It's a bit confusing to go from the SI part number because they all begin with "9900" or "9901"! A summary of the WQESD switch settings, and the various ways in which you can invoke Wombat, lives at: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/hardware as the file "WQESD.txt". I'm willing to bet that you have severe Q-bus continuity problems, especially now that you've told us that you have an expansion Q-bus cabinet and that you've been randomly moving Q-bus cards around. You have to tell us exactly which slot each card is in, and preferably the original configuration as well (the Sigma backplanes have different wirings than the common DEC ones.) Is the "BA23" indeed a real DEC BA23, and not the Sigma "clone"? The sigma 5.25" 9-slot backplanes have very different backplane wirings (and, indeed, putting a DEC dual-wide Microvax CPU into it will very likely cause damage.) As a start, work just with the BA23. Put the CPU in slot 1, with the two memory boards in slots 2 and 3. Put the WQESD in slot 4. Have nothing else plugged in at all - especially not the boards that jumper the two backplanes together. Set the DIPswitches on the WQESD as follows: 10-switch pack: Switches 1-2 off, 3 on, 4-9 off, 10 on. 4-switch pack near the edge connector: 1-3 on, 4 off. 4-switch pack near the handles: 1-4 on. Then try to start up wombat with the following sequence of console commands: Microvax II: Halt the processor U I D/P/W 20001F40 20 D/L 20088008 80000002 D/W 20001468 AC S 400 If this doesn't start Wombat, tell us *exactly* what the error message produced is. -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927