[9front] Minimal viable terminal.

[9front] Minimal viable terminal.

[Pär Moberg]

I am going to a retro computer hack/gathering in two months and I am
wondering what is the most retro computer/minimal system requirements
for a terminal to connect to 9front?
//Pär
Ps. The "retro" computer I am bringing is going to be my 9front setup.

Re: [9front] Minimal viable terminal.

[ori]

Quoth Pär Moberg <ghostdewolf@gmail.com>:
> I am going to a retro computer hack/gathering in two months and I am
> wondering what is the most retro computer/minimal system requirements
> for a terminal to connect to 9front?
> //Pär
> Ps. The "retro" computer I am bringing is going to be my 9front setup.

SGI Indy?

Re: [9front] Minimal viable terminal.

[sl]

i've installed 9front on thinkpad 390x and 600.

the older known working hardware list in the wiki details some old stuff:

https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/Supported_PC_hardware

https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/other_hardware

sl

Re: [9front] Minimal viable terminal.

[B. Atticus Grobe]

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On Sun Jan 19, 2025 at 3:54 PM CST, Pär Moberg wrote:
> I am going to a retro computer hack/gathering in two months and I am
> wondering what is the most retro computer/minimal system requirements
> for a terminal to connect to 9front?
> //Pär
> Ps. The "retro" computer I am bringing is going to be my 9front setup.

I've run 9front on an old Soekris net4501 (133MHz AMD Elan SC520 w/64MB RAM) and used an
Apple IIe as a serial terminal as the Soekris boards have no video output
capability. Was actually rather fun.

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[9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[magma698hfsp273p9f]

I have an old VT-100 terminal (orange screen).  If you'd like it (free
for the taking), mail me off-list.

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Steve Simon]

if you can find a 286 it should work, perhaps booting a 3c509 isa ether card.

it used to be that you could run a terminal without floating point (that might be 2nd ed only), as long as you don’t use awk (or dc i suspect).

that may no longer be true, so perhaps you will need a 287 as well.

i think there are copies of the 1st ed floppys on the net. that was plan9 on 1 floppy, with ftpfs, and 8.5, but ascii (pre utf8).

-Steve
 

> On 24 Jan 2025, at 7:38 pm, magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org wrote:
> 
> I have an old VT-100 terminal (orange screen).  If you'd like it (free
> for the taking), mail me off-list.

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Dan Cross]

I believe the person to whom you were responding is offering a VT100
serial terminal to a good home, not looking for a plan 9 terminal of
this vintage.

On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 5:40 PM Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> if you can find a 286 it should work, perhaps booting a 3c509 isa ether card.

Surely at least a 386?

80286 only had "protected mode" based on segmentation, and segments
were limited to 64KiB. 386 extended the segment granularity so that
segments could expand to cover the full 4GiB of a 32-bit address space
and added paging. The intent as per the designers was that Real
Operating Systems would set up all segments to cover a flat 32-bit
address space and then use virtual memory for actual work.

I highly doubt plan9 ever ran on the 80286.

> it used to be that you could run a terminal without floating point (that might be 2nd ed only), as long as you don’t use awk (or dc i suspect).
>
> that may no longer be true, so perhaps you will need a 287 as well.

No, dc does all of its own arithmetic in terms of integer operations
(to a surprisingly large scale). But I do believe that `awk` requires
floating point (ota represented all numbers as `double` internally,
last time I looked).

> i think there are copies of the 1st ed floppys on the net. that was plan9 on 1 floppy, with ftpfs, and 8.5, but ascii (pre utf8).

I'll bet the foundation has them; cool historical artifact.

        - Dan C.

> > On 24 Jan 2025, at 7:38 pm, magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org wrote:
> >
> > I have an old VT-100 terminal (orange screen).  If you'd like it (free
> > for the taking), mail me off-list.

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Pär Moberg]

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For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a terminal
running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.
I do have a couple of Pentium machines with and without MMX to try too.
If I can dream, drawterm on a Raspberry Pi Pico W/Pico 2 W would be cool.

Den lör 25 jan. 2025 00:39Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> skrev:

> I believe the person to whom you were responding is offering a VT100
> serial terminal to a good home, not looking for a plan 9 terminal of
> this vintage.
>
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 5:40 PM Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> > if you can find a 286 it should work, perhaps booting a 3c509 isa ether
> card.
>
> Surely at least a 386?
>
> 80286 only had "protected mode" based on segmentation, and segments
> were limited to 64KiB. 386 extended the segment granularity so that
> segments could expand to cover the full 4GiB of a 32-bit address space
> and added paging. The intent as per the designers was that Real
> Operating Systems would set up all segments to cover a flat 32-bit
> address space and then use virtual memory for actual work.
>
> I highly doubt plan9 ever ran on the 80286.
>
> > it used to be that you could run a terminal without floating point (that
> might be 2nd ed only), as long as you don’t use awk (or dc i suspect).
> >
> > that may no longer be true, so perhaps you will need a 287 as well.
>
> No, dc does all of its own arithmetic in terms of integer operations
> (to a surprisingly large scale). But I do believe that `awk` requires
> floating point (ota represented all numbers as `double` internally,
> last time I looked).
>
> > i think there are copies of the 1st ed floppys on the net. that was
> plan9 on 1 floppy, with ftpfs, and 8.5, but ascii (pre utf8).
>
> I'll bet the foundation has them; cool historical artifact.
>
>         - Dan C.
>
> > > On 24 Jan 2025, at 7:38 pm, magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org wrote:
> > >
> > > I have an old VT-100 terminal (orange screen).  If you'd like it (free
> > > for the taking), mail me off-list.
>

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Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Frank D. Engel, Jr.]

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Why drawterm on a Pi?

Why not just run 9front on it as well?

Mixed architectures were kind of a staple of the Plan 9 design, so it 
can easily juggle more than one CPU architecture in the same cluster.  
The terminals don't need to match the servers.


On 1/25/25 08:54, Pär Moberg wrote:
> For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a 
> terminal running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.
> I do have a couple of Pentium machines with and without MMX to try too.
> If I can dream, drawterm on a Raspberry Pi Pico W/Pico 2 W would be cool.
>
> Den lör 25 jan. 2025 00:39Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> skrev:
>
>     I believe the person to whom you were responding is offering a VT100
>     serial terminal to a good home, not looking for a plan 9 terminal of
>     this vintage.
>
>     On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 5:40 PM Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net>
>     wrote:
>     > if you can find a 286 it should work, perhaps booting a 3c509
>     isa ether card.
>
>     Surely at least a 386?
>
>     80286 only had "protected mode" based on segmentation, and segments
>     were limited to 64KiB. 386 extended the segment granularity so that
>     segments could expand to cover the full 4GiB of a 32-bit address space
>     and added paging. The intent as per the designers was that Real
>     Operating Systems would set up all segments to cover a flat 32-bit
>     address space and then use virtual memory for actual work.
>
>     I highly doubt plan9 ever ran on the 80286.
>
>     > it used to be that you could run a terminal without floating
>     point (that might be 2nd ed only), as long as you don’t use awk
>     (or dc i suspect).
>     >
>     > that may no longer be true, so perhaps you will need a 287 as well.
>
>     No, dc does all of its own arithmetic in terms of integer operations
>     (to a surprisingly large scale). But I do believe that `awk` requires
>     floating point (ota represented all numbers as `double` internally,
>     last time I looked).
>
>     > i think there are copies of the 1st ed floppys on the net. that
>     was plan9 on 1 floppy, with ftpfs, and 8.5, but ascii (pre utf8).
>
>     I'll bet the foundation has them; cool historical artifact.
>
>             - Dan C.
>
>     > > On 24 Jan 2025, at 7:38 pm, magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org
>     wrote:
>     > >
>     > > I have an old VT-100 terminal (orange screen). If you'd like
>     it (free
>     > > for the taking), mail me off-list.
>

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Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Pär Moberg]

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Den lör 25 jan. 2025 15:55Frank D. Engel, Jr. <fde101@fjrhome.net> skrev:

> Why drawterm on a Pi?
>
> Why not just run 9front on it as well?
>
The Pico is a line of microcontrollerboards.

> Mixed architectures were kind of a staple of the Plan 9 design, so it can
> easily juggle more than one CPU architecture in the same cluster.  The
> terminals don't need to match the servers.
>
>
> On 1/25/25 08:54, Pär Moberg wrote:
>
> For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a terminal
> running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.
> I do have a couple of Pentium machines with and without MMX to try too.
> If I can dream, drawterm on a Raspberry Pi Pico W/Pico 2 W would be cool.
>
> Den lör 25 jan. 2025 00:39Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> skrev:
>
>> I believe the person to whom you were responding is offering a VT100
>> serial terminal to a good home, not looking for a plan 9 terminal of
>> this vintage.
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 5:40 PM Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
>> > if you can find a 286 it should work, perhaps booting a 3c509 isa ether
>> card.
>>
>> Surely at least a 386?
>>
>> 80286 only had "protected mode" based on segmentation, and segments
>> were limited to 64KiB. 386 extended the segment granularity so that
>> segments could expand to cover the full 4GiB of a 32-bit address space
>> and added paging. The intent as per the designers was that Real
>> Operating Systems would set up all segments to cover a flat 32-bit
>> address space and then use virtual memory for actual work.
>>
>> I highly doubt plan9 ever ran on the 80286.
>>
>> > it used to be that you could run a terminal without floating point
>> (that might be 2nd ed only), as long as you don’t use awk (or dc i suspect).
>> >
>> > that may no longer be true, so perhaps you will need a 287 as well.
>>
>> No, dc does all of its own arithmetic in terms of integer operations
>> (to a surprisingly large scale). But I do believe that `awk` requires
>> floating point (ota represented all numbers as `double` internally,
>> last time I looked).
>>
>> > i think there are copies of the 1st ed floppys on the net. that was
>> plan9 on 1 floppy, with ftpfs, and 8.5, but ascii (pre utf8).
>>
>> I'll bet the foundation has them; cool historical artifact.
>>
>>         - Dan C.
>>
>> > > On 24 Jan 2025, at 7:38 pm, magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I have an old VT-100 terminal (orange screen).  If you'd like it
>> (free
>> > > for the taking), mail me off-list.
>>
>

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Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Dan Cross]

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:56 AM Pär Moberg <ghostdewolf@gmail.com> wrote:
> For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a terminal running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.

Far be it for me to tell someone else what to do, but aside from the
"cool, it works!" factor, I think this would be pretty unsatisfying.
Honestly, you'd be better off with a Raspberry Pi as a terminal. I had
a 486DX/33; it was...ok for its time. A Raspberry Pi is frankly better
in every respect.

> I do have a couple of Pentium machines with and without MMX to try too.

I mean, if you're just doing it for fun, give it a go and knock
yourself out. :-)

> If I can dream, drawterm on a Raspberry Pi Pico W/Pico 2 W would be cool.
>
> Den lör 25 jan. 2025 00:39Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> skrev:
>>
>> I believe the person to whom you were responding is offering a VT100
>> serial terminal to a good home, not looking for a plan 9 terminal of
>> this vintage.
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 5:40 PM Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
>> > if you can find a 286 it should work, perhaps booting a 3c509 isa ether card.
>>
>> Surely at least a 386?
>>
>> 80286 only had "protected mode" based on segmentation, and segments
>> were limited to 64KiB. 386 extended the segment granularity so that
>> segments could expand to cover the full 4GiB of a 32-bit address space
>> and added paging. The intent as per the designers was that Real
>> Operating Systems would set up all segments to cover a flat 32-bit
>> address space and then use virtual memory for actual work.
>>
>> I highly doubt plan9 ever ran on the 80286.
>>
>> > it used to be that you could run a terminal without floating point (that might be 2nd ed only), as long as you don’t use awk (or dc i suspect).
>> >
>> > that may no longer be true, so perhaps you will need a 287 as well.
>>
>> No, dc does all of its own arithmetic in terms of integer operations
>> (to a surprisingly large scale). But I do believe that `awk` requires
>> floating point (ota represented all numbers as `double` internally,
>> last time I looked).
>>
>> > i think there are copies of the 1st ed floppys on the net. that was plan9 on 1 floppy, with ftpfs, and 8.5, but ascii (pre utf8).
>>
>> I'll bet the foundation has them; cool historical artifact.
>>
>>         - Dan C.
>>
>> > > On 24 Jan 2025, at 7:38 pm, magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I have an old VT-100 terminal (orange screen).  If you'd like it (free
>> > > for the taking), mail me off-list.

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Ori Bernstein]

On Sat, 25 Jan 2025 10:41:40 -0500, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:56 AM Pär Moberg <ghostdewolf@gmail.com> wrote:
> > For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a terminal running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.
> 
> Far be it for me to tell someone else what to do, but aside from the
> "cool, it works!" factor, I think this would be pretty unsatisfying.
> Honestly, you'd be better off with a Raspberry Pi as a terminal. I had
> a 486DX/33; it was...ok for its time. A Raspberry Pi is frankly better
> in every respect.

If you read the first message in the thread, this was for a vintage
computing festival. I suspect "Cool, it works!" is at least a decent
part of the motivation.

My vote is still for a MIPS box.

-- 
    Ori Bernstein

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Dan Cross]

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 11:32 AM Ori Bernstein <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Jan 2025 10:41:40 -0500, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:56 AM Pär Moberg <ghostdewolf@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a terminal running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.
> >
> > Far be it for me to tell someone else what to do, but aside from the
> > "cool, it works!" factor, I think this would be pretty unsatisfying.
> > Honestly, you'd be better off with a Raspberry Pi as a terminal. I had
> > a 486DX/33; it was...ok for its time. A Raspberry Pi is frankly better
> > in every respect.
>
> If you read the first message in the thread, this was for a vintage
> computing festival. I suspect "Cool, it works!" is at least a decent
> part of the motivation.

I guess I'm just sad that the first PC I owned is now a retro museum
piece.  I still can't quite wrap my head around that.

> My vote is still for a MIPS box.

+1.

        - Dan C.

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Brian Stuart]

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 5:44 PM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I guess I'm just sad that the first PC I owned is now a retro museum
> piece.  I still can't quite wrap my head around that.

I know the feeling.  I now have one of my aspirational machines from
when I was growing up (a PDP-8) and the machine is over 50 years old.
The PDP-8 book I found in the attic as a kid and that was part of my
initial exposure to computers was printed in '64, just before they
introduced the first of the 8s.  At least it feels new compared to my
studies of the ENIAC.  :)

BLS

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[adventures in9]

Wouldn't the retro use of a Mips box in a Plan 9 setup be for a cpu or
file server?  At least historically.  Then again, trying to find a
Motorolla 68020 for a terminal now is kind of difficult.

I've ported 9Front to a few "low end" systems, but unfortunately
nothing used as a terminal, so I never had to factor in a framebuffer.

But 500MHz single core Mips with 64MB of ram will run 9Front, at least
as a cpu server.  I imagine a Pentium II class machine of similar
specs would run fine.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:35 AM Ori Bernstein <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 25 Jan 2025 10:41:40 -0500, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:56 AM Pär Moberg <ghostdewolf@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a terminal running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.
> >
> > Far be it for me to tell someone else what to do, but aside from the
> > "cool, it works!" factor, I think this would be pretty unsatisfying.
> > Honestly, you'd be better off with a Raspberry Pi as a terminal. I had
> > a 486DX/33; it was...ok for its time. A Raspberry Pi is frankly better
> > in every respect.
>
> If you read the first message in the thread, this was for a vintage
> computing festival. I suspect "Cool, it works!" is at least a decent
> part of the motivation.
>
> My vote is still for a MIPS box.
>
> --
>     Ori Bernstein

Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Dan Cross]

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On Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 1:45 PM adventures in9 <adventuresin9@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Wouldn't the retro use of a Mips box in a Plan 9 setup be for a cpu or
> file server?  At least historically.  Then again, trying to find a
> Motorolla 68020 for a terminal now is kind of difficult.
>
> I've ported 9Front to a few "low end" systems, but unfortunately
> nothing used as a terminal, so I never had to factor in a framebuffer.
>
> But 500MHz single core Mips with 64MB of ram will run 9Front, at least
> as a cpu server.  I imagine a Pentium II class machine of similar
> specs would run fine.
>

Not necessarily. The generation of terminals after the gnot (68k based)
were called, of I recall correctly, the Carrera and were MIPS based. They
were pretty cool little machines for their day.

The SGI port was also MIPS based.

        - Dan C.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:35 AM Ori Bernstein <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 25 Jan 2025 10:41:40 -0500, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 8:56 AM Pär Moberg <ghostdewolf@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > > For me it was more about finding out if my 486DX 33MHz could be a
> terminal running rio or if I had to settle for a Raspberry Pi B.
> > >
> > > Far be it for me to tell someone else what to do, but aside from the
> > > "cool, it works!" factor, I think this would be pretty unsatisfying.
> > > Honestly, you'd be better off with a Raspberry Pi as a terminal. I had
> > > a 486DX/33; it was...ok for its time. A Raspberry Pi is frankly better
> > > in every respect.
> >
> > If you read the first message in the thread, this was for a vintage
> > computing festival. I suspect "Cool, it works!" is at least a decent
> > part of the motivation.
> >
> > My vote is still for a MIPS box.
> >
> > --
> >     Ori Bernstein
>

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Re: [9front] Re: Minimal viable terminal.

[Steve Simon]

> Surely at least a 386?

yes, quite right, i should have said 386/387.

re: html email
seems it is an artefact of replying to a topicbox list on an iphone.
sorry for the angle bracket chatter.