[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Norman Wilson]

If all that is needed is to concatenate three files into a single
tape file, with each new file aligned on a block boundary, isn't

	(for f in f1 f2 f3; do dd <$f conv=sync; done) >/dev/rmt0

sufficient?

The only time I had to do anything like this, the target system was
a MicroVAX; hence the tape had to have ISO labels, and the program
to be booted a particular tape filename.  I don't remember how I
handled that; probably I used one of the several public-domain
tape-label-writing programs.  But that was a VAX; I would assume
an 11/73 doesn't have so much enforced complexity in its firmware.

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

  Howdy.

  I'd like to confirm that somebody has successfully made a TK50 boot tape
for 2.11BSD using a TK50Z attached to some other Unix box.  In my case it will
likely have to be Linux, though IRIX might be doable.  It *should* work, after
all, but, well, you know.  :)

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Jochen Kunz]

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On 2003.01.15 21:48 David Evans wrote:

>   I'd like to confirm that somebody has successfully made a TK50 boot
> tape for 2.11BSD using a TK50Z attached to some other Unix box.  
Well, the TK50z sems to be rather quirky. I had not much luck with it.
The TZ30 is not much better. You don't happen to have a QBus VAX? I used
a MicroVAX 4000-200 with NetBSD to write the 2.11BSD tape. 

Use the maketape programm from the archive. dd will not work proper. 
-- 



tschüß,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 10:50:31PM +0100, Jochen Kunz wrote:
> Well, the TK50z sems to be rather quirky.

  That's a kind way to describe it.  I made a tape last night using
"maketape" and it didn't boot.

> You don't happen to have a QBus VAX? I used
> a MicroVAX 4000-200 with NetBSD to write the 2.11BSD tape. 
> 

  I have a KA650 boardset.  It's been misbehaving, but I haven't thorougly
explored why.  Given the troubles with the TK50Z, though, I'll likely invest
some time into troubleshooting it.

> Use the maketape programm from the archive. dd will not work proper. 

  That's truly weird.

  Anyway, thanks.  :)

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Andru Luvisi]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, David Evans wrote:
[snip]
> > Use the maketape programm from the archive. dd will not work proper.
>
>   That's truly weird.

maketape will pad each of "mtboot", "mtboot", and "boot" out to an even
length of 512 bytes.  The "cat | dd" method will not pad the first two
out.

I discovered this while trying to create a bootable tape image for simh.
I needed to emulate the maketape behavior for it to work.

Andru
-- 
Andru Luvisi, Programmer/Analyst

Quote Of The Moment:
  Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
  ( Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound. )

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 07:53:02AM -0800, Andru Luvisi wrote:
> maketape will pad each of "mtboot", "mtboot", and "boot" out to an even
> length of 512 bytes.  The "cat | dd" method will not pad the first two
> out.
> 

  Ahhh--of course.  One would have to do a series of "dd"s in order to
get the padding happening.

> I discovered this while trying to create a bootable tape image for simh.
> I needed to emulate the maketape behavior for it to work.
> 

  That's not a bad idea.  Perhaps I should just make a minimal bootable image
using simh or such, dd it to a SCSI disk, and then attach that to my 11/73.
Might be easier than endless futzing with the TK50.

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Johnny Billquist]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, David Evans wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 07:53:02AM -0800, Andru Luvisi wrote:
> > maketape will pad each of "mtboot", "mtboot", and "boot" out to an even
> > length of 512 bytes.  The "cat | dd" method will not pad the first two
> > out.
> 
>   Ahhh--of course.  One would have to do a series of "dd"s in order to
> get the padding happening.

Probably not. Repeated "dd"s will not produce the same result. This is the
typical error when not understanding that tapes actually are not a stream
of characters. (And also a good example when the Unix paradigm fails 
pretty bad).
Each write to the tape device will create a block. You cannot do two
writes after each other to extend the block. You will instead get two
different blocks.

Boot tapes for VAXen (and PDP-11s) are expected to have 512 byte
blocks. Actually, the first block should be repeated twice, and this is
the primary boot block. After that you can put whatever you want. Most
primary boot blocks however also expects to read 512 byte blocks, which
means that the next file (secondary booter or the system itself) also most
often is written with 512 byte blocks.

> > I discovered this while trying to create a bootable tape image for simh.
> > I needed to emulate the maketape behavior for it to work.
> 
>   That's not a bad idea.  Perhaps I should just make a minimal bootable image
> using simh or such, dd it to a SCSI disk, and then attach that to my 11/73.
> Might be easier than endless futzing with the TK50.

Don't. The moment you copy a tape file to disk, you will loose meta
information unless you use a program specifically designed to preserve
that information.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 06:28:30PM +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> >   Ahhh--of course.  One would have to do a series of "dd"s in order to
> > get the padding happening.
> 
> Probably not. Repeated "dd"s will not produce the same result. This is the
> typical error when not understanding that tapes actually are not a stream
> of characters. (And also a good example when the Unix paradigm fails 
> pretty bad).

  If you could do something like

(dd if=mtboot sync bs=512 |+ dd if=mtboot sync bs=512 |+ dd if=boot sync bs=512) | dd of=/dev/whatever obs=512

in order to concatenate the multiple copies of mtboot then all would be well.

> >   That's not a bad idea.  Perhaps I should just make a minimal bootable image
> > using simh or such, dd it to a SCSI disk, and then attach that to my 11/73.
> > Might be easier than endless futzing with the TK50.
> 
> Don't. The moment you copy a tape file to disk, you will loose meta
> information unless you use a program specifically designed to preserve
> that information.
> 

  I meant an actual bootable system, not the tape image.

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Andru Luvisi]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, David Evans wrote:
[snip]
>   If you could do something like
>
> (dd if=mtboot sync bs=512 |+ dd if=mtboot sync bs=512 |+ dd if=boot sync bs=512) | dd of=/dev/whatever obs=512
>
> in order to concatenate the multiple copies of mtboot then all would be well.

How about:
(
  dd if=mtboot conv=sync bs=512
  dd if=mtboot conv=sync bs=512
  dd if=boot conv=sync bs=512
) |dd of=/dev/whatever bs=512

Andru
-- 
Andru Luvisi, Programmer/Analyst

Quote Of The Moment:
  It has been said very justly that every virtue is, as it were, a
  middle course between two opposite vices. Thus, courage is midway
  between cowardice and rashness; thrift is midway between
  acquisitiveness and improvidence; morality is midway between prudery
  and licentiousness; and so forth. In like manner, justification stands
  half-way between the faults of pedantry, on the one hand, and the
  failures of ignorance, on the other.
  
  	- Nevil Maskelyne

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 10:01:35AM -0800, Andru Luvisi wrote:
> How about:
> (
>   dd if=mtboot conv=sync bs=512
>   dd if=mtboot conv=sync bs=512
>   dd if=boot conv=sync bs=512
> ) |dd of=/dev/whatever bs=512
> 

  Will that actually work?  I'll give it a try.  I haven't had to do much with
dd in almost ten years.

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Andru Luvisi]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, David Evans wrote:
[snip]
> >   That's not a bad idea.  Perhaps I should just make a minimal
> > bootable image using simh or such, dd it to a SCSI disk, and then
> > attach that to my 11/73. Might be easier than endless futzing with the
> > TK50.
>
> Don't. The moment you copy a tape file to disk, you will loose meta
> information unless you use a program specifically designed to preserve
> that information.

I misread David's post the first time.  I thought he was thinking of doing
an installation on simh (using a bootable tape image) and then dd'ing the
disk image onto a SCSI disk to boot the real PDP-11 from.  Is there any
reason this wouldn't work?

Andru
-- 
Andru Luvisi, Programmer/Analyst

Quote Of The Moment:
  If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
                  -- Mark Twain

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Johnny Billquist]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Andru Luvisi wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, David Evans wrote:
> [snip]
> > >   That's not a bad idea.  Perhaps I should just make a minimal
> > > bootable image using simh or such, dd it to a SCSI disk, and then
> > > attach that to my 11/73. Might be easier than endless futzing with the
> > > TK50.
> >
> > Don't. The moment you copy a tape file to disk, you will loose meta
> > information unless you use a program specifically designed to preserve
> > that information.
> 
> I misread David's post the first time.  I thought he was thinking of doing
> an installation on simh (using a bootable tape image) and then dd'ing the
> disk image onto a SCSI disk to boot the real PDP-11 from.  Is there any
> reason this wouldn't work?

Ah. Maybe I misunderstood things. Copying a bootable disk image should
work just fine. I thought he wanted the tape image moved over.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 06:40:24PM +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> 
> Ah. Maybe I misunderstood things. Copying a bootable disk image should
> work just fine. I thought he wanted the tape image moved over.
> 
 
  No, bootable disk is what I was after.  The tape image idea floated into my
brain for a moment, but it didn't last long since I'm certain it would not
work.

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Andru Luvisi]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, David Evans wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 07:53:02AM -0800, Andru Luvisi wrote:
> > maketape will pad each of "mtboot", "mtboot", and "boot" out to an even
> > length of 512 bytes.  The "cat | dd" method will not pad the first two
> > out.
> >
>
>   Ahhh--of course.  One would have to do a series of "dd"s in order to
> get the padding happening.

But then they would end up in separate tape files.  :-(

> > I discovered this while trying to create a bootable tape image for simh.
> > I needed to emulate the maketape behavior for it to work.
> >
>
>   That's not a bad idea.  Perhaps I should just make a minimal bootable image
> using simh or such, dd it to a SCSI disk, and then attach that to my 11/73.
> Might be easier than endless futzing with the TK50.

I already made one.  It's part of
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Boot_Images/2.11_on_Simh/211bsd.tar.gz
along with the Perl script I wrote to make it.

Andru
-- 
Andru Luvisi, Programmer/Analyst

Quote Of The Moment:
  I'm not normal.  I know it.  I don't care!
       - Ace Of Base

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 09:34:16AM -0800, Andru Luvisi wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, David Evans wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 07:53:02AM -0800, Andru Luvisi wrote:
> > > maketape will pad each of "mtboot", "mtboot", and "boot" out to an even
> > > length of 512 bytes.  The "cat | dd" method will not pad the first two
> > > out.
> > >
> >
> >   Ahhh--of course.  One would have to do a series of "dd"s in order to
> > get the padding happening.
> 
> But then they would end up in separate tape files.  :-(
> 

  Ahh--I was asleep at the wheel and forgot that there's no convenient way
to concatenate the files using dd.  Duh.

> I already made one.  It's part of
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Boot_Images/2.11_on_Simh/211bsd.tar.gz
> along with the Perl script I wrote to make it.
> 

  Oh yeah--I saw that but forgot about it.

  Just not my day.  :P

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[Jochen Kunz]

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On 2003.01.16 17:06 David Evans wrote:

>   Ahhh--of course.  One would have to do a series of "dd"s in order to
> get the padding happening.
That is only half the thing. It is also important to use the proper tape
block size. maketape uses some ioctls to set this, dd don't know about
this. 

> That's not a bad idea.  Perhaps I should just make a minimal
> bootable image using simh or such, dd it to a SCSI disk, and
> then attach that to my 11/73.
A common solution. 

> Might be easier than endless futzing with the TK50.
Whimp. ;-) 
-- 



tschüß,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[emanuel stiebler]

David Evans wrote:
 >   Howdy.
 >
 >   I'd like to confirm that somebody has successfully made a TK50 boot 
tape
 > for 2.11BSD using a TK50Z attached to some other Unix box.

Yes. Did it to a TK50Z & TZ30 many times. Slow, but works ...

 > In my case it will
 > likely have to be Linux, though IRIX might be doable.  It *should* 
work, after
 > all, but, well, you know.  :)

What version is your "linux" ? There were problems in earlier version 
(redhat before 7.x ?) exactly with the block command on tapes, and 
that's what bites you :(

Just make sure your tape drive is clean, check if you get any errors 
during writing the tape.

And don't use any scripts, just compile the maketape.c, it worked for me 
many times.

cheers

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[David Evans]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 11:24:25AM -0700, emanuel stiebler wrote:
> What version is your "linux" ? There were problems in earlier version 
> (redhat before 7.x ?) exactly with the block command on tapes, and 
> that's what bites you :(
> 

  This is a Debian setup running a 2.4.18 kernel.  I'm not really surprised
that it didn't work...Linux always seems to hose me when I try to do something
vaguely "tricky."

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

[pups] Making a TK50 2.11BSD boot tape for an 11/73

[emanuel stiebler]

David Evans wrote:

>   This is a Debian setup running a 2.4.18 kernel.  I'm not really surprised
> that it didn't work...Linux always seems to hose me when I try to do something
> vaguely "tricky."

Just because you try to boot a 2.11BSD, the last three letters should 
tell you something. Go for FreeBSD, NetBSD, or something with a "BSD" in 
the name ... ;-)