[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60 (was: speaking of early C compilers)

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60 (was: speaking of early C compilers)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2014-10-28 13:42, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> yes:
> http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3241&context=compsci

Cool. I knew CMU did a lot of things with 11/40 machines. I didn't know 
they had modified them to be able to write their own microcode, but 
thinking about it, it should have been obvious. As they did 
multiprocessor systems based on the 11/40, they would have had to modify 
the microcode anyway.

> I had a 60 running v7 years later. we also toyed with adding CSV/CRET
> but never did it because we got an 11/70
>> >On Oct 27, 2014, at 9:09 PM, Dave Horsfall<dave at horsfall.org>  wrote:
>> >
>>> >>On Mon, 27 Oct 2014, Clem Cole wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >>[...] because the CMU 11/40E had special CSV/CRET microcode which we
>>> >>could not use on the 11/34.
>> >
>> >The 40E had microcode whilst the vanilla 40 didn't?  I thought only the 60
>> >was micro-programmable; I never did get around to implementing CSV/CRET on
>> >our 60 (Digital had a bunch of them when a contract with a publishing
>> >house fell through).

DEC actually made two PDP-11s that were micro programmable. The 11/60 
and the 11/03 (if I remember right). DEC never had microprogramming for 
the 11/40, but obviously CMU did that.

Ronald Natalie<ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

>> >On Oct 27, 2014, at 10:06 PM, Clem Cole<clemc at ccc.com>  wrote:
>> >
>> >yes:http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3241&context=compsci  <http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3241&context=compsci>
>> >
>> >I had a 60 running v7 years later.   we also toyed with adding CSV/CRET but never did it because we got an 11/70
> Problem with the 60 was it lacked Split I/D (as did the 40's).    We kind of relied on that for the kernels towards the end of the PDP-11 days,
> We struggled with the lack of I/D on the 11/34 and 11/23 at BRL but finally gave up when TCP came along.   We just didn't have enough segments to handle all the overlaying needed to do.    I recycled all the non split-I/D machines into BRL GATEWAYS.
>
> Of course, there was the famous (or imfamous) MARK instruction.   This thing was sort of a kludge, you actually pushed the instruction on the stack and then did the RTS into the stack to execute the MARK to pop the stack and jump back to the caller.      I know of no compiler (either DEC-written or UNIX) that used the silly thing.    It obviously wouldn't work in split I/D mode anyhow.   Years later while sitting in some DEC product announcement presentation, they announced the new T-11 chip (the single chip PDP-11) and the speaker said that it supported the entire instruction set with the exception of MARK.    Me and one other PDP-11 trivia guy are going "What?  No mark instruction?" in the back of the room.

Yurg... The MARK instruction was just silly. I never knew of anyone who 
actually used it. Rumors have it that DEC just came up with it to be 
able to extend some patent for a few more years related to the whole 
PDP-11 architecture.

Clem Cole<clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

>> >Problem with the 60 was it lacked Split I/D (as did the 40's).
>
> ?A problem was that it was 40 class processor and as you says that means it
> was shared I/D (i.e. pure 16 bits) - so it lacked the 45 class 17th bit.
>    The 60 has went into history as the machine that went from product to
> "traditional products" faster than any other DEC product (IIRC 9 months).
> I'm always surprised to hear of folks that had them because so few were
> actually made.

I picked up four 11/60 machines from a place in the late 80s. I still 
have a complete set of CPU cards, but threw the last machine away about 
10 years ago.

> I've forgotten the details nows, but they also had some issues when running
> UNIX.  Steve Glaser and I chased those for a long time.  The 60 had the HCM
> instruction sequences (halt a confuse microcode) which were some what
> random although UNIX seemed to hit them.  DEC envisioned it as a commercial
> machine and added decimal arithmetic to it for RSTS Cobol.?  I'm not sure
> RSX was even supported on it.

RSX-11M supports it. So do RSTS/E and RT-11. RSX-11M-PLUS obviously 
don't, since it have a minimal requirement of 22-bit addressing.

The microcode specific instructions are interesting. But in general 
shouldn't crash things, but of course kernel is a different story. :-)

	Johnny

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60 (was: speaking of early C compilers)

[Ronald Natalie]

> 
> I picked up four 11/60 machines from a place in the late 80s. I still have a complete set of CPU cards, but threw the last machine away about 10 years ago.

Chuckle.   My wife would kill me.   I finally got rid of the ASR-37 (you know a real UNIX teletype complete with a big NEWLINE key and able to interpret those ESC-8 and ESC-9 things that nroff outputs by default) decades ago (RS tells me he left it blocking someone's car in at Sprint or something, I disavow all knowledge of it).

While at BRL I was the king of the surplus PDP-11.    Any time a PDP-11 came up surplus I recycled it into internet routers.   Sometimes I took the older machines for either their RK05 or RL02 drives, or just the racks.    I got a call up from surplus people asking me about this $100,000 worth of computer equipment I had turned in and needed to come over and identify. 

What $100,000 worth of computer equipment?

It says here "One PDP-11/40 and accessories."

That thing is 16 years old.   That's the price the government paid for it then.   Do you know how much a 16 year old computer is worth?
(especially one that had been stripped of just about everything but the CPU box itself).

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60 (was: speaking of early C compilers)

[Ronald Natalie]

Found a manual for the WCS for the 11/03...http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/1103/EK-KUV11-TM_LSI11_WCS.pdf
Amusing reading

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60 (was: speaking of early C compilers)

[Clem Cole]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 1:46 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:

> DEC actually made two PDP-11s that were micro programmable. The 11/60 and
> the 11/03 (if I remember right). DEC never had microprogramming for the
> 11/40, but obviously CMU did that.


C.mmp was 11/40E's and C.m* was LSI/11's and both needed them for the
capabilities support.  I never really got to mess with the WCS units -
although we learned about them (along with ISPL/ISPS in courses), I did
hack on the OS and in user space of both systems - which was a wonderful
experience. It was how I learned about capabilities which I still have soft
spot.   But around that time, I was also introduced to this strange new
system language and system and started to get paid better as a programmer
for a group using it.   I never went back ;-)

As an a side, Wulf's dedication in the Hydra (C.mmp's OS) Book:  "To the
designers and builders of *real* programming systems."

BTW: the 780 & 750 had ustore but it was not user documented and the tools
were internal.   Paul Guilbo wrote much of both and later would write the
uCode for the Masscomp FPU and APU.   Paul was bitching about the great
tool(s) they had had at DEC, so one weekend two of us on the SW team got
sick of his bitching a couple of us hacked up a uCode assembler in the same
key in Yacc/lex/C (not BLISS ;-).

Later when a couple of ex-PRISM guys started a firm in California there was
an underground trade (i.e. no management knew about it).  We were both
using the same EE/CAD systems and we traded them some libraries for our
uCode tools.

Clem
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20141028/58fa6d83/attachment.html>

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60 (was: speaking of early C compilers)

[Ronald Natalie]

> On Oct 28, 2014, at 2:22 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> BTW: the 780 & 750 had ustore but it was not user documented and the tools were internal.   Paul Guilbo wrote much of both and later would write the uCode for the Masscomp FPU and APU.   Paul was bitching about the great tool(s) they had had at DEC, so one weekend two of us on the SW team got sick of his bitching a couple of us hacked up a uCode assembler in the same key in Yacc/lex/C (not BLISS ;-).

Apparently they were at least advertised as available for the 780.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/info/SP2509/SP2509PF.PDF


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20141028/b558dd83/attachment.html>

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60 (was: speaking of early C compilers)

[Clem Cole]

That SPF shows a date of 1987.   Masscomp was '83 for the FP and 84 for the
APU and I know we could not get them - but then again KO was mad at us.  At
that point we had more of the 780 HW guys then DEC did, plus a bunch of
ex-VMS and ex-LDP folks.   The nasty-gram letter from Ken was framed and
hung out the office of one of the VPs (I wonder if Palmer of one of the
other Masscomp pack rats still has a picture of it).

I know we tried to get it for our Vax, and it was a clear - no way.

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:39 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

>
> On Oct 28, 2014, at 2:22 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
> BTW: the 780 & 750 had ustore but it was not user documented and the tools
> were internal.   Paul Guilbo wrote much of both and later would write the
> uCode for the Masscomp FPU and APU.   Paul was bitching about the great
> tool(s) they had had at DEC, so one weekend two of us on the SW team got
> sick of his bitching a couple of us hacked up a uCode assembler in the same
> key in Yacc/lex/C (not BLISS ;-).
>
>
> Apparently they were at least advertised as available for the 780.
> http://h18000.www1.hp.com/info/SP2509/SP2509PF.PDF
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20141028/8835e1ca/attachment.html>

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2014-10-28 19:22, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 1:46 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se
> <mailto:bqt at update.uu.se>> wrote:
>
>     DEC actually made two PDP-11s that were micro programmable. The
>     11/60 and the 11/03 (if I remember right). DEC never had
>     microprogramming for the 11/40, but obviously CMU did that.
>
>
> C.mmp was 11/40E's and C.m* was LSI/11's and both needed them for the
> capabilities support.  I never really got to mess with the WCS units -
> although we learned about them (along with ISPL/ISPS in courses), I did
> hack on the OS and in user space of both systems - which was a wonderful
> experience. It was how I learned about capabilities which I still have
> soft spot.   But around that time, I was also introduced to this strange
> new system language and system and started to get paid better as a
> programmer for a group using it.   I never went back ;-)

Yeah, it was the C.mmp I was thinking of when I said that CMU obviously 
had to have been playing at this.

> BTW: the 780 & 750 had ustore but it was not user documented and the
> tools were internal.   Paul Guilbo wrote much of both and later would
> write the uCode for the Masscomp FPU and APU.   Paul was bitching about
> the great tool(s) they had had at DEC, so one weekend two of us on the
> SW team got sick of his bitching a couple of us hacked up a uCode
> assembler in the same key in Yacc/lex/C (not BLISS ;-).

:-)
As someone else mentioned, the 11/780 had a separate product for user 
written microcode. I think it actually also included a different board 
for the CPU, with more memory for the microcode. So it must have been 
documented externally somehow, somewhere.

The 11/750 was not documented for external use, I think. However, I have 
some vague memory of seeing something about user written microcode for 
it as well.
And of course, Ultrix had a microcode patch for the 11/750, which fixed 
some bugs in a couple of instructions. This microcode patch is still 
included in the NetBSD/vax distribution. :-)

The 86x0 machines always loaded microcode from the FE RL02, and there is 
documentation on that microcode available today, although it was DEC 
internal at the time. And I still happen to have access to an 8650. But 
no time to actually try and play with the microcode. And that machine is 
rather complex as well. That's when things started to get pipelined and 
other stuff that makes things much more difficult to fool around with.

	Johnny

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

[TUHS] 11/40E and 11/60

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2014-10-28 20:03, Clem Cole wrote:
> That SPF shows a date of 1987.   Masscomp was '83 for the FP and 84 for
> the APU and I know we could not get them - but then again KO was mad at
> us.  At that point we had more of the 780 HW guys then DEC did, plus a
> bunch of ex-VMS and ex-LDP folks.   The nasty-gram letter from Ken was
> framed and hung out the office of one of the VPs (I wonder if Palmer of
> one of the other Masscomp pack rats still has a picture of it).
>
> I know we tried to get it for our Vax, and it was a clear - no way.

That SPD is from 1987, true. But that is for version 3.0...
I know that the user microcode option for the 11/780 is really much 
older than that. But I wonder how many actually ever purchased it?

	Johnny

>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:39 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com
> <mailto:ron at ronnatalie.com>> wrote:
>
>
>>     On Oct 28, 2014, at 2:22 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com
>>     <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     BTW: the 780 & 750 had ustore but it was not user documented and
>>     the tools were internal.   Paul Guilbo wrote much of both and
>>     later would write the uCode for the Masscomp FPU and APU.   Paul
>>     was bitching about the great tool(s) they had had at DEC, so one
>>     weekend two of us on the SW team got sick of his bitching a couple
>>     of us hacked up a uCode assembler in the same key in Yacc/lex/C
>>     (not BLISS ;-).
>
>     Apparently they were at least advertised as available for the 780.
>     http://h18000.www1.hp.com/info/SP2509/SP2509PF.PDF
>
>
>


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