[TUHS] System III on 11/34 + rl02

[TUHS] System III on 11/34 + rl02

[Jacob Ritorto]

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Hi,
  Was wanting to put together a fully functional (meaning able to load the
whole distro and recompile itself) and "reliable" System III machine made
of real, albeit not terribly sexy parts.  I have (4) working rl02 drives
and an 11/34, so I feel like there's a chance it could work.  I'll have to
build it on the emulator, of course, then vtserver it over to the real hw
in chunks.

But the blocker is that System III only supports rl01, not rl02, which
kills the 'full distro' prospect.

Would anyone know if it's trivial to modify the source for the rl01 driver
to just add double the blocks, thereby supporting rl02?  Or am I wildly
underestimating the task at hand?  Has this been done before?  Tips?

thx
jake

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Re: [TUHS] System III on 11/34 + rl02

[Clem cole]

Should be pretty easy particularly since the rl0x is supported in the BSD environment 

That said why mess with PWB 3.0 on an 11?   BSD 2.9 will be more interesting.  Also if you have a 40 class system like the 34 of 34A see if you can find an Able Enable board.  The memory will make a huge difference. 

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Oct 23, 2018, at 10:59 PM, Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>   Was wanting to put together a fully functional (meaning able to load the whole distro and recompile itself) and "reliable" System III machine made of real, albeit not terribly sexy parts.  I have (4) working rl02 drives and an 11/34, so I feel like there's a chance it could work.  I'll have to build it on the emulator, of course, then vtserver it over to the real hw in chunks.  
> 
> But the blocker is that System III only supports rl01, not rl02, which kills the 'full distro' prospect.
> 
> Would anyone know if it's trivial to modify the source for the rl01 driver to just add double the blocks, thereby supporting rl02?  Or am I wildly underestimating the task at hand?  Has this been done before?  Tips?
> 
> thx
> jake

Re: [TUHS] System III on 11/34 + rl02

[Jacob Ritorto]

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I did run 2.9bsd on this machine and I like it better, but the distro
struggles to fit on (4) rl02s and then can't recompile itself due to lack
of space.

The System III idea is kind of homage to my Solaris years and for bragging
rights to my teenage friends who know nothing but Linux (and I kinda feel
(as a stretch) like Linux is in the System III line).  That said, I'd was
originally going for System V, but when I recompiled it under the emulator,
I found out that it requires separate I&D, so the 11/34 is out; System III
is next closest.  Eventually I'll be doing this same exercise on mt split
11/45 and then have some serious bragging rights :)

I sure hope there's a pdp11 sdcard / usb disk solution someday like they
did for the Commodore 64 - I could even pay a little for it.  And for some
clever kernel optimizing hack that'll let me run a tcp/ip stack on my poor
little-address-space 11/45 so I can telnet to it with 2.11bsd.

I'm totally in the market for an Able Enable board too!  Out of curiosity,
is it totally out of the question to just find the prints and do a
production run?  I mean if we got 100 people in at a hundred each, wouldn't
that cover it?  There's enough interest in vintage now that that headcount
could realistically happen.

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 11:21 PM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> Should be pretty easy particularly since the rl0x is supported in the BSD
> environment
>
> That said why mess with PWB 3.0 on an 11?   BSD 2.9 will be more
> interesting.  Also if you have a 40 class system like the 34 of 34A see if
> you can find an Able Enable board.  The memory will make a huge difference.
>
> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
> quite.
>
> > On Oct 23, 2018, at 10:59 PM, Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >   Was wanting to put together a fully functional (meaning able to load
> the whole distro and recompile itself) and "reliable" System III machine
> made of real, albeit not terribly sexy parts.  I have (4) working rl02
> drives and an 11/34, so I feel like there's a chance it could work.  I'll
> have to build it on the emulator, of course, then vtserver it over to the
> real hw in chunks.
> >
> > But the blocker is that System III only supports rl01, not rl02, which
> kills the 'full distro' prospect.
> >
> > Would anyone know if it's trivial to modify the source for the rl01
> driver to just add double the blocks, thereby supporting rl02?  Or am I
> wildly underestimating the task at hand?  Has this been done before?  Tips?
> >
> > thx
> > jake
>

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Re: [TUHS] System III on 11/34 + rl02

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Jacob Ritorto <jacob.ritorto@gmail.com>

    > System III only supports rl01, not rl02

Really? That seems odd; SysII long post-dates (I think) the RL0x, if so it's
odd they only supported the RL01. Looking at:

  https://minnie.tuhs.org//cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SysIII/usr/src/uts/pdp11/io/rl.c

it seems to support RL02's:

  #define RL02 0200	/* bit 7 indicates an rl02 present if set */

    > Would anyone know if it's trivial to modify the source for the rl01
    > driver to just add double the blocks

The only difference between the two is that the RL02 has twice as many
cylinders, so there's an extra bit in use on the high end of the 'disk
address' register.


    > From: Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com>

    > Also if you have a 40 class system like the 34 of 34A see if you can
    > find an Able Enable board.

I'm sure there are a stack of them stored away with Jimmy Hoffa's body and the
Ark of the Covenant in King Solomon's Mine! :-)

Seriously, if anyone has one, I'd pay a very substantial sum for it.

	   Noel

Re: [TUHS] System III on 11/34 + rl02

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Jacob Ritorto

    > If this is true, I wonder why the install only offers rl01?

Where does it say this? (I didn't search for that.)


    > I'm totally in the market for an Able Enable board too! Out of
    > zcuriosity, is it totally out of the question to just find the prints
    > and do a production run?

Rotsa ruck! They're down the same mine as Jimmy Hoffa!! :-)

But seriously, if you could find them, that would be fantastic. I've managed
to collect (thanks Clem!) a tiny bit of info about them:

  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Able_ENABLE

and I _think_ I've worked out how they worked, but more is better. We had a
set of the prints at MIT BITD, but we didn't have the PROM/PLA/PAL/etc
programming info, and one would need that too to reproduce them.

    > I sure hope there's a pdp11 sdcard / usb disk solution someday like they
    > did for the Commodore 64

So Dave Bridgham and I have been working on a QBUS card with an FPGA that uses
an SD card to hold the bits, and emulates an RK11/RP11/etc controller. We have
a wire-wrap prototype working (the RK11's done, the RP11 should be a short
edit of that), and UNIX boots and runs. Now to turn it into PCB's...

We've planned that the next step will be to do a UNIBUS version, which will
also include ENABLE functionality (although it won't be plug compatible with
an ENABLE, the memory will be on-board).

Now to find the time/energy to make it happen... :-(

   Noel

Re: [TUHS] System III on 11/34 + rl02

[Jacob Ritorto]

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Isn't there still at least one ABLE ENABLE board out there extant that
could be used to read the PROMs?
Or is the actual original programming info itself needed to duplicate?



On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 6:56 AM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > From: Jacob Ritorto
>
>     > If this is true, I wonder why the install only offers rl01?
>
> Where does it say this? (I didn't search for that.)
>
>
>     > I'm totally in the market for an Able Enable board too! Out of
>     > zcuriosity, is it totally out of the question to just find the prints
>     > and do a production run?
>
> Rotsa ruck! They're down the same mine as Jimmy Hoffa!! :-)
>
> But seriously, if you could find them, that would be fantastic. I've
> managed
> to collect (thanks Clem!) a tiny bit of info about them:
>
>   http://gunkies.org/wiki/Able_ENABLE
>
> and I _think_ I've worked out how they worked, but more is better. We had a
> set of the prints at MIT BITD, but we didn't have the PROM/PLA/PAL/etc
> programming info, and one would need that too to reproduce them.
>
>     > I sure hope there's a pdp11 sdcard / usb disk solution someday like
> they
>     > did for the Commodore 64
>
> So Dave Bridgham and I have been working on a QBUS card with an FPGA that
> uses
> an SD card to hold the bits, and emulates an RK11/RP11/etc controller. We
> have
> a wire-wrap prototype working (the RK11's done, the RP11 should be a short
> edit of that), and UNIX boots and runs. Now to turn it into PCB's...
>
> We've planned that the next step will be to do a UNIBUS version, which will
> also include ENABLE functionality (although it won't be plug compatible
> with
> an ENABLE, the memory will be on-board).
>
> Now to find the time/energy to make it happen... :-(
>
>    Noel
>

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