* [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter
@ 2018-04-12 2:22 Warner Losh
2018-04-12 3:30 ` Nigel Williams
2018-04-12 8:10 ` Mutiny
0 siblings, 2 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2018-04-12 2:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
Today I reached a minor milestone with my 'Venix restoration project' that
I talked about months ago. I ran a Venix 86 binary (sync) to successful
completion on my FreeBSD/amd64 box (though none of the code should be too
FreeBSD specific).
So, I hacked https://github.com/tkchia/reenigne.git to remove the DOS
loader and emulator and to add a Venix system call loader and emulator, or
at least the start of one. I've also added FP instruction parsing, but it's
100% wrong (it just parses the instructions and does nothing else to decode
or implement them). With this, I'm able to load OMAGIC binaries from the
extant venix 86 distributions and run them. The only one that runs
successfully is sync() since I've not yet implemented argument passing or
any of the other 58 system calls :). NMAGIC should be pretty quick after
this.
This is but a step on the road to getting the Venix compiler running so I
can see how much of the system I can recreate from the v7 and other sources
that are on TUHS.
Not sure who, if anybody, cares about this stuff. I thought people here
might be interested. I've pushed the results to
https://github.com/bsdimp/venix if you care. This program is in the
tools/86sim directory. There's also a doc directory where I document the
Venix 86 ABI, as well as doing a very deep-dive into a disassembled
/bin/sync to discover what I can from it (turns out, it's quite a lot).
So, I thought I'd share this here. Don't know if anybody else is
interested, but you never know until you tell people about stuff...
Warner
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* [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter
2018-04-12 2:22 [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter Warner Losh
@ 2018-04-12 3:30 ` Nigel Williams
2018-04-12 4:23 ` Warner Losh
2018-04-12 4:52 ` Jim Carpenter
2018-04-12 8:10 ` Mutiny
1 sibling, 2 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Nigel Williams @ 2018-04-12 3:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 12:22 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> So, I thought I'd share this here. Don't know if anybody else is interested,
> but you never know until you tell people about stuff...
Definitely glad to see efforts to reverse-engineer this software.
For the curious there is a good walk-through of Venix/86 2.1 being
installed here on the MESS emulator:
https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/venturcomm-venix86-on-messmame/
Has anyone established whether all the various Venix releases have
been found and which of the add-on tools have been found? like the
Fortran and RM/COBOL referenced on wikipedia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venix
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter
2018-04-12 3:30 ` Nigel Williams
@ 2018-04-12 4:23 ` Warner Losh
2018-04-12 4:52 ` Jim Carpenter
1 sibling, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2018-04-12 4:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 9:30 PM, Nigel Williams <
nw at retrocomputingtasmania.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 12:22 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> > So, I thought I'd share this here. Don't know if anybody else is
> interested,
> > but you never know until you tell people about stuff...
>
> Definitely glad to see efforts to reverse-engineer this software.
>
Cool...
> For the curious there is a good walk-through of Venix/86 2.1 being
> installed here on the MESS emulator:
>
> https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/
> 08/14/venturcomm-venix86-on-messmame/
Yea, this is where I got the XT version that's in my repo :) I've been
working with the Rainbow mess emulator author to get the Rainbow version
working..
Has anyone established whether all the various Venix releases have
> been found and which of the add-on tools have been found? like the
> Fortran and RM/COBOL referenced on wikipedia?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venix
>
I have none of them. I just have Venix... I'd love to see them...
Warner
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* [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter
2018-04-12 3:30 ` Nigel Williams
2018-04-12 4:23 ` Warner Losh
@ 2018-04-12 4:52 ` Jim Carpenter
2018-04-12 13:22 ` Warner Losh
1 sibling, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread
From: Jim Carpenter @ 2018-04-12 4:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
On 04/11/2018 11:30 PM, Nigel Williams wrote:
> For the curious there is a good walk-through of Venix/86 2.1 being
> installed here on the MESS emulator:
>
> https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/venturcomm-venix86-on-messmame/
>
I'm the one that wrote that walk-through. The challenge was very
frustrating because MESS didn't/doesn't allow double-density media in
high-density drives and the images I had to work with were a mix of
both. Also, the one bootable image supported only one floppy drive and
had no mknod. But I did win $100 for being the first to get it to
compile and run a certain program. Yay! Back in the day I had always
wanted Venix so it was nice finally getting to do something with it and
make money doing it.
Jim
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter
2018-04-12 2:22 [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter Warner Losh
2018-04-12 3:30 ` Nigel Williams
@ 2018-04-12 8:10 ` Mutiny
1 sibling, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Mutiny @ 2018-04-12 8:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
Great! Thanks a lot!
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* [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter
2018-04-12 4:52 ` Jim Carpenter
@ 2018-04-12 13:22 ` Warner Losh
0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2018-04-12 13:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 10:52 PM, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com>
wrote:
> On 04/11/2018 11:30 PM, Nigel Williams wrote:
> > For the curious there is a good walk-through of Venix/86 2.1 being
> > installed here on the MESS emulator:
> >
> > https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/
> 08/14/venturcomm-venix86-on-messmame/
> >
>
>
> I'm the one that wrote that walk-through. The challenge was very
> frustrating because MESS didn't/doesn't allow double-density media in
> high-density drives and the images I had to work with were a mix of
> both. Also, the one bootable image supported only one floppy drive and
> had no mknod. But I did win $100 for being the first to get it to
> compile and run a certain program. Yay! Back in the day I had always
> wanted Venix so it was nice finally getting to do something with it and
> make money doing it.
>
Yea, in my tools directory, there's a venixp2l.c that makes the diskettes
into tarballs effectively. Though I never have figured out how to convert
the /dev entries to proper c or b device nodes.
It was quite helpful, because this image had low.s in it, which I didn't
have yet :)
Warner
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2018-04-12 2:22 [TUHS] Minor Milestone: Venix 86 "user mode" interpreter Warner Losh
2018-04-12 3:30 ` Nigel Williams
2018-04-12 4:23 ` Warner Losh
2018-04-12 4:52 ` Jim Carpenter
2018-04-12 13:22 ` Warner Losh
2018-04-12 8:10 ` Mutiny
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