2 Apr
1998
2 Apr
'98
8:54 p.m.
<> Does anybody know what `distribution from within Digital' is being
<> referred to here, and how I can get my hands on it, for the archive.
<> Is this an early Ultrix?
<
<
< I have an Edition 7 distribution from DEC. The work was largely
<done by Fred Canter, along with Jerry Brenner and Armando Stettner. It
<had prebuilt kernels as follows :-
So happens I have a tk50 tape labeled ULRIX-11 X3.1 27-jul-87.
Never looked at it as its apparently a tarball and all my systems with
tk50 to date are rt-11/rsts or VMS. I keep meaning to look at it with
the VAX ULTRIX4.2 VS2000.
Allison
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Don't know about vi FP, I could go have a look at the source. No, vi
doesn't appear to use any floating point.
I asked Bob about the factor(6) bug in my Ultrix mail, he didn't mention
it, but he might at some stage. I'll keep people informed.
As for vi, what was the abnormal behaviour?
Warren
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From Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Fri
Apr 3 08:41:49 1998
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From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Message-Id: <199804022241.IAA12757(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Subject: Ultrix for PDP-11
To: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (PDP Unix Preservation)
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 08:41:49 +1000 (EST)
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Briefly, Jean tells me the stuff I saw on his web page (early DEC support)
is called UNIX V7M RELEASE 2.1. There's a copy of _a_ V7M in the archive, but
I've asked Jean to look at his tape so we can compare contents.
John Holden, as you saw, also has a tape with lots of pre-built kernels.
I've asked John if we can get a copy of this tape too.
A few people mentioned Ultrix for the PDP-11. This is probably a dumb
question, but I assume DEC still owns these systems. Would it be possible
(and/or worth it) to ask DEC to make it freely available to licensees?
I guess we could ask Bob Supnik about it.
Thanks again,
Warren
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From Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Fri
Apr 3 09:59:47 1998
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From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Message-Id: <199804022359.JAA12908(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Subject: Ultrix: reply from Bob Supnik
To: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (PDP Unix Preservation)
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 09:59:47 +1000 (EST)
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All,
I've just received this reply from Bob Supnik on PDP-11 Ultrix:
If you can clear the other license issues (SCO's)
Digital would have no
problem giving a free license to its value add, whatever that was.
That is, if the user can obtain a valid license from SCO, either binary
or source, Digital will agree to license its portion at no cost under
existing terms.
I asked him if DEC would permit us to distribute Ultrix to LICENSEES ONLY,
if some license agreement was also distributed. Awaiting a reply....
Warren
P.S Ken, Allison, can you send in some tape images??? Thanks 8-)
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From Tim Shoppa <shoppa(a)alph02.triumf.ca> Fri Apr
3 10:00:40 1998
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From: Tim Shoppa <shoppa(a)alph02.triumf.ca>
Message-Id: <9804030000.AA00122(a)alph02.triumf.ca>
Subject: Re: Bug in Bob Supnik's Emulator!
To: wkt(a)CS.ADFA.OZ.au
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 16:00:40 -0800 (PST)
Cc: pete(a)dunnington.U-NET.com, edgee(a)cyberpass.net, pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
In-Reply-To: <199803280050.LAA05410(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from "Warren
Toomey" at Mar 28, 98 11:50:54 am
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I suspect the FP emulation in Bob's Emulator, so
it might be worth
watching the floating point values in the program. Bob mailed me during
the week, and I sent him a virgin binary of factor so he could verify that
there is a bug.
More evidence of a bug is that 'vi' doesn't work right under Bob
Supnik's emulator, either. At one point Steven Schultz made some
private speculations to me about where the problem might be, but
I've forgotten the details. Is it possible that these two bugs
are both due to FP emulation? Does the 2.11BSD 'vi' even use
the FP registers?
Tim. (shoppa(a)triumf.ca)
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From Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Fri
Apr 3 10:16:15 1998
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From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Message-Id: <199804030016.KAA12956(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Subject: Re: Bug in Bob Supnik's Emulator!
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 10:16:15 +1000 (EST)
Cc: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (PDP Unix Preservation)
In-Reply-To: <9804030000.AA00122(a)alph02.triumf.ca> from Tim Shoppa at "Apr 2,
98 04:00:40 pm"
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In article by Tim Shoppa:
I suspect the
FP emulation in Bob's Emulator [breaking factor(6)]
More evidence of a bug is
that 'vi' doesn't work right under Bob
Supnik's emulator, either. At one point Steven Schultz made some
private speculations to me about where the problem might be, but
I've forgotten the details. Is it possible that these two bugs
are both due to FP emulation? Does the 2.11BSD 'vi' even use
the FP registers? From "Steven M. Schultz"
<sms(a)moe.2bsd.com> Fri Apr 3 10:50:26 1998
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Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 16:50:26 -0800 (PST)
From: "Steven M. Schultz" <sms(a)moe.2bsd.com>
Message-Id: <199804030050.QAA07798(a)moe.2bsd.com>
To: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
Subject: Re: Bug in Bob Supnik's Emulator?
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Tim. (shoppa(a)triumf.ca)
More evidence of a bug is that 'vi'
doesn't work right under Bob
Supnik's emulator, either. At one point Steven Schultz made some
private speculations to me about where the problem might be, but
I've forgotten the details. Is it possible that these two bugs
are both due to FP emulation? Does the 2.11BSD 'vi' even use
the FP registers?
To the best of my knowledge 'vi' does NOT use any FP at all (other than
the usual 32 bit arithmetic that all programs do if they do any 'long'
arithmetic).
My speculation is that there's a MMU emulation bug somewhere. 'vi' is
a overlaid split I/D program. Overlays in 2.11BSD are done via
'page flipping' (altering MMU registers). Also 2.11 uses the 'expand
downward' bit on the stack (as well as relying on MMR3 - i think that's
the one - for instruction restart after growing the stack). If there's
a subtle gotcha in the MMU emulation that will cause problems
eventually. 2.11 is not alone in using the ED bit and instruction
restart - if the problem is MMU related it could show up under other
systems (V7). It would be interesting to know if 'vi' encountered
problems on V7 but V7 doesn't have usermode overlays so getting 'vi'
to run would be very problematic.
Steven
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From Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Fri
Apr 3 11:00:34 1998
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From: Warren Toomey <wkt(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Message-Id: <199804030100.LAA13088(a)henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>
Subject: Re: Bug in Bob Supnik's Emulator?
To: sms(a)moe.2bsd.com (Steven M. Schultz)
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 11:00:34 +1000 (EST)
Cc: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au
In-Reply-To: <199804030050.QAA07798(a)moe.2bsd.com> from "Steven M. Schultz"
at "Apr 2, 98 04:50:26 pm"
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In article by Steven M. Schultz:
[re bugs in Bob Sunik's PDP emulator]
My speculation is that there's a MMU emulation
bug somewhere. 'vi' is
a overlaid split I/D program. Overlays in 2.11BSD are done via
'page flipping' (altering MMU registers). Also 2.11 uses the 'expand
downward' bit on the stack (as well as relying on MMR3 - i think that's
the one - for instruction restart after growing the stack). If there's
a subtle gotcha in the MMU emulation that will cause problems
eventually. 2.11 is not alone in using the ED bit and instruction
restart - if the problem is MMU related it could show up under other
systems (V7). It would be interesting to know if 'vi' encountered
problems on V7 but V7 doesn't have usermode overlays so getting 'vi'
to run would be very problematic.
Steven
The 2bsd distribution in the archive comes with an early non-overlayed vi
which compiles on V7. However, I haven't got it to work correctly yet. I
suspect that the /etc/termcap entry I was using is not recognised by this
early version of termlib.
This is all irrelevant to the emulator bug, BTW.
Steven, have you mentioned your hypothesis to Bob?
Warren
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From "Ed G." <edgee(a)cyberpass.net> Fri
Apr 3 12:15:08 1998
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From: "Ed G." <edgee(a)cyberpass.net>
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Subject: Re: What's magtape good for anyway?
Reply-to: edgee(a)cyberpass.net
CC: allisonp(a)world.std.com (Allison J Parent)
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Mag tape has
several things that make it difficult, one is old (late 60s and through
In old movies, filmmakers often focused on spinning tape
drives when they wanted to show a computer "thinking." What is it
about tape drives that made them such a powerful symbol for big,
complicated computer systems?
the 70s) drives had a difficult time starting and
stopping without
breaking tape or resorting to complex(then standards) controllers. This
lead to things like large interrecord gaps (start, speed up read, stop,
backspace records, stop, read) due to the inerta of starting and stoping
the reels. Also fixed record sizes were used to make blocks about the
same length so blocks and marks could be differentiated using simple
timers.
Was dectape an attempt to remedy some of these problems? My
hazy recollection was that you could treat dectape in some ways as if
it were a disk.
Magtape was for the longest time the only portable
media, which lead to
the ansi/EBCDIC problems (Evryone else and IBM/HP). It was generally
used for archival storage making file organized access excess overhead.
While often used as block oriented, many systems used it more as a stream
device where the high volume storage (relative to the disks of the time)
capability was available.
How much data can magtape hold? If magtape was a portable media,
does that mean that the manufacturers agreed on the width of
the tape, the density of recording, the method of recording bits,
etc.?
I have an old 9 track tape from a computer course I took in 1980.
For sentimental reasons I'd love to get a copy of its contents. Is
this possible do you think?
When processing was done on early system usually two
or three drives were
involved as one of two were for reading and the third was writing results
usually due to memory size limitations of the time compared to the amount
of data. Alot of magtapes lore is a result of historical use.
Is 'merge sort' an example of an application that required three tape
drives?
Ed
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