Hello and thanks!

[Jason T. Miller]

After about a week of work (mainly due to a dying RA81 ... see below), I
have successfully installed 2.11BSD on my 11/83. First and foremost,
thanks to a) Steven M. Shultz for so carefully maintaining and updating
(!) CSRG's PDP-11 code to work with hardware such as my MSCP drives and
TMSCP TK50 and b) everyone involved in prodding SCO to release free
Ancient UNIX source licenses.

After dealing with a crippled binary-only Micro/RSX lack-of-a-kit, and as
a FreeBSD user of five-odd years, I decided to bite the bullet and see
what UNIX was/is like on a PDP. Thanks to the work of Steven and a cast of
thousands, it's pretty damned impressive.

The only problems I've been having seem to be coming from disk controllers
without media. More specifically, I get a hard error, followed by an
endless loop of error indications if I try to access one of my RX50s (on
an RQDX3 controller), and the only recourse is a reset. Okay, so the
solution here is simple: don't do it. The bigger problem comes with my
flake-job of an RA81, which, FWIW, is the only fixed disk storage I have.
It has a strange habit: the "A" light goes off and the controller can no
longer access it. If I soft-restart the PDP (under either RSX or UNIX),
the driver connects back to the drive without a glitch. And this gives me
the same loop-of-errors syndrome as an empty RX50. Anyone have any
pointers or sage advice? I figured I may try to modify the MSCP driver to
re-init the controller on a hard error, and try again. But the MSCP code
is fairly complicated, and I know nothing of the protocol. Anyone have any
MSCP documentation which I could beg, borrow, or steal? I'd give the
specific error codes, but I haven't written any down yet and I'm at work.

Also, I am willing to provide a Good Home for any 19" rackmount MSCP
drives in the midwest. Let me rephrase that: any one or two; I have a one
bedroom apartment, and I'm saving a bit of floorspace for a (yet to
materialize) VAX. Also Qbus thinnet or SCSI would be nice, whilst on cloud
780...

TIA,
jasomill


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