[Simh] Emul. DL-lines over Telnet for PDP11, but all char's are converted Upper Case

[Göran Åhling]

Hello!
An interesting idea, but, I´m sorry to say, but it dosn´t explain my 
problem...

This software version is the very last available. Y2K-secured and all 
(released in -99). It runs fine, using lower-case when I "set host " or 
connect to it using LAT. It't only when I try to access the emulated 
DL-lines that this problem occurs.

Now, during the day, I got some more ideas, did some testing, and 
managed to penetrate this problem further!

The way forward was to give the "sim>HELP SHOW MODIFIERS", that revealed 
a SET TTOX UC, 7B, 8B, 7P, ... (as opposed to the SET TTIX... I tryed by 
myself)

So, I tried  "sim>SET TTOX0 8B" in the setup, before booting, and this 
made the first telneted terminal (that came to TT1:) to work with 
lower-case.
BUT: Next in line: TT2: using the next telnet terminal window... gave UC 
again :-(
I made some SHOW TTOX ... showing just what I hade lumped into...

And both SHOW and SET ttix_ and ttox_ seems to have a number that, as I 
understand it, reflects more a controller number, each controller having 
8 lines (strange enough, as DL:s used to come 1 by 1!). SET TTOX1 
renders: "Non-existion unit".
I have made set ttix lines=8 in my set-up file.

I've tried to look into the source-code, but C never was my favorite... 
to me, .EQ. 200 CONTINUE ...is clear, but ->||{ ... } is more of 
guesswork (but I have a book describing the clues to such a quiz  ;-)

Where I found the RSX? At a company that really needs some help. They 
operate roughly 20 PDP:s (all real hardware) for test-stands operations. 
There used to be at least twice the amount, all sw developed "in house" 
etc. These machines are supposed to work until their "full time", and 
they really do the job, so putting time, money and effort into replacing 
the PDP with a PC to do the same job in the same way wuold'nt make sense 
neither to me, nor to the bean-counters... The only problem is that both 
the men that used to fiddle with these were sent home (due to illnes and 
retirement age). I used to play for  hobby and fun with PDP:s for a lot 
of years - I used to be a System Manager for VMS -systems in my first 
job, long time ago. An old friend of mine (computer fellow...) from 
those days works at this company, need I say any more? Btw,  I've found 
a pile of licences, plenty of them compared to what is still running...

All machienes interface hw, both comersial and tailored ("home-brew"). 
All but one that is. The one used for develpment, having all sources 
etc. No backup available, and no tape-unit...

I have been quite anctious until I managed to get a true clone of that 
machiene, which is this SIMH... I Don't really use it for production or 
anything like that, but I like the SIMH very much, and this gave me an 
excellent time to get into the system, while getting my hart-rate return 
to normal after realizing the safety of the entire aplication source, 
about 35 k lines of F77 code, beeing a double disc in one single computer!

I had some fuzz bootstrapping myself into the SIMH with this immages, 
but it really worked out, finally, after getting some advice,...
I got a SIMH immage with the same OS-version from a freind. This 
version, amongst all, include a new feature, the virtual devices! So, I 
enabled some virutal devices in the running 11/93,  attached disc's of 
suitable size and made BACKUP /MOUNTED....    after detach, the 
container-file of one disc (at a time) could be copied using decnet onto 
the "given" PDP/SIMH on my PC. Later, I have changed DEC-net addres and 
host-name of the copy, and I'm even able to boot it inte the same Lan!

Still this terminal access problem of mine, though.

All PDP:s running are 11/93 with SCSI-attached discs. All disc:s are 
used 2 by 2, beeing identical. From time to time, when a disc has read 
its final block, a new disc has to be replaced. Those are(were) found 
plenty of from scrapped Mac's a frew years ago. Regular 3,5" 8-bit SCSI.
A simple sand-alone BRU from the working disc to the replacement dics, 
reboot, and again operational.

Just want to mention that the technology that replaced this is allready 
dead and scrapped. The next again had to have a major upgrade, 
unplanned, unbudgeted... Memory, Disc and mother-board had to be 
upgraded after just 18 months of operations, as corporate policy 
suddenly required PC:s to run XP and antivirus and ...

Nothing unplanned, unexpected, like that has happened with the PDP:s! 
Some of them were a little shaky, but when I replaced stuck colling air 
fans with working fans, this dissapeared also!

/Göran

Gregg C Levine wrote:

>Hello!
>An interesting question. Also an interesting problem. 
>
>According to my working knowledge of the PDP-11, it didn't start
>understanding that there was an upper and a lower case of alphabetic
>characters until the widespread use of VDT based hardware. Therefore some
>operating systems were generated to only use uppercase characters. This is
>because the teletypes used also only spoke uppercase characters. 
>
>So unless your RSX system ran on an original system that had a VDT present
>who had both sets available, you may be out of luck. The manual may not be
>aware of this fact although we certainly are. I believe this is a feature,
>and a dratted nuisance.
>
>Next becomes the question, where did you find RSX11M+ 4.6?
>--
>Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon at worldnet.att.net
>"The Force will be with you always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
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>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com
>>    
>>
>[mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On
>  
>
>>Behalf Of Göran Åhling
>>Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 3:11 AM
>>To: simh at trailing-edge.com
>>Subject: [Simh] Emul. DL-lines over Telnet for PDP11, but all char's are
>>    
>>
>converted Upper
>  
>
>>Case
>>
>>In running SIMH PDP11, with RSX11M+ 4.6, attaching DL-lines using
>>TCP/IP-telnet, I run into a problem of "character conversion".
>>Whatever I write is converted into UpperCase. This seems to be according
>>to the SIMH manual, that states 4 different modes available, with UC the
>>default.
>>
>>My problem is that the manual doesn´t state how to change mode, just
>>that 4 different modes exist.
>>
>>In SIMH i can do SHOW TTIX0:, SHOW TTIX1: etc, and I can do SET
>>TTIX0:..., but when I try SET TTIX1:, the emulator replies with "DEVICE
>>NOT PRESENT" (or anything close to that, I'm not sitting next to the
>>system right now...) (Is this really a bug or a feature I have not fully
>>understod ??)
>>
>>I have made sure the OS (RSX) is set /LOWERCASE, which does the job on
>>true HW.
>>
>>I'm running the "latest" binaries for Win... available on a machiene
>>running a fully updated Win XP.
>>I have tried a couple of different terminal emulators (Putty is one of
>>them) with the same problem, and running the same emulators towards
>>other systems (for example VMS with TCP/IP) works fine. Working this
>>target system using LAT from a emulated terminal connected to a VAX also
>>works fine, thus I conclude the problem arises from SIMH, not from the
>>terminal programs and not from the RSX.
>>
>>The reasson for running DL's, as opposed to DHQ's or DZ's,  is that this
>>SIMH has a true clone of a running, working system with 11/93-cpu, where
>>the DL's are (on the CPU board). I don´t want the "clone" to be
>>differently SYSGEN'ed than the true HW version...
>>
>>Any suggestion apprecieated!
>>/Göran
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>>Simh mailing list
>>Simh at trailing-edge.com
>>http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
>>    
>>
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