From jjheik at gmail.com Fri Jul 5 18:46:58 2013 From: jjheik at gmail.com (Joel Heikkila) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 18:46:58 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator Message-ID: Hi all, Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" ?VAX 3900 emulator and the "microvax2" emulator. First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken such as http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot(unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop I got mopd to serve up the bootloader, the bootloader to boot and to get bootp configuration info from the dhcpd server. Checking with Wireshark, the emulated VAX then makes a NFS mount request and then goes silent on Ethernet, printing endlessly on the console "stray interrupt: vector 0x18, ipl 31". Googling this wasn't much help and I don't have a real VAX to test with. I got the same error trying with OpenBSD's loader under the same setup too. Has anyone successfully netbooted any VAX OS under the SIMH emulators? It's not much of pressing issue since I'm just having some fun, but it has made me curious. Maybe this counts as a bug report of sorts. Thanks, Joel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Mark at infocomm.com Fri Jul 5 19:46:21 2013 From: Mark at infocomm.com (Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 16:46:21 -0700 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> The VAX 3900, MicroVAX2, and MicroVAX1 simulators all can boot VMS over the network (and join a VMScluster). I think that the MicroVAX 1 has some VMS version constraints, but the boot activity works. The boot host in these cases have been real hardware or smh VAX systems. From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Joel Heikkila Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 12:47 PM To: simh at trailing-edge.com Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator Hi all, Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" ?VAX 3900 emulator and the "microvax2" emulator. First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken such as http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot (unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop I got mopd to serve up the bootloader, the bootloader to boot and to get bootp configuration info from the dhcpd server. Checking with Wireshark, the emulated VAX then makes a NFS mount request and then goes silent on Ethernet, printing endlessly on the console "stray interrupt: vector 0x18, ipl 31". Googling this wasn't much help and I don't have a real VAX to test with. I got the same error trying with OpenBSD's loader under the same setup too. Has anyone successfully netbooted any VAX OS under the SIMH emulators? It's not much of pressing issue since I'm just having some fun, but it has made me curious. Maybe this counts as a bug report of sorts. Thanks, Joel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From captainkirk359 at gmail.com Sat Jul 6 16:38:43 2013 From: captainkirk359 at gmail.com (Christian Gauger-Cosgrove) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 16:38:43 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries Message-ID: I've a few questions regarding SIMH. The first question I have is: Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? E.g. instead of the full PDP-11 simulator, building just a PDP-11/23 (with FPP, no CIS), with 256KB of RAM, a pair of RL02's and a quartet of serial ports (as an example system); or as another example, a PDP-8 with EAE, 4K of core, and a single console teleprinter. The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, subsume a simulator into another program/application? While some of you following this mailing list will probably find the idea silly, but an idea was put forth among my circle of friends of trying to get a subset of one of the SIMH simulators (we're still debating whether to use the VAX, PDP-11 or Z-80 S-100 bus system) as a flight computer for Kerbal Space Program. (You may commence laughing... now.) A third question, somewhat applicable to the above, but is there a place where one can find some documentation/information on adding a device to one of the simulators? I and my friends find the need to create an interface akin to the DRV11-J (that's the card with the four 16-bit wide parallel interfaces with handshaking/flow control lines). Thanks to any and all who will answer, Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove From jdbryan at acm.org Sat Jul 6 18:49:59 2013 From: jdbryan at acm.org (J. David Bryan) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 18:49:59 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Saturday, July 6, 2013 at 16:38, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: > Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been > stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? More or less. Generally, you can remove specific peripherals, typically by removing the corresponding DEVICE references in the "nnn_sys.c" file. But subset configurations within a specific device (e.g., CPU submodels) are usually handled by runtime "if" statements within the code. So you couldn't remove, say, one CPU model from the others without major surgery. Would disabling (at run time, perhaps via a startup script) the devices you aren't using work as well? A "fully laden" PDP11 simulation executable is only a few hundred KB. The code for disabled devices is still present, but the simulator treats them as non-existent. By disabling unwanted devices, you can present the simulator user with a view of a specific configuration. > The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, > subsume a simulator into another program/application? Yes, with some work. Each device simulator is essentially a set of functions called by the simulator control program (SCP). You could arrange to call them from a different program, although you'd need to supply the support functions present in SCP that are called by the device simulators. > A third question, somewhat applicable to the above, but is there a > place where one can find some documentation/information on adding a > device to one of the simulators? Go here: http://simh.trailing-edge.com/papers.html ...and download these documents: - Writing a Simulator for the SIMH System - Adding an I/O Device to a SIMH Virtual Machine ...which should get you started. In-development versions of the documents are here: https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/doc -- Dave From toby at telegraphics.com.au Sat Jul 6 19:03:48 2013 From: toby at telegraphics.com.au (Toby Thain) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 19:03:48 -0400 Subject: [Simh] mopd sources - Re: Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51D8A254.8080306@telegraphics.com.au> On 05/07/13 6:46 PM, Joel Heikkila wrote: > Hi all, > > Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. > The mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 ... > > I got mopd to serve up the bootloader, the bootloader to boot and to get > bootp configuration info from the dhcpd server. Checking with > Wireshark, the emulated VAX then makes a NFS mount request and then goes > silent on Ethernet, printing endlessly on the console "stray interrupt: > ... > > Has anyone successfully netbooted any VAX OS under the SIMH emulators? > It's not much of pressing issue since I'm just having some fun, but it > has made me curious. Maybe this counts as a bug report of sorts. What version of mopd are you using? I had trouble booting NetBSD on a MicroVAX II without patching the sources that I could find. The upstream sources were offline at the time ... have not checked if they have come back. https://github.com/qu1j0t3/mopd I don't think my problems were the same as yours, though. --T > > Thanks, > > Joel > > > > _______________________________________________ > Simh mailing list > Simh at trailing-edge.com > http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh From Mark at infocomm.com Sat Jul 6 21:07:41 2013 From: Mark at infocomm.com (Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 18:07:41 -0700 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECFE@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> On Saturday, July 06, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: > I've a few questions regarding SIMH. > > The first question I have is: > Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been > stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? E.g. instead of > the full PDP-11 simulator, building just a PDP-11/23 (with FPP, no > CIS), with 256KB of RAM, a pair of RL02's and a quartet of serial > ports (as an example system); or as another example, a PDP-8 with EAE, > 4K of core, and a single console teleprinter. All of these are theoretically possible, however the benefit would hardly be very significant. The largest current simulator is just about 1MB in size including all current device simulations. The simulated RAM is dynamically allocated, so that wouldn't matter one way or another. Essentially any target platform you'd hope to run on likely uses virtual memory and thus would only contain (in memory) more or less the code for the devices you are actually Using. All the current simulators run fine on a $35 Raspberry Pi, so it would be hard to imagine shooting for a smaller target. Even so, the existing simulators depend on a basic set of runtime capabilities which are met well by any current Linux platform. > The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, > subsume a simulator into another program/application? While some of > you following this mailing list will probably find the idea silly, but > an idea was put forth among my circle of friends of trying to get a > subset of one of the SIMH simulators (we're still debating whether to > use the VAX, PDP-11 or Z-80 S-100 bus system) as a flight computer for > Kerbal Space Program. (You may commence laughing... now.) You could probably do that or merely run a simulator (in a subprocess) from another program. > A third question, somewhat applicable to the above, but is there a > place where one can find some documentation/information on adding a > device to one of the simulators? I and my friends find the need to > create an interface akin to the DRV11-J (that's the card with the four > 16-bit wide parallel interfaces with handshaking/flow control lines). One could write a simulated device using info that Dave Bryan pointed you at. Alternatively you could use a network capable simulator (VAX or PDP11) and communicate with the simulated system via the network. An additional alternative for any simulator would be to use one of the existing multiplexor devices (terminal port emulation) can be connected inbound (via an arbitrary listen port) and/or outbound to a tcp listening port in another application. - Mark Pizzolato From jjheik at gmail.com Sat Jul 6 23:23:56 2013 From: jjheik at gmail.com (Joel Heikkila) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 23:23:56 -0400 Subject: [Simh] mopd sources - Re: Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: <51D8A254.8080306@telegraphics.com.au> References: <51D8A254.8080306@telegraphics.com.au> Message-ID: > > What version of mopd are you using? I had trouble booting NetBSD on a MicroVAX II without patching the sources that I could find. The upstream sources were offline at the time ... have not checked if they have come back. > > https://github.com/qu1j0t3/mopd > > I don't think my problems were the same as yours, though. I've been using the version that's in the FreeBSD ports tree under net/mopd. It seemed to work, does it corrupt the file during transmission? - Joel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From abs at absd.org Sun Jul 7 07:17:31 2013 From: abs at absd.org (David Brownlee) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 12:17:31 +0100 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 5 July 2013 23:46, Joel Heikkila wrote: > Hi all, > > Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The > mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on > is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest > SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" ?VAX 3900 emulator > and the "microvax2" emulator. > > First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken > such as > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot > (unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to > dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop I know the netboot bootloader was broken for a while, but I'm sure I netbooted a 4000/90 using the 6.0 bootloader. Its *possible* it was fixed sometime after 6.0 so it could have been in 6.1. Do you get the same error trying the 6.1 bootloader? From abs at absd.org Sun Jul 7 07:20:36 2013 From: abs at absd.org (David Brownlee) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 12:20:36 +0100 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> References: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> Message-ID: On 6 July 2013 00:46, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm wrote: > The VAX 3900, MicroVAX2, and MicroVAX1 simulators all can boot VMS over the > network (and join a VMScluster). I think that the MicroVAX 1 has some VMS > version constraints, but the boot activity works. The boot host in these > cases have been real hardware or smh VAX systems. I wonder if the *BSD/vax code assumes the ethernet interface is in a certain state which is always true on real hardware and simh-from-disk, but not on simh-netboot? Its quite likely VMS is more diligent about initialising the hardware... From abs at absd.org Sun Jul 7 07:22:29 2013 From: abs at absd.org (David Brownlee) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 12:22:29 +0100 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> Message-ID: On 7 July 2013 12:20, David Brownlee wrote: > On 6 July 2013 00:46, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm wrote: >> The VAX 3900, MicroVAX2, and MicroVAX1 simulators all can boot VMS over the >> network (and join a VMScluster). I think that the MicroVAX 1 has some VMS >> version constraints, but the boot activity works. The boot host in these >> cases have been real hardware or smh VAX systems. > > I wonder if the *BSD/vax code assumes the ethernet interface is in a > certain state which is always true on real hardware and > simh-from-disk, but not on simh-netboot? Its quite likely VMS is more > diligent about initialising the hardware... Actually - if its the bootloader that failing then its quite possible the *BSD standalone ethernet code is driving the hardware slightly differently which works on real hardware but not simh... From vince at mulhollon.com Sun Jul 7 07:26:38 2013 From: vince at mulhollon.com (Vince Mulhollon) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 06:26:38 -0500 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 6, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove < captainkirk359 at gmail.com> wrote: > Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been > stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, > subsume a simulator into another program/application? > I think you may be going about this from a "windows" philosophy/development perspective, where absolutely everything needs to be compiled into one huge GUI executable because the OS doesn't provide very much.. If you go about it the unix/linux way life could be much simpler. For example, you can create a plain text config file to do all your configuration work, the end user does not need to manually type in "set cpu 8k" etc etc every time the simulator is started, and you don't need to recompile the source to default the CPU to 8k, you merely need to put that line (and many others) in a config file. Also for interactive work there are quite a few unix-ish ways to spawn off a CLI program and control its input and watch its output, ranging from general purpose languages like Perl to specialized systems like "expect". Just saying you might be steering down a more difficult path than necessary. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rosenfeld at grumpf.hope-2000.org Sun Jul 7 18:44:12 2013 From: rosenfeld at grumpf.hope-2000.org (Hans Rosenfeld) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 00:44:12 +0200 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130707224411.GA16376@grumpf.hope-2000.org> On Sun, Jul 07, 2013 at 12:17:31PM +0100, David Brownlee wrote: > On 5 July 2013 23:46, Joel Heikkila wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The > > mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on > > is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest > > SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" ?VAX 3900 emulator > > and the "microvax2" emulator. > > > > First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken > > such as > > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot > > (unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to > > dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 > > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop > > I know the netboot bootloader was broken for a while, but I'm sure I > netbooted a 4000/90 using the 6.0 bootloader. Its *possible* it was > fixed sometime after 6.0 so it could have been in 6.1. Do you get the > same error trying the 6.1 bootloader? I fixed this in 2006, and the fixed version was shipped with 4.0. Hans -- %SYSTEM-F-ANARCHISM, The operating system has been overthrown From jjheik at gmail.com Mon Jul 8 02:42:41 2013 From: jjheik at gmail.com (Joel Heikkila) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 02:42:41 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I know the netboot bootloader was broken for a while, but I'm sure I > netbooted a 4000/90 using the 6.0 bootloader. Its *possible* it was > fixed sometime after 6.0 so it could have been in 6.1. Do you get the > same error trying the 6.1 bootloader? With the 6.1 bootloader I'm not getting anywhere. The emulator spits out >>>b xqa0 (BOOT/R5:0 XQA0 2.. -XQA0 1..0.. HALT instruction, PC: 00005201 (HALT) (Some whitespace removed). mopd with the -d flag shows: MOP RC 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > ab:0:0:2:0:0 len 45 code 07 SID MOP RC 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > ab:0:0:2:0:0 len 37 code 07 SID MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > ab:0:0:1:0:0 len 47 code 08 RPR MOP DL 802.3 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba > 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc len 9 code 03 ASV MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba len 47 code 08 RPR MOP DL 802.3 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba > 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc len 14 code 02 MLD MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba len 11 code 0a RML MOP DL 802.3 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba > 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc len 40 code 14 PLT MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba len 11 code 0a RML and that's it. I'm using this file http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.1/vax/installation/netboot/boot This configuration still works with the 1.5.2 bootloader. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From u.schmeling at online.de Mon Jul 29 11:02:53 2013 From: u.schmeling at online.de (u.schmeling at online.de) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:02:53 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Simh] Restore issue with pdp11 Message-ID: <703233340.3733623.1375110172892.JavaMail.tomcat55@mrmseu3.kundenserver.de> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- Hi All, if one attaches a network interface to xq device and save it to a file, you will get a segfault on restore. This is caused by a wrong structure size in STATS reg. Attached you will find a patch to solve the issue. regards Uwe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: restore.patch Type: application/octet-stream Size: 728 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Mark at infocomm.com Mon Jul 29 13:16:51 2013 From: Mark at infocomm.com (Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 10:16:51 -0700 Subject: [Simh] Restore issue with pdp11 In-Reply-To: <703233340.3733623.1375110172892.JavaMail.tomcat55@mrmseu3.kundenserver.de> References: <703233340.3733623.1375110172892.JavaMail.tomcat55@mrmseu3.kundenserver.de> Message-ID: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E8094E90B@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> Thanks for that patch. This issue was fixed in the core source at https://github.com/simh/simh/ back in January. The latest code can be downloaded as a zip from: https://github.com/simh/simh/archive/master.zip. FYI. It seems that the patch you?ve supplied only fixes the size of the STATS reg for the XQB device and misses the same change for the XQA device. From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of u.schmeling at online.de Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 5:03 AM To: simh at trailing-edge.com Subject: [Simh] Restore issue with pdp11 Hi All, if one attaches a network interface to xq device and save it to a file, you will get a segfault on restore. This is caused by a wrong structure size in STATS reg. Attached you will find a patch to solve the issue. regards Uwe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jjheik at gmail.com Fri Jul 5 18:46:58 2013 From: jjheik at gmail.com (Joel Heikkila) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 18:46:58 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator Message-ID: Hi all, Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" µVAX 3900 emulator and the "microvax2" emulator. First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken such as http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot(unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop I got mopd to serve up the bootloader, the bootloader to boot and to get bootp configuration info from the dhcpd server. Checking with Wireshark, the emulated VAX then makes a NFS mount request and then goes silent on Ethernet, printing endlessly on the console "stray interrupt: vector 0x18, ipl 31". Googling this wasn't much help and I don't have a real VAX to test with. I got the same error trying with OpenBSD's loader under the same setup too. Has anyone successfully netbooted any VAX OS under the SIMH emulators? It's not much of pressing issue since I'm just having some fun, but it has made me curious. Maybe this counts as a bug report of sorts. Thanks, Joel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Mark at infocomm.com Fri Jul 5 19:46:21 2013 From: Mark at infocomm.com (Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm) Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 16:46:21 -0700 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> The VAX 3900, MicroVAX2, and MicroVAX1 simulators all can boot VMS over the network (and join a VMScluster). I think that the MicroVAX 1 has some VMS version constraints, but the boot activity works. The boot host in these cases have been real hardware or smh VAX systems. From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Joel Heikkila Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 12:47 PM To: simh at trailing-edge.com Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator Hi all, Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" µVAX 3900 emulator and the "microvax2" emulator. First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken such as http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot (unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop I got mopd to serve up the bootloader, the bootloader to boot and to get bootp configuration info from the dhcpd server. Checking with Wireshark, the emulated VAX then makes a NFS mount request and then goes silent on Ethernet, printing endlessly on the console "stray interrupt: vector 0x18, ipl 31". Googling this wasn't much help and I don't have a real VAX to test with. I got the same error trying with OpenBSD's loader under the same setup too. Has anyone successfully netbooted any VAX OS under the SIMH emulators? It's not much of pressing issue since I'm just having some fun, but it has made me curious. Maybe this counts as a bug report of sorts. Thanks, Joel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From captainkirk359 at gmail.com Sat Jul 6 16:38:43 2013 From: captainkirk359 at gmail.com (Christian Gauger-Cosgrove) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 16:38:43 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries Message-ID: I've a few questions regarding SIMH. The first question I have is: Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? E.g. instead of the full PDP-11 simulator, building just a PDP-11/23 (with FPP, no CIS), with 256KB of RAM, a pair of RL02's and a quartet of serial ports (as an example system); or as another example, a PDP-8 with EAE, 4K of core, and a single console teleprinter. The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, subsume a simulator into another program/application? While some of you following this mailing list will probably find the idea silly, but an idea was put forth among my circle of friends of trying to get a subset of one of the SIMH simulators (we're still debating whether to use the VAX, PDP-11 or Z-80 S-100 bus system) as a flight computer for Kerbal Space Program. (You may commence laughing... now.) A third question, somewhat applicable to the above, but is there a place where one can find some documentation/information on adding a device to one of the simulators? I and my friends find the need to create an interface akin to the DRV11-J (that's the card with the four 16-bit wide parallel interfaces with handshaking/flow control lines). Thanks to any and all who will answer, Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove From jdbryan at acm.org Sat Jul 6 18:49:59 2013 From: jdbryan at acm.org (J. David Bryan) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 18:49:59 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Saturday, July 6, 2013 at 16:38, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: > Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been > stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? More or less. Generally, you can remove specific peripherals, typically by removing the corresponding DEVICE references in the "nnn_sys.c" file. But subset configurations within a specific device (e.g., CPU submodels) are usually handled by runtime "if" statements within the code. So you couldn't remove, say, one CPU model from the others without major surgery. Would disabling (at run time, perhaps via a startup script) the devices you aren't using work as well? A "fully laden" PDP11 simulation executable is only a few hundred KB. The code for disabled devices is still present, but the simulator treats them as non-existent. By disabling unwanted devices, you can present the simulator user with a view of a specific configuration. > The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, > subsume a simulator into another program/application? Yes, with some work. Each device simulator is essentially a set of functions called by the simulator control program (SCP). You could arrange to call them from a different program, although you'd need to supply the support functions present in SCP that are called by the device simulators. > A third question, somewhat applicable to the above, but is there a > place where one can find some documentation/information on adding a > device to one of the simulators? Go here: http://simh.trailing-edge.com/papers.html ...and download these documents: - Writing a Simulator for the SIMH System - Adding an I/O Device to a SIMH Virtual Machine ...which should get you started. In-development versions of the documents are here: https://github.com/simh/simh/tree/master/doc -- Dave From toby at telegraphics.com.au Sat Jul 6 19:03:48 2013 From: toby at telegraphics.com.au (Toby Thain) Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 19:03:48 -0400 Subject: [Simh] mopd sources - Re: Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51D8A254.8080306@telegraphics.com.au> On 05/07/13 6:46 PM, Joel Heikkila wrote: > Hi all, > > Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. > The mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 ... > > I got mopd to serve up the bootloader, the bootloader to boot and to get > bootp configuration info from the dhcpd server. Checking with > Wireshark, the emulated VAX then makes a NFS mount request and then goes > silent on Ethernet, printing endlessly on the console "stray interrupt: > ... > > Has anyone successfully netbooted any VAX OS under the SIMH emulators? > It's not much of pressing issue since I'm just having some fun, but it > has made me curious. Maybe this counts as a bug report of sorts. What version of mopd are you using? I had trouble booting NetBSD on a MicroVAX II without patching the sources that I could find. The upstream sources were offline at the time ... have not checked if they have come back. https://github.com/qu1j0t3/mopd I don't think my problems were the same as yours, though. --T > > Thanks, > > Joel > > > > _______________________________________________ > Simh mailing list > Simh at trailing-edge.com > http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh From Mark at infocomm.com Sat Jul 6 21:07:41 2013 From: Mark at infocomm.com (Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 18:07:41 -0700 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECFE@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> On Saturday, July 06, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: > I've a few questions regarding SIMH. > > The first question I have is: > Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been > stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? E.g. instead of > the full PDP-11 simulator, building just a PDP-11/23 (with FPP, no > CIS), with 256KB of RAM, a pair of RL02's and a quartet of serial > ports (as an example system); or as another example, a PDP-8 with EAE, > 4K of core, and a single console teleprinter. All of these are theoretically possible, however the benefit would hardly be very significant. The largest current simulator is just about 1MB in size including all current device simulations. The simulated RAM is dynamically allocated, so that wouldn't matter one way or another. Essentially any target platform you'd hope to run on likely uses virtual memory and thus would only contain (in memory) more or less the code for the devices you are actually Using. All the current simulators run fine on a $35 Raspberry Pi, so it would be hard to imagine shooting for a smaller target. Even so, the existing simulators depend on a basic set of runtime capabilities which are met well by any current Linux platform. > The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, > subsume a simulator into another program/application? While some of > you following this mailing list will probably find the idea silly, but > an idea was put forth among my circle of friends of trying to get a > subset of one of the SIMH simulators (we're still debating whether to > use the VAX, PDP-11 or Z-80 S-100 bus system) as a flight computer for > Kerbal Space Program. (You may commence laughing... now.) You could probably do that or merely run a simulator (in a subprocess) from another program. > A third question, somewhat applicable to the above, but is there a > place where one can find some documentation/information on adding a > device to one of the simulators? I and my friends find the need to > create an interface akin to the DRV11-J (that's the card with the four > 16-bit wide parallel interfaces with handshaking/flow control lines). One could write a simulated device using info that Dave Bryan pointed you at. Alternatively you could use a network capable simulator (VAX or PDP11) and communicate with the simulated system via the network. An additional alternative for any simulator would be to use one of the existing multiplexor devices (terminal port emulation) can be connected inbound (via an arbitrary listen port) and/or outbound to a tcp listening port in another application. - Mark Pizzolato From jjheik at gmail.com Sat Jul 6 23:23:56 2013 From: jjheik at gmail.com (Joel Heikkila) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2013 23:23:56 -0400 Subject: [Simh] mopd sources - Re: Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: <51D8A254.8080306@telegraphics.com.au> References: <51D8A254.8080306@telegraphics.com.au> Message-ID: > > What version of mopd are you using? I had trouble booting NetBSD on a MicroVAX II without patching the sources that I could find. The upstream sources were offline at the time ... have not checked if they have come back. > > https://github.com/qu1j0t3/mopd > > I don't think my problems were the same as yours, though. I've been using the version that's in the FreeBSD ports tree under net/mopd. It seemed to work, does it corrupt the file during transmission? - Joel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From abs at absd.org Sun Jul 7 07:17:31 2013 From: abs at absd.org (David Brownlee) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 12:17:31 +0100 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 5 July 2013 23:46, Joel Heikkila wrote: > Hi all, > > Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The > mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on > is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest > SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" µVAX 3900 emulator > and the "microvax2" emulator. > > First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken > such as > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot > (unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to > dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop I know the netboot bootloader was broken for a while, but I'm sure I netbooted a 4000/90 using the 6.0 bootloader. Its *possible* it was fixed sometime after 6.0 so it could have been in 6.1. Do you get the same error trying the 6.1 bootloader? From abs at absd.org Sun Jul 7 07:20:36 2013 From: abs at absd.org (David Brownlee) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 12:20:36 +0100 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> References: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> Message-ID: On 6 July 2013 00:46, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm wrote: > The VAX 3900, MicroVAX2, and MicroVAX1 simulators all can boot VMS over the > network (and join a VMScluster). I think that the MicroVAX 1 has some VMS > version constraints, but the boot activity works. The boot host in these > cases have been real hardware or smh VAX systems. I wonder if the *BSD/vax code assumes the ethernet interface is in a certain state which is always true on real hardware and simh-from-disk, but not on simh-netboot? Its quite likely VMS is more diligent about initialising the hardware... From abs at absd.org Sun Jul 7 07:22:29 2013 From: abs at absd.org (David Brownlee) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 12:22:29 +0100 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E7B11ECF0@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> Message-ID: On 7 July 2013 12:20, David Brownlee wrote: > On 6 July 2013 00:46, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm wrote: >> The VAX 3900, MicroVAX2, and MicroVAX1 simulators all can boot VMS over the >> network (and join a VMScluster). I think that the MicroVAX 1 has some VMS >> version constraints, but the boot activity works. The boot host in these >> cases have been real hardware or smh VAX systems. > > I wonder if the *BSD/vax code assumes the ethernet interface is in a > certain state which is always true on real hardware and > simh-from-disk, but not on simh-netboot? Its quite likely VMS is more > diligent about initialising the hardware... Actually - if its the bootloader that failing then its quite possible the *BSD standalone ethernet code is driving the hardware slightly differently which works on real hardware but not simh... From vince at mulhollon.com Sun Jul 7 07:26:38 2013 From: vince at mulhollon.com (Vince Mulhollon) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2013 06:26:38 -0500 Subject: [Simh] Making "Stripped Down" Simulator Builds + Other Queries In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 6, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove < captainkirk359 at gmail.com> wrote: > Is it possible to create a build of a specific emulator that has been > stripped or pared down to a specific configuration? The only other question I was wondering, is would it be possible to, > subsume a simulator into another program/application? > I think you may be going about this from a "windows" philosophy/development perspective, where absolutely everything needs to be compiled into one huge GUI executable because the OS doesn't provide very much.. If you go about it the unix/linux way life could be much simpler. For example, you can create a plain text config file to do all your configuration work, the end user does not need to manually type in "set cpu 8k" etc etc every time the simulator is started, and you don't need to recompile the source to default the CPU to 8k, you merely need to put that line (and many others) in a config file. Also for interactive work there are quite a few unix-ish ways to spawn off a CLI program and control its input and watch its output, ranging from general purpose languages like Perl to specialized systems like "expect". Just saying you might be steering down a more difficult path than necessary. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rosenfeld at grumpf.hope-2000.org Sun Jul 7 18:44:12 2013 From: rosenfeld at grumpf.hope-2000.org (Hans Rosenfeld) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 00:44:12 +0200 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20130707224411.GA16376@grumpf.hope-2000.org> On Sun, Jul 07, 2013 at 12:17:31PM +0100, David Brownlee wrote: > On 5 July 2013 23:46, Joel Heikkila wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > Just on a whim, I decided to try to netboot NetBSD on the VAX emulator. The > > mopd/dhcpd/NFS server is FreeBSD amd64 and the machine SIMH was running on > > is FreeBSD sparc64, they were both on the same hub. I'm using the latest > > SIMH code from Github. I tried it with both the "vax" µVAX 3900 emulator > > and the "microvax2" emulator. > > > > First, the MOP bootloader from every NetBSD since I think 1.5.3 is broken > > such as > > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot > > (unless I'm misconfiguring it or downloading the wrong file), so you have to > > dig into the archives to find a working bootloader such as from 1.5.3 > > http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-archive/NetBSD-1.5.2/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop > > I know the netboot bootloader was broken for a while, but I'm sure I > netbooted a 4000/90 using the 6.0 bootloader. Its *possible* it was > fixed sometime after 6.0 so it could have been in 6.1. Do you get the > same error trying the 6.1 bootloader? I fixed this in 2006, and the fixed version was shipped with 4.0. Hans -- %SYSTEM-F-ANARCHISM, The operating system has been overthrown From jjheik at gmail.com Mon Jul 8 02:42:41 2013 From: jjheik at gmail.com (Joel Heikkila) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 02:42:41 -0400 Subject: [Simh] Netbooting the SIMH VAX emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I know the netboot bootloader was broken for a while, but I'm sure I > netbooted a 4000/90 using the 6.0 bootloader. Its *possible* it was > fixed sometime after 6.0 so it could have been in 6.1. Do you get the > same error trying the 6.1 bootloader? With the 6.1 bootloader I'm not getting anywhere. The emulator spits out >>>b xqa0 (BOOT/R5:0 XQA0 2.. -XQA0 1..0.. HALT instruction, PC: 00005201 (HALT) (Some whitespace removed). mopd with the -d flag shows: MOP RC 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > ab:0:0:2:0:0 len 45 code 07 SID MOP RC 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > ab:0:0:2:0:0 len 37 code 07 SID MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > ab:0:0:1:0:0 len 47 code 08 RPR MOP DL 802.3 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba > 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc len 9 code 03 ASV MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba len 47 code 08 RPR MOP DL 802.3 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba > 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc len 14 code 02 MLD MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba len 11 code 0a RML MOP DL 802.3 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba > 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc len 40 code 14 PLT MOP DL 802.3 8:0:2b:aa:bb:cc > 1c:6f:65:af:9:ba len 11 code 0a RML and that's it. I'm using this file http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.1/vax/installation/netboot/boot This configuration still works with the 1.5.2 bootloader. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From u.schmeling at online.de Mon Jul 29 11:02:53 2013 From: u.schmeling at online.de (u.schmeling at online.de) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:02:53 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Simh] Restore issue with pdp11 Message-ID: <703233340.3733623.1375110172892.JavaMail.tomcat55@mrmseu3.kundenserver.de> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- Hi All, if one attaches a network interface to xq device and save it to a file, you will get a segfault on restore. This is caused by a wrong structure size in STATS reg. Attached you will find a patch to solve the issue. regards Uwe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: restore.patch Type: application/octet-stream Size: 728 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Mark at infocomm.com Mon Jul 29 13:16:51 2013 From: Mark at infocomm.com (Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm) Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 10:16:51 -0700 Subject: [Simh] Restore issue with pdp11 In-Reply-To: <703233340.3733623.1375110172892.JavaMail.tomcat55@mrmseu3.kundenserver.de> References: <703233340.3733623.1375110172892.JavaMail.tomcat55@mrmseu3.kundenserver.de> Message-ID: <0CC6789C1C831B4C8CCFF49D45D7010F9E8094E90B@REDROOF2.alohasunset.com> Thanks for that patch. This issue was fixed in the core source at https://github.com/simh/simh/ back in January. The latest code can be downloaded as a zip from: https://github.com/simh/simh/archive/master.zip. FYI. It seems that the patch you’ve supplied only fixes the size of the STATS reg for the XQB device and misses the same change for the XQA device. From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of u.schmeling at online.de Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 5:03 AM To: simh at trailing-edge.com Subject: [Simh] Restore issue with pdp11 Hi All, if one attaches a network interface to xq device and save it to a file, you will get a segfault on restore. This is caused by a wrong structure size in STATS reg. Attached you will find a patch to solve the issue. regards Uwe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: