[Simh] EXT : Ultrix 1.0

[Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm]

QVSS support was done by Matt Burke (as part of the extra VAX models he implemented) and has been in the MicroVAX I and MicroVAX II simulators available on github for at least a year.

The video support provided uses the video, keyboard and mouse capabilities provided by libSDL.

Since we’ve only got the mono graphics of the QVSS video to worry about now the necessary interfaces to provide color capabilities haven’t been fully worked out, but should be not too hard to work out when necessary.

From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Hittner, David T (IS)
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2014 8:44 AM
To: Henry Bent
Cc: simh at trailing-edge.com
Subject: Re: [Simh] EXT : Ultrix 1.0

AFAIK, the Q-Bus QVSS graphic video card(s) have not been simulated in SIMH, unless someone has done it recently.
QVSS mono graphics and QDSS color graphics were supported on the MicroVAX 1 (KA610), MicroVAX 2 (KA630), MicroVAX 3 (KA65x), and VAX 4000 (KA670/690) series.
You’d have to map the graphics output to some fairly common graphics renderer for portability: X or QT are probably the best bets. X would be more universally available.

One of the 1-off simulators posted on the web really did simulate Rainbow or Pro350 graphics, but it only worked on windows, and I don’t think it was ever back-ported into the SIMH code base. It was based on an older SIMH 2.x release, I think.

I took a stab at writing the QDSS simulator using X once, but couldn’t find enough documentation to figure out what the QDSS card was doing. There’s a lot of weird pixel mapping going on.
I still have real QDSS boards in an  VAX 4000/500 to compare behavior with if anyone ever finds enough QDSS documentation for me.

--

Regarding the DEQNA – there were some early DEQNA boards that had less bits defined in the registers. It’s possible that Ultrix 1.0 sees the ‘wrong’ register state - undefined bits shouldn’t be tested and verified, but in practice, most OS’s *assume* that the undefined bits will be in a specific state at specific times, and will exit if the undefined bits aren’t in the ‘correct’ state.

Dave

From: simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com<mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com> [mailto:simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com] On Behalf Of Henry Bent
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 9:09 PM
To: simh at trailing-edge.com<mailto:simh at trailing-edge.com>
Subject: EXT :[Simh] Ultrix 1.0

I had success booting the Unix Archive's floppy distribution of Ultrix 1.0 on the MicroVAX 1 simulator.  It appears that the distribution there was only meant for a dual-RX50 MicroVAX 1 with an RD drive, and will not boot on any other machine.  RQ0 needs to be an RD51 or RD52, and RQ1 and RQ2 need to be RX50s.  TTI and TTO need to be 7 bit.  To boot the installer, put 32m-1.0-bin/01 on RQ1 and 32m-1.0-bin/02 on RQ2.  The install goes cleanly, albeit with quite a bit of disk swapping - the installation disk set is 13 floppies.
The QVSS is supported and will display some output on boot.  I haven't yet looked into what is needed to use it as the console (if that's possible?).

The kernel seems to support what I assume is the DEQNA - it has references to a qe device - but I can't figure out how to get it recognized.  Unfortunately there are no kernel config files in the distribution, so I have no idea if the stock kernel is expecting the controller at a non-standard address.  Any help with this would be greatly appreciated,
-Henry
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