[Simh] Problem with QVSS graphics display

Peter Allan petermallan at gmail.com
Mon May 20 06:23:38 EDT 2019


Encouraged by the recent release of simulated vaxen with QVSS graphics, I
have tried out a couple of these with very different results.

Firsly I tried a microVAX II and put the line

   SET CPU MODEL=VAXstation in the .ini file.

I installed VMS 7.3 and everything worked fine. I had a QVSS window appear
and I could work nicely apart from a problem with the keypad that I will
report separately.

However, when I set up a microVAX 3900 configured as a VAXstation, it has
strange black bars on the video (QVSS) screen.

Specifically, on the login screen, the word COMPAQ towards the top of the
screen has 22 thick vertical bars over it that are about 80% taller than
the letters in COMPAQ.

In the login box, Username and Password have the letters se in Username and
ass in Password blacked out by a vertical bar that runs from above Username
to well below Password. Also the letters m in Username and ord in Password
are blacked out by short bars that are only as tall as the letters.

There are several other bars that corrupt the login box. They all seem to
be aligned vertically, although some are tall while others are short
(shorter than they are wide).

When I log in, the session manager has similar black bars on it and when I
click on the Applications menu (fortunately I know where it is, since it is
illegible) and start a DECterm, then that windows has the black bars too.

Typing something like SHO DEV D produces a listing where about half of the
text that is displayed is obscured by black bars.

Typing EDIT/EDT A.A produces vertical black bars that fill the DECterm
window. The bars are about 1.5 characters wide.

Typing C at the * prompt clears most of the screen, but as soon as I type
any key, the vertical bars come back.

This makes the 3900 essentially unusable as a VAXstation.

My computer is a standard PC running CentOS 6.10. The version of SDL I am
using
is 1.2, so I suspect that, yet it works fine on the microVAX II.

I built the simulators from the code on github. The git commit id is
05f84879 for both of them.

My vax.ini file is:

SET CPU NOIDLE
SET CPU IDLE=VMS
SET CPU MODEL=VAXstation

ATTACH NVR nvram.bin
;
; Set up the disks
SET    RQ0 RA81
SET    RQ1 DISABLE
SET    RQ2 DISABLE
SET    RQ3 CDROM
ATTACH RQ0 system
ATTACH -r RQ3 cd
;
; Line printer
;
;;ATTACH LPT printer
;
; Card Reader
;
SET CR DISABLE
;
; Disable RL cartridge disks
SET RL DISABLE
;
; Disable unused tape drives
SET TQ TK70
ATTACH TQ0 tape1
SET TQ1 DISABLE
SET TQ2 DISABLE
SET TQ3 DISABLE
;
; Disable TSV11 magnetic tape drives
SET TS DISABLE
;
; Set up the ethernet interface
SET XQ MAC=08-00-2B-AA-BB-CC
ATTACH XQ eth0
;
; Allow telent connections to the DZV11 serial interface
SET DZ LINES=4
ATTACH DZ 10003
;
; Start the CPU
SET CPU CONHALT
DEP BDR 0
BOOT CPU
;
EXIT

I am hoping that I have done something wrong, but I can't see what.

Help please!!

Peter Allan
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