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New PDP-11/23, have some questions!

That's an interesting change. Do you think a similar modification should be practical on a DLV11-J?

I've sent bensinc an image to try via PM.
 
NF6X said:
That's an interesting change. Do you think a similar modification should be practical on a DLV11-J?

I've sent bensinc an image to try via PM.
Click to expand...

The UART portion is the same, but how the baud rates are generated for the four serial ports would be an issue. They are generated from a common 614KHz crystal-based oscillator. Just replacing the crystal might work to get 115Kb, but then you would probably have to run all the ports at that same baud rate (or 57.6K and divides by 2 of it). 9600b would no longer be an option.

The 614K signal is also rectified to produce the -12V for RS232, so that might also need to be tweaked if the crystal is replaced with 1.843MHz (3X higher). You might not get a good -12V level out at that higher clock rate. 1.843MHz is a common crystal frequency, so it should be easy enough to try.

Don

PS I'll post some pictures of my DL11-W modification later.
 
Thanks for the disk image!

I had to fix some things the TU58 emulator to get it to compile under Ubuntu 14.04, but it seems to work! I do have to set the baud rate vi stty manually after starting, but I'll try and fix that as well later.

The boot loader in my EPROM seems to be a working TU58 bootloader, as when I start it up, the emulator responds and starts sending data. However, I haven't had been able to get anything to actually boot.

NF6X, your disk image gives me the following on my console:


?BOOT-U-Conflicting SYSGEN options


000720
@


I tried booting some of the other images found on the TU58 emulator site, though I'm not sure they're all supposed to be bootable. The ones I tried just dropped me back to the console without any messages.

It seems like my system is at least partially working, but I'm not sure where to go from here! Could my "BOOT-U-Conflicting SYSGEN options" message be something related to how the disk image was created? Maybe my system doesn't have something it expects to find?

I also wrote a serial boot loader program, and tried booting using two different TU58 boot loaders that I found in the forums, and they appear to act the same as my EPROM version.

Thanks!
 
Well, I might have accidentally sent you a nonfunctional image. I'll need to try it out on my system at home, but I can't promise that I'll remember to do that tonight.
 
bensinc said:
Thanks for the disk image!

I had to fix some things the TU58 emulator to get it to compile under Ubuntu 14.04, but it seems to work! I do have to set the baud rate vi stty manually after starting, but I'll try and fix that as well later.

The boot loader in my EPROM seems to be a working TU58 bootloader, as when I start it up, the emulator responds and starts sending data. However, I haven't had been able to get anything to actually boot.

NF6X, your disk image gives me the following on my console:


?BOOT-U-Conflicting SYSGEN options


000720
@


I tried booting some of the other images found on the TU58 emulator site, though I'm not sure they're all supposed to be bootable. The ones I tried just dropped me back to the console without any messages.

It seems like my system is at least partially working, but I'm not sure where to go from here! Could my "BOOT-U-Conflicting SYSGEN options" message be something related to how the disk image was created? Maybe my system doesn't have something it expects to find?

I also wrote a serial boot loader program, and tried booting using two different TU58 boot loaders that I found in the forums, and they appear to act the same as my EPROM version.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

All the .dsk images under: http://www.ak6dn.dyndns.org/PDP-11/TU58 should be bootable on your system. XXDP is written agnostic of the PDP-11 CPU type, and all it requires to boot is a CPU and the console and TU-58 serial ports. No other peripherals are required.

You need to have your serial line setup in 8b mode, check that. The TU-58 protocol is 8b binary.

You also might want to put tu58em into 'debug' mode (D command) to get a very detailed printout of the communications between your PDP-11 and tu58em host CPU.

Don
 
Thanks!

Do you know if any of those other images on the TU58 emulator site are bootable? I've tried several of them, but they just halt back at the console after loading.
 
I did find a description of that error in some docs on archive.org:

?BOOT-U-Conflicting SYSGEN options

Support for the error logger, extended mem-
ory, and device time-out is not the same in
the system handler and monitor. Execution
terminates.

I'm not sure if that helps... I don't really know what it's referring to.
 
I can't get any of them to boot for some reason then!

I have an 11/23, so just now I tried 1123_1.dsk. The emulator seems to send it okay, but on my console it stops here:

000552
@

I'm not sure what it's supposed to boot into, but I don't think it's working! Do you know where I might start to try and debug them?

Thanks!
 
When I was booting my system from tu58em, I found that I needed to use all of the various command-line options to slow things down to realistic speeds.

Edited to add: In particular, I think I found that I needed to use --timing 2. I also used --verbose and --debug, but I don't know if that made any functional difference. It did show me what was going on, though.
 
Sorry, I was replying at the same time you were replying earlier with more info!

Obviously it's not booting, but I would think that the TU58 emulator is working from a communcations standpoint if NF6X's image was at least able to load to the point to give me an error from RT-11. I have been running in verbose and debug mode, and it doesn't seem to complain about anything.
 
I've tried it with the various timing settings too, and get the same results on your disk and the others. I might dig out a Windows machine and try the precompiled binary next, as I had to do a bit of hacking to get it to compile.

But, I still think that if RT-11 was up enough to give me an actual error message, I should be almost there!
 
NF6X said:
When I was booting my system from tu58em, I found that I needed to use all of the various command-line options to slow things down to realistic speeds.

Edited to add: In particular, I think I found that I needed to use --timing 2. I also used --verbose and --debug, but I don't know if that made any functional difference. It did show me what was going on, though.
Click to expand...

I've never used TU58EM in application mode (even at 115Kb baud on my 11/34) with any of the timing delays inserted ... they were put there mainly to make running the DEC TU-58 diagnostic test happy (which complains about very fast seek times) and to simulate how bad a real TU-58 could be.

I do routinely run it with --verbose and sometimes --debug. Running in a CYGWIN console on windows neither of these slow down the link in any observable way.

Don
 
bensinc said:
I've tried it with the various timing settings too, and get the same results on your disk and the others. I might dig out a Windows machine and try the precompiled binary next, as I had to do a bit of hacking to get it to compile.

But, I still think that if RT-11 was up enough to give me an actual error message, I should be almost there!
Click to expand...

It really sounds to me like you don't have the link in 8b data mode, but rather 7b ASCII mode.

I would really like to see you try the precompiled windows version to see if there is any difference in behavior.

Don
 
AK6DN said:
I've never used TU58EM in application mode (even at 115Kb baud on my 11/34) with any of the timing delays inserted ... they were put there mainly to make running the DEC TU-58 diagnostic test happy (which complains about very fast seek times) and to simulate how bad a real TU-58 could be.

I do routinely run it with --verbose and sometimes --debug. Running in a CYGWIN console on windows neither of these slow down the link in any observable way.
Click to expand...

I've used it exclusively on my Mac, so maybe that affects the timing.
 
gslick said:
For a storage device the easiest option is usually to go with a SCSI controller. The least expensive one I currently see on eBay today is this one at $125, though maybe the seller would accept a lower offer. I think they originally were asking $175 and have lowered that once or twice.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251514096256

That one is an MTI QTS-30, which only supports TMSCP tape, but the board itself is the same as a CMD CQD-200 and it can be converted into an equivalent of a CQD-200/TM version with simultaneous TMSCP tape and MSCP disk support by replacing the EPROMs and CSR decode PAL.
Click to expand...

I see that one finally sold for $100. Anyone here pick it up?
 
I was able to dig up a Windows 7 machine and try to boot using the pre-compiled TU58 executable, but I got the same results. NF6X's disk image gives me that RT-11 error message, and the others from the TU58 site just bring me back to ODT. Here's the output from the TU58 emulator if you're interested in seeing it: http://pastebin.com/rCJZrSi7

I'm not sure what to try next!
 
I'm not sure why my posts sometimes don't appear, but I posted earlier that I did try booting from Windows 7, running the pre-compiled version of the TU58 emulator. It produced the same results unfortunately!

Edit: And my post appeared just after I wrote this!
 
Last edited:
Hi All;
I had the same kind of Output, when I was trying to run my PDP 11/45, and later determined that I had one of the settings was wrong, that were not clearly stated in the "How" of setting this up.. I have forgotten just what it was, also You might want to get a terminal emulator like Tera-Term, for doing your transfers.. You might look at my postings, as I probably have it stated somewhere..

THANK YOU Marty
 
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