AT&T 7300 PC: Adventures in installing ETHERNET!!!

[czunit]

I’ll see if I can modify the ETHERNET+IN I made previously from the 5 dd’d install disks so that it installs properly from /usr/spool/uucppublic - hopefully it’s just a matter of +x perms on the Install file, and potentially pad the +IN so it decompresses properly with the -B param used on cpio, which I don’t know if “install from electronic mail” uses -B or not.

I have not attempted to use the 5 dd images to install from floppy. Additionally those 5 dd’s are not on bitsavers. There are no IMD’s of the Ethernet disks available that I’m aware of but @shirsch mentioned having them. That would be great to get on bitsavers.

Now that I'm loading up some other +IN images on the system I don't think +x perms are needed on the Install and remove scripts by default. My guess is the AT&T uucp installer just does a sh Install command to get things going so it's not required.

It was probably barfing when it couldn't load the ether.o file due to the aforementioned corruption. Fix that and the IN file is the way to go these days as you can just kermit it up and don't have to screw around with floppies.

Thanks for working on all this. I wonder who will be the next person to get Ethernet working. And on a side note, did the starlan card work with tcp/ip?

 

[shirsch]

Thanks for uploading. I tried to open it in an older excel but it barfed on possible virus (probably doesn't like openoffice).

I wonder if it would be possible to just warm the board up on my Aoyue preheater then use the hot air tools to drop sockets in through the existing solder. So far though I don't seem to be RAM bound on the system, maybe I'll look into replacing the WD disk chip and going to a larger (and slightly more modern. Hah) disk drive.

Sorry, here is an Excel compatible version (I hope).

My skills (and luck) with hot-air soldering are so poor I wouldn't be able to comment on that approach. I did the WD2010 + secondary drive update to one of my 7300s. I replaced the hard drive with a Gesswein (pdp8online) MFM emulator and it's setup to present two large disks. Doubt I'll ever run out of space on that unit.

Here's a picture just prior to reassembly.

 

[agentb]

I don't think +x perms are needed on the Install and remove scripts by default. My guess is the AT&T uucp installer just does a sh Install

That makes sense to me. I was thinking more about it and it didn’t make sense that the permissions were wrong since this ETHERNET+IN was created directly from the 5 dd images. Just need to figure out the padding I think, possibly remove that dupe TRAILER!!! entry.

 

[agentb]

I wonder who will be the next person to get Ethernet working. And on a side note, did the starlan card work with tcp/ip?

@firebirdta84 might be able to get around to his Ethernet card this winter, haha who knows! I’m not sure on StarLAN, that’s a good question as to what was used. I don’t recall seeing install media archived anywhere for StarLAN cards so I haven’t looked into it. Though I’ve gotten the impression that there are far more StarLAN cards for 3b1 kicking around than there are Ethernet cards.

 

[czunit]

That makes sense to me. I was thinking more about it and it didn’t make sense that the permissions were wrong since this ETHERNET+IN was created directly from the 5 dd images. Just need to figure out the padding I think, possibly remove that dupe TRAILER!!! entry.

Or we could just re-CPIO the file with the right flags and go from there. We have the ether.o file, and that was the only broken one in the archive.

 

[komradebob]

Indeed. I'm currently struggling to get a floppy image of the ethernet disk created that I can use with FlashFloppy. Trick being all I have available are linux/OSX systems and I've been unable to create an hfe file that the unixpc sees via thdisk-ane FlashFloppy/GOTEK. Has anyone got a description of how to take a file with a FAT fs in it and turn it into an hfe image?

 

[shirsch]

I’m not sure on StarLAN, that’s a good question as to what was used. I don’t recall seeing install media archived anywhere for StarLAN cards so I haven’t looked into it. Though I’ve gotten the impression that there are far more StarLAN cards for 3b1 kicking around than there are Ethernet cards.

I have a good collection of StarLAN support software and drivers for x86 and UnixPC. PM me if you need anything.

 

[agentb]

Indeed. I'm currently struggling to get a floppy image of the ethernet disk created that I can use with FlashFloppy. Trick being all I have available are linux/OSX systems and I've been unable to create an hfe file that the unixpc sees via thdisk-ane FlashFloppy/GOTEK. Has anyone got a description of how to take a file with a FAT fs in it and turn it into an hfe image?

What Ethernet files do you have and what sizes are they? The ones I've seen floating around are a cpio archive that spans 5 floppies - each image being 316 KB - so looks to be missing a track of a 320 KB, 8sec/trk disk image. I took these images and combined them into the ETHERNET+IN that's on bitsavers. I'm not sure if there are other images floating around for the Ethernet disks.

Regarding gotek/FlashFloppy, I've used it with .IMD files IIRC with UNIX PC. Valid disk sizes for UNIX PC are 320KB (8sec/trk, DOS), 360KB (9sec/trk, DOS), 400KB (10sec/trk, native).

 

[komradebob]

What Ethernet files do you have and what sizes are they? The ones I've seen floating around are a cpio archive that spans 5 floppies - each image being 316 KB - so looks to be missing a track of a 320 KB, 8sec/trk disk image. I took these images and combined them into the ETHERNET+IN that's on bitsavers. I'm not sure if there are other images floating around for the Ethernet disks.

Regarding gotek/FlashFloppy, I've used it with .IMD files IIRC with UNIX PC. Valid disk sizes for UNIX PC are 320KB (8sec/trk, DOS), 360KB (9sec/trk, DOS), 400KB (10sec/trk, native).

I have the ETHERNET+IN set. Not sure where I got it, but the challenge was getting it onto the 3b1 asI found only dd'd copies of the floppies or the whole directory. Getting the dd images converted to IMD remains a mystery, so I solved it the hard way.

Finally solved this last night by using HxCFlopptEmulator to create four 360K MSDOS floppy images, loading up a compressed, tar'd copy of the directory split across the floppy images. Loaded those up into FlashFloppy via USB stick, unloaded them into a directory on the 3b1, putting the chunks back together, unrolling it, and running ./Install.

I am no presented with the ethernet configuration screen asking for a network number and name. I've tried putting in a number for the network number, an IP address of a network, but neither works. The configuration fails with the following:

ERROR #9: Cannot initialize ETHERNET.
Make sure that /etc/lddrv/ether.rc contains the correct hostname/internet-address Ethernet driver is being unloaded
Touch ENTER to configure

after enter, I get a screen

Loading ETHERNET driver.

Please wait...
./Install: /etc/lddrv/ether.rc cannot execute

Any idea at to what it's complaining about?

 

[shirsch]

Looks like the ethernet driver is failing to load. ISTR some discussion about a corrupted driver in one of the archives.

 

[komradebob]

Was a multitude of issues. Started off with a fresh set of floppy images and it works fine. Many thanks to everyone, one more unixpc is back on the network!

 

[czunit]

Aw that's cool! Maybe we can put our systems on the real internet and talk to each other!

More seriously, any thoughts on getting a resolver running? I doubt we could ever run http, but we could run gopher.....

 

[komradebob]

A resolver is pretty simple. The trick is intercepting the gethostbyname call in the c library to look in the DNS as well as in the hosts file. Of course, if you are feeling really cheezy, since there are only a few network commands in the system, you wrap them with a script that does the name to number translation that either runs the code (ftp, telnet, etc) with the IP address or does the lookup and stuffs the name/IP address in the hosts file. something like this:

cat dns_telnet
#!/your_favourite_scripting_language_that_runs_on_3b1

RESOLVER=192.168.0.11
IP_ADDR = `rexec $RESOLVER nslookup $1 | grep Address | awk -e '{print $2}'`
telnet $IP_ADDR

Then
bash$ dns_telnet my_favourite_host.example.com

will take you where you want to go. Wrap the rest of the network commands similarly.

 

[bear]

IP_ADDR = `rexec $RESOLVER nslookup $1 | grep Address | awk -e '{print $2}'`

ahem

incorrect use of whitespace with =

awk -e not portable

grep with awk redundant, `awk '/Address/ { print $2 }'`

unquoted use of $1 results in trojan horse

 

[agentb]

one more unixpc is back on the network!

Excellent! That was the same method I used when looking to transfer over larger files.

 

[komradebob]

ahem

incorrect use of whitespace with =

awk -e not portable

grep with awk redundant, `awk '/Address/ { print $2 }'`

unquoted use of $1 results in trojan horse

Thanks bear, all good points.

 

[developer]

Nice to see some Safari S4's are still alive.