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

C

czunit

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2015
Messages
520
Hi all!

In a nutshell I have an AT&T 3B1/7300 PC, 2mb RAM on board, old software, and a genuine Ethernet card.

ACRTiDC.jpg


After many decades a copy of the ETHERNET+IN cpio file has been published, so I downloaded it, recompressed it from .gz to .Z (as my 7300 doesn't have gzip), fired up Kermit, copied it over to /usr/spool/uucppublic and tried to install.

Didn't work. So I manually expanded the CPIO archive in /tmp/install, and found the Install and Remove files do not have the x bit set. Quick chmod fixes that and the software installs.

However the software does not work. Throws the following:

jNZUwgc.jpg


I do have some of the manuals for the TCP/IP, Enhanced TCP/IP Win/3B Lan Interface, however the administrator's guide Appendix A for hardware install and diagnostics points you to the

AT&T Unix PC Ethernet board installation and diagnostic guide

Which of course I do not have.

So, questions:
1) Does anyone have a working one of these?
2) Any idea where the diagnostics may be?
3) Any idea how to probe the IO interfaces to see if the card is there/how far up the stack it may go/what the error messages mean?

Perhaps I am running the wrong version of Unix, or something else. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

(I have the users, programming, and Admin guide for this card. I don't have the install :)
 
What version of the OS are you running? You might be on to something there. I’m not sure what those cmpb or ldtbread references are to.
 
Well, according to the uname -v I'm running 3.51. And this is interesting.....

First I needed to figure out how device loaders work. The key tool seems to be lddv over in /etc/lddrv. Doing an lddrv -av (driver) should load up the driver. So I decided to start with a driver I know, love, and have a card for: tp. (Tape)

With the tape card out and a lddrv -av tp I get:

Allocated 0x3000 bytes starting at 0x5b000 for device tp b:-1 c:9 id:2
Then a bind failed, no such device after about 25 seconds.

After installing I get allocated properly. This is in the middle slot. Middle slot is ok. tp card is ok.

Once again trying to load ether gets the cmpb:ldtbread failed:719

Something is wrong with the Ethernet object file. Wrong version? Date? Hm?

Other oddness: Ether.o is huge by comparison to other files. Why?
106496 vs. 48536 for wind (winchester disk?)

So I went back to the install media. And found that there are *two* of them on the install media.

So the one that is there in my /etc/lddrv is size 106496 bytes. It is the one from the "new" directory on the install media. In the normal directory on the install media there is a different 115914 sized ether.o

So on a lark I copied the "not new" ether.o to the /etc/lddrv directory and tried loading it. Bingo, something worked. With the "older" one the system tried to allocate space then blew up spectacularly.
allocated 0x14000 bytes starting at 0x367000 for device ether, B:-1 C:10 id:3
Then it threw two underfined symbols
wdopen referenced in ether.o
wintty referenced in ether.o

ld fatal. Symbol referencing errors. No output written to ether
ld failed:1 errno:25

There is also a libnet.a as well in the "new" directory that is probably wrong. I tried backing that one out to the "not new" version but the load still fails. DRAT!

So what does this mean?

Well looking at the Install file I see that it does check the version, and if it's 3.51 it installs the "new" files and if not it installs the "not new" files.

Is it possible to load up a 3.5 version of the OS and NOT 3.51? Or maybe I have a botched system here and I should install a fresh 3.51 install. Or a 3.5 install.

I have a Dave Gesswin MFM emulator, and it might be time to start using it, as the floppy disk on this system is crocked and the 67mb hard drive is probably not the happiest thing on Earth. Hm. I also have one of the hacked flash floppy things, so I might be able to use that as a replacement for the floppy drive.

Thoughts? It's possible ether.o in the new directory is corrupt? Can one open it with a threading disassembler to see if it's legit?
 
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Interesting. Given you are running 3.51, sounds like that “new” ether.o is the one you want. It’s possible something is botched or weird with your OS install or config. MFM emulator would be good to try. That’s what I’m using with David Gesswein’s VCF disk image. I also use a gotek floppy emulator. Both work great.

One question is whether you have FIXDISK2.0 installed. I believe that updates you to 3.51m (but I don’t think that’s reflected in uname, may just still say 3.51). There’s an off chance that the “new” ether driver wants 3.51m. If you look at installed software in the GUI, FIXDISK 2.0 should be listed if it was installed.

Have you tried the Ethernet card in all 3 slots?
 
Hm. To speed this up, can you send me over a copy of your system patched to the latest software? I'll load that on my Gesswin system and try loading up the ethernet drivers.

Actually you can try installing the ETHERNET+IN. If it works, you should be able to do the lddrv -av ether and see it try to load, not throw errors, but ultimately say device not found.

That would help a lot. If you get the same errors on a good 3.51 system then we know there is a problem with ether.o

C
 
David’s image is here

I can’t test now, but I did previously try installing on the FreeBee emulator (which doesn’t support Ethernet) to make sure the software installed, which it did. I do recall getting an error from the driver, as expected, but I don’t recall the error. I don’t think it was the error you are getting. I’ll try to test on FreeBee (with David’s VCF image) when I’m at my computer next.
 
czunit said:
I do have some of the manuals for the TCP/IP, Enhanced TCP/IP Win/3B Lan Interface, however the administrator's guide Appendix A for hardware install and diagnostics points you to the

AT&T Unix PC Ethernet board installation and diagnostic guide

Which of course I do not have.
Click to expand...
I have a scan of the installation and diagnostic guide. Too big to attach here, but PM if you would like a copy.
 
@shirsch do you happen to have a copy of the Ethernet diagnostics disk? I didn't even realize there was one until I read about it in your docs.
 
I've never seen the ethernet diagnostics disk, unfortunately. Any possibility the diagnostic program(s) were installed with the support software and simply not documented?
 
I have an install of 3.51 without FIXDISK2.0 which I tried in FreeBee and went through the same ETHERNET+IN manual install process, and also received the cmpb:ldtbread failed:719 error when attempting lddrv -av ether (the 106496 sized file, "new").
 
I found another disk image which may be the Ethernet Diagnostics disk, looking at the strings in the image, it looks like it's the regular Diagnostics disk with a menu option "12 - Ethernet" added. This may be different from the diagnostics mentioned in the Ethernet manuals, I haven't looked yet.
 

Attachments

  • ETHER-diag.zip
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I installed FIXDISK2.0, updating to kernel 3.51m (from 3.51), and still get the same error, cmpb:ldtbread failed:719
 
ldtbread(3X) reads a symbol from a COFF binary. If it's failing, the installation is probably broken, perhaps because the binary is corrupt or because some other library file is missing. Or maybe the kernel needs reconfiguring?
 
czunit said:
Hi all!

In a nutshell I have an AT&T 3B1/7300 PC, 2mb RAM on board, old software, and a genuine Ethernet card.

ACRTiDC.jpg


After many decades a copy of the ETHERNET+IN cpio file has been published, so I downloaded it, recompressed it from .gz to .Z (as my 7300 doesn't have gzip), fired up Kermit, copied it over to /usr/spool/uucppublic and tried to install.

Didn't work. So I manually expanded the CPIO archive in /tmp/install, and found the Install and Remove files do not have the x bit set. Quick chmod fixes that and the software installs.

However the software does not work. Throws the following:

jNZUwgc.jpg


I do have some of the manuals for the TCP/IP, Enhanced TCP/IP Win/3B Lan Interface, however the administrator's guide Appendix A for hardware install and diagnostics points you to the

AT&T Unix PC Ethernet board installation and diagnostic guide

Which of course I do not have.

So, questions:
1) Does anyone have a working one of these?
2) Any idea where the diagnostics may be?
3) Any idea how to probe the IO interfaces to see if the card is there/how far up the stack it may go/what the error messages mean?

Perhaps I am running the wrong version of Unix, or something else. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

(I have the users, programming, and Admin guide for this card. I don't have the install :)
Click to expand...
You indeed have a rare card there! I'm also one of the few who has one...only ONE. So, we'll have to test together. I have yet to even TRY mine yet. BUT, that said, you're in the best hands here with agentb, as he is next best other than to DoN Nichols, who only posts on the comp.sys.3b1 Google Group, and then rarely. So, let's see what comes of this!
 
czunit said:
Hm. To speed this up, can you send me over a copy of your system patched to the latest software? I'll load that on my Gesswin system and try loading up the ethernet drivers.

Actually you can try installing the ETHERNET+IN. If it works, you should be able to do the lddrv -av ether and see it try to load, not throw errors, but ultimately say device not found.

That would help a lot. If you get the same errors on a good 3.51 system then we know there is a problem with ether.o

C
Click to expand...
Interesting side note, I DO have the original MFM hard drive from that UNIX PC that had my one Ethernet Card installed, and I have every reason to believe that the Ethernet software was intstalled and working on that UNIX PC. But, when I tried to image it, I got some errors. Perhaps I'll try again? Especially since @czunit you say you are using a Gessweing MFM Emulator, you could just try the image and see if it works for you! Not a long term solution for those of us UNIX PC Enthusiasts, but a good interim options while we try to get the original Ethernet install images fixed. What are your thoughts on this?
 
I have images of a known good (5) diskette TCPIP installation disk set. They are in IMD format and would require an MS-DOS PC with Imagedisk or Applesauce device to write them to media. Let me know if this would be of help? Or, alternately, you can convert them to HFE and use with an HxC or FlashFloppy/Gotek emulator.
 
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agentb said:
I found another disk image which may be the Ethernet Diagnostics disk, looking at the strings in the image, it looks like it's the regular Diagnostics disk with a menu option "12 - Ethernet" added. This may be different from the diagnostics mentioned in the Ethernet manuals, I haven't looked yet.
Click to expand...
I cannot make sense of that image size. Do you know what the track / sector layout should be on disk? It does not correlate with either 8x512 or 9x512 geometry.
 
shirsch said:
cannot make sense of that image size
Click to expand...
Yeah I noticed it was a weird size. Probably could be dd’d to a floppy and work. Most UNIX PC disks are 10x512 (400K) but I feel like the diag disk may have been 8x512 or 9x512.
 
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