Pdp-11 gui

[Qbus]

Ok, so although I have been doing this PDP-11 stuff for a while now have to admit that I have always approached this thing from an old school approach. On most all of my hardware I have always used dedicated terminal or a computer running a terminal program but after all of the reports and rave reviews about using a GUI to work with your primitive systems I have decided to give it a try.
The PDP-11 GUI that I am using is:

http://www.retrocmp.com/tools/pdp11gui

I installed it last night on an old XP Workstation that was in the shop and after building up a serial cable today went to try it am have an issues. First thing I did was test the windows system to the PDP-11/23 just using the HyperTerminal program that comes with windows and setting it up for 9600, 8, N, 1 everything works well. That 11/23 has a bootstrap loader that starts right after the memory test and prompts “START?” and when answered with a “Y” boots the RL drive and RT-11, any other answer will drop the system back into ODT. When I try to use the GUI it starts and responds that it cannot communicate with the system and to check the settings. I have the same settings for the GUI, 9600, 8 N, 1 and the preference on the software set to 11/23 18 bit version. The question is do I have to have the 11/23 set up to just start in ODT at maybe 173000? And is that fancy GUI upset because it seeing the START prompt?
Did not have much time to play with the system at lunch today and will attempt to try with the system in ODT and see if that makes a difference tonight.

 

[smp]

I thought that I had looked into this last year when I got my PDP-11/23, and IIRC, I thought that this GUI was only supposed to work with a PDP-11/44, for some reason. I don't remember this well, though.

I will follow your effort with your 11/23 with interest!

smp

 

[MattisLind]

I thought that I had looked into this last year when I got my PDP-11/23, and IIRC, I thought that this GUI was only supposed to work with a PDP-11/44, for some reason. I don't remember this well, though.

I will follow your effort with your 11/23 with interest!

smp

It works fine with my 11/04 which is using the console emulation in the M9312.


I think that the machine needs to startup to the "@" prompt for the PDP11GUI to recognize it so that is a good first try.

 

[Qbus]

Got tied up with family stuff last night and never got an opportunity to get out to the workshop. In the settings/connections menu there is a list of a dozen or so systems including 11/03, 11/23 18 bit and 11/23 22 bit so there is a configuration file
(PDP11.INI) file that loads when you launch the GUI.

http://www.retrocmp.com/tools/pdp11gui/machine-discription

Gives a description of that file and tells how to build your own. Think having the system start in ODT is the answer but did not get time to try that last night. The issue is that I would like to keep the bootstrap program that currently loads for when I am using the system with anything else so don’t want to get to the point of disabling the bootstrap loader just yet but think this will involve starting the system using HyperTerminal in windows and knocking it back to ODT and then starting the PDP11 GUI application because with the way the application starts now it appears to attempt to communicate with the system but it’s not happy and comes back with a communications error message and apparently there is no way out of that.

 

[Qbus]

Ok, it has to be in ODT to proceed. By knocking the system in ODT from HyperTerminal and then closing that and opening the GUI everything appears to work well. Found that it’s easy to just start the PDP-11 and hit the Halt switch and then return it to run and you can go directly to the GUI. The stuff under the I/O page is fun with being able to look at all the registers at once along with the console terminal display. The memory functions appear to be useful in giving the ability to look at a larger field at one time. The next thing will be to work with some of the other features and see where that gets me. Although it more then likely me it appears that the GUI is good for working at a machine language level but when I reset the system and loaded RT-11 the only function that is useable is the terminal window, attempting to run anything else crashes the GUI and you have to exit and restart it to the extent that after attempting to do anything in the terminal it wont work until after you close and restart the application. Wondering now if after you load XXPD that it may have the same affect on the GUI?

 

[Qbus]

Final Thoughts:
Although many of the issues that I have encountered in using this GUI may be my misunderstanding or failure to properly configure I have to say that I found using the GUI complicated operations that can be carried out over a terminal emulator or better yet by a simple serial terminal. The GUI has its strong points in allowing you to look at groups or registers or many memory locations at once the problems booting the GUI with a system with a bootstrap or the unexpected hangs when running a program were an issue to me.