[HECnet] installing LPs on RSX

[Mark Matlock]

>>> Yeah... I sometimes wonder why BP2 is rather odd. It uses its own installation procedures instead of the standard tools that most other layered products use, and it also behaves rather different than any other tool (it don't exit with any status for example, so you cannot tell if a compilation went ok or not programatically).
>> 
>> It really would be great to have the source code for the layered products to be able to fix issues like that.
> 
> *Yes*
> Oh, how I wish I had some clue on where to find those...
> So far, that search have been really futile. :-(


>>>> 
>>>> Indeed!   I wonder if the original tape that Tim Shoppa had still exists?
>>> 
>>> Nope. Or at least Tim don't have it. I asked several years ago, and he had returned the tapes after dumping them, and this was close to 15 years ago...
>>> I don't know if the guy he originally got the tapes from still have them. I'm not sure Tim even have any contact with the person, or even remember who it was.
>> 
>> Bruce Mitchell had a few tapes that were a bit rare. I think he told me once that he had the SPD-11 (RSX system performance monitoring system) tape which I've never seen anywhere. I know I have asked him about FMS-11 V1.0 which has RSX KED. (Later versions of FMS didn't include it)
> 
> Bruce Mitchell seems to refuse to speak to me. Not sure why.
> You're thinking of SPM-11 by the way. It would be an interesting tools to play with.

Bruce lives a few hundred miles away and I've spoke to him on the phone a couple times. We talked about meeting sometime and maybe this summer I could drive up and see him. He wrote a very nice book of tips on using RSX. You are right, I was  thinking of SPM-11 and he acted like he might be willing to make it available.

> Yes, as for KED, I heard it would be on some FMS distribution, but all the ones I have lack it. Not that I've really been missing KED in the first place. If I had some more time, I'd focus on getting AMIS working instead. I have the sources, and it's a pretty decent EMACS clone. There is a version working under RSTS/E, but that version sources seems to be lost. Newer version needs some hacking, since it by default is just a bit too large.
> (Written mostly in Pascal.)

   I liked KED's learn mode and used it to quickly modify large ASCII data files instead of writing code to do it for one time projects. I think the RT11 sources for KED exists. I've wondered how difficult it would be to convert it to RSX, changing the EMT traps etc. 

   EMACS would be nice but I haven't used it as much. It sounds like a chore to write or modify an editor in Pascal.

> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> No worries. My fixes included making it all work correctly in I/D space, and then I did a half-hearted attempt at adding a void datatype.
>>>> The I/D space fix for C would be great. Sometime ago I was trying to fix APL-11 to use I/D space. A guy had done this and put it on one of the DECUS tapes, but it was linked to an old FCSRES and when I tried to rebuild it, I got errors from TKB that I could not figure out. That was one of the things I was working on in my guest account on MIM that you graciously provided. Sometime I need to take another look at that. I think it is probably a simply fix, but I don't understand .odl files so it hasn't gotten fixed. In APL having I/D space is a big deal because it enlarges the available workspace by two fold.
>>> 
>>> I can probably help with that, if you just can catch me when I have some time...
>> 
>> Thanks, I'll capture exactly what the errors are and get it to you in a brief email so hopefully it won't take much of your time to determine what is needed.
> 
> Feel free. Always happy to help.
> 
>>>>>>> I should probably make a kit disk or something available from MIM/Madame as well. If I only had time...
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Too bad noone is willing to pay for me doing this kind of work. I could spend full time just fixing things for years... :-)
>>>>>> That is too bad. There are a number of things in RSX that I'm sure you could improve. I really do appreciate what you've done on TCP/IP.   Thanks!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Plenty of work to do... So little time. :-)
>>>>> Anyway, it's great that people find TCP/IP useful...
>>>>> I think the FTP code is good enough to be left for a while now. Next for proper telnet both in and out...
>>>> I have a nice terminal emulator on my iMac that works well with Simh telnet to DZ ports but it would be great to telnet directly to the real PDP-11/83 system I have. The FTP file access has been fantastic to great .dsk files over to the PDP-11/83. I use the SCSI2SD device and a UC07 to have two pseudo RA92s that provide plenty of space and high reliability.
>>> 
>>> By the way, you can also transfer TPC files. There is a slight trick to it, but it works.
>>> You need the TPC tool from the DECUS library, and also a tool called ATT.
>>> Once you have them, run ftp on the RSX system, and fetch TPC files in block mode (really, block mode, not binary mode). Once you have them on the RSX system, use ATT to change the file attributes. The first two words should be 1002, leave all the other header words alone.
>>> After that you can use the DECUS TPC tool to read the file, and write it to a virtual tape.
>> 
>> Thanks for that information! I have been planning to transfer some .tpc files to the PDP-11/83 and did not know about the changes needed on the file attributes. I could have wasted some time trying to figure this out.
> 
> You are welcome. I became curious about doing just this a couple of days ago, and located ATT. It's available now at MIM::DU:[ATT].

Thanks, I'll grab a copy of it tonight.

By the way I'm in Seattle this week, so tomorrow I'm planning to spend a day at the Living Computer Museum and see the KI-10. It should be a lot of fun.

Mark
> 
> There are several versions of TPC around. Unfortunately, they all have small irritating issues. I'm almost tempted to write a new version myself... The code is pretty ugly.
> 
>    Johnny
>