[HECnet] KLH-10 TOPS-10 DECnet Executor Configuration Persistence

[Supratim Sanyal]

On 3/10/20 10:54 PM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
> I don't think it would be a terrible idea to understand just a little 
> bit more to know what start up files to edit, but I certainly do 
> understand not wanting to be bothered with something.  If I remember 
> any more, I'll let you know.

Just temporarily - see the problem is if I don't "CHANGE" it comes up as 
24.172 and I don't want to accidentally introduce a rogue node, so 
expect will be a workaround for now. This also means 24.172 is 
persistently pulled from somewhere, I'll dig deeper into the pointers 
received in this thread to find the right place to change it at.

> The new SIMH port appears to allow for a slaved PDP-6, which I 
> remember seeing on the 9th floor (It was connected to the MIT AI 
> KA-10).  I think they only shared one moby.  The last I heard was that 
> the KL sources to ITS (MC) were lost.  Anyway, if the SIMH KL 
> simulator allows multiple CPU's, then you could run Tops-10 SMP, which 
> really was a tour de force.  Extremely cool.
>
Wow. Yes - have to try it, definitely. Also I love the way it names its 
interface "ETH-0" :)


>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On 3/10/20 10:41 PM, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
>>
>> 31.37 (TWONKY) is just a straight TWONKY distribution on KLH-10. All 
>> required keyboard interactions to get it to boot up are consistently 
>> the same; so I might be able to wrap it up around an expect script 
>> ... worth a shot.
>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> On 3/10/20 9:46 PM, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
>>>
>>> I think you're right, but it has been _decades_ since I last used 
>>> Tops-10.  At WPI, we had a KA-10 running a much modified 6.03 series 
>>> monitor that we were quite proud of. At Marlboro, the project that I 
>>> was working on (FILE-FINDER, a database for DUMPER tapes) was quite 
>>> Tops-20 centric; we depended on files with holes in them.
>>>
>>> I'm unaware of any systems level structured data store in either 
>>> Tops-10 or Tops-20 with the exception of the Quasar failsoft file 
>>> (QSRFSS, holds queue, print, batch requests across crashes).  I 
>>> don't find this surprising; if you crash and corrupt a file with 
>>> confuration information in it, a flat ASCII file is whaaay easier to 
>>> recover than an specially engineered database.  The binary 
>>> accounting and error files are sequential and don't count, IMHO.
>>>
>>> Under Tops-20, we used the following 'trick' for start-up speed and 
>>> persisted configuration.  The configuration file was 'compiled' into 
>>> binary and directly mapped into memory on start-up.
>>>
>>>  1. This was necessary for LPTSPL as it is started up for jobs, but
>>>     shut down and put into a quiescent state when there is nothing
>>>     left to print.  When you have a lot of printers, reparsing
>>>     LPFORM.INI can be a real dog.  Very noticeable.
>>>  2. I got the idea from the mailer, which does the same thing for
>>>     mailing-list.txt
>>>  3. The EXEC will also do it; you can restore a binary environment
>>>     with all your special scripts really fast (like on PUSH or LOGIN)
>>>  4. I had been thinking about doing this for the Extended Mode FTP
>>>     server, but I'm not sure it's worth it.  I instrumented the
>>>     start up time and it's in the milliseconds.  Probably would be
>>>     necessary for a couple hundred simultaneous small requests.
>>>
>>> If I ever get truly serious about supporting Galaxy again, then 
>>> probably I'll bite the bullet and put up Tops-10 so I can validate 
>>> execution.
>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> On 3/10/20 9:25 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've never used Tops-10 as an operator, so I can't answer most of 
>>>> this, but one question I think I can...
>>>>
>>>> My understanding is that neither Tops-10, nor TOPS-20 have a 
>>>> persistent database. Instead you need to have a script that does 
>>>> all the definitions, and you need to run it at every boot. But I 
>>>> could be confused about that one.
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> On 2020-03-11 01:50, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> KLH-10 TOPS-10 noob questions:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) At the TOPS-10 boot startup option prompt, I can type in CHANGE 
>>>>> and then set the DECnet address. How do I make it persist across 
>>>>> reboots and not have to do this every time?
>> -- 
>> Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
>> 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
>> QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

-- 
Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

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