Hi all,

I'm looking for a 21MX RTE image for use with HPdrive, which is compatible with the 12992J CS/80 loader. From the loader docs this could be an image of 7908x / 7911x / 7912x / 7935x discs. Either RTE-IVB or or RTE-6/VM would be appreciated.
The only images I found on the net are for different loaders (e.g. 12992H), which are not usable.

Thanks,
Achim

Is the reason it won't work is because you don't have the H loader?. You could generate one if you had 2 12821 cards and 2 hpib cards on your pc . You could toggle the H loader in and then regenerate the system with the second card and driver added then regenerate it to a cs80 image but might be simpler to add the H loader if thats why it won't work for you. If I had a second 12821 I would do it for you.

I recently acquired a cs/80 7958b and it looks to be supported by rte-6vm . I would like to try and use this to run my E instead of hp-drive but as Achim pointed out all the pre rolled images are for icd drives, Is there a way to generate a system image for cs/80 drives .

Thanks,
Grant

I'm an interested bystander because I hope to eventually load RTE-II or III on an E machine as well, though I don't expect to actually have the machine in my hands for another month or two. 

In the DEC world, I'd run through the whole sysgen process in SIMH and then load the image from SerialDisk (roughly analogous to HPDrive) to my real hardware. Not sure if all the pieces exist in the HP world, but that might be a way to connect the dots without duplicating hardware.
--
Jack
www.computerarium.org

i was looking at the simh option but looks like it does not support cs/80 or 2 instances of a 12821 for that matter. I have my e running great with rte-6/vm , and i could generate a cs/80 version but how could i get it on a cs/80 disk with only one 12821 . The card can only support one or the other icd or cs/80 .

I agree with Jack - I have an A400 and A600 running RTE-A on multiple CS/80
drives. I genned the first time using HPDRIVE as my CS/80 and once I had a
system running on my CS/80, I did further generating from there to create an
image to transfer to my real CS/80 drive (a 7859B),

Unfortunately for the "A" series, there is no simulator. If there was, I would
have done all the generation using SIMH. Since you are using a 21MX, you should
be able to use SIMH to create a good image to transfer. After You create an
image file on SIMH, transfer the image to HPDRIVE. Then use HPDRIVE to emulate
a CS/80 Drive on your real hardware. From there, re-gen for your real drive and
copy the new image to your real CS/80 drive. A bit complicated, but very
doable (since you can have HPDRIVE's emulated disk and your real disk on the
same GPIB controller card in your 21MX (at different GPIB addresses, of
course!).

The generation process is written up in the HP manuals in detail - and the
first time you do it, expect it not to work ;) It's complicated, for sure.
But after a few try's you will get it right...

Cheers,
Lyle
--
On Wed, 02 Dec 2020 16:08:59 -0800
"Jack Rubin" <j@ckrubin.us> wrote:

I'm an interested bystander because I hope to eventually load RTE-II or III
on an E machine as well, though I don't expect to actually have the machine
in my hands for another month or two.

In the DEC world, I'd run through the whole sysgen process in SIMH and then
load the image from SerialDisk (roughly analogous to HPDrive) to my real
hardware. Not sure if all the pieces exist in the HP world, but that might
be a way to connect the dots without duplicating hardware. -- Jack
www.computerarium.org ( http://www.computerarium.org )

--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West
https://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

Hello
RT6GN is working A-Series, that means you could gen a RTE-6/VM System on
A-Series. I have never done, but I remember my about this possibility. Maybe
it helps to simplify.
Cheers
Roland


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: VintHPcom@groups.io [mailto:VintHPcom@groups.io] Im Auftrag von Lyle
Bickley
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 3. Dezember 2020 01:31
An: VintHPcom@groups.io
Cc: Jack Rubin
Betreff: Re: [VintHPcom] HP21MX RTE-IVB or RTE-6 CS/80 image wanted

I agree with Jack - I have an A400 and A600 running RTE-A on multiple CS/80
drives. I genned the first time using HPDRIVE as my CS/80 and once I had a
system running on my CS/80, I did further generating from there to create an
image to transfer to my real CS/80 drive (a 7859B),

Unfortunately for the "A" series, there is no simulator. If there was, I
would have done all the generation using SIMH. Since you are using a 21MX,
you should be able to use SIMH to create a good image to transfer. After You
create an image file on SIMH, transfer the image to HPDRIVE. Then use
HPDRIVE to emulate a CS/80 Drive on your real hardware. From there, re-gen
for your real drive and copy the new image to your real CS/80 drive. A bit
complicated, but very doable (since you can have HPDRIVE's emulated disk and
your real disk on the same GPIB controller card in your 21MX (at different
GPIB addresses, of course!).

The generation process is written up in the HP manuals in detail - and the
first time you do it, expect it not to work ;) It's complicated, for sure.
But after a few try's you will get it right...

Cheers,
Lyle
--
On Wed, 02 Dec 2020 16:08:59 -0800
"Jack Rubin" <j@ckrubin.us> wrote:

I'm an interested bystander because I hope to eventually load RTE-II
or III on an E machine as well, though I don't expect to actually have
the machine in my hands for another month or two.

In the DEC world, I'd run through the whole sysgen process in SIMH and
then load the image from SerialDisk (roughly analogous to HPDrive) to
my real hardware. Not sure if all the pieces exist in the HP world,
but that might be a way to connect the dots without duplicating
hardware. -- Jack www.computerarium.org ( http://www.computerarium.org
)

--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West
https://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

As far as I can tell simh won't do cs80 drives . So there is no starting point to get a cs80 image. The only image for hp drive is icd. And the the 12821 needs a different driver and loader for cs80.  Is there a way to generate it put it on tape and then some how load . I'm thinking the only way to do it is have 2 12821 cards in the system?

On Wed, 02 Dec 2020 17:30:04 -0800
"Klyball" <Grant@klyball.com> wrote:

As far as I can tell simh won't do cs80 drives . So there is no starting
point to get a cs80 image. The only image for hp drive is icd. And the the
12821 needs a different driver and loader for cs80.  Is there a way to
generate it put it on tape and then some how load . I'm thinking the only
way to do it is have 2 12821 cards in the system?

I wasn't aware that SIMH not only fails to support the "A" series - but also
lacks CS80 capability. That is a bummer.

You might want to bring up the RTE ICD image that's available on the HP Museum
website on SIMH and transfer it to HPDRIVE. Then attach HPDRIVE to your real
HP 1000 and get it running. Then do a gen on this system which includes the
CS80 driver. Then attach your real CS80 drive to your system and transfer a
system image (including boot) to it. Complicated, but seems doable...

Cheers,
Lyle

--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West
https://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 06:46 PM, Lyle Bickley wrote:

I wasn't aware that SIMH not only fails to support the "A" series - but also
lacks CS80 capability. That is a bummer.

You might want to bring up the RTE ICD image that's available on the HP Museum
website on SIMH and transfer it to HPDRIVE. Then attach HPDRIVE to your real
HP 1000 and get it running. Then do a gen on this system which includes the
CS80 driver. Then attach your real CS80 drive to your system and transfer a
system image (including boot) to it. Complicated, but seems doable...

Cheers,
Lyle

I think the only way ,would be to have two 12821 in the system as the card can only support one type of drive at a time.
unless there is a way to do it off line from tapes , but i have no idea about that.

Grant

On Thu, Dec 3, 2020 at 01:10 AM, Roland Dietiker wrote:

If it helps, I could open an Telnet account for you of one of my A-Series. There  is also an HPDRIVE allocated, where maybe could be installed your future 21MX System as the CS/80 SS/80 Disk Layout. Then I could tranfer the PC HPDrive Image to you and you could access your HPDrive through the 12821 IF and your disk?

 

I gened my last RTE-6/VM in 1984… I don’t remember to all the details…and this was native, not on an A-Series Environment.

 

Maybe a valuable way, also for future 21MX project ?

 

Roland

 

 

Ah, ok i see what your getting at, that just might work ,Do you have all the RTE-6 files on the machine .

I would be interested in giving it a try

Thanks,
Grant

 

 

On Wed, 02 Dec 2020 19:43:53 -0800
"Klyball" <Grant@klyball.com> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 06:46 PM, Lyle Bickley wrote:

I wasn't aware that SIMH not only fails to support the "A" series - but
also
lacks CS80 capability. That is a bummer.

You might want to bring up the RTE ICD image that's available on the HP
Museum
website on SIMH and transfer it to HPDRIVE. Then attach HPDRIVE to your
real
HP 1000 and get it running. Then do a gen on this system which includes
the
CS80 driver. Then attach your real CS80 drive to your system and transfer
a
system image (including boot) to it. Complicated, but seems doable...

Cheers,
Lyle

I think the only way ,would be to have two 12821 in the system as the card
can only support one type of drive at a time. unless there is a way to do it
off line from tapes , but i have no idea about that.

Grant

You may indeed require two two 12821.

When I setup my first "A" system using HPDRIVE, I did just that on the HPDRIVE
"side" (so I could use tape and disk simultaneously). I built my original
system using a distribution tape I obtained from bitsavers, which placed the
derived system on my HPDRIVE disk. After a re-generating using the HPDRIVE
system disk, I transferred the newly generated image to "real" CS/80 disk. The
reason I used that approach was to be insure that I always had a bootable
system on HPDRIVE. (If you make a mistake in the generation and use the same
disk to store the resultant image you can wipe out a lot of work ;)

Cheers,
Lyle
--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West
https://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

On Thu, Dec 3, 2020 at 07:50 AM, Roland Dietiker wrote:

RTE- 6/VM Relocatables on System: Yes, thats true.

You get access over VPN.

How familar are you with RTE Systems ?

 

Thanks Roland.

There seems there might be a work around with simh .So I will try that first . I would not want to accidentally mess up your real system

Cheers,
Grant

 

Roland,

that's great. I didn't know that RTE6/VM also runs on A-series. I have also a A400 with a RTE-A image from the original owner, which I copied from an attached 7946 drive to hpdrive.
I made some tries to build a new RTE-A from scratch but didn't succeed, mainly because I had not enough time to make myself familiar with the answer file and build process.
A generic RTE image with only basic LUs and some hints how to customize this would be very helpful. As you can see I opened this thread in search for a CS/80 RTE image for my 2113 and 2117.
But maybe an IDL image will also be possible for me soon, as I just received empty 1k PROMs and asked a friend to burn the 12992H loader.

Achim

Guys:

I've corresponded with J. David Bryan, the author of the HP 2100 application for SimH. He has laid out the necessary steps for creating a CS/80 disc image. If the "swtch.c" file doesn't make it through the list, I'll post it on my site.

Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2020 17:50:57 -0500
From: J. David Bryan
Subject: Re: [VintHPcom] HP21MX RTE-IVB or RTE-6 CS/80 image wanted

I just confirmed that the RT6GN output file containing the newly generated
system can be copied to the paper tape punch to produce a file on the host
platform. The file can be copied with either CI or FMGR, using these
example commands:

CI> CO !SYSGN 4

:DU,!SYSGN,2004B,IH

FMGR needs 2000B added to the punch LU to request "honest" output mode and
needs the IH parameter to suppress writing an EOF to the file. CI seems to
do these things automatically. Either case produces a file identical to
that produced by copying to simulated mag tape and then converting from
SIMH tape records to straight binary.

So the whole process is:

1. Use a MAC/ICD-based RTE-6/VM simulated system to run RT6GN to generate
a CS/80-based system.

2. Copy the resulting generator output file to the paper tape punch to
obtain a host-platform binary file.

3. Run my "swtch" utility to convert that file to an HPDrive image file
by trimming the SWTCH records at the front and padding the file to
the correct length for HPDrive.

4. Run HPDrive using the CS/80 image file on the real HP 1000 system.

One significant advantage is that RT6GN takes only about 20 seconds to
perform a sysgen under simulation.

Feel free to pass this on to the list if you think it would help others.

-- Dave

On Thu, 3 Dec 2020, Mike Loewen wrote:

If the "swtch.c" file doesn't make it through the list, I'll post it on my site.

Dave's "swtch.c" utility is available, here:

http://q7.neurotica.com/swtch.c


Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

On Thu, 3 Dec 2020 18:15:46 -0500 (EST)
"Mike Loewen" <mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us> wrote:

On Thu, 3 Dec 2020, Mike Loewen wrote:

If the "swtch.c" file doesn't make it through the list, I'll post it on my
site.

Dave's "swtch.c" utility is available, here:

http://q7.neurotica.com/swtch.c

Thanks, Mike. Looks handy to have!

Cheers,
Lyle
--

--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West
https://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"