INFO-VAX Tue, 14 Oct 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 554 Contents: DS10 front access storage cage (3X-BA10B-AA) Re: LS1-11 Graphics Boards Re: Macro compiler error on Itanium Re: MX list revival Re: New LaserJet fun (or upward compatibility? What is that?) Re: Starting a CDE session over SSH? Re: Status of Intel's Common System Interconnect ? Re: Using an Infoserver Re: VMS news reader Re: VMS news reader ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:19:09 +0200 From: The Spriteman Subject: DS10 front access storage cage (3X-BA10B-AA) Message-ID: <48f0536d$0$201$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl> i have a DS10 with internal Storage cage, but now i am searching for a front acces storage cage, does anywhone here know what the best way is to find one? whithout paying the full price. i live in Amsterdam (Netherlands) With regards, Robin robinschip at hotmail dot com ------------------------------ Date: 13 Oct 2008 13:24:23 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: LS1-11 Graphics Boards Message-ID: In article , JohnPSDS writes: > We have a government client who wants to clone their MicroVaxII. Slots > 7 & 8 have LS1-11 graphics boards made by Ramtek. Anybody know of > these boards? Do (4) spares still exist in the world? Inquiring minds > want to know. A quick google search shows that these were used as parts of an intelligent graphics terminal. I.E. once you loaded data from the host you could do processing within the "terminal" without using the host CPU. That's pretty old technology. I don't know who made the one I used, but it's been almost two decades. Looks like Ramtek supported both UNIBUS and Qbus versions of their LSI based board. They may have been basing their board on a standard DEC part. There are still companies with Ramtek in their names, but it doesn't look like any are in that business. And google didn't point me to the usual list of refurbushed hardware vendors like it would for lots of other parts. Good luck. Nowdays if I was implementing that kind of system, I'd probably start with an EV5 or later Alpha workstation, or an Itanium with a graphics card, and replace the LSI based operations with host based operations. Or I'd go with a standard graphics/mathematics package like IDL or Matlab, neither of which support VMS (anymore). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:06:14 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Macro compiler error on Itanium Message-ID: <00A80CB5.F6305F85@SendSpamHere.ORG> In article <74OdnVsVEJqVK3HVnZ2dnUVZ_vadnZ2d@earthlink.com>, "John Reagan" writes: > > wrote in message >news:00A80C40.9F03122D@SendSpamHere.ORG... >> Has anybody here ever seen one of these errors from the Macro compiler >> on Itanium? >> >> Code cell integrity check: >> Operand literal value out of range: >> COD INSTRUCTION adds : NEXT=02010770, PREV=01F0CA28, >> LOCATOR={15155:0-22}, >> SCOPE=SOME_ROUTINE, MUST_WRITE, IS_DEBUG_PROLOG, UDB=?ACCVIO: >> 00004070?, OPCODE=4, INSTRUCTION_SLOT=2, OP1=pr0, OP2=r12, >> OP3=#-8208, >> OP4=r12; >> for operand 2 >> Assertion failure: Compiler internal error - please submit problem report >> %GEM-F-ASSERTION, Compiler internal error - please submit problem report >> %MMK-F-ERRUPD, error status %X19DB800C occurred when updating target >> OBJ$:SOME_PROGRAM.OBJ >> >> > >For those of you keeping score at home, what happened is... > >Brian had a cut-n-paste error like we all do. That resulted in references >to large offsets from the (AP) when he meant large offsets from (SP). I discovered this late last evening when checking over the code. I had rested the new routine in a standalone program and then I copied it from one DECterm window (a session on one system) to another DECterm window (a session on yet another system). Any- one who has done this has probably experienced the problem of a buffer overload when copying overzealous amounts in this fashion between DECterm windows. I "fixed" the copied code but typed in (AP) instead of (SP) -- one of those typical "I've been hacking at this code now for 16 hours" faux pas. >Macro then decided to home the argument list for whatever reason (somebody >taking the address of a parameter or getting the value of AP). It then >needed to decide how many arguments to home. Since it saw the bogus large >offset, it wanted to allocate 8208 bytes of stack for the homed argument >list. Which is correct, one page (8192 bytes) and a few overhead bytes. >For those of you who've studied the Itanium instruction set :-), you'll know >that the literal field of the "adds" instruction cannot handle such a large >value. So after IMACRO asked for the instruction, the GEM backend was kind >enough to kick me in the pants and remind me to RTFM. I've been heavily thumbing Vol. 3. I also downloaded the Vol. 3. PDF from the intel site and printed out, in color, several of the tables/figures in the initial pages of Ch. 4 and laminated them. When I get some time to, I want to write an SDA extension to take some of the instructions apart and display them; especially, those with embedded addresses which intel splits into small bundles like IMM5c, IMM9d, IMM7b, and sign bits. I'm killing trees drawing it out on graph paper. >The solution is for IMACRO (and probably AMACRO as well) to check for large >values and print some more meaning full error message like "EH?" or perhaps >"large offset from (AP) exceeds the largest possible homed argument list". >I'll pick the more useful message and fix the compiler to be more helpful in >the future to track down invalid programs. So next time I see "Eh?" I'll have to remember that I'm not in the (X)DELTA debugger or Canada, and that it means too many homies. :) -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM ... pejorative statements of opinion are entitled to constitutional protection no matter how extreme, vituperous, or vigorously expressed they may be. (NJSC) Copr. 2008 Brian Schenkenberger. Publication of _this_ usenet article outside of usenet _must_ include its contents in its entirety including this copyright notice, disclaimer and quotations. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:02:12 +0200 From: Wilm Boerhout Subject: Re: MX list revival Message-ID: <48f04169$0$8584$ba620dc5@nova.planet.nl> Wilm Boerhout vaguely mentioned on 10-10-2008 7:04: > Tom Linden vaguely mentioned on 9-10-2008 19:09: >> We have revived the mailing list just send a SUBSCRIBE to >> mx-list-request at our domain, HELP for list of >> commands > > I'm getting: > > 554 5.7.1 Message rejected due to header contents. (state 18). > [snipped] This issue is resolved. Thanks Tim! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:11:04 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: New LaserJet fun (or upward compatibility? What is that?) Message-ID: Rich Jordan wrote: > Just a note if any of you are still spec'ing LaserJet printers for use > on VMS systems. I'm not aware of any available PCL6 support info or > libraries on VMS (PCL5 either for that matter, but its easy enough to > roll your own with that). > > We've used PCL (3, then 5) as our primary 'print forms' language for > 16 years. HP hasn't always made that easy as their backward > compatibility has been less than stellar, and their penchant for > producing badly crippled firmware in their low end printers has also > not helped. Soft fonts were a particular problem over the years as > certain low end printers refused to load them; these limitations were > often not documented; we found out 'in use'. > > The newest printer we've tried to use is the P2015-N. There is one, > and only one note, indicating a font limitation: 45 scalable fonts > (PCL6), 35 scalable fonts (PS), 11 Scalable fonts plus 11 lineprint > fonts (PCL5e). > > None of the scalable fonts available to PCL5e have proportional > spacing. This printer has been crippled back to a fixed pitch dumb > printer for anyone not running a PCL6 driver. It is NOT their bottom > line stuff; its in the mid-range. And not suitable to our forms > printing needs. > > At the same time, the HP developer website that was supposed to > provide links to the various PCL5/PCL6 specs and docs has apparently > been lobotomized. All my searches ended up going to dead pages or to > the hp.com pages with the PCL5 docs; nothing on PCL6. If anyone knows > where the PCL6 developer or spec docs are I'd appreciate a heads-up. > In the meantime these printers are sidelined while we locate some real > LaserJets that haven't been crippled into PC toys. He, yes it's an sad development. I've been looking into some printing problems at a site lataly where they had problems printing national swedish characters (ÅÄÖ) using 7-bit ASCII (some ISO-11 char table or something like that). I got a P2015-N for my in-office tests. Now, you're perfectly correct that everything, the printer isself as well as the docs, have been simplified into some dumb-PC-user version. I had severe problems locating such simple things as the name of the "local printer" used by the LPD... Anyway, in this particular case it all boiled down to the use of a character set command "(91S" that only could be found in some old manual for some OKI laser not sold anymore. After checking with the customer they verified that yes, they had used OKI printers many years ago... A few changes in the COBOL source (where all PCL command are hardcoded, over 600 ESC-sequences in one singe COBOL source) it worked fine on the P2015-N and on the printers at the site, mainly Xerox lasers. Well, maybe it didn't helped you, but I do understand your problem... :-) Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:21:57 -0700 (PDT) From: urbancamo Subject: Re: Starting a CDE session over SSH? Message-ID: <005e1336-d76e-4ca1-a07c-818321ccfee7@v53g2000hsa.googlegroups.com> On Oct 10, 8:16=A0pm, samp...@gmail.com wrote: > On Oct 9, 5:16=A0am, Kari Uusim=E4ki > > > > wrote: > > samp...@gmail.com wrote: > > > Is this possible? I've got X forwarding enabled and running individua= l > > > programs works (e.g. CREATE/TERM) but I can't figure out how to start > > > a full CDE session, I've tried running DTSESSION.EXE but nothing > > > happens aside from some font messages like these ones: > > > > X Toolkit Warning: Cannot convert string "-dt-interface user-medium-r= - > > > normal-m*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" to type FontStruct > > > X Toolkit Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-Menu-Medium-R-Normal-- > > > *-120-*-*-P-*-ISO8859-1" to type FontStruct > > > X Toolkit Warning: Cannot convert string "-dt-interface user-medium-r= - > > > normal-m*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" to type FontStruct > > > X Toolkit Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-Menu-Medium-R-Normal-- > > > *-120-*-*-P-*-ISO8859-1" to type FontStruct > > > > I've seen similar messages when running say the graphical MAIL client > > > so I assume they're not the problem. > > > > Sampsa > > > Have you configured your X-emulator to make the request to your VMS hos= t? > > > Regards, > > > Kari > > Yes, well, sort of :) > > If I run a nested X server on the local subnet it works, giving me the > XDM login prompt etc. But this is not what I want to do, I want to log > in and authenticate with SSH and start a CDE session tunneled over SSH > for this user. > > Sampsa Try this: $ mcr cde$system_defaults:[bin]dtsession more details on my blog: http://blog.wickensonline.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:16:58 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk Subject: Re: Status of Intel's Common System Interconnect ? Message-ID: On Oct 13, 6:52 pm, JF Mezei wrote: > johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: > > I'm not 100% sure I'm up to date either, but if I recall correctly, > > CSI-based systems require Nehalem (x86-64) or Tukwila (IA64) chips. > > The question is whether Tukwila requires CSI or whether HP can have have > its own proprietary chipset. As I recall, HP has had its own chipset for > a while. (then again, if they shipped all their chip designers to Intel, > perhaps they don't have that capability anymore). > > > floating around (be it HP or anyone else) will likely either be > > covered by NDA and subject to change, or be content-free. Examples to > > the contrary most welcome. > > Ok, so the answer to my question should have been "the information has > not been made public yet" instead of "any 9 year old could look it up by > searching X and Y on the HP.com web site". > > > Realistically, what does CSI buy anyone anyway that HyperTransport > > hasn't offered for years (and before that there was its close relative > > the EV7 bus...). > > AMD may now lag intel in raw CPU horsepower, but they still have > hypertransport advantage. With CSI, Intel catches up on that aspect of > system performance. And it will allow the 8086 to scale to much larger > systems. > > > For most purposes an entry or > > mid-range Itanium (the "volume market" ones) offers no features I can > > see that a suitable Proliant hasn't offered for years, > > Do 8086 based servers have the equivalent of the management console card > that gives telnet/terminal access to the system firmware prompts ? > > Also, HP's 8086 servers are BIOS based. You would need to buy an Apple > server to get an EFI console. > > > If CSI does catch on for both x86-64 and IA64, > > I don't think there is a neeed for "IF" in there. The market will > consume whatever Intel produces for the 8086. CSI should propagate down > the chain of systems and eventually reach laptops. (for intel based > machines, of course) > > > interesting questions to answer (again) about whether VMS still needs > > VMS-specific system hardware, and that will inevitably lead right back > > to why it needs a VMS-specific CPU architecture... > > These questions are no longer relevant. As long as HP refuses to discuss > porting VMS beyond IA64, the assumption is that VMS dies with IA64, just > like MPE and Tru64 died when their platform stopped being developped. Can you get remote management for Proliant? Aboslutely, been around in one form or another for many years. It started life as an add-in board but these days it's just another chip on the server motherboard. It's had various names such as "Remote Insight" or in later versions "Integrated Lights Out". Think of an IP KVM addon (with the capability of being on a secure management LAN), but integrated into the server. I'm afraid you'll have to de-hype the CPQ/HP material somewhat but the current version seems more than adequate for most purposes, though the serial console equivalent is still being worked on. These days the hardware and basic functionality is typically bundled in the server price, advanced functionality is a =A3200 add-on. The Integrity product has the same iLO name, I have no idea whether it is the same product, same functionality, or same pricing. Can you get EFI for Proliant? Well you seem to be able to boot OSX, which seemingly requires EFI, but that's a bit of a hack, just for fun. For business use in the multiprocessor 64bit world surely it can only be a matter of time before EFI becomes a supported option. Windows 2008 and Vista SP1 already support EFI on x86-64, and AMI (y'know, the commodity BIOS people) were showing it at IDF, so... wait and see? Will CSI really catch on? That may depend on whether it works right, and whether it adds value as well as cost (if it *saves* cost, so much the better). Actually I'm not as confident as you are, but the chances of success are high. Intel do have market failures from time to time, even in the x86 world, e.g. their in-house graphics have traditionally been laughable. As for CSI enabling scalability to bigger systems: you can already get a 32core 256GB Proliant based on Opteron, and even the Xeon one already does 16 cores and 256GB. Do many sensible people really want/need more than that? Some do, but... There's not much you can't do on a decent Proliant, apart from run VMS native (or run HP-UX). There's a reason they really have been *the* industry standard server for years. There used to be a nice realtively- low-hype CPQ whitepaper on the technologies and history that make a proper Proliant a proper server but I can't find either my saved version or a current one, which is a shame, as it would make a feature for feature comparison between x86-64 and IA64 so much easier. The Proliant family brochure does refer to Integrity for mission critical capabilities (and even mentions VMS): go to www.hp.com/go/proliant and then for the family brochure, click on "HP Proliant Family Guide" on the right. It also suggests that Proliants are quite good at business-critical, and plenty of happy customers would agree in hardware terms, even if they are somewhat constrained by only having x86 OSes to choose from. This message was brought to you by... someone who's seen Proliants as well as VAXes, Alphas, and a bit of Integrity. I'm doing different things now, but Proliants don't look to have changed that much since I last looked properly (that's one of the things that their customers like, compatibility and investment protection). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:56:14 -0400 From: "John Reagan" Subject: Re: Using an Infoserver Message-ID: "Bill Gunshannon" wrote in message news:6l70mcFau26sU1@mid.individual.net... > OK, enough OT and No-Marketing posts. Let's get back to some tech talk. > :-) > > I have an Infoserver. I have never used one before. So, now is a good > time. > What can I do with an Infoserver (other than boot VMS systems)? I thought > it would share devices among multiple machines. Correct? What protocol > does it use? Is it likely that I could share devices with my PDP-11's? > Or, even more interesting possibility, can I boot a PDP-11 from an > Infoserver? > BTW, OpenVMS V8.3 can now be an Infoserver (well, most of an Infoserver, the Infoserver software won't do MOP loads but you can MOP load from DECnet or LANCP). Check the release notes. We have both actual Infoservers and OpenVMS-hosted Infoservers in the lab. I can't tell them apart myself. John ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 07:21:39 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: VMS news reader Message-ID: In article <48ebdfa1$0$12363$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei writes: > It is very memory hungry, and you want to give yourself some inordinate > amount of PGFILQUOTA like 1 gig. Also, some newsgroups with very long > names may not work under VMS when the software tries to create its own > files. (comp.os.vms is nowhere near the limit, but some newsgroup names > are extremely long (like the one about the hamster and ducttape) As long as alt.sex.fetish.dec-hardware is not too long, you should be OK! :-) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:45:11 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: VMS news reader Message-ID: <48ec6621$0$12358$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote: > As long as alt.sex.fetish.dec-hardware is not too long, you should be As I recall, it had to do with the complete path of the file containing the newsgroup specific data that had some limits. This newsgoup would create a file such as: USRDIR:[JFMEZEI._MOZILLA.DEFAULT.K9EN0HAR_SLT.NEWS.NEWS2_TEKSAVVY_COM]COMP_OS_VMS.MSF From what I had tested, the newsgroup's maximum name could be between 40 and 50 characters. I reported this in Feb 18 2007 on this very newsgroup. ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.554 ************************