The collected works of urbancamo - Page 1

Me at the Vintage Computer Festival GB 2010:



And after a hard days work with the missus (the sister-in-law is holding the gun )

I pulled out my 5000/240 - had to reinstall Ultrix 4.5 as the root disk had gone gaga. It's a really snappy maching running Ultrix and DECwindows XUI. Display postscript, full documentation in bookreader format. Very nice... You need the keyboard/mouse breakout cable if you're doing local interaction.

Mark.

Hi guys,

Solaris n00b here, so please don't tut too hard I do have a lot of experience building software packages, but not without a C compiler, make util etc...
I'm a bit confused here - I'd like to install GNU etc al software on my Solaris 7 based Ultra 5 but I can't seem to find a sensible place to source it.
I tried sunfreeware but that appears to be commercial only now.

I tried tgcware but there were no instructions about how to install the packages (which are built for Solaris 2.6) in http://jupiterrise.com/tgcware/sunos5.6_sparc/stable/ - certainly pkgadd wasn't interested.

Could anyone enlighten me please? Solaris 7 was pre-installed so I don't have access to the Solaris CC compiler.

I believe there might have been a companion CD containing enough GNU software to start building OSS applications but I don't have that as no media was supplied with the box.
I also believe that the NetBSD pkgsrc system supports Solaris http://www.netbsd.org/docs/software/pac ... #platforms but again I believe I need at least the core GNU utils and compiler, make, autoconf etc. to get started.

Regards, Mark.

Corel WordPerfect 6 GUI and/or 5.2 CLI.
Picked up an old school boxed version off Ebay UK a month ago... works great under Solaris 7.

Rational Rose? Never could get on with it. Seemed to be an extension of the bloat ware that was J2EE at the time.

I eventually found the ibilio set of binary packages here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/packages/solaris/sparc/
Was able to get enough installed (gcc, make, m4, autoconf etc) to allow me to build newer versions. I'm going to upload a tar of my /usr/local when done so that hopefully others wishing to explore Solaris 7 won't have quite the pain I've had!

Mark

Thanks for the info. Any links to mirrors still providing access to Solaris 7 binary packages would be most welcome - I didn't find any in my trauling, but maybe I wasn't using the most appropriate search term!

There might be some GNU utilities provided in a disk distro for Solaris 7 but my Ultra 5 came pre-installed. I believe there is a trail version of Sun Studio on one of the disks which might just about get you started, but that's pure speculation on my part!

Cheers, Mark

OK, so nothing to get anyone too excited, but I've had this machine for about 18 months and have had a hard disk fail, then graphics card, then PSU. This is what happens when you take on a 'free' machine

However, happy to report thanks to a replacement PSU from Ian Mapleson, an additional 128 MB of RAM that pretty much came free with the replacement graphics card and a 3com 100MB network card I have it running nicely now. Just need to upgrade from Irix 6.2 to 6.5. Typing this on it right now, once I'd got the gamma adjusted to cure the washed out look of a remote firefox display (thanks to Nekochan!)

I've posted some info on using WordPerfect for Unix 6.0 in my Retrochallenge Blog . Apart from requiring some symlinks to satisfy the installation checker everything has worked fine.

Oh, and my wife's favourite colour is purple, which I'm sure smooths the way compared with my usual anonymous DEC cream boxes...

Very on-topic for Nekochan, back in 1993 I had to evaluate workstations from several manufacturers: Sun, DEC and SGI. I had an Indy on loan for a week which was really nice but quite slow. The college already had several Sun computers (including a suite of IPX which were also very slow) but Sun would not offer a machine on loan (I remember having to go to one of their buildings and run some tests there) and DEC who sent a sales person to go through all the options. The budget was around GBP 10,000. I ended up opting for the DEC, a DEC AXP3000/600 with 175 Mhz processor and 64 MB of RAM, 24 bit 1280x1024 graphics and 2 x 1GB hard drives, running tru64 3.2. Now, if I had stuck with the Indy, how would that have shaped my future career? At the time it was all about performance, but of course with the benefit of hindsight it is only one factor in a decision like that. I had some difficulties with Visualisation pakages compiling on the DEC Alpha (KHOROS comes to mind) which would have probably gone a lot smoother on an SGI or Sun box.

Gotta love the choice back then however! Oh, and I retrieved that DEC Alpha several years later

I probably have something that would suit you. I'm up in Windermere.

With regard to bluecode's questions. There are various Alpha based workstations which aren't too noisy, don't draw stupid power and aren't too large. One example would be the AlphaServer 300. Most hobbyists aren't too worried about outright performance. I find that the smaller alphas or faster VAXen (such as the VAXstation 4000 series) are very hobbyist friendly. The VAXstation 4000/VLC still crops up second hand now and again, is a small pizza box, will drive a sync-on-green panel at 1280x1024, has 6 VUPS and draws 50 watts. It's a bit limited with only 24MB, but good for exploring the basics of VMS. Also works very well as an X-terminal with all the VMS specific bits to access a server which you can put elsewhere (in my case an AlphaServer 1000A).

The Itanium boxes are somewhat the opposite, power hungry, noisy and quite large. The ZX6000 has the 'office friendly' kit which makes it fairly quiet. Although it isn't officially supported by OpenVMS it runs 8.4 fine. It also takes 3.5" SCA SCSI drives which are cheaper to purchase than the 2.5" SAS SCSI variety. I don't use the ZX6000 anywhere near as much as Alpha and VAX hardware.

A ZX6000 with a single PSU, two 1.3Ghz Madison class processors, three 15k hard drives and 16GB of RAM idles at 380 watts. If you were to remove drives, a processor and some RAM you could probably make quite a dent in this figure.

They are a lovely box. I *could* have had a similar situation to Alver - mine was delivered rattling around in a very shoddy box - this is apparently a prime cause of the plastic stands breaking. I was really lucky and everything survived. They *do* look really smart with the floor standing kit attached, the dimensions are all weird though - a full length 2U rack mount enclosure turned on its' side. Definitely desk-side rather than desk-top!

You know I can't remember what graphics card it had in at the time I measured the draw - you could be right, when I got the box it had an ATI Fire Pro GL AGP graphics card which runs great under Gentoo Linux but isn't supported under OpenVMS or HP/UX (unless you happen to have *exactly* the right version for 2004, drivers, etc.)

When using OpenVMS it's a PCI ATI 7500 graphics card which probably only draws a few watts. I may take the time to re-evaluate the power usage now, shouldn't take long!

Mark.

I have a DS10L going spare and just had delivery of a couple of DEC blue desktops, Alpha's of some description, one 333Mhz and one 500Mhz. Other specs unknown, and I've got to check to see if they are fully functional.

Mark.

I noticed yesterday that Irix and VMS are listed as 'Obsolete' operating systems and as such has been dropped from Emacs. Can someone confirm that my understanding of this is correct, given the highlighted lines in the MACHINES file shown below?

The narrowing diversity of support from various open source projects worries me.

And I especially object to the use of the word 'Obsolete' to describe a few of these operating systems

From http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/MACHINES

Support for the following obsolete platforms was removed in Emacs 23.1
(the names in parentheses state the files in src/ that were removed):

Apollo SR10.x (unexapollo.c)
Convex (unexconvex.c and m/convex.c)
Xenix (unexenix.c and s/xenix.h)
Iris (unexmips.c m/iris4d.h m/irist.h s/iris3-5.h s/iris3-6.h)
Gould (m/gould*)
Siemens machines running Sinix (unexsni.c)
Harris CXUX (s/cxux*)
ESIX, a variant of v.5.3 for the 386 (s/esix*)
Interactive (ISC) Unix (s/isc*)
Sony News (s/newsos*)
RTU 3.0, ucb universe (s/rtu.h)
UniSoft's UniPlus 5.2 (s/uniplus.h)
UMAX (s/umax.h)
AT&T UNIX PC model 7300 (m/7300.h)
Acorn
Alliant (m/alliant*)
Amdahl (m/amdahl*)
Altos 3068 Unix System V Release 2 (m/altos.h)
Apollo (m/apollo.h)
AT&T 3b (m/att3b.h)
Aviion (m/aviion*)
Berkeley 4.1 (m/bsd4.1.h)
Berkeley 4.2 (m/bsd4.2.h)
Berkeley 4.3 (m/bsd4.3.h)
Celerity (m/celerity.h)
clipper (m/clipper.h)
convergent S series (m/cnvrgnt.h)
cydra (m/cydra5.h)
Motorola System V/88 machines (m/delta88k.h)
Bull DPX/2 range (m/dpx2.h)
Dual machines using unisoft port (m/dual.h)
Elxsi machine (running enix) (m/elxsi.h)
Fujitsu F301 machine (m/f301.h)
i860 (m/i860.h)
ibm ps/2 aix386 (m/ibmps2-aix.h)
ISI 68000's (m/is*)
Masscomp 5000 series running RTU, ucb universe (m/masscomp.h)
Megatest 68000's (m/mega68.h)
Whitechapel Computer Works MG1 (ns16000 based) (m/mg1.h)
Harris Night Hawk Series 1200 and Series 3000 (m/nh3000.h m/nh4000.h)
ns16000 (m/ns16000.h)
National Semiconductor 32000, running Genix (m/ns32000.h)
TI Nu machines using system V (m/nu.h)
HLH Orion (m/orion.h m/orion105.h)
Paragon i860 (m/paragon.h)
PFU A-series (m/pfa50.h)
Plexus running System V.2 (m/plexus.h)
pyramid. (m/pyramid.h)
Bull SPS-7 (m/sps7.h)
Hitachi SR2001/SR2201 (m/sr2k.h)
Stride (m/stride.h)
Sun 1 (m/sun1.h)
Sun 2 (m/sun2.h)
SEQUENT SYMMETRY (m/symmetry.h)
Tadpole 68k machines (m/tad68k.h)
tahoe (m/tahoe.h)
targon31 (m/targon31.h)
Tektronix* (m/tek4300.h m/tekxd88.h)
NCR Tower 32 running System V.2 (m/tower32.h)
NCR Tower 32 running System V.3 (m/tower32v3.h)
U-station (Nihon Unisys, SS5E; Sumitomo Denkoh, U-Station E30) (m/ustation.h)
Wicat (m/wicat.h)
Honeywell XPS100 running UNIX System V.2 (m/xps100.h)
Data General's DG/UX (s/dgux*)
Irix before version 6
osf1 (s/osf*)
SunOS4 (s/sunos*)
RISCiX (s/riscix*)
SCO 3.2v4 (s/sco4.h)
SCO 3.2v5 (s/sco5.h)
Sun's 386-based RoadRunner (m/sun386.h)
Sun3 machines (m/sun3*)
Integrated Solutions 386 machine (m/is386.h)
Integrated Solutions `Optimum V' -- m68k-isi-bsd4.2 or -bsd4.3
Harris Power PC (powerpc-harris-powerunix)
Hewlett-Packard 9000 series 200 or 300 on some platforms -- m68k-hp-bsd or
m68k-hp-hpux; note m68k-*-netbsd* still works
IBM PS/2 -- i386-ibm-aix1.1 or i386-ibm-aix1.2
GEC 63 -- local-gec63-usg5.2
Tandem Integrity S2 -- mips-tandem-sysv
System V rel 0 -- usg5.0
System V rel 2 -- usg5.2
System V rel 2.2 -- usg5.2.2
System V rel 3 -- usg5.3
Ultrix -- bsd4.3
VMS (s/vms.h)

I'm currently installing OpenVMS 8.3 on one of the Alphas - it is an AlphaStation 500 333 Mhz.
Comes with PBXGB-AA graphics which is a Powerstorm 3D30 good for 1280x1024.
Has a CDROM drive, floppy drive and single hard disk.

I'll add more details once I've finished the install.

SIMH runs VAX emulation only, not Alpha of IA64. There are free versions of some Alpha emulators but I think they are binary distros for Windows. The ES40 simulator was very promising but the lead developer moved into the commercial arena. FreeAXP is your best bet for Alpha emulation: http://www.migrationspecialties.com/FreeAXP.html

OK, here are some pictures of the AlphaStation 500 333Mhz:








All the hard drives in both the AlphaServers sounded knackered, so this one now has a brand new U160 9GB SCSI drive onto which I've installed OpenVMS Alpha 8.4. As a consequence the box runs very quietly. The other AlphaServer isn't looking too healthy so I may strip it for parts, which means I should be able to up the memory in this one substantially, probably 512MB+, and get a fairly clean set of plastics together.

If anyone is interested in this box and would like to swap SGI or any other kit let me know. These AlphaStations are one of the last desktop alpha boxes that have a good spec processor, not too power hungry and don't take up too much space. As stated previously I'm in the UK. This would be the base unit only but they are very peripheral friendly: a standard 1280x1024 flat panel or CRT, a standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse are all that is required. I can supply various versions of OpenVMS or tru64 media.

I ended up removing the IDE drive that Solaris 7 was on and installing a 68 pin SCSI drive via a SYM22801 which is a dual channel Ultra SCSI card (and was available for small change off eBay). I had a copy of Solaris 9 shipped with the box and following a recommendation from a fellow retrochallenger I installed OpenCSW http://www.opencsw.org/about/ which is about as close to linux based package management as I have seen on Solaris. Works a treat!

I've been told the two deficiencies of the Ultra 5 are the IDE hard disk and the PGX8 graphics. I got a PGX32 card off eBay again for around GBP5 wich supports 1280x1024x24 and is much faster apparently. In theory it supports 1920x1200x8 but I couldn't get it working reliably at that resolution.

Here are some images of the Ultra 5 (there are more here http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/rc2012sc/2012/07/04/sun-ultra-5/ )

OK, so I read the listing wrong. At least Irix 6 is still in there then.
I haven't used emacs a great deal over the past few years but that's more because I became a Java developer and needed specific tools, oh, and finding jEdit did all I needed in terms of regular expression replacements and the like, and supports Unicode and all the variety of file formats that entails.
Mark.

No one tempted by one of these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-AlphaServe ... 080wt_1186

HP AlphaServer ES45 3x EV68 1.25GHz Server DY-66EBA-BA - that's gotta be pretty much the highest spec Alpha that was manufactured.
I know the electricity bill would be $$$, anyone live near a large dam?

I'd be very tempted if they were for sale over here in the UK, alas, 1/2 a world away isn't close enough.
Something romantic about the end-of-the line alpha boxes, especially as the plate says 'Made in the UK'...

Mark.

Sorry, meant to say the highest MHz Alpha CPU manufactured, rather than the total machine.

Anyone know if these boxes will run two PMAGB-JA/PMAGB-DA etc graphics cards in dual head mode?
I currently have a single width 24 bit graphics board which I guess from the options catalogue I have must be a PMAGB-JA, although this is listed as DEC OSF/1 support only I know it does work with OpenVMS, possible a later release than was available when the catalogue was printed - September 1993.

Alternatively does anyone have one of the higher spec cards they'd like to sell/trade. I'm in the UK.

Regards, Mark.

Absolutely, always useful to know for parts rather than whole systems...

The VAXstation 4000/VLC is a lovely small box but as mentioned is a bit underpowered. It does make a really fantastic x-terminal however, and in my case I have it setup to run as a diskless remote satellite in a VMS cluster, so it is very quiet too (although the small 2" fans are a little higher pitched than standard PC cooling fans). You can plug in an LK201 or LK401 and not suffer from keyboard mapping issues. I think it would be a little limiting as a standalone system, the maximum memory is 24MB and you would almost certainly need an external SCSI CDROM drive for it to be of any use.





Another nice system is the AlphaServer 300 series, seen pictured below. The processor is a 266 Mhz EV5, with 256 MB of RAM. Fairly compact desktop enclosure - initially I thought this system would be a bit cheap and cheerful, but when it arrived I was surprised to find that it still shows a good deal of DEC's legendary design and quality.









Finally, below, is an image with Multias on the left, VAXstation 4000/VLCs in the middle and a VAX 2000 on the right.

Hi guys,

Thanks to sgi_mark I'm now the proud owner of an SGI Fuel. He kindly installed IRIX. The boot sequence proceeds without issue and the mouse is responsive, however when I get to the login screen the mouse freezes. I've tried this with an official SGI mouse and a Kensington trackball. Any ideas why the IRIX display manager/X server is no longer processing mouse input? Keyboard works fine.

Thanks, Mark.

Keyboard and mouse are both PS/2, and the peripherals I'm using are known working with the Indigo 2.

Brilliant! That solved the problem.

Many thanks for the help.

Mark.

Received one AlphaServer DEC 3000/800 AXP and two DEC 3000/600 AXP's, all rackmount variations, and very imposing!
I've only fired up the '800 so far which works just fine, they are all in excellent condition so I have high hopes for the other two.

I can do you one as well, I'm in the UK

No problem, I've accumulated quite a few over the years.
Depending on where you are, and how long you can wait, I might be able to get someone to bring it over with them.

AlphaServer 1000A

SLAVE$$ @pi
How many digits do you want to compute? Computing PI with 40000 digits

Computed in 189 sec

SLAVE$$ @vups (with multiplier set to 10 for VAX, cpu_round_add set to 1)

Approximate System VUPs Rating : 85.5 ( min: 82.4 max: 87.6 )

SLAVE$$ @vups (with multiplier set to 40for Alpha, cpu_round_add set to 9)

Approximate System VUPs Rating : 343.5 ( min: 341.0 max: 350.0 )