Booting an Apollo with the external scsi connection

[Kurt Nowak]

So I was wondering if it was even possible to boot an Apollo using an external tape drive connected to the centronics scsi connector on the WD7000 controller? I have a centronics to 50pin cable connected to a Sun 411 case that has an Apollo QIC-11 tape drive in it. I EX CONFIG'ed the machine appropriately for the WD7000. Now is it just a matter of setting the jumpers correctly on the WD7000 controller? When i turn the unit on, the tape drive cycles and chatters like it would if it would be internal, but nothing happens if i try and read a tape, ie LD...

[supervinx]

I tried with an IBM SCSI tape, 72007-001.
Did EX CONFIG, DI C, but the tape did not move in response to the
subsequent LD.
I think it's a firmware issue. DI C, DI W refers only to internal
connections ...




--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Lothar Paltins]

But it must work. The WD7000 has only one SCSI bus, electrically it
doesn't matter whether a device is connected to the internal or external
connector. Of course the SCSI bus must be enabled, the termination must
be correct and the termination power must be supplied. And AFAIK, the
SCSI address of the tape drive must be 0 to be recognized as dev ct.

Lothar
--
Lothar Paltins lpt...@arcor.de

[supervinx]

I used ID 0, but had no luck. May be the drive wasn't suitable for the
Apollo...



--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Kurt Nowak]

I might be having more luck than Vincenzo, because I at least get tape activity and a tape sense error upon issuing LD. I have the scsi set to 4 for my Sun chain, so I will change that and see what happens. I have a terminator on the external enclosure, so I am guessing that I dont need to set anymore jumpers? Or perhaps I need to make sure that J10 is NOT jumpered? I will try both and see what happens.

Per T. Hunkler's site:


key: * = pin with jumper block in place
o = bare pin

***SNIP***

W7 o o o o o [1] SCSI TAPE Interrupt = IRQ5. Jumper across rows
o o * o o [2] 1/2 for ESDI i/f or 2/3 for SCSI i/f.
o o * o o [3]
^ ---------------- IRQ 9
^------------------- IRQ 7
^--------------------- IRQ 5
^----------------------- IRQ 4
^------------------------- IRQ 3

W8 o o o o o [1] TAPE DRQ/DACK select. Jumper across rows
* o * o o [2] 1/2 for ESDI i/f or 2/3 for SCSI i/f.
* o * o o [3]
^------------------- DACK 3
^--------------------- DACK 1
^----------------------- DRQ 3
^------------------------- DRQ 1

W9 o o o o o o o * TAPE I/O address = 200
o o o o o o o *

W10 * * SCSI Terminator power, IN = powered

-Kurt

[Lothar Paltins]

Hi Kurt,

the settings on T. Hunkler's site are correct, they correspond to the
ones in the Technical Reference manual. You should leave jumper W10 in,
it enables termination power to the bus. And if you don't have any
internal devices connected to J8, then you should have both resistor
networks Z1 and Z2 installed to terminate the bus at the controller
side.

[supervinx]

Since I did it a couple of months ago, I'm unsure if I got no activity or
a sense error.
Surely I forgot to terminate the bus at controller side :(
As soon as I make room on the "workin' table", I'll try again ...




--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Kurt Nowak]

Ok, I had success! You are correct, Lothar. Electrically the external connector is the same connection as the internal one. My problem was that I had my jumpers set incorrectly on my Archive Scorpion (60MB) tape drive. I had "ID0" and "CF0" jumpered where instead I needed to have CF0 and CF2 jumpered. I left all the SCSI "IDxs" unjumpered and it still worked. I didnt have any jumpers handy but I will try and jumper ID0 and see if it also still works, the next time I have a chance. I am still not sure what those "CF" jumpers are for though. According to Sunshack, they discribe the 3 jumpers as controlling the "disconnect transfer size"

http://www.sunshack.org/data/sh/1.0/wcd00002/wcd0023a.htm

Vincenzo...Perhaps the IBM drive just wont work on an Apollo. You should get at least some chattering of the drive when you power up the Apollo. But hopefully its just a jumper issue.

My next test is to see if a Sun QIC 150 drive can be used to boot an Apollo. They seem to be much easier to find on the open market than QIC-11s. Its amazing how much people are asking for them on ebay...$100s... However I just boght a QIC-150 in a Sun 411 enclosure for $8! Of course you have to rebuild the capstan to ensure reliability.

[supervinx]

Can we boot from a DDS tape ?



--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Kurt Nowak]

Ha! Now you're asking too much! :-)

[supervinx]

Il Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:03:15 -0700, Kurt Nowak ha scritto:

> Ha! Now you're asking too much! :-)

I asked because som IBM RS/6000 tolerate well booting from a DDS tape,
instead of QIC-150...



--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Kurt Nowak]

Booting flexibily was not exactly Apollo's strength, like networking was...I wish the engineers at Apollo had a bit more forsight to add more *new installation* booting options besides Tape and floppy. But then again, spending hours hacking on this old equipment is totally our choice. Lothar and Jim are pretty sharp, maybe they can hack the boot PROM to boot from CD and DDS for us ;-)

[supervinx]

Well, speaking about hacking ...
In orde to build a cable to connect only two Apollos with ATR,
which kind of connector must I look for ? Mini bnc ? Do they have a
name/code that will help my search ?
Connections must be made this way ?

-- -- .
|----------- -------------| .
| \ / | .
| / \ | .
|----------- -------------| .
-- -- .



--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 19, 7:28 pm, supervinx <ness...@libero.it> wrote:
> Well, speaking about hacking ...
> In orde to build a cable to connect only two Apollos with ATR,
> which kind of connector must I look for ? Mini bnc ? Do they have a
> name/code that will help my search ?

They're just plain old BNC connectors. For short runs, the cable
doesn't matter, although 75 ohm is best. You could use, for example,
"3ft BNC to BNC RG59 Coaxial Cable" from deepsurplus at $1.35 each.
Connect "out" to "in" and vice versa, although there was at least one
device (a wall plate?) that was labelled backwards.

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 19, 5:42 pm, Kurt Nowak <kurt.m.no...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday, March 19, 2012 1:08:26 PM UTC-7, supervinx wrote:
> Booting flexibily was not exactly Apollo's strength, like networking was...I wish the engineers at Apollo had a bit more forsight to add more *new installation* booting options besides Tape and floppy.

Ah, but we did! The original ether boot code was in the main prom, and
we split it out to the individual devices. That's why you need to add
a boot rom to a 3c505 to get it to boot. Obviously we couldn't code up
a cd boot rom because the device didn't exist yet. If you want to
write one, I think the documentation is available.

[supervinx]

> They're just plain old BNC connectors. For short runs, the cable doesn't
> matter, although 75 ohm is best. You could use, for example, "3ft BNC to
> BNC RG59 Coaxial Cable" from deepsurplus at $1.35 each. Connect "out" to
> "in" and vice versa, although there was at least one device (a wall
> plate?) that was labelled backwards.

You mean these ones ?
http://deepsurplus.com/Home-Theater-Audio-Video_2/RG59-Audio-Video

But connectors seems too big for the small holes in the back of ATR cards

---> O

(DB in the middle)

---> O


--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 20, 3:56 am, supervinx <ness...@libero.it> wrote:
> > They're just plain old BNC connectors. For short runs, the cable doesn't
> > matter, although 75 ohm is best. You could use, for example, "3ft BNC to
> > BNC RG59 Coaxial Cable" from deepsurplus at $1.35 each. Connect "out" to
> > "in" and vice versa, although there was at least one device (a wall
> > plate?) that was labelled backwards.
>

> You mean these ones ?http://deepsurplus.com/Home-Theater-Audio-Video_2/RG59-Audio-Video

>
> But connectors seems too big for the small holes in the back of ATR cards

Those are not BNC. If you can't find the adapter, you'll have to make
something. I don't know if those are a standard connector.

[Kurt Nowak]

So I am assuming you have a pair of ATR "dongles" with the male BNC connectors (in/out)? If not, then how are you connecting between the two machines? Those dongles seem very hard to come by....

[Kurt Nowak]

Yeah I guess its kinda hard to design for a technology that doesnt exit yet! You must be thinking way back to the DNX00 days. Didnt CDs exist when the DN4000s came out? Anyway, ethernet was a great addition, but you still cant do a fresh "first node" install from media other than tape or floppy. You have to assume the other machine has enough storage to house a full AA. And what if you dont have another machine? Youre SOL.. And with *good* tapes costing $30 a pop and becoming more and more rare, the Apollo will die pretty soon unless someone (smart, not me) come up with another method (CD, TTFTP, etc). Also, it seems the 3C505 is another rare beast. And then the ESDI disk shortage...*sigh*...thats another story...:)
/rant

[Lothar Paltins]

Hi Vincenzo,

> But connectors seems too big for the small holes in the back of ATR cards

you need a 7W2 male D-Type connector with 2 coaxial contacts. I've also
planned to make an additional adapter and found the needed parts at
www.reichelt.de:

Artikelnummer Bezeichnung Anzahl Euro
---------------------------------------------------------------
MIX-STG CO D-SUB-Einzelkon., Koax, Stecker, 50 O 2 5,80
MIX-STG 7W2 D-SUB-Koax Stecker f. Mischbestückung 1 1,35
KAPPE 15PM D-SUB-Kappe f. 15-polig D-Sub, lange 1 0,21
---------------------------------------------------------------
7,36

Additionally, two short pieces of a thin coaxial cable and two female
BNC connectors for the other end of the cables are required. I think,
these parts should also be available from a dealer in Italy and all the
parts for one adapter should not cost much more than about 10 Euros.

Kurt did send me some cut off connectors, but it will be difficult to
diasassemble the coaxial contacts and to reuse them. But there's one
interesting thing about these connectors. I've always thought, that the
5 single contacts aren't used and are not connected. But there are wires
connected to two of these contacts. On the old 2-board ATR controller,
these pins are really not connected, but on the new 1-board ATR
controller they are. One of the contacts with the wires is connected to
GND and the other to +5V. It seems, that the other 3 contacts are also
connected on the board. Jim, do you know, what the purpose of these pins
are? AFAIK, there was no such thing like an active ATR hub or switch.
Maybe the 5V was used to control a relay in a wall plug.

[Lothar Paltins]

Hi Jim,

> Ah, but we did! The original ether boot code was in the main prom, and
> we split it out to the individual devices. That's why you need to add
> a boot rom to a 3c505 to get it to boot. Obviously we couldn't code up
> a cd boot rom because the device didn't exist yet. If you want to
> write one, I think the documentation is available.

that's interesting, could you provide me this documentation? Where must
a potential CD-ROM loader be located? In the ROM of the SCSI controller
or the main ROM? But anyway, several different implementation would be
required to support the different SCSI controllers (the WD7000 and the
built in controllers of the DN2500 and the HP4xx).

--
Lothar Paltins lpt...@arcor.de

[Kurt Nowak]

Yeah, I thought that was interesting too. I took some pics before I sent them to you... see picture 3.

https://plus.google.com/photos/112158735340501596756/albums/5722133206612433617

[Kurt Nowak]

I had no idea the 7w2 was a standard connector. I thought this was some proprietary Apollo design!

http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/282973-conn-dsub-power-plug-7w2-a-da7w2pa00lf.html

[Lothar Paltins]

Kurt Nowak wrote:

> Yeah, I thought that was interesting too. I took some pics before I sent
> them to you... see picture 3.
>
> https://plus.google.com/photos/112158735340501596756/albums/5722133206612433617

Oops, the parts I've described for the adapter connector were wrong.
Good that I looked at your pictures and the ATR cards again. Now I've
seen, that the connector is quite unusual. At the ATR card, there are 5
single female and 2 coaxial male contacts. The connector on your first
large picture is the one that is required for the adapter cable. It
mustn't contain male but female coax contacts.

--
Lothar Paltins lpt...@arcor.de

[Kurt Nowak]

After doing a search for 7w2 on mouser.com, there are in fact both male and female versions comercially avaiable of this conector. Im guessing that the two "unusual" female types did not come from Apollo equipment though. Regardless, I'm sure its pretty easy to make one of those 7W2 to 2x BNC/male "dongles" from off the shelf connector housing parts. On a side note, I think our frames of references are swapped. When describing male vs female, Im callign the ATR adapter the female and the cable connector the male, but the actual conductor gender is the opposite. :)

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 20, 4:02 pm, Lothar Paltins <lptm...@arcor.de> wrote:
> that's interesting, could you provide me this documentation? Where must
> a potential CD-ROM loader be located? In the ROM of the SCSI controller
> or the main ROM? But anyway, several different implementation would be
> required to support the different SCSI controllers (the WD7000 and the
> built in controllers of the DN2500 and the HP4xx).

I don't have pointers to specific docs. Check on Bitsavers and
Typewritten. But I thought of a problem. If you write a rom, then the
prom will be able to load from CD. But Aegis won't be able to read the
CD, so you won't be able to do an install. You'd have to also write an
Aegis driver.

I gave up all my Apollos, but I still run Aegis, in an emulator. As
the hardware dies off that may become the only option. I think the
emulator is nearly good enough to use it as a server for net installs.

Here's another idea. Get a regular computer, running linux for
example, with a scsi controller, and write a tape drive emulator.

I have no idea what those extra pins are for on the atr connector.

[supervinx]

> I gave up all my Apollos, but I still run Aegis, in an emulator. As the
> hardware dies off that may become the only option. I think the emulator
> is nearly good enough to use it as a server for net installs.
>
> Here's another idea. Get a regular computer, running linux for example,
> with a scsi controller, and write a tape drive emulator.
>
> I have no idea what those extra pins are for on the atr connector.

I admit my ignorance ... never known about an emulator.
So
1) It's publicly available ?
2) Does it support ethenet networking ?
3) Are some "preinstalled" images with the complete aa folder available ?




--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 23, 3:17 am, supervinx <ness...@libero.it> wrote:
> I admit my ignorance ... never known about an emulator.
> So
> 1) It's publicly available ?
> 2) Does it support ethenet networking ?
> 3) Are some "preinstalled" images with the complete aa folder available ?
>
> --http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

I wrote one myself:
http://jim.rees.org/computers/otterlator.html

But stopped working on it because there's a better one available now.
It's in the Apollo Archive:
http://www.umich.edu/~archive/apollo/
Look for "ost.apollo.mess". I think you need a bootable disk image but
it wouldn't be too hard to get it to do an install from a tape image.

[Lothar Paltins]

Jim Rees wrote:

> I don't have pointers to specific docs. Check on Bitsavers and
> Typewritten. But I thought of a problem. If you write a rom, then the
> prom will be able to load from CD. But Aegis won't be able to read the
> CD, so you won't be able to do an install. You'd have to also write an
> Aegis driver.

But Domain/OS 10.4 does support CDROMs. Don't know, whether this support
is available already after the initial system load.

> I gave up all my Apollos, but I still run Aegis, in an emulator. As
> the hardware dies off that may become the only option. I think the
> emulator is nearly good enough to use it as a server for net installs.

I did also download the ost.apollo.mess emulator some time ago, but I
didn't install and run it yet. Just running Aegis or Domain/OS is not
what I want. I'm looking at my Apollos as museum pieces that must be
complete with the original HW and SW. But you are right, a CDROM loader
isn't worth the effort, if it's feasible at all. Especially since SCSI
CDROM drives are also obsolete for a long time now. But the emulator
would be really useful if it could be used as an install and diskless
node server.

> Here's another idea. Get a regular computer, running linux for
> example, with a scsi controller, and write a tape drive emulator.

Yes, this and an ESDI disk emulator would be useful, but for an ESDI
emulator a special HW adapter would be necessary.

> I have no idea what those extra pins are for on the atr connector.

At least they are definitely not required for the simple ATR to BNC
adapter.

[supervinx]

>> ... But the emulator

> would be really useful if it could be used as an install and diskless
> node server.

That's my idea ;) Since ESDI disks are dying, we can boot the node diskless from
the emulator and save data on SCSI disk connected to the WD controller.

[Kurt Nowak]

If we go in this direction, then why would you even need a disk on the WD7000, or a WD7000 at all? Or any controller?.. Just save data to a partition on the diskless server running the emulator. I guess for someone with a bare Apollo with no contoller, this would be a viable option. But I am in the same camp as Lothar - I'm doing this because of the "museum" aspect of all of this and the original HW/SF interplay of the Original Apollo computers...Not so much because of the novelty of the OS alone. Sadly the ESDI issue is the most urgent. Im always nervous when I fire up my most valuable machine with the 760MB HD and cross my fingers that a head wont crash! :)

On a related topic (diskspace) ...Lothar. So I got your SR10.4.1 upgrade and unpacked it in /install but unfortunately my 380MB drive ran out of disk space during the unpacking. Is it even possible to have a full SR10.4.1 AA with a 380MB drive? I'm thinking I may need another disk to store the .gz file and unpack it from there into the /install directory. Thoughts/hints?

-Kurt

[supervinx]

You're right, I own three Apollos.
But I couldn't do a backup of the two HDs (the DN3000 is diskless) and this
new emulator is a blessing.
I've ended the compilation and now it's running. I've create an empty disk image
but it's only 380MB. Must find the way to create a 760MB disk images, which could
hold the 170MB and 380MB backups.

I'll use the SR10.4 tape images found on bit savers.
Now the emulator is reading the first tape, slowly as real ;)



--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[supervinx]

I've ended the compilation and now it's running. I've create an empty
> disk image but it's only 380MB. Must find the way to create a 760MB disk
> images, which could hold the 170MB and 380MB backups.
>

No way :(
The emulator only supports OMTi controller with 170MB o 380MB disks...



--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[supervinx]

Did you ever user 10.4 tape images found on Bitsavers ?
I tried them on the emulator.
During the initial writing on the hard disk, after
EX DOMAIN_OS
when writing the SAU7/ part, system stops signaling a tape error
(I mean a logical error, not physical), like there had been a CPTAPE error
when the images were created.
The sistem is incomplete: cannot execute nor GO nor INIT, only SHUT and REBOOT.

[Kurt Nowak]

Ive never used the bitsavers images. But they might be the same ones I have. I ended up making a little shell script to make the tapes from the images because I only have one good trustworthy tape that I use over and over. I cant speak for how they would work with the emulator. My 10.4 installation worked fine, but its the images of the 10.4.1 upgrade that I'm having disk space problems with.

[Lothar Paltins]

Hi Kurt and Vincenzo,

supervinx wrote:
>>> That's my idea ;) Since ESDI disks are dying, we can boot the node
>>> diskless from the emulator and save data on SCSI disk connected to the
>>> WD controller.

that would be great. And as Kurt wrote, you won't need a local disk at
all.

Kurt Nowak wrote:
>> On a related topic (diskspace) ...Lothar. So I got your SR10.4.1 upgrade
>> and unpacked it in /install but unfortunately my 380MB drive ran out of
>> disk space during the unpacking. Is it even possible to have a full
>> SR10.4.1 AA with a 380MB drive? I'm thinking I may need another disk to
>> store the .gz file and unpack it from there into the /install directory.
>> Thoughts/hints?

Unfortunately, a 380MB (which in fact has only 348MB formatted capacity)
is too small for a full Domain/OS 10.4.1. The only chance for an ESDI
disk node is a 697MB disk or a set of two 348MB disks which would have
about the same capacity.

[supervinx]

@Jim Rees
As usual, I was lookin' through http://www.umich.edu/~archive/apollo/ when I
noticed two links to my collection site :) LOL !
Thanks for the addition !

--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 24, 6:38 pm, supervinx <ness...@libero.it> wrote:
> @Jim Rees

> As usual, I was lookin' throughhttp://www.umich.edu/~archive/apollo/when I

> noticed two links to my collection site :) LOL !
> Thanks for the addition !
>
> --http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

I should add another link now that you've got the dn3500. I'm always
looking for additions and corrections.

[supervinx]

I've got two DN3500 (Aegis 9.x , DomainOS 10.4), a DN3000
(still work in progress, not in the site) and a HP 425t with DomainOS,
besides that with the dual boot...


--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 25, 6:14 am, supervinx <ness...@libero.it> wrote:
> I've got two DN3500 (Aegis 9.x , DomainOS 10.4), a DN3000
> (still work in progress, not in the site) and a HP 425t with DomainOS,
> besides that with the dual boot...
>
> --http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

I just put in a single link to the Apollo section of your index, so if
you add more machines they'll show up. I guess I should also have a
link to your HP section, but those aren't real Apollos.

[ja...@forluna.co.uk]

Hi there,

I tried to install Domain/OS in the emulator from the tape images on Bitsavers but I had the same problems as you. I tried it several times and eventually the first part worked and I got through to part 2 of the install in the DM, but the other tapes kept failing at different points so I couldn't complete the install. I am not sure if it is a problem with the tape images or the tape emulation. It is quite a shame that the disk images mentioned in the Readme aren't available. I know there are licensing issues but really this can only be of historical interest now surely.

[supervinx]

Hi !
I installed with success the tape images from bitsavers, with the emulator.
You need the latest package of the ost emulator and some patience.
I installed the "large" options with two 380MB disks INVOLed as one.

I can help you if you give me some other infos, like:
1) Host system
2) package used (i.e. the one downloaded from umich.edu)

The umich.edu zip has a random timing error reading from tape. I overcomed it,
before receving from the author another zip, putting the emulator (messtiny),
the disk images and the tape images on three different physical disk. Tape images
were on a disk with no other activity.
With the updated version, the trick it's not necessary.
(still random reset problems of the tape subsystem: from the MD, instead of
> RE you should reset the machine with scrollock, partial emulation, F3)
Tape must be changed from the emulator menu (scroll lock, partial emulation,
tab,file manager ...)

Now I'm planning to create other images with other option (not large...) and
tried networking...
If you need the updated version, feel free to contact me at
supervinx
@
libero
.
it

--
http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer

[Jim Rees]

On Mar 27, 5:08 pm, supervinx <ness...@libero.it> wrote:
> The umich.edu zip has a random timing error reading from tape. I overcomed it,
> before receving from the author another zip, putting the emulator (messtiny),
> the disk images and the tape images on three different physical disk. Tape images
> were on a disk with no other activity.

Hans just sent me a new copy of the emulator with the tape errors
fixed. It's in the Archive.