Rev 18.3 on the Prime emulator

[Jim Wilcoxson]

I restored a rev 18 Primos tape recently, from circa 1983, when I was
doing Prime consulting work. Unfortunately, it only contained an
operating system - no commands. But I loaded it up on the emulator
anyway, just for kicks. It's running on port 8007.

I had some trouble with the security setup, if you can call it
that. :) At rev 18, there was no SAD, no system administrator, etc;
any top-level UFD was a login id. So while I setup a GUEST UFD with a
password, it also let me login as MFD! Hmm... owner password, non-
owner password, protect... After some head scratching and
experiments, I muddled through and put an owner password on the
directories, used FUTIL and UFDPRO to set the protection to 7 1
(owners all, non-owners read), and things seem to work. There's
something about a password of XXXXXX being special, but I can't
remember how it worked. I did remember the special Primos II
universal password of ^Z^Y^X^W^V^U, and actually had to use it during
my experiments: apparently I had screwed up when setting password,
probably put in a backspace by mistake, and couldn't figure it out.

I took NSED (non-shared editor) from rev 19 and called it ED, FUTIL
works, SLIST works, PMA, but LOAD is from rev 19 and raises
LINKAGE_FAULT$ for TONL because I don't have any shared libraries. :
( You can attach to CMDNC0 and see what few commands are there.

Have fun!

$ telnet prirun.dyndns.org 8007
Connected to prirun.dyndns.org.
Escape character is '^]'.

Welcome to the Prime Computer 50-series emulator, running Primos rev
18.3.1!

This is a very minimal rev 18 - only Primos and a few commands.
You are welcome to create a directory under GUEST for your files.
To report bugs or contact the author, send email to pri...@gmail.com
*** REMEMBER *** the password is on the login line at rev 18!

Enjoy your time travels! -Jim Wilcoxson aka JIMMY

Login please.
login guest pr1me

PRIMOS Version 18.3.1
GUEST (2) LOGGED IN AT 9:31 102711
OK, stat sys

System is currently running PRIMOS rev. 18.3.1


OK, stat di


DISK LDEV PDEV SYSN
SYS183 0 462
USR192 1 EM19

OK, lo
GUEST (2) LOGGED OUT AT 9:31 102711
TIME USED= 0:00 0:00 0:00
OK,
Prime session disconnected
Connection closed by foreign host.

[Bill Gunshannon]

I really should give this a try. I started at Rev 18 and stopped
just about the time Rev 20 was being talked about. Although a
bunch have gone to Dennis Boone already I am still finding Primos
manuals all around the house. I'll bet I even still have a Rev 18
Commands Reference in the attic somewhere. :-)

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>