Failed first light test.

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Carl Marbach

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May 21, 2022, 6:53:38 PM5/21/22
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The Pi is working and I can get to it with Mobaxterm from my PC. I checked all the solder connections and diodes. What do i do next?


timr...@gmail.com

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May 21, 2022, 10:27:22 PM5/21/22
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How does it fail?  No lights work?  Some lights work?  Most lights work?  More information is needed.  Are you sure the LEDs are installed correctly?

Mark Matlock

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May 21, 2022, 10:49:20 PM5/21/22
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Carl,
   Did you insert the led driver chip in the socket under the LED alignment panel. This step is listed in the instructions just before the board test.
Good Luck,
Mark
On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 5:53:38 PM UTC-5 cmar...@marbachs.com wrote:

Regan Russell

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May 21, 2022, 10:50:33 PM5/21/22
to Mark Matlock, [PiDP-11]
The lights on mine are all functional but very dim. Suggestions?

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Mark Matlock

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May 21, 2022, 10:58:47 PM5/21/22
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Check voltage on the board itself. It is being fed through the Pi’s header and you might have a weak connection. I put a small digital voltmeter on mine permanently to keep an eye on that. 

Also, the twelve 390 ohm resistors are the current limiting resistors for the LEDs. That is another place to check but it is multiplexed so you might need an oscilloscope to see the pulse voltages.
Good Luck,
Mark

randy jackson

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May 21, 2022, 11:42:06 PM5/21/22
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could be your power supply, i just built mine with a pi2 and it seemed to work with the stock power supply. I did read something about using a good power supply so your lights dont dim or swapping out resistor values. Its either on the website or in the manual dont remember.

Carl Marbach

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May 22, 2022, 11:26:05 AM5/22/22
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I think I have the Pi set up incorrectly. The default name is NOT Pi. Would that be the cause of no lights?

Marco

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May 22, 2022, 1:55:34 PM5/22/22
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Definitely. Either reinstall the Pi with 'pi' as the default user, or first edit install.sh and replace all occurrences of 'pi' with your default user, and then run install.sh again. Check for any error messages when running the install.

Op zondag 22 mei 2022 om 17:26:05 UTC+2 schreef cmar...@marbachs.com:

Mark Matlock

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May 22, 2022, 2:27:59 PM5/22/22
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Carl,
   As Marco just replied, if you used the latest release of the Raspberry Pi OS the lack of a default pi account is a problem. In Oscar's latest update to the build instructions:

"Using Raspberry Pi OS 12 (versions downloaded after April 2022)? Also read this:

Make sure you specify 'pi' as the default user when installing your freshly minted SD card. They broke with the tradition of having 'pi' as the default login, but I depend on it."

You may also need this fix too:

" If using Raspberry Pi OS 11 (versions downloaded after 30 October 2021)? Apply this fix:

cd /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf
sudo ln -sv libreadline.so.8 libreadline.so.7

"

Best,

Mark

Carl Marbach

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May 23, 2022, 3:25:43 PM5/23/22
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I reinstalled the pi operating system with pi as the user name and rasberry as the pwd.
I then followed all the directions in the building instructions for preparing your pi. Now when I reboot, I get the Pi GUI. Entering ./pdp.sh returns a 0.
 Now what???

Thanks
Carl

Carl Marbach

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May 24, 2022, 12:03:01 AM5/24/22
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IT WORKS!! YEA!!

Even though I downloaded what I thought was version 11, I got version 10 and had to do the extra linux thing.
I also used the 32 NOT 64 bit operating system. Then it all worked. 
One LED had to be fixed, but it all works.....so far.

moving on....

Thanks to everyone.

Carl

Marco

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May 24, 2022, 2:31:55 AM5/24/22
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Great! Perseverance (and reading the manual) always pays off. Now enjoy the blinkenlights!

Op dinsdag 24 mei 2022 om 06:03:01 UTC+2 schreef cmar...@marbachs.com:

Mark Matlock

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May 24, 2022, 9:44:39 AM5/24/22
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Carl,
   I'm glad to hear you got it sorted out. I just took a look at the newest Raspian installer and the OS that works out of the box is the Raspberry Pi (Legacy) which is the Buster with security and dektop enhancements released 4-4-2022. I think you'll have a lot of fun exploring the old PDP-11 operating systems.
Best,
Mark

Carl Marbach

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May 25, 2022, 4:30:31 PM5/25/22
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Unfortunately, when I said "it works" I meant the lights.
I don't seem to be able to open the PDP-11 terminal by typing  ./pdp.sh
when I type that I get:
0
then the pi@rasberrypi: ~     prompt

What is going on ??????

Help....(again)

Carl

Peter Ekstrom

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May 25, 2022, 8:26:56 PM5/25/22
to Carl Marbach, [PiDP-11]
Hi Carl,

So when you say it works, do you mean all the lights come on when you flip the lamp test switch? Based on what you get from ./pdp.sh it seems the simulator and frontpanel driver aren't running yet.
I think you need to run 'sudo /etc/init.d/pidp11 start' from the pi user to get those running. Then you can try ./pdp.sh and see if that gives you the PDP-11 console.

-Peter

Carl Marbach

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May 25, 2022, 9:16:36 PM5/25/22
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When I said it works, When booted, the front panel lights all light. 
I have never seen the simulator. 
I have never seen the instruction: "sudo /etc/init.d/pidp11 start"
So I did that and when I do  ./pdp.sh It replies with a 0.
I can't seem to get to SIMH or the simulator....
??
ARGH!

Carl Marbach

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May 25, 2022, 10:41:17 PM5/25/22
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when I try cd/opt/bin
./pidp11.sh 1
I get:
*** start portmapper for rpc service, OK to fail if already running rpcbind: another rpcbind is already running. Aborting 
ignoring sr switches, argument provided to script: 1
*** booting rsx11mplus ***
*** START client/server ***
*** RP1 4 DETECTED
./client 11: error while loading shared library:  libreadline.so 7: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory



What next?

Marco

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May 26, 2022, 3:43:33 AM5/26/22
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Did you do these steps:

cd /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf
sudo ln -sv libreadline.so.8 libreadline.so.7

Then you should have this in that directory: libreadline.so.7 -> libreadline.so.8

The error message you reported, together with the excellent PiDP-11 build manual, should already have pointed you to this...

Op donderdag 26 mei 2022 om 04:41:17 UTC+2 schreef cmar...@marbachs.com:

Mike Ross

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May 26, 2022, 7:48:35 AM5/26/22
to Marco, [PiDP-11]
Just a generalised comment to this whole thread.

Ideally, none of these steps should be necessary. There should be a downloadable preconfigured pidp11 tested SD card image.

You download it. You dd it to an SD card. You put it in the pidp11, you turn it on, it works. Modulo TCP/IP customisation. 

If I had the spare time, I'd cook one myself. As it is... :-(

PS I've been kinda inactive in this space due to Work and too many Real Hardware projects... what's the news on pidp-10? That's what I'm waiting for! Because my Real Hardware pdp-10 is still not cooperating :-) 

Mike 




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For one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know or see.'

Marco

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May 26, 2022, 4:27:00 PM5/26/22
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I wouldn't necessarily go into a fully reconfigured card image. The Raspberry Pi OS as it is, is good enough. But I would suggest a more robust install script, which is also much easier to maintain than a custom card image. This script could easily take care of matters such as missing libraries (like the correct libreadline), create a 'pi' user as the default user if it doesn't exist, warn the user if a non-supported image is being used (like 64 bit as long as that is not officially PiDP-11 supported), more verbose error messages if something goes wrong, and so on.

( Better still would of course be to make the whole install user-independent. And personally I would move away from init.rc to systemd, but that is my preference and is sure to raise discussions. )

Of course, there will always be cases where the install will fail nevertheless, there never is a 100% success solution. But the aim should be to make that number as small as possible. Even for users who refuse to read the manual...


Op donderdag 26 mei 2022 om 13:48:35 UTC+2 schreef tmfd...@gmail.com:
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