Troubleshooting a new build

[Pete Hartman]

I'm at the "light up all the LEDs" stage of the build, with everything but the switches soldered in.  I'll give the full details in a bit but the summary version is, every time I turn it on, I get one bank of LEDs lit solidly, and all the others are off.  It's a different bank every time, mostly the three central banks of 12, but the last time I powered it last night it lit the column on the far right.  Shorting either pair of pads for the Test switch doesn't do anything.

- I have a pi 3B+

- I loaded Bullseye lite 64-bit on my SD card ***

- I've been soldering for a very long time but I recognize that I still ought to go over things -- but at the moment this behavior isn't consistent with what I'd expect for bad joints.

- I have tried multiple power supplies; initially none of the LEDs was lighting but I think I was using supplies that were too weak.  The most recent one is a pi supply I got for a different project a while back, it's 5V @ 2.5A and it snaps in nice and snug so I don't think it's the problem (and after I started using it is when I started getting partial banks)

- I looked at the GPU pins driving this with my oscilloscope and they are solidly on.  The LED row doesn't change once lit, nor do the columns -- they're all at 3.3V for the bank that's lit, and none of the other row outputs will be anything but ground.  I do see that the LED row is different each time as you'd expect.

*** I'm suspicious now as I re-read the instructions this morning, about my installation ...  It's an older pi but I thought I had seen that bullseye would be fine/Bookworm would have issues.  But re-reading the PDF I see "Recommended: Install the latest PiDP-11 software version onto an existing Raspberry Pi OS. Requires the 2023 ‘Bookworm’ version of Raspberry Pi OS. The 64 bit OS version is recommended"

I had noticed some weird messages late last night -- but the menu still comes up after this so initially I wasn't seeing them when logging in; I only see it if I log in almost immediately after boot.

/pidp11.sh: line 5: xhost: command not found
*** Start portmapper for RPC service, OK to fail if already running
sudo: rpcbind: command not found
*** booting idled ***
*** Start client/server ***
PiDP-11 FP 2023
[3:34:48.251] unable to register (BLINKENLIGHTD, BLINKENLIGHTD_VERS, udp).
PDP-11 simulator V4.0-0 Current  REALCONS build Dec 19 2023
Disabling XQ
Searching realcons controller "11/70" ...
Connecting to host localhost ...
Connect to host localhost failed.
boot.ini-5> set realcons connected
Unit not attachable

So I'm curious

- does this seem like something that could be due to the older OS selection?

- I plan to try Bookworm later today to see for myself, but experienced commentary would help me reinforce or rule out the likelihood.

- if it doesn't seem likely to be the PiOS, I'm not sure where to look next.  The random bank behavior doesn't seem like a soldering fault, that ought to be more consistent (even if it were intermittent), and the GPIO pins should be doing the expected cycling whether the signals are getting to the LEDs correctly or not.

Thanks for your time reading :)

Pete

[Bert Driehuis]

It appears you haven't got rpcbind installed yet. Without that, the bits that make up the blinkenlights and the emulator can't talk to each other.

Not sure if that's your only problem, but this is low hanging fruit.

I've gotten PiDP11 running on Ubuntu and on PiCore, and the latter is really different from Debian and Ubuntu.

With kind regards,

Bert

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[terri-...@glaver.org]

On Wednesday, October 15, 2025 at 10:30:51 AM UTC-4 pete.h...@gmail.com wrote:

- I loaded Bullseye lite 64-bit on my SD card ***

*** I'm suspicious now as I re-read the instructions this morning, about my installation ...  It's an older pi but I thought I had seen that bullseye would be fine/Bookworm would have issues.  But re-reading the PDF I see "Recommended: Install the latest PiDP-11 software version onto an existing Raspberry Pi OS. Requires the 2023 ‘Bookworm’ version of Raspberry Pi OS. The 64 bit OS version is recommended"

The version of the PiDP-11 software that you get via Git expects Bookworm, and my 

development fork enforces that (once I  test under the just-released Trixie, I'll add

 support for that release as well).

Although my fork is labeled "not yet ready for use", I'd suggest you start with that. 

Follow the instructions in the regular installation document, but do the "git pull" step

from https://github.com/Terri-Kennedy/pidp11.git

Note that you MUST recompile (build from source) the emulator binaries at present 

as the binaries in my fork have not yet been updated. This will be a bit slow on a Pi 

3B.

Open an issue in my fork if you run into problems. I have a number of uncommitted

changes.

[Pete Hartman]

Much appreciated.  Not sure where I got bookworm vs bullseye backwards.  I did load from the tarball / install script so that's the source build?  I'll re read and be sure.  I've built enough oss it shouldn't be an issue even if that isn't the whole picture.

Thanks!

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[Pete Hartman]

HM.  I'm not seeing "git pull" in the instructions?

https://www.pidp.net/pidp-11-building-instructions.html

has 2 options, and this was what I followed:

Option #2: Download the latest Raspberry Pi OS to your liking (64 bit is preferred), make sure to create the username 'pi', and bring the Raspberry Pi up to the point where you have an internet connection. Then:

sudo mkdir /opt/pidp11
cd /opt
sudo wget http://pidp.net/pidp11/2024/pidp11.tar.gz
sudo gzip -d pidp11.tar.gz
sudo tar -xvf pidp11.tar
sudo /opt/pidp11/install/install.sh

Follow the install script instructions, make sure to load the system disk images through the install script, and reboot.
(And yes, unzipping and untarring need to be separate steps, thanks to an arcane quirk of web hosting, never mind).

Option 1 is just put a full premade image down.

the PDF has "3 options", 1 & 2 are identical, and 3 is "just use a 32 bit OS"

I suppose that "install" may have a git clone/git pull in it?

Currently laying down bookworm, and will try option 2 again.

Pete

[terri-...@glaver.org]

On Wednesday, October 15, 2025 at 9:02:10 PM UTC-4 pete.h...@gmail.com wrote:

HM.  I'm not seeing "git pull" in the instructions?

https://www.pidp.net/pidp-11-building-instructions.html

has 2 options, and this was what I followed:

Option #2: Download the latest Raspberry Pi OS to your liking (64 bit is preferred), make sure to create the username 'pi', and bring the Raspberry Pi up to the point where you have an internet connection. Then:

[...]

That's just one of the semi-abandoned carcasses of Oscar's prior work. You want the instructions here:
https://github.com/obsolescence/pidp11

Although I suggest you substitute my repo instead of the obsolescence one. It'll let you install as 

whatever user you are running as (doesn't have to be 'pi') and has a bunch of other fixes beyond

what Oscar has in his repo. 

[Pete Hartman]

The Joy of the internet.  Some things never die even if they're just snake skins :)

Using those older nstructions *did* get me a working set of LEDs.  I fiddled and fussed with the switches a while and eventually "took a break" as suggested.

I'll read the newer instructions soon, thank you :)

Pete

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[terri-...@glaver.org]

On Thursday, October 16, 2025 at 12:24:19 AM UTC-4 pete.h...@gmail.com wrote:

Using those older nstructions *did* get me a working set of LEDs.  I fiddled and fussed with the switches a while and eventually "took a break" as suggested.

I'll read the newer instructions soon, thank you :)

You'll want to use the newer kit (either the GitHub obsolescence one or mine)

because there are *many* fixes in the obsolescence one, and mine is current-

ly 21 commits ahead of obsolescence. As I mentioned, with mine you can run

with any username, not just 'pi'. Remember, you'll need to select the build from

source option to pick up some of my fixes (actually submitted by 2 other users)

to fix the "LEDs hang or disappear" bugs. 

[Colin Gaudion]

Just picked this conversation up.  Have been running on a Pi 5 with the original instructions from website / manual and not encountered any issues. Then created a new SD card using latest Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit - which appears to be a port of Debian Trixie. Installed Pidp11 using the newer suggested https://github.com/obsolescence/pidp11  All appeared to work fine.  Did not see any messages about using 'Bookworm'.  Then wiped pdp11 and started again using the newer 'clone' instruction again, but using the GitHub/Terri-Kennedy install.  Got a warning that I was not running 'Bookworm' and to stop.  Ignored it and reinstalled and built from sources and it all appears to work fine so far?  Am just testing the whole setup at this stage.  One thing I have noticed once the SD card is formatted and O/S installed with the Pi Imager it is no longer recognised as a 'disc' by my Mac so can't re format it.  Not tried to read on a Windows machine yet.

[Steve Tockey]

"One thing I have noticed once the SD card is formatted and O/S installed with the Pi Imager it is no longer recognised as a 'disc' by my Mac so can't re format it."

That is normal. Once the new OS image is installed, you don't "reformat" it. You just put it into the Pi and boot it up. The initial OS boot process for a newly-installed OS does all the formatting it needs to.

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[terri-...@glaver.org]

On Saturday, October 18, 2025 at 1:31:34 PM UTC-4 alchy...@gmail.com wrote:

Just picked this conversation up.  Have been running on a Pi 5 with the original instructions from website / manual and not encountered any issues. Then created a new SD card using latest Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit - which appears to be a port of Debian Trixie. Installed Pidp11 using the newer suggested https://github.com/obsolescence/pidp11  All appeared to work fine.  Did not see any messages about using 'Bookworm'.  Then wiped pdp11 and started again using the newer 'clone' instruction again, but using the GitHub/Terri-Kennedy install.  Got a warning that I was not running 'Bookworm' and to stop.  Ignored it and reinstalled and built from sources and it all appears to work fine so far?  Am just testing the whole setup at this stage.  One thing I have noticed once the SD card is formatted and O/S installed with the Pi Imager it is no longer recognised as a 'disc' by my Mac so can't re format it.  Not tried to read on a Windows machine yet.

 

It's good to hear that my alternative repo worked for you. For anyone else who wants to try it, 

you should be sure to select the 'compile from source' installation option as the binaries have 

not yet been updated to the fixed versions.