ODS-1 ACP for Alpha

[Alan Frisbie]

Does an Alpha version of the ODS-1 ACP exist, either officially
or otherwise? If so, how can I get a copy?

Thanks,
Alan

[Robert A. Brooks]

On 4/12/2017 9:28 PM, Alan Frisbie wrote:
> Does an Alpha version of the ODS-1 ACP exist, either officially
> or otherwise? If so, how can I get a copy?

None exists within VSI.

--
-- Rob

[Bob Koehler]

Do like IBM. Get a VAX.

The only way I can use ODS-1 now i to set up an LD container for
a very small drive on my VAX. ODS-1 won't habdle anything bigger
than several generations old.

[Bob Gezelter]

Alan,

The answer has always been "no".

The caveat more recently has been:

- Run one of the VAX emulators
- Run OpenVMS on simulated VAX
- Configure (possibly LD virtual disks) for the emulated environment
- Copy the files to an ODS-2/5 volume
- Access the ODS-2/5 volume from the Alpha

Hope the above is helpful.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Alan Frisbie]

On 04/13/2017 09:13 AM, Bob Gezelter wrote:

> - Run one of the VAX emulators
> - Run OpenVMS on simulated VAX
> - Configure (possibly LD virtual disks) for the emulated environment
> - Copy the files to an ODS-2/5 volume
> - Access the ODS-2/5 volume from the Alpha
>
> Hope the above is helpful.

Like the vast majority of your answers, not at all.

Those steps are totally obvious to the most casual observer.
The goal was to eliminate one of them.

[terry-...@glaver.org]

On Thursday, April 13, 2017 at 9:40:01 PM UTC-4, Alan Frisbie wrote:
> Those steps are totally obvious to the most casual observer.
> The goal was to eliminate one of them.

Will $ EXCHANGE MOUNT/VIRTUAL do anything useful?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2017-04-13 01:28:55 +0000, Alan Frisbie said:

> Does an Alpha version of the ODS-1 ACP exist, either officially or
> otherwise? If so, how can I get a copy?

DEC never brought ODS-1 support or tooling past OpenVMS VAX.

Get the OpenVMS source listings and figure out how to build it (and I
don't recall anybody in ZKO even looking at this, either; not past the
decision not to port), or fetch one of the open-source ODS readers for
another platform (one or two were on the OpenVMS Freeware) and start
with that.

Or port the PDP-11 or whatever source of this data forward from ODS-1
to something with more current support. See if whatever PDP-11 box
involved here can generate something that EXCHANGE or some other file
system or tool available for OpenVMS can deal with, for instance.
EXCHANGE does RT-11, FILES11 (which won't help here), or DEC's DOS-11
format. The /VIRTUAL support also won't help here, AFAIK.

XMODEM/YMODEM or ZMODEM or whatever the data across a serial or network
connection.

Maybe start to replace the data source environment with hardware and
software from the post-PDP era? That'll be more disruptive short term,
but better long-term as these problems only accrete.

Or write some OpenVMS glue code for whatever you're up to here.
Scripting a SIMH launch and boot, at al. That's the usual approach,
after all: more glue code, longer chains of dependencies. complexity.

--
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2017-04-13 16:17, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article <ocmp1f$n8j$1...@dont-email.me>, "Robert A. Brooks" <FIRST...@vmssoftware.com> writes:
>> On 4/12/2017 9:28 PM, Alan Frisbie wrote:
>>> Does an Alpha version of the ODS-1 ACP exist, either officially
>>> or otherwise? If so, how can I get a copy?
>>
>> None exists within VSI.

How hard can it be? If the code exists for VAX... ;-)

> Do like IBM. Get a VAX.
>
> The only way I can use ODS-1 now i to set up an LD container for
> a very small drive on my VAX. ODS-1 won't habdle anything bigger
> than several generations old.

Uh, is the VMS ODS-1 implementation trailing RSX by much? RSX can deal
with up to 8G drives. Anything larger just gets truncated, so you can
actually throw any size drive at it.

There are also hooks to actually use 32 bit LBNs in RSX, but I haven't
tried turning that on, so I don't know if it actually works.

All that said, one could also fire up RSX, Alan... ;-)

Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

[Michael Moroney]

Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:

>On 2017-04-13 16:17, Bob Koehler wrote:
>> In article <ocmp1f$n8j$1...@dont-email.me>, "Robert A. Brooks" <FIRST...@vmssoftware.com> writes:
>>> On 4/12/2017 9:28 PM, Alan Frisbie wrote:
>>>> Does an Alpha version of the ODS-1 ACP exist, either officially
>>>> or otherwise? If so, how can I get a copy?
>>>
>>> None exists within VSI.

>How hard can it be? If the code exists for VAX... ;-)

I once looked at that a long time ago. Much more complicated than I
thought it would be. Lots of ugly BLISS-32 code. Also, any macro code
was never put through the VAX-Alpha porting, which can get interesting.

>> Do like IBM. Get a VAX.
>>
>> The only way I can use ODS-1 now i to set up an LD container for
>> a very small drive on my VAX. ODS-1 won't habdle anything bigger
>> than several generations old.

>Uh, is the VMS ODS-1 implementation trailing RSX by much? RSX can deal
>with up to 8G drives. Anything larger just gets truncated, so you can
>actually throw any size drive at it.

There are ODS-1 remnants in INIT and MOUNT, it appears that both
would complain about oversized disks if the code wasn't disabled.