Cray X-MP simulator...

[Quadibloc]

Looking for videos on YouTube about supercomputers, I happened to learn about this project:

http://www.modularcircuits.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/

They _have_ the operating system, UNICOS, for the Cray X-MP, but no other
software.

In doing some more searching, I see that UNICOS was Cray's licensed version of
Unix System V.

So in the mean time, while we are waiting for other authentic software that was
actually used with the Cray X-MP to turn up, I would ask if...

people might know enough of the details of the Cray X-MP to at least, say, port
GCC to it, so that things could be done on the resurrected X-MP, if not in
exactly the way they were originally done.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

I've been doing some more digging on this matter.

Apparently, there are Cray Y-MP machines still around running in more than one
computer museum, but Cray hasn't given permission for them to make the software
generally available.

For the Cray X-MP and previous, though, early versions of the software were not
proprietary to Cray. This is what allowed companies like Convex and Scientific
Computer Systems to make Cray clones like the C-1 and the SCS-40.

So back when Cray systems were actively in use, the software _was_ floating
around so that such companies could get their hands on it.

...one source said that the SCS-40 used an early, non-proprietary, version of
the Cray Fortran Compiler, CFT, and another said that it came with a
vectorizing Fortran written by SCS that was language-compatible with VAX
Fortran, so there are still some ambiguities here.

John Savard

[jfehl...@comcast.net]

On Thursday, July 28, 2016 at 3:52:01 PM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:

> Looking for videos on YouTube about supercomputers,
> I happened to learn about this project:
>
> http://www.modularcircuits.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/
>
> They _have_ the operating system, UNICOS, for the Cray X-MP,
> but no other software.
>
> In doing some more searching, I see that UNICOS was Cray's

> licensed version of Unix System V. . .

It wasn't UNICOS they recovered. It was COS 1.17 (the final release
of the Cray Operating System). Not the same thing as its
successor, the Unix-like UNICOS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_Operating_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNICOS

(The disk image at archive.org mentioned in the Wikipedia article
on the Cray Operating System is in fact the one from the CDC disk pack
recovered by Chris Fenton and Andras Tantos.
https://archive.org/details/Cos1.17DiskImageForCray-1x-mp )

As for UNICOS, Tantos wrote:

http://www.modularcircuits.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/the-matrix/
---------
Andras Tantos on May 25, 2013 said:

[T]he X-MP was capable of running UNICOS
(as a guest OS on top of COS). Cray-cyber in
fact is a Y-MP EL, though any time I’ve checked
it was off-line. I would be more than happy to
run UNICOS on the simulator, the trouble is,
I don’t have it. These OS-es were (as far as I can tell)
compiled from sources for each machine they were
running on. So, taking a Y-ML EL image (even if
the Cray-Cyber guys would be able to provide it)
would not help at all with an X-MP. In fact, even
an X-MP image would only help if I can re-create
the same configuration. There are significant
differences between a Y-MP EL and an X-MP, especially
in the IOP/IOS domain. Here, the X-MP is well documented,
the Y-MP EL is not at all. So, simulating a Y-MP EL
is not a reasonable target – at least wasn’t when
I’ve last looked at it. Maybe new documentation
surfaced since. . .
====

You can see Andras Tantos starting up COS 1.17 on his
software Cray X-MP simulator at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtGCMnmQ-Rk
Cray X-MP normal start
Published on Oct 2, 2013

See also:
http://www.chrisfenton.com/cray-1-digital-archeology/
http://www.chrisfenton.com/cos-recovery/

The software Cray simulator can be downloaded from:
http://modularcircuits.tantosonline.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/downloads/

However, as Tantos mentioned on his blog, there wasn't much
in the way of system software recovered from that disk pack:

http://www.modularcircuits.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/
---------
Help wanted!

Now that the Cray simulator is finally booting the OS,
I have to plead for your help! I need SW to run on this.
I need source code, I need compilers, I need tools.
Without these, the machine is almost as dead as if
I haven’t done anything. The OS is just the framework
to do useful work in, but useless in itself.

---

Andras Tantos on July 3, 2013 said:

Unfortunately there isn’t any assembler on it either.
I’ve found one dataset, that contains the following utilities:

AUDIT
TEDI
PLD10
GENCAT
ACCTDEF
JCSDEF
PRVDEF
LOADCAT
RECALL
RELOAD
RECIO
DMP10

That’s all I have. . .

---

[Nothing much has changed in the last three years, but
it seems he hasn't **quite** abandoned hope:]

Pedro Neto on June 23, 2016 said:

What about contacting Cray’s family directly?

---

Andras Tantos on September 10, 2016 said:

I haven’t thought of that path. Thanks for the suggestion!
====

http://www.modularcircuits.com/blog/articles/the-cray-files/jobs
---------
To gain the full functionality of the system at minimum
I would need tools: COS, the assembler, CFT, the Fortran compiler,
SEGLDR, the linker and the libraries: $CLIB, $FTLIB, $IOLIB,
$PSCLIB, $RATLIB, $SCILIB, $SYSLIB, $UTLIB, maybe others too.
I have some leads to some of them, but if you have anything,
**anything**, please let me know. Without at least a subset
of these tools and libraries, further work on the project
is rather pointless. It would not lead to a more functional
system. . .

As an interesting side-note, the disk contains one dataset
(JINSTALL) that would restore the full system from backup,
trouble is, the tape that it would use to restore the system
from is missing. If you look at the 3rd file in that dataset,
you get a list of files that comprised the base system:

JOBCLASS
JGENCAT
GENCAT
JDIAGGO
$DIAGLB
LOCALS
STARTUP
STARTARCHIVE
CRAY1SYSTEMDUMP
JSYSDIR
$ADMLIB
$APTEXT
$ARLIB
$CLIB
$DBCTL
$DBHELP
$DBTXT
$DIAGLB
$FTLIB
$IOLIB
$LEXLB
$PDDERR
PROCLIB
$PSCLIB
$RATDEF
$RATLIB
$RATXVS
$SCILIB
$SID
$SYSDEF
$SYSLIB
$SYSTXT
$TDGTOC
$UTLDEF
$UTLIB
$UTLTXT
$WTOOLS
$YYPLB
ACCOUNT
ACCTDEF
ADSTAPE
APML
AUDIT
AUDPL
BACKUP
BIND
BLOCK
BUILD
BUPIO
BVCEDIT
CAL
CC
CFT
CFT77
CHARGES
CLEANUP
CLUPIO
COMPARE
CONNECT
COPYD
COPYF
COPYR
COPYU
COSDEF
COSTXT
CPP
CSIM
DDA
DEBUG
DRD
DSDUMP
DUMP
DUMPGOS
EXTRACT
FDUMP
FLODUMP
FTREF
ISP
ITEMIZE
JCSDEF
LDR
LD2
LOADGOS
MANAGE
MODSEQ
MODSET
MTDUMP
NEWCAL
NOTE
PASCAL
PDSDUMP
PDSLOAD
PERFMON
PREMULT
PRVDEF
QSTSUI
QUERY
RECALL
RECIO
SLSTACK.RELEASE
RELOAD
RESTORE
RETIRE
SLSTACK.REWIND
SEGLDR
SEGRLS
SETOWN
SKIPD
SKIPF
SKIPR
SKIPU
SKOL
SKOLREF
SKOLTXT
SORT
SPAWN
SPY
STATGOS
STATS
STOPGOS
STEP
SYSREF
TARGET
TDI
TDUMP
TEDI
TG
UNB
UNBLOCK
UPDATE
WRITEDS
EDITOR

This is going to be my wish-list for Santa this year.
====

So if anybody here has any any leads to share (I believe Al Kossow
has already dismissed this quest as a fool's errand ;-> ),
I'm sure Mr. Tantos would be very happy.

Jim F.