Help Needed - Telesoft Telegen 3.2.5 expert VAX/VMS

[Rick Cottle]

We need to touch an old project and of course there is very little documentation available (or readily found) and previous contributors move on a long time ago.

In short, the project is an embedded system built with Mil-Std-1750 built with ADA on a Vax. We have recreated the project to the point of trying to link but do not have a linker map to go the final step.

It would be awesome to find copies of the subject manuals. Additionally someone experienced in this environment for consulting work. Phoenix AZ area.

[Simon Clubley]

If you have had no luck here, then maybe you could try comp.os.vms.

There's a few of us over there who know Ada but whether the others know
the toolkit you are using is another matter. (I have no knowledge of it).

Even if no-one knows, it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway.

Simon.

PS: BTW, it's Ada, not ADA. :-)

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

[Jeffrey R. Carter]

On 06/16/2016 10:57 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>
> There's a few of us over there who know Ada but whether the others know
> the toolkit you are using is another matter. (I have no knowledge of it).

I also have no help to offer the OP, but if he is unsuccessful, he might be able
to use a different compiler. I recall TLD, Tartan, Intermetrics, GNAT, XD, and
XGC compilers for the 1750A. Tartan's Ada compilers were obtained by DDC-I, and
Intermetrics ended up absorbed by AdaCore. AdaCore doesn't claim to support the
1750A on its web site, so GNAT might have been an unofficial port. I don't know
about the availability of any of those, but they might be an option.

The 1750A was often used when radiation hardening is needed. I recall the RH32,
and this paper dated 2012

http://webee.technion.ac.il/~ran/papers/SurveySpaceProcessors.DASIA2012.pdf

lists a number of other RH processors and equivalents. It also seems that
current practice is to use redundant non-RH COTS processors or RH-By-Design
processors, which achieve similar tolerance of radiation at a lower cost than an
RH processor. Transitioning to such a system might be an option if staying with
the 1750A doesn't work out.

--
Jeff Carter
"Since I strongly believe that overpopulation is by
far the greatest problem in the world, this [Soylent
Green] would be my only message movie."
Charleton Heston
123

[Britt]

Since you are in Phoenix, I suggest contacting Dr Joyce Tokar to see if she or someone she knows could help. Her last c.l.a post was over a year ago at

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/comp.lang.ada/tokar%7Csort:date/comp.lang.ada/mpG-_nrTK0E/oawpsLi34ukJ

but it has contact info.

-Britt

[riea...@comcast.net]

On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 5:12:56 PM UTC-4, Rick Cottle wrote:
> We need to touch an old project and of course there is very little documentation available (or readily found) and previous contributors move on a long time ago.
>
> In short, the project is an embedded system built with Mil-Std-1750 built with ADA on a Vax. We have recreated the project to the point of trying to link but do not have a linker map to go the final step.

If you take the source and feed it to gnatchop for any version of GNAT, you will get a set of files properly named for GNAT compilation. If you then compile the main program, it will (recursively if necessary) compile all of the source files, and create a make file for that main program.

There may be more than one main program. If so you can compile them all in a single project and get a make that will create each one. (Compilation units used by multiple main programs will be compiled just once.) Can't figure out from the documentation which are the main programs? Just look for procedure bodies as files, probably without a corresponding specification.

If all of this is Greek to you? Contact AdaCore (www.adacore.com) and hire them to do it for you. Personally, I'm retired. I assume you have access to the Telesoft compiler and a machine to run it on. Note that if the source is classified that may be the major cost and schedule driver in getting the work done. In other words, it might be much cheaper to educate one of your own software engineers to do the work.

If there are only a dozen or so source files, it will be an easy task. If there are hundreds? One engineer can do it. If there are thousands? You will need to partition the work among multiple engineers--assuming you need to do more that retarget to a different CPU or operating system. Why? You need to recover the information about how the software works that was in the brains of the original project engineers to know how changes will affect the system.

As an anecdote to warn you about the effort involved. I and another software engineer, both of us very familiar with the software, spent about a month on one change proposal. After an intense review which lasted all afternoon, we made the software change--changing an "and" to an "or," and ran the test suite. In other words, learning the software may be the biggest task in any change, and the time to do that will be proportional to the source code size, not the magnitude of the change.

If the source code contains useful comments it will help, even if you can't find the other project documentation. Again though, it will take time to read that documentation.

[Eryndlia Mavourneen]

Rick, I was an early user of DEC Ada on VAX/VMS and loved it. I don't have manuals; however, it may not matter a great deal, as VMS has always had great interactive help.

I developed an application of my own which used kernel mode to access the I/O lists. I also converted a memory-mapped FAX driver for a defense contractor from one VMS version for another.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2016-06-20, Eryndlia Mavourneen <eryn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 4:12:56 PM UTC-5, Rick Cottle wrote:
>> We need to touch an old project and of course there is very little documentation available (or readily found) and previous contributors move on a long time ago.
>>
>> In short, the project is an embedded system built with Mil-Std-1750 built with ADA on a Vax. We have recreated the project to the point of trying to link but do not have a linker map to go the final step.
>>
>> It would be awesome to find copies of the subject manuals. Additionally someone experienced in this environment for consulting work. Phoenix AZ area.
>
> Rick, I was an early user of DEC Ada on VAX/VMS and loved it. I
> don't have manuals; however, it may not matter a great deal, as VMS
> has always had great interactive help.
>

DEC Ada was DEC's own compiler. Unfortunately, from what I can tell,
the OP's compiler is a third party compiler.

Simon.