Coherent questions.

word...@wesleykranitz.com

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Mar 18, 2019, 2:03:16 AM3/18/19

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I didn't realize this group still existed. I actually have 4.2.10 running on an older Pentium system. I have some questions:

1) www.autometer.de has a lot of coherent software on it. Using a browser will take forever to download. I wanted to us ftp to download the tree, but for the life of me I haven't been able to get FileZilla to connect, no matter what I try. Any idea's on what I setting I could use to get FileZilla to connect?

2) What changes were made in the 4.2.12 release. I'm going to try to compile that from the download.

3)I found some information on supposedly an updated driver for the hardrive. Anyone know anything about that?? One that handled 2 controllers, Udma, and Busmastering would be interesting.

4)A cdrom driver of an IDE Cdrom would be interesting.

5) Does anyone know of any Tcp/Ip work one coherent.

I'm a retired Software engineer, and I'm having fun playing with Coherent. I may try to make some changes like expanding the 12mb memory limit, but we'll see.

Thanks for listening and any answers to my questions would be greatly appreciated.

Wes

Udo Munk

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Mar 18, 2019, 2:31:25 PM3/18/19

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On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 7:03:16 AM UTC+1, Wesley Kranitz wrote:

> 1) www.autometer.de has a lot of coherent software on it. Using a browser will take forever
> to download. I wanted to us ftp to download the tree, but for the life of me I haven't been
> able to get FileZilla to connect, no matter what I try. Any idea's on what I setting I could
> use to get FileZilla to connect?

Anonymous ftp is not available, sorry.

> 2) What changes were made in the 4.2.12 release. I'm going to try to compile that from the download.

The 4.2.12 kernel sources can be compiled on a 4.2.10 system, no problem. I've setup a VM
with all that usable on VirtualBox, Qemu and PCem. For the changes I would suggest to use
diff against the 4.2.10 sources, it's too much to mention it all.

> 3)I found some information on supposedly an updated driver for the hardrive. Anyone know
> anything about that?? One that handled 2 controllers, Udma, and Busmastering would be
> interesting.

Yes the hard disk drivers also were improved. Two controllers are possible with one IDE and
one SCSI controller, but not two of the same. Busmastering is only supported with Adaptec
SCSI controllers.

> 4)A cdrom driver of an IDE Cdrom would be interesting.

Indeed, other than SCSI CDROM support the other supported controllers are outdated
and not much useful anymore.

> 5) Does anyone know of any Tcp/Ip work one coherent.

Nothing from MWC was released. There are several user community ports of packet radio
TCP/IP like KA9Q and K5JB for serial lines and NE2000 networking cards. Not very useful
because clients and servers are in a single user land program.

> Thanks for listening and any answers to my questions would be greatly appreciated.
> Wes

You are welcome,
Udo

Wesley Kranitz

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Mar 19, 2019, 1:11:05 AM3/19/19

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On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 1:31:25 PM UTC-5, Udo Munk wrote:
> On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 7:03:16 AM UTC+1, Wesley Kranitz wrote:
>
> > 1) www.autometer.de has a lot of coherent software on it. Using a browser will take forever
> > to download. I wanted to us ftp to download the tree, but for the life of me I haven't been
> > able to get FileZilla to connect, no matter what I try. Any idea's on what I setting I could
> > use to get FileZilla to connect?
>
> Anonymous ftp is not available, sorry.

Oh well. It was a thought. The only one that's going to be a bear to download, would be the BBS code. Do you think there's any possibility of getting that source tree into a compressed tar??? It would certainly be a lot easier to download through a browser that way.

>
> > 2) What changes were made in the 4.2.12 release. I'm going to try to compile that from the download.
>
> The 4.2.12 kernel sources can be compiled on a 4.2.10 system, no problem. I've setup a VM
> with all that usable on VirtualBox, Qemu and PCem. For the changes I would suggest to use
> diff against the 4.2.10 sources, it's too much to mention it all.
>

I was just hoping that there were release notes somewhere, that's all. I'll see about diff'ing everything.

> > 3)I found some information on supposedly an updated driver for the hardrive. Anyone know
> > anything about that?? One that handled 2 controllers, Udma, and Busmastering would be
> > interesting.
>
> Yes the hard disk drivers also were improved. Two controllers are possible with one IDE and
> one SCSI controller, but not two of the same. Busmastering is only supported with Adaptec
> SCSI controllers.
>

I found a site that had something called Lanibase on it. It looked like someone had written a driver for a Realtek ethernet card and also a IDE driver that handled large drives and had busmastering. But I didn't see any code offered and I was just ondering if you new of any.

> > 4)A cdrom driver of an IDE Cdrom would be interesting.
>
> Indeed, other than SCSI CDROM support the other supported controllers are outdated
> and not much useful anymore.
>

I'll have to make this a quest of mine. It's been a number of years since I retired and I'm a little rusty at writing kernel code and device drivers. But I'm looking for a challenge, so I might give it a go.

> > 5) Does anyone know of any Tcp/Ip work one coherent.
>
> Nothing from MWC was released. There are several user community ports of packet radio
> TCP/IP like KA9Q and K5JB for serial lines and NE2000 networking cards. Not very useful
> because clients and servers are in a single user land program.
>

See my response to three above.

> > Thanks for listening and any answers to my questions would be greatly appreciated.
> > Wes
>
> You are welcome,
> Udo

Udo, I appreciate your responses. Just a side note here. I followed your instructions to set up VirtualBox. Running FSCK is super slow. However, I found that turning off VirtualBox's disk caching seems to speed that up significantly. Just a note for anyone trying to set that up.

Thanks again,
Wes

PS, I live in Wisconsin. One time, on the way home from the theater in Lincolnshire, Illinois, my wife and I took the scenic route back home and went past your office's in Northbrook. I want to stop in and tell you all how much I liked using Coherent, but my wife was tired and wanted to get back home, so we didn't stop. Too bad. I would have liked to have met some of people involved.

Udo Munk

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Mar 19, 2019, 4:07:05 PM3/19/19

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On Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 6:11:05 AM UTC+1, Wesley Kranitz wrote:

> Oh well. It was a thought. The only one that's going to be a bear to download,
> would be the BBS code. Do you think there's any possibility of getting that source
> tree into a compressed tar??? It would certainly be a lot easier to download through
> a browser that way.

No problem, I have put the BBS and GNU trees into gripped tar archives, so that you can
get them at once.

> I was just hoping that there were release notes somewhere, that's all. I'll see
> about diff'ing everything.

Unfortunately the 4.2.10 release notes is the latest archived version.

> I found a site that had something called Lanibase on it. It looked like someone
> had written a driver for a Realtek ethernet card and also a IDE driver that handled
> large drives and had busmastering. But I didn't see any code offered and I was just
> ondering if you new of any.

This work was done under NDA before the MWC sources became Open Source,
nothing of this is available.

> I'll have to make this a quest of mine. It's been a number of years since I retired and
> I'm a little rusty at writing kernel code and device drivers. But I'm looking for a
> challenge, so I might give it a go.

Such things now can be done in public with Open Source.

> Udo, I appreciate your responses. Just a side note here. I followed your instructions
> to set up VirtualBox. Running FSCK is super slow. However, I found that turning off
> VirtualBox's disk caching seems to speed that up significantly. Just a note for anyone
> trying to set that up.

Indeed, the VirtualBox log is full with controller reset messages caused by watchdog
timeouts. Still not working correct...

> Thanks again,
> Wes
>
>
> PS, I live in Wisconsin. One time, on the way home from the theater in Lincolnshire,
> Illinois, my wife and I took the scenic route back home and went past your office's
> in Northbrook. I want to stop in and tell you all how much I liked using Coherent,
> but my wife was tired and wanted to get back home, so we didn't stop. Too bad.
> I would have liked to have met some of people involved.

The office in Northbrook was a real nice place with a buch of very bright people to
work with. I'm sure you would have liked a visit, oh well.

Wesley Kranitz

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Mar 20, 2019, 4:51:28 PM3/20/19

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UDO,

First, let me thank you for TARing those. It took me about 15 seconds to download both. I'm sure it'll make it easier for others also.

On the software written under an NDA. The laws must be different in the EU than the US. If the NDA was with MWC, then the owner of the software releases for public use (such as open source), then that NDA becomes unenforceable as it has been freely disclosed to the public. I had an NDA with COMPAQ and had the schematics for the compact portable (which by the way, I still own). When COMPAQ released those schematics through SAM's publishing, My NDA was null and void, as the information was now publicly available.

Anyways, thanks again for your help.

Take care,

Wes

Udo Munk

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Mar 20, 2019, 6:06:54 PM3/20/19

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On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 9:51:28 PM UTC+1, Wesley Kranitz wrote:
> UDO,
>
> First, let me thank you for TARing those. It took me about 15 seconds to download both. I'm sure
> it'll make it easier for others also.

Sure does, you were the first asking about it tho.

> On the software written under an NDA. The laws must be different in the EU than the US.
> If the NDA was with MWC, then the owner of the software releases for public use (such as
> open source), then that NDA becomes unenforceable as it has been freely disclosed to the
> public. I had an NDA with COMPAQ and had the schematics for the compact portable (which
> by the way, I still own). When COMPAQ released those schematics through SAM's publishing,
> My NDA was null and void, as the information was now publicly available.

Right, after open disclosure of all sources the NDA is void and the sources could be made
public now. One would have to contact Andrzej about that...

> Anyways, thanks again for your help.
> Take care,
> Wes

You're welcome and you take care too,
Udo

Wesley Kranitz

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Mar 20, 2019, 8:33:16 PM3/20/19

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UDO,

> > On the software written under an NDA. The laws must be different in the EU than the US.
> > If the NDA was with MWC, then the owner of the software releases for public use (such as
> > open source), then that NDA becomes unenforceable as it has been freely disclosed to the
> > public. I had an NDA with COMPAQ and had the schematics for the compact portable (which
> > by the way, I still own). When COMPAQ released those schematics through SAM's publishing,
> > My NDA was null and void, as the information was now publicly available.
>
> Right, after open disclosure of all sources the NDA is void and the sources could be made
> public now. One would have to contact Andrzej about that...

You wouldn't happen to know his current email address, would you. I sent him
an email using the email address in his posts, but it bounce as Invalid.

Thanks,

Wes

Udo Munk

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Mar 21, 2019, 4:10:53 AM3/21/19

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On Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 1:33:16 AM UTC+1, Wesley Kranitz wrote:

> You wouldn't happen to know his current email address, would you. I sent him
> an email using the email address in his posts, but it bounce as Invalid.

I also only have the email address he used for posting here, sorry.