Drum usage for dummies

Win Heagy

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Jul 12, 2026, 2:35:12 PM (9 days ago) Jul 12

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Hi,

I'm trying to move beyond loading tapes and thought I'd mess with the drum a bit, but I'm not seeing the big picture.

I'm using pidp1-mods and I read the drum related files in Docs. I did notice that the two files UsingDrumloader.md and UsingDrumUpdater.md are both the same and seem to only have the text for UsingDrumUpdater.md in them. I also have the pdp23drum.example but cannot figure out how to access it. I'm guessing this is pretty straightforward, but I have not been able to connect all the dots.

Also, I cannot find the drumloader.rim (or files to build the .rim). I'm guessing I only need this if I want to load other files into a drum?

Can anyone point me to any docs that explain the process of making this work?

Thanks,

Win

wheagy@g***l.com

Bill E

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Jul 12, 2026, 7:41:19 PM (9 days ago) Jul 12

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It was all in place last time I went through it all, but there have been a lot of recent changes. Let me review, I'll follow up shortly. The drum is remarkably easy to use, 3 steps and done.

Bil.

Bill E

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Jul 12, 2026, 7:59:53 PM (9 days ago) Jul 12

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It looks like I managed to overwrite the .md document, I'll clean that up. Drumupdater is a C program that runs standalone to copy rim tape images to the drum, /opt/pidp1-mods/pdp23drum. The example one can be copied to give you a populated start. You can then run drumlist to see what's on it. Drumloader is obsolete and gone, it was replaced by drumupdater. On the real pdp-1 side, there are a couple of assembly programs you can run if you copy the drum example to pdp23drum. FunStuff/Switcher has a program that will listen on port 2022 for a PASSIVE telnet connection, let you list what's on the drum, select a program and run it. Just type 'make' in its directory, you'll get a .rim file. Similarly, in Demos programSelector will put up a list of programs on the type30dpy display (or the old display) and let you select one with the 'lightpen'. Type30dpy or Type30dpy3 work much better.

Let me know if you have any other questions,

Bill

Win Heagy

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Jul 12, 2026, 8:04:41 PM (9 days ago) Jul 12

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Thanks Bill! I'll take another look and see if I can get it going.

Win

Bill E

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Jul 14, 2026, 4:14:30 PM (7 days ago) Jul 14

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Truns out there was a bug, it only showed up on the pi 4 with compiler optimization turned on. Tricky. All fixed, pull the latest.