I ran mongen and would like to use that image for TOPS-10

[Andy]

Hey folks - a while back I ran mongen (following Quentins blog - https://www.quentin.org.uk) and made a nice tailored TOPS-10.  I don't suppose there's any way to roll this into the PiDP-10 without breaking everything?  

Basically I have a .dsk and a tty.ini file. Snooping around in /opt/pidp10/systems/tops10-603/ I don't see any obvious way for me to do this easily.  Thoughts anyone?

cheers.. Andy

[steve...@gmail.com]

Hi Andy,

It is possible, and it's not horribly difficult. The problem is that I am half a world away from my PiDP-10 so I can't offer detailed instructions. There are only a few things that are important:

-- Create a directory at the same level as /opt/pidp10/systems/tops10-603/, calling it whatever you want

-- Put your .dsk image into that new directory. As well, copy the boot script files out of the /tops10-603/ directory into your directory. There are two, one for with PiDP-10 hardware and one for without

-- Edit the two boot script files to match your new configuration (e.g., system disk name(s)).

Part of the tricky-ness is that the SCANSW program does not necessarily recognize all switch configurations for booting. Well, at least it didn't a month or so ago. Oscar said he would modify it so that it did. If it's been modified then you're pretty well home free. There's a file, I think it's named "/opt/pidp10/systems/systems" or something like that. Edit that file to add in both your selected switch configuration and the name of your new directory. If everything is working then simply restarting the PiDP-10 with your selected switch configuration should start your version of TOPS-10.

If SCANSW has not been modified yet, then you may have to also do some editing in one of the other programs that is triggered in the boot process that translates the switch settings into the selected directory in /opt/pidp10/systems/. Sorry I can't provide more detail than this, but again I'm quite far from my PiDP-10. The code in that file is pretty easy to read and tweak. I had to hijack it because the switch setting group I wanted to use was pre-reserved for KL-10 and I needed KS-10 for my version of TOPS-10.

If you can get all of the details from someone else, great. If not, I will be back home around 10-July and can fill in all of the missing details then. So don't worry, it's possible without a lot of work, but you may have to wait a bit before you can make it all work on your PiDP-10.

Best,

-- steve

[Richard C]

I would not use Quentins example for Mongening 6.03, his is for 7.04. This is a very different system. For the image that Oscar has installed it was generated by my system generation script. It has all the useful devices defined. Also BCPL and other languages are installed and working.

If you wish to customize it you can find generation scripts here:

http://sky-visions.com/dec/tops603/

The zip file has all that you will need. The other .go files are for when I update a part, that way you don't need to redownload the whole zip.

Rich

[Andy]

Hey Steve, Rich - thanks for the guidance.

Will have a poke around and update you!

cheers

Andy