SunOS 4.1.3?

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Charles Ess

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Oct 5, 2023, 7:16:51 AM10/5/23
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Hi all,
I'm still waiting to build my own kit when I acquire it at the end of October. But in the meantime, am trying to work my way into the simulator, various OSs, and so on.  
I'm wondering if anyone has tried to bring a SunOS into play here - specifically 4.1.3.? Any tips, tricks, suggestions would be welcome.
Many thanks in advance,
charles ess

Bryan Cote

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Oct 5, 2023, 11:55:38 AM10/5/23
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Hello!

Are you thinking sparc or x86 architecture?  I don't recall if 4.1.3 made it to x86 but you could try QEMU for Raspberry Pi.  It has emulators for both sparc and x86 architectures I believe.

==Bryan

Johnny Billquist

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Oct 5, 2023, 11:59:26 AM10/5/23
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I'm not sure I understand the question.

Are we talking about running simh under SunOS? Why not just compile and
give it a go?

Johnny
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Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
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email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

Warner Losh

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Oct 5, 2023, 12:11:13 PM10/5/23
to Bryan Cote, [PiDP-11]


On Thu, Oct 5, 2023, 9:55 AM Bryan Cote <bryan...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello!

Are you thinking sparc or x86 architecture?  I don't recall if 4.1.3 made it to x86 but you could try QEMU for Raspberry Pi.  It has emulators for both sparc and x86 architectures I believe.

SunOS 4.1.3 was the final release for the x86 port. That port only supported Sun's road runner machine. Otherwise, it supported m68k and sparc machine. There was no SMP support and it stopped supporting sparc kernel architectures at sun4m I believe. 

None of these are pdp11 and the 11 lacks many features that SunOS requires in a cpu.

Warner


==Bryan

On Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 7:16:51 AM UTC-4 charl...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I'm still waiting to build my own kit when I acquire it at the end of October. But in the meantime, am trying to work my way into the simulator, various OSs, and so on.  
I'm wondering if anyone has tried to bring a SunOS into play here - specifically 4.1.3.? Any tips, tricks, suggestions would be welcome.
Many thanks in advance,
charles ess

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Mike Katz

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Oct 5, 2023, 12:11:59 PM10/5/23
to Bryan Cote, [PiDP-11]
I won't comment on the fact that the Pi CPU has an Arm architecture and the simh is emulating the PDP-11 architecture.

The versions of SunOS I am familiar with had the Sun graphics hardware drivers deep in ring 0 of the kernel (both 68000 and Sparc versions).

To start with I would recommend that you look into the PDP-11 operating systems already included in the PiPD-11 memory card image.

Good luck.
--

Bryan Cote

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Oct 5, 2023, 12:51:39 PM10/5/23
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My assumption was the OP wanted to have a SunOS environment running in a PiDP-11 with Blinking lights :-) 

 I do that when I bet my buddies I can get Linux running on a PDP-8 "clone" (aka PiDP-8)

==Bryan

Anton Lavrentiev

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Oct 5, 2023, 1:21:36 PM10/5/23
to Charles Ess, [PiDP-11]
VirtualBox (free) supports SunOS x86 (which you can download from
Oracle, too, for free), and runs rather decently on it.
Good luck!
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Johnny Billquist

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Oct 5, 2023, 1:28:48 PM10/5/23
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That don't make any sense. SunOS have never run on a PDP-11... And apart
from the requirement that someone would need to write some drivers,
bootloaders and stuff, SunOS would never squeeze into a PDP-11 in the
first place.

Johnny
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/3bc9d504-c521-4211-90ef-3c6aab7df762n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/3bc9d504-c521-4211-90ef-3c6aab7df762n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
>
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Charles Ess

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Oct 5, 2023, 11:54:29 PM10/5/23
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Thanks much - this was the magic that worked in fact.
Again, many thanks!
- c.

Charles Ess

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Oct 5, 2023, 11:56:16 PM10/5/23
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Right - I was thinking of trying it on the Pi running simh in conjunction with the PDP-11 console. Will give this a shot when the time comes.
Many thanks!
- c.

Charles Ess

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Oct 5, 2023, 11:57:47 PM10/5/23
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No, sorry I wasn't clear. The idea was to try it on the Pi and the the PDP-11 console when I get it built. 
Looks like that might be tricky - but will see what I can do when the time comes.
Many thanks!
- c.

Charles Ess

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Oct 5, 2023, 11:59:10 PM10/5/23
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Right - thanks. I'm perfectly happy with the BSD and Unix distributions - I was asking on behalf of a family member who, as the saying goes, cut his teeth on the SunOS.
Again, thanks for the clarification and good suggestions.
- c.

Charles Ess

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Oct 6, 2023, 12:00:56 AM10/6/23
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Great - many thanks. I passed this along to the family member interested in this - it was all up and running by yesterday evening, US central time.
Again, many thanks!
- c.

On Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 7:21:36 PM UTC+2 Anton L. wrote:

Charles Ess

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Oct 6, 2023, 12:04:22 AM10/6/23
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So the suggestion to try QEMU on the Pi won't work? 
No longer a priority for me, but always happy to learn more as I can.
Many thanks!
- c.

Peter Ekstrom

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Oct 6, 2023, 8:29:44 AM10/6/23
to Charles Ess, [PiDP-11]
I'm not sure about the Pi, although I can't imagine it wouldn't work. I have run SunOS 4.1.3 in QEMU under Linux on my intel laptop.
It works great so I would expect it to work on the Pi as well since QEMU emulates the Intel architecture.

-Peter

Johnny Billquist

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Oct 6, 2023, 9:15:22 AM10/6/23
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SunOS undert QEMU? Might (should) work. I just don't understand what it
has to do with PiDP-11?

Johnny

On 2023-10-06 14:29, Peter Ekstrom wrote:
> I'm not sure about the Pi, although I can't imagine it wouldn't work. I
> have run SunOS 4.1.3 in QEMU under Linux on my intel laptop.
> It works great so I would expect it to work on the Pi as well since QEMU
> emulates the Intel architecture.
>
> -Peter
>
> On Fri, Oct 6, 2023 at 12:04 AM Charles Ess <charl...@gmail.com
> <mailto:charl...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> So the suggestion to try QEMU on the Pi won't work?
> No longer a priority for me, but always happy to learn more as I can.
> Many thanks!
> - c.
>
> On Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 7:28:48 PM UTC+2 b...@softjar.se
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/3bc9d504-c521-4211-90ef-3c6aab7df762n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/3bc9d504-c521-4211-90ef-3c6aab7df762n%40googlegroups.com> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/3bc9d504-c521-4211-90ef-3c6aab7df762n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/3bc9d504-c521-4211-90ef-3c6aab7df762n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.
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>
> --
> Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
> || on a psychedelic trip
> email: b...@softjar.se || Reading murder books
> pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>
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