Looking for SIM H command

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

This noob question should be an easy one, but if the OS I happen to be running is halted and I am kicked back to the sim> prompt, what is the command to restart get back into the OS from the sim command line? Is it possible or do I have to do a hardware reset? 

For example, I was running Lunar Lander in RT-11 and when I when back into the console window and hit a <cr>, which halted the OS.

Since I'm running remotely, I would like to be able to reboot the OS without having to walk up to the PiDP-11.

[Anton Lavrentiev]

Are you looking for "continue" (just "c") command? (Or using "Cont" on the front panel should do the same.)

Or "boot" ("b")?  For that you need to know the device, from which the OS was booted up.

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[Del Rey Custom Shop]

Hi,

I tried the C command and B, with the device number 565, which should be the RT-11 OS, but it didn't work. I had the switches set for RT-11. 

Sometimes entering the RUN command 3 times works. Sometimes it locks up the system. As I mentioned I remote in to the PDP11. I use VNC and it would be great to be able to relaunch the OS without having to physically hardware reboot.

What do folks do when they don't even have the PDP11 hardware and just the Pi, when they want to boot into various systems?

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

@Phillip Porch, MD

Works beautifully. Thank you!

Jon

[Anton Lavrentiev]

I don't understand about device 565, simh wouldn't understand that.

If your boot device was a DK disk (in RT11), simh should be used to book an RK unit (that's how devices go by their hardware names):

sim> b rk0

Or if that was a DL: drive, your boot command would be "b rl0"..... RSX is booted from a DU: drive, so in simh, it's "b rq" (missing unit number is treated as 0, so "rq" or "rq0" are the same in the boot command).

But each simulator under PiDP-11 has its own configuration file, which is usually called "boot.ini" and is located in a subditectory dedicated to a system (under /opt/pidp11/systems).... the front panel switches just code, which directory simh will be started from and thus, which boot.ini and which disk images, are going to be used.

I suppose you are mistaking the switch register value (which selects the directory, and thus, the configuration and the OS) with the device, which the simulator boots (that would be the last command in the respective boot.ini file).

Hope this helps and good luck!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/8be66f15-948a-439e-8409-d4c4951f61b1n%40googlegroups.com.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-10-14 01:08, Del Rey Custom Shop wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I tried the C command and B, with the device number 565, which should be
> the RT-11 OS, but it didn't work. I had the switches set for RT-11.
> Sometimes entering the RUN command 3 times works. Sometimes it locks up
> the system. As I mentioned I remote in to the PDP11. I use VNC and it
> would be great to be able to relaunch the OS without having to
> physically hardware reboot.
>
> What do folks do when they don't even have the PDP11 hardware and just
> the Pi, when they want to boot into various systems?

You need to take a step back.

First of all, when you say "PDP11 hardware", what you probably mean in
PiDP11 hardware. Which is not the same thing.

Let's leave PDP11 hardware out of this for now, since it's a completely
different topic.

If we then talk PiDP11 and simh, we have two different things as well.
Let's start with the simple one: simh.
To boot different OSes in simh, you basically just boot a disk image.
simh have no clue about different OSes per se. It boot whatever is on
the disk. If you want to boot RSX, you boot a disk image which have RSX.
If you want to boot RT-11, you boot a disk image which have RT-11. You
can have as many disk images are you want. You connect a disk image with
a device in simh, configure the other parameters in simh, and off you
go. To make things convenient, you can have all the commands for simh in
a file, so you can boot whatever OS with a single command. Assuming simh
PDP11 is available as the command "pdp11", then you could have one
script file for RSX, which sets the CPU to something appropriate,
connects your RSX disk image to a device in simh, and boot that device.
Same story with a different script file, connecting to a different disk
image in order to boot from RT-11. Then you'd just do "pdp11 rsx" or
"pdp11 rt11" (assuming the scripts were named "rsx" and "rt11") and off
you go.

Now, PiDP11 is based on simh, but since it don't have the same
flexibility as a command line, they decided to create a solution where
you basically always run through the same script, but instead use
different directories. And the way a directory is picked is based on the
number set on the switches of the PiDP11.
So you have different directories under /opt/pidp11/systems, and you
have a file selections there, which maps the different front panel
settings to the different directories, and then simh always is started
expecting to use a "boot.ini" under that directory.
So, booting different OSes then becomes a case of having different
directories, and having a boot.ini in that directory which sets up simh
with the right cpu parameters, connecting the appropriate disk image,
and booting it.

Johnny

>
> On Thursday, October 12, 2023 at 8:01:49 PM UTC-7 Anton L. wrote:
>
> Are you looking for "continue" (just "c") command? (Or using "Cont"
> on the front panel should do the same.)
>
> Or "boot" ("b")?  For that you need to know the device, from which
> the OS was booted up.
>
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 10:55 PM Del Rey Custom Shop
> <delreycu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This noob question should be an easy one, but if the OS I happen

> to be running is halted and I am kicked back to the *sim>*

> prompt, what is the command to restart get back into the OS from
> the sim command line? Is it possible or do I have to do a
> hardware reset?
>
> For example, I was running Lunar Lander in RT-11 and when I when
> back into the console window and hit a <cr>, which halted the OS.
>
> Since I'm running remotely, I would like to be able to reboot
> the OS without having to walk up to the PiDP-11.
>
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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

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

@ "Johnny" thank you for providing that great information. I'll put it in my knowledge base.

Question: Now that I'm more or less able to restart a disk or simulated OS, If I QUIT out of SIMH, I go back to the pi command line. If I type in "./pdp.sh" now nothing happens and I can't get back into SIM or the Screen. Is there a command from the Pi command line to restart the SIM or do I have to reboot the Pi?

Once again, thanks all for putting up with my novice questions!

[Anton Lavrentiev]

IIRC, you can't get back to screen because when you quit simh you also end the screen session, and it ceases to exist -- so pdp.sh, which effectively reconnects to screen, has nowhere to go.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/9ea93da2-3cf5-43f9-b453-82701aa4f218n%40googlegroups.com.

[Johnny Billquist]

If you look at pdp.sh (and understand a bit of shell scripting), you'll
see that the only thing it does is checking if there already exists a
screen session running simh, and if not, then pdp.sh does nothing.

So your question should really be about how does the whole thing even
get started in the first place at boot.

And the answer to that is that it's all started as a service from
systemd. And the name of the serivice is "pidp11".
So if you just want to restart the whole thing, "systemctl restart
pidp11" should do it.
And if you want to check if it is running "systemctl status pidp11" will
tell you.
If you just want to brutally kill the thing of "systemctl stop pidp11"
is the command for you.

And so on. "systemctl --help" will give you a lot more.

Johnny

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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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[Johnny Billquist]

More things, by the way.

When you ssh into your pi, you end up inside simh, on the running
system. If you want to, you can get out to the shell without killing off
simh. Just type "^A D" - that is control+A D. Which will detach you from
screen.

No reason normally to quit simh.

Also, if you look at /opt/pidp11/bin/pidp11.sh, you'll find all the
steps done to actually start pidp11. In there you'll find the bit of
code that reads the front panel, change to the corresponding directory
and starts simh.

Johnny

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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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[Neal G.]

One alternative is to run various systems in separate SimH processes and leave the "primary" system started by the PiDP-11 alone.

On my PiDP-11 I created revised copies of the boot.ini for each system so that I can start them detached from the front panel.

I typically let IDLED run connected to the front panel, then start other systems independently, or concurrently, as needed.

If something goes wrong, restarting these separate processes is much simpler than restarting the PiDP-11 entirely.

It is something to consider.

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

@neal g

This is exactly what I would like to do. I understand the concept of creating individual .ini files per OS. Perhaps you can explain your commands procedure starting from the Pi command line. What does that look like? I imagine it entails the usual ./pdp.sh and then disconnect from IDLED back to SIM> where you call the ini in the designated folders?

[Neal G.]

Typically I connect to the Pi with SSH from a terminal emulator.

Then navigate to my Documents folder where the scripts reside to launch the various systems.

The command to open 211BSD within the terminal emulator SSH session looks like this:

        pi@raspberrypi:~/Documents $ ./go-BSD-Unix.sh

The script contains:

    #!/bin/sh
    cd /opt/pidp11/systems/211bsd
    /opt/pidp11/bin/client11 boot-2.ini

This starts a second instance of SimH which is independent of the one connected to the PiDP-11 front panel. so no need to disconnect IDLED, or do anything with pdp.sh

The "boot-2.ini" file was revised to comment out the "realcons" statements that would otherwise inform SimH that a front panel is available and how to connect to it.

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

@Neal G.

I created a file in Documents called "go-BSD-Unix.sh" and I put the script in it. 

I tried creating a file in /211bsd called boot-2.ini but I was denied permission.

I tried a few chmod commands but nothing works so far for unlocking that folder or being able to create that ini file.

I guess there's also chown, but the only name I know on the Pi is "Pi". 

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

@Neal

So, I got as far as trying to execute go-211bsd.sh, but ran into a roadblock. Any ideas?

On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 7:07:52 PM UTC-7 Neal G. wrote:

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

@Neal 

Not sure if those screenshots came through.

On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 7:07:52 PM UTC-7 Neal G. wrote:

[Don Kosak]

First line in your shell script has a typo.

Probably should be #!/bin/sh

The "file not found" message refers to /bin.sh not existing.

- Don

[Del Rey Custom Shop]

@Don

Right you are. Good catch. 

Thanks!

@Neal G please disregard earlier message!

Now on to create .ini's for the other OS's...