Getting Files In/Out of V7 Unix and 2.11BSD

[Warren Toomey]

Hi all, just joined this group. I don't have a PiDP-11 but I'm running several Unix variants with SimH on a desktop system.

A few people have asked about moving files in/out of Unix systems on PiDP-11. For those running 2.11BSD, I've patched the source code for the ftp client so that it supports passive mode (PASV). This makes it more usable with 21st century ftp servers. The source code and a binary are at: https://minnie.tuhs.org/ftp/misc/211BSD_Apps/pasv_ftp.tar.Z

For those with ftp, you can get the file by ftp'ing to minnie.tuhs.org and changing to the misc/211BSD_Apps directory.

There's also another solution which I saw suggested here in this group (by Johnny?), which is https://github.com/jaylogue/retro-fuse. This allows you to mount Unix filesystem images on a Linux system.

I'm using the 2.11BSD image available at: https://github.com/chasecovello/211bsd-pidp11, and here are the command I use to mount the root, /home and /usr partitions on that disk image:

mkdir root home usr          # Only once of course

bsd211fs -o fsoffset=0 2.11BSD_rq.dsk root

bsd211fs -o fsoffset=425902 2.11BSD_rq.dsk home

bsd211fs -o fsoffset=16302 2.11BSD_rq.dsk usr

umount home; umount usr; umount root

There are similar commands for V6 and V7 Unix images.

Hope this helps! Cheers, Warren

[jay.logue]

Hi Warren,

retro-fuse is my project.  Glad to see it has been useful for you.

A quick FYI for anyone looking to run retro-fuse directly on their Raspberry Pi: there are a couple bugs that currently prevent its use on the 32-bit version of the Pi OS (see github issue#4).  I hope to have these resolved sometime later today.

--Jay

[Walter F.J. Müller]

Before retro-fuse (great work Jay, a triple-like via this channel) one could use FTP, as Warren mentioned, and of course tar or kermit. tar is is good when whole directory trees are moved, write to/from a virtual tape. Since patch 446 2.11BSD tar can write the whole system without running out of memory. kermit is sometimes a bit quirky, but if you like retro computing you must love kermit. It is slow, but ok for just a few files. And using it brings back a lot of old memories.

[Igor M]

I tried with kermit and it works - see this thread:

https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/AHUGX9At_mE/m/PnX1RNZpCQAJ

[Walter F.J. Müller]

On Saturday, June 18, 2022 at 11:34:00 AM UTC+2 igr...@gmail.com wrote:

I tried with kermit and it works - see this thread:

https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/AHUGX9At_mE/m/PnX1RNZpCQAJ

OK. My experience comes from the w11 FPGA implementation of a PDP-11. 

The DL11 and DZ11 data path are buffered and allow quite high data throughput, which can be limited via interrupt rate limiters. 

211BSD implements some form of fair share concept for the common character device buffer pool, see tty.c and the logic for TTYHOG. 

And kermit has the window size and packet size parameters.  

So lots of knobs to twiddle with. 

To have it slow and stable was easy.

But it took some time to find a fast and stable setting.