Setting TTIX to be 8 Bits for output

[Mike Katz]

I have my ASR-33 connected to /dev/ttyUSB0 using the following SIMH command:

attach ttix line=0, connect=/dev/ttyUSB0;110-8N2

The following documentation says you can set the port to 8 bits to 8 bit mode.  What SIMH command will accomplish that?

The following command do not work:

sim> set ttix 8b
%SIM-ERROR: TTIX device: Non-existent parameter - 8B
sim> set ttix=8b
%SIM-ERROR: Non-existent device: TTIX
sim> set TTIX line=0 8b
Invalid argument
sim> set TTIX=8b line=01
%SIM-ERROR: Non-existent device: TTIX
sim> set TTIX0 8b
%SIM-ERROR: TTIX device: Non-existent parameter - 8B
sim> set TTIX0=8b
Non-existent unit

I also tried:

attach ttix line=0, connect=/dev/ttyUSB0;110-8N2;8B

Which also did not work.

I am testing this with the following program

    *100
    6416            ; Output to the teletype on port 41
    6411            ; Skip on output ready on port 41
    JMP 101      ; Loop until ready
    IAC               ; Increment the AC
    JMP 100     ;  Print the next character

With the current TTIX settings the output I am getting is from 007 octal to 176 octal.  I am trying to get from 000 to 377 octal to punch on the ASR-33 paper tape so I can punch readable text on the punch.

I hope to show this, this weekend at VCF Midwest.

Thank you.

KL8JA Additional Terminals (TTIX, TTOX)

The simulator supports 1 to 16 additional terminals, with an initial default of 4 lines. The additional terminals consist of two independent devices, TTIX and TTOX. The entire set is modeled as a terminal multiplexer, with TTIX as the master controller. The number of lines is specified with a SET command:

SET TTIX LINES=n set number of additional lines to n [1-16]

The ATTACH command specifies the port to be used:

ATTACH TTIX <port> set up listening port

where port is a decimal number between 1 and 65535 that is not being used for other TCP/IP activities. The additional terminals are disabled by default.

The additional terminals can be set to one of four modes: UC, 7P, 7B, or 8B.

mode input characters output characters

UC lower case converted lower case converted to upper case,

to upper case, high-order bit cleared,

high-order bit cleared non-printing characters suppressed

7P high-order bit cleared high-order bit cleared,

non-printing characters suppressed

7B high-order bit cleared high-order bit cleared

8B no changes no changes

The default mode is UC. Finally, each line supports output logging. The SET TTOXn LOG command enables logging on a line:

SET TTOXn LOG=filename log output of line n to filename

The SET TTOXn NOLOG command disables logging and closes the open log file, if any.

Once TTIX is attached and the simulator is running, the terminals listen for connections on the specified port. They assume that the incoming connections are Telnet connections. The connections remain open until disconnected either by the Telnet client, a SET TTIX DISCONNECT command, or a DETACH TTIX command.

[Steve Tockey]

Hi Mike,

I'm not sure this is going to be of any help, but ... Seems that the latest documentation on the PDP-8 version of SIMH is here, FYI:

https://simh.trailing-edge.com/pdf/pdp8_doc.pdf

According to that, it seems that the individual KL8JA lines are numbered from 1 to 16, not from 0 to 15. So to set the first line to 8B, shouldn't the command be:

SET TTIX1 8B

?

It might be interpreting TTIX0 as being the same as TTIX, and TTIX itself does not support the UC, 7), 7B, and 8B mode settings. That could be what's giving you the "Non-existent parameter" response.

I don't show if these two commands would help either, but

SHOW TTIX CONNECTIONS

and

SHOW TTIX STATISTICS

might give you some additional insight into how TTIX is implemented in PDP-8 SIMH and what it is up to.

Also, when you say, "With the current TTIX settings the output I am getting is from 007 octal to 176 octal." do you mean that you are able to punch a 007 on the paper tape but cannot punch, for example, 000, 001, 002, 003, ... 006? I can understand not being able to punch 200 ... 377, but not being able to punch 000 ... 006 and 177 is very strange indeed.

-- steve