newbie: RL disk speed stays 0

[Richard Chapman]

Hello all,

I just finished building my Unibone, and it passed the basic tests, so I thought I would try to emulate RL01/02's with it in my 11/34. I put it in the slot where the RL11 controller was, (and the RL11 controller had worked in that slot), so I think the NPR/NPG is okay. I ran the demo application and was able to read and write into the pdp-11 memory with the Unibone, and the front panel results agreed, so I tried following the steps in the tutorial at retrocmp.com to load the rt11 games image and then use the M9312 boot rom to boot from that disk.I never got to the booting step.  Using demo, I enabled device rl1 (got a seg fault when I tried to enable rl0, why?), set rl1 as the current device, set power on, set the image file name (moved the .rl02 file to the home directory), and set the runstopbutton to 1. When I did that I got endless messages that spin down drive speed = 0, rather than increasing spin up drive speed messages. What am I doing wrong? Thanks. 

[wohus...@gmail.com]

Hello Richard,

I guess that you put the UNIBONE into an SPC slot with an open NPG, as you wrote.

And I guess that you use a real CPU, some real serial I/O and a real M9312?

Do you use any of the .CMD files in folder 5_applications/rt11.rl02/  of the UNIBONE?

Can you post the communication with UNIBONE?

Let's go through the .CMD-file "rt11v5.5_dl_shared.cmd", started with .\demo.....

# inputfile for demo to select a rl1 device in the "device test" menu.
# Read in with command line option  "demo --cmdfile ..."
d # device menu

# en dl11 # use emulated serial console                                                          <<<<  NO EMULATION of serial console
# en kw11

pwr # reboot PDP-11
.wait 3000 # wait for PDP-11 to reset
m i # install max UNIBUS memory

# Deposit bootloader into memory
m ll dl.lst                                                                                                               <<<<< the boot loader for DL "dl.lst" is  loaded to memory, starting at 10000 octal

en rl # enable RL11 controller

# mount RT11 v5.5 in RL02 #0 and start
en rl0 # enable drive #0
sd rl0 # select
p emulation_speed 10 # 10x speed. Load disk in 5 seconds
# set type to "rl02"
p runstopbutton 0 # released: "LOAD"
p powerswitch 1 # power on, now in "load" state
p image rt11v5.5.rl02 # mount image file with test pattern
p shared_filesystem RT11 # now share RT11 image with local Linux directory
p shared_dir shared_rl0 # relative path of subdir for shared files
p runstopbutton 1 # press RUN/STOP, will start

# mount RT11 GAMES in RL02 #1 and start
en rl1 # enable drive #1
sd rl1 # select
p emulation_speed 10 # 10x speed. Load disk in 5 seconds
# set type to "rl02"
p runstopbutton 0 # released: "LOAD"
p powerswitch 1 # power on, now in "load" state
p image rt11v5.5_games.rl02 # mount image file with test pattern
p shared_filesystem RT11 # now share RT11 image with local Linux directory
p shared_dir shared_rl1 # relative path of subdir for shared files
p runstopbutton 1 # press RUN/STOP, will start

.print Disk drive now on track after 5 secs
.wait 6000 # wait until drive spins up
p                       # show all params of RL1

.print RL drives ready.
.print RL0 content accessible in shared Linux directory "shared_rl0"
.print RL1 content in "shared_rl1"
.print RL11 boot loader installed.
.print Start 10000 to boot from drive 0, 10010 for drive 1, ...
.print Reload with "m ll"


If you have a real M9312 in your system, you should be able to boot the monitor program that shows you

the PDP11 prompt.

Now

L 10000  <CR>    to load the start address of the boot loader and then

S <CR>

should boot the RL0 disk.

Hope this helps

Wolfgang

[Richard Chapman]

Hello Wolfgang, 

Thank you -- that helped quite a bit. Your assumptions about my system were all correct, except I have real unibus memory in the system, not simiulated with unibone, 

so the "m i" command returns 

Disable memory emulation, size physical memory ...
Found physical memory in full range 0..757776, no emulation necessary!

The reason my speed remained zero was that I had not enabled the rl controller (en rl). I was able to manually execute successfully alll the commands in the script, then  start the rom monitor from the 9312, then boot DL0 (or start from 10000, same thing) and LED0 blinks repeatedly on the Unibone, I believe indicating activity on RL0. and a green light on my memory board blinks at the same rate, but I get no output on the pdp-11 console. On the Unibone console I have 

[05:31:53.463980 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 1710
[05:31:53.564368 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 1800
[05:31:53.664803 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 1890
[05:31:53.765242 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 1980
[05:31:53.865678 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 2070
[05:31:53.966106 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 2160
[05:31:54.066535 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 2250
[05:31:54.166947 Inf    rl0] Spin up drive speed = 2340


D>>>p

Parameters of device rl0:
Name                Short  Value                Unit  Access     Info                                                                            
------------------  -----  -------------------  ----  ---------  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
name                name   rl0                        read only  Unique identifier of device                                                      
type                type   RL02                       read only  Type                                                                            
enabled             en     1                          read only  device installed and ready to use?                                              
emulation_speed     es     10                         writable   1 = original speed, > 1: faster                                                  
verbosity           v      4                          writable   1 = fatal, 2 = error, 3 = warning, 4 = info, 5 = debug                          
unit                unit   0                          read only  Unit # of drive                                                                  
capacity            cap    10485760             byte  read only  Storage capacity                                                                
image               img    rt11v5.5_games.rl02        read only  Path to binary image file. Empty to detach. ".gz" archive also searched.        
shared_dir          shd                               read only  Path to directory with shared files. Created on demand, empty to disable sharing.
shared_filesystem   shfs                              read only  Encode shared dir in this file system (empty, RT11, XXDP).                      
activityled         al     0                          writable   Number of LED to used for activity display.                                      
rotation            rot    2400                 rpm   read only  Current speed of disk                                                            
state               st     5                          read only  Internal state                                                                  
powerswitch         pwr    1                          writable   State of POWER switch                                                            
runstopbutton       rb     1                          writable   State of RUN/STOP button                                                        
loadlamp            ll     0                          read only  State of LOAD lamp                                                              
readylamp           rl     1                          read only  State of READY lamp                                                              
faultlamp           fl     0                          read only  State of FAULT lamp                                                              
writeprotectlamp    wpl    0                          read only  State of WRITE PROTECT lamp                                                      
writeprotectbutton  wpb    0                          writable   Writeprotect button pressed                                                      
coveropen           co     0                          read only  1, if RL cover is open                                                          

D>>>

This goes on however long I wait, but once when I stopped things, I got  on the pdp-11 console, 

?MON-F-System read failure halt

which looks a little like an RT11 prompt. Any ideas? 

Thanks again, 

Richard