herbert@dievms.dec.com.UUCP (03/26/87)
>I was surprised, and disappointed, to see that the old Star Trek blinking >light pattern was gone. I had never seen our console when running V8.0. >I KNOW the lights are gone with V9.x, DEC even documents that. Our RUN >light is on almost constantly, even with ZERO activity, so I have a sinking >feeling we have a runaway peripheral scarfing up cycles, which may explain >our system sluggishness more than blaming it on CBE, etc. In all your >many DEC contacts, can you find out if an 11/70 running RSTS V8.0 should >show the Star Trek rotating light display during periods of idleness??? RSTS/E V8.0 still has the idle light pattern; in fact, it is still there in RSTS/E V9.3. The thing that we removed was the "fancy" null job which uses supervisor mode to rotate BOTH the address and data lights. Be sure that the display select switch is set to "data paths" if you want to see the rotating lights. If you suspect that you have some I/O device eating up all your idle time, the easiest way to tell is to run the STATUS program (if you included monitor statistics when you built your monitor) and see what the % of idle time is. If there isn't any idle time, the problem is most likely a terminal line which is passing transmit data to receive data, using lots of CPU time echoing the same thing over and over. To find this, set the input speed of each of your terminals, one at a time, to zero, until the problem goes away. Kevin Herbert RSTS/E development
jimb@tekigm2.UUCP (03/26/87)
In article <8811@decwrl.DEC.COM> herbert@dievms.dec.com (Kevin Paul Herbert) writes: >>I was surprised, and disappointed, to see that the old Star Trek blinking >>light pattern was gone. I had never seen our console when running V8.0. >>I KNOW the lights are gone with V9.x, DEC even documents that. Our RUN >>light is on almost constantly, even with ZERO activity, so I have a sinking >>feeling we have a runaway peripheral scarfing up cycles, which may explain >>our system sluggishness more than blaming it on CBE, etc. > >Be sure that the display select switch is set to "data paths" if you >want to see the rotating lights. > >If there isn't any idle time, >the problem is most likely a terminal line which is passing transmit >data to receive data, using lots of CPU time echoing the same thing >over and over. We run RSTS v9 on our 11/70 and the light pattern exists. We had problems about a year ago with the light pattern stopping and all lights were on constantly. The system would slow down (die) to a mere snooze. With no activity, it would take appx 2 mins to log in. Restarting the system would clear up the problem; however, the problem would reappear randomly. We traced it down to a noisy terminal line which had nothing connected at the other end. Disconnecting unused terminal lines solved the problem. There was a software routine printed in DEC PROFESSIONAL(I believe) in Fall of 85 that checks for terminal activity. I don't remember which issue and my issues don't go back prior to Dec 1985. I remember the article,though, and we tried the program. It helped to find our problem.