marc@aplvax.UUCP (10/12/84)
Subject: Problem Booting System 5 on 11/70 Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards net.wanted I am posting this for a compatriot: He has an 11/70 with a western peripherals controller which emulates an rm05. When he attempts to boot he gets a trap 0. This controller-disk combination works perfectly using RST/S but somehow system 5 seems to have problems. He has ordered 2.9bsd (should he wait for that?). A Bell software engineer suggested that the bsd driver might work where the system 5 driver doesn't because the Berkeley drivers are more loosely written (more forgiving?). Anyway, the abovementioned friend does not have a source license for system 5 and is unable to look at the driver and check against the way his controller is emulating the rm05. Any help, leads etc. would be very much appreciated -- marc gates umcp-cs!aplvax!marc
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (10/14/84)
> He has an 11/70 with a western peripherals controller which emulates an > rm05. When he attempts to boot he gets a trap 0. This controller-disk > combination works perfectly using RST/S but somehow system 5 seems to > have problems.... Bell/AT&T RP/RM drivers are notorious for assuming that, if they're on a 70, the controller must be on the Massbus (loose terminology here, but it's what people understand). If your Western Peripherals controller is a Unibus controller, that's almost certainly where the problem is. The difference is in how >16-bit addresses are handled; the "Massbus" controllers can directly address 22 bits of memory, whereas the Unibus controllers need help from the Unibus map. The underlying problem is that AT&T buys only certain combinations of peripherals for internal use, and doesn't test on other combinations. (At least, that's the way it used to be.) Evidently DEC is more paranoid about varying configurations (hence RSTS works). Berklix will probably handle this correctly, since Berkeley is/was heavily into non-Dec and hence often non-Massbus controllers. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (10/20/84)
> > He has an 11/70 with a western peripherals controller which emulates an > > rm05. > > The underlying problem is that AT&T buys only certain combinations of > peripherals for internal use, and doesn't test on other combinations. (bit about Unibus controller trying to emulate a Massbus one omitted) I think Henry has it right. I would add that sometimes you can lean on the foreign peripheral vendor (of the system interface module in most cases) to provide patches to make their product work on your system, if they advertised it as working there. E.g. "Works under RSTS/E, RSX-11M, and UNIX".