From ams at gnu.org Tue Jul 22 04:53:17 2014 From: ams at gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 07:53:17 -0400 Subject: [LispM] World Files In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: For an odd bit of entertainment, I have been attempting to decypher world files. (I have an Ivory/XL1200.) Based on information available in i-sys/sysdef.lisp and netboot/world-substrate.lisp I have made some progress. I have, however, hit a wall and am looking for some inspiration. When the FEP loads and boots a world, it must read the world file into memory, build an environment for it and, eventually, vector to it. It appears that the definition of this "environment" is not readily obvious from the source code. It appears, for example, that the function QLD is the initial entry point inside the LISP world (although how we get to that function is unclear to me). Also, the world file describes both wired and un-wired regions of memory. How the unwired page table is communicated to the code within the world and where it should be located is equally not obvious. Has anyone tinkered around at this level, and would be in a position to provide some hints? I am trying to understand the FEP -> World protocol. Ten years later, we get an answer -- but not exactly what you might be looking for. Did you get any further in your digging? :-) Here is a fun document on cold loading: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: lambda-cold-load.txt URL: From ams at gnu.org Tue Jul 22 04:53:22 2014 From: ams at gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 07:53:22 -0400 Subject: [LispM] UNIX Chaosnet / dist. reels? Message-ID: I'm trying to find a copy of the UNIX/MIT/Symbolics Chaosnet source code for presering an old Symbolics machine which only talks Chaos, but also to make it more fun to use from UNIX installations. Has anyone seen it floating around? Note I'm not talking about the port that Brad (Parker) made some time ago, but the original one with a SUPDUP server, RTAPE service, command line utilities to talk to a Chaosnet machin, etc. AFAIK, they where part of the Genera 6 distribution, but where removed in 7. Cheers, Alfred. From mike at umbricht.org Tue Jul 22 05:09:50 2014 From: mike at umbricht.org (Michael L. Umbricht) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 05:09:50 -0700 Subject: [LispM] Symbolics open house (Providence) Message-ID: <20140722050950.529630cbb2d30ca4c72d6ac4a4187d5b.5996e57dff.wbe@email14.secureserver.net> The Retro-Computing Society will be featuring the Symbolics 3600 L bus Lisp Machines at our Sept. 20 open house in Providence, RI. If you are in the New England area stop by for a visit. Info and directions at: http://rcsri.org/ If you are not local we are planning on having a series of Google+ video hangouts where we discuss various machines. Theses events will be announced at https://www.google.com/+RcsriOrg I restored some old webpages that give an overview of our LispM collection and some notes from restoring them. The pages haven't been updated since about 2004, so many of the links are broken. Our collection includes a 3600, 3670, and two 3640 systems. We also have a 3630 and a Xerox Dandelion. http://www.umbricht.org/rcs/Symbolics/contents.html We are open on the third Sat. of each month from 1-8 pm. If anyone is in the area and would like to visit, drop me a note. We will be featuring the ANSnet Core Nodal Switching System for our Aug. 16 open house. This is an IBM RS/6000 POWERserver based NSFnet T3 experimental backbone router from the early 1990s. -mikeu info at rcsri.org http://rcsri.org https://www.facebook.com/rcsri https://www.google.com/+RcsriOrg https://twitter.com/RetroCompSocRI https://www.linkedin.com/company/retro-computing-society-of-ri From ams at gnu.org Tue Jul 22 05:45:54 2014 From: ams at gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 08:45:54 -0400 Subject: [LispM] World Files In-Reply-To: <20140722122621.9D69B12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> (message from Robert Swindells on Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:26:21 +0100 (BST)) References: <20140722122621.9D69B12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> Message-ID: I have made changes to the MIT sources to allow QLD to pull in the extra object files needed using TFTP. Do you have it published? Have you managed to make a cold load partition from scratch? I have no idea how much Symbolics had changed their bootstrap process, it is interesting though that the entry function still has the same name. >From what I have gathered, the boot process is quite similar in theory, i.e. you build a basic cold load image (from cross compiled files for the target with information on how things should look on the target), that in turn can only talk Chaos, read files into memory and maybe some other minor bits. Then you load your cross compiled files over Chaos into memory, getting a more usable environment, which you can then save into a fresh world file. But I suspect that things where rewritten heavily and not much is shared other than the theory. (ams) From rjs at fdy2.co.uk Tue Jul 22 05:26:21 2014 From: rjs at fdy2.co.uk (Robert Swindells) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:26:21 +0100 (BST) Subject: [LispM] World Files In-Reply-To: (ams@gnu.org) References: Message-ID: <20140722122621.9D69B12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> ams at gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) wrote: > For an odd bit of entertainment, I have been attempting to decypher > world files. (I have an Ivory/XL1200.) Based on information > available in i-sys/sysdef.lisp and netboot/world-substrate.lisp I > have made some progress. I have, however, hit a wall and am > looking for some inspiration. > > When the FEP loads and boots a world, it must read the world file > into memory, build an environment for it and, eventually, vector to > it. It appears that the definition of this "environment" is not > readily obvious from the source code. It appears, for example, > that the function QLD is the initial entry point inside the LISP > world (although how we get to that function is unclear to me). > Also, the world file describes both wired and un-wired regions of > memory. How the unwired page table is communicated to the code > within the world and where it should be located is equally not > obvious. > > Has anyone tinkered around at this level, and would be in a > position to provide some hints? I am trying to understand the FEP > -> World protocol. > >Ten years later, we get an answer -- but not exactly what you might be >looking for. Did you get any further in your digging? :-) >Here is a fun document on cold loading: Your document describes how LMI bootstrapped a new Lisp image, a process that had evolved from the way the MIT CADR did things, their final source tree is in Joe Marshall's repository. I have made changes to the MIT sources to allow QLD to pull in the extra object files needed using TFTP. I have no idea how much Symbolics had changed their bootstrap process, it is interesting though that the entry function still has the same name. Robert Swindells From rjs at fdy2.co.uk Tue Jul 22 06:41:15 2014 From: rjs at fdy2.co.uk (Robert Swindells) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:41:15 +0100 (BST) Subject: [LispM] World Files In-Reply-To: (ams@gnu.org) References: <20140722122621.9D69B12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> Message-ID: <20140722134115.50C2C12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> ams at gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) wrote: > I have made changes to the MIT sources to allow QLD to pull in the > extra object files needed using TFTP. > >Do you have it published? It is in the source tree of the mit-cadr project on common-lisp.net, this repository started as a copy of Brad Parker's private one. >Have you managed to make a cold load partition from scratch? Yes. From ams at gnu.org Tue Jul 22 09:21:08 2014 From: ams at gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 12:21:08 -0400 Subject: [LispM] Ivory macroinstruction set documentation Message-ID: I spent a few moments converting the three Ivory documents into text that are located at http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/symbolics/I_Machine/ If anyone is interested, feel free to poke me. Cheers, Alfred. From mcwood at nefkom.net Tue Jul 22 13:34:59 2014 From: mcwood at nefkom.net (Marc Holz) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 22:34:59 +0200 Subject: [LispM] SCSI Disk for XL400 Message-ID: Hi Folks, I have a Symbolics XL-400 with a dead SCSI disk and would like to bring that machine back to live. I would like to find some on the list who could format a disk and put Genera on it. I have MacIvory2 in storage but from my understanding it is not possible to format a SCSI disk with that system. Greetings, Marc Located in Erlangen, Bavaria, Germany -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ams at gnu.org Mon Jul 28 02:07:34 2014 From: ams at gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 05:07:34 -0400 Subject: [LispM] World Files In-Reply-To: <20140722134115.50C2C12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> (message from Robert Swindells on Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:41:15 +0100 (BST)) References: <20140722122621.9D69B12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> <20140722134115.50C2C12326@ren.fdy2.co.uk> Message-ID: >Have you managed to make a cold load partition from scratch? Yes. Sweet, is it the same procedure as before?