MicroVAX VCB02 Video Card | Let's DECWindows ft. XUI
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ม.ค. 2021
- Finally, the culmination of all our VCB02 work. With the peripherals (mostly) figured out and the video (mostly) displaying correctly, let's relax, drink some wine, and enjoy the glow of an old-school GUI.
And also a brief fable about how Q-Bus cards will destroy your life.
Big ups to my wife. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
The pushing windows to the bottom of the stack thing is in Xfce by middle-clicking the title bar.
The "hiding windows behind the other windows" thing I think is in Amiga Workbench 1.3/3.1 or both, at least if I remember correctly, could've been another OS like NeXTStep or Mac OS 9
but this DECTerm GUI, woot that's some real nice stuff
I remember when all minicomputers were measured in terms of how many VAX mips they could perform. Nice picture of the CDC6600 mainframe on one of your displays. I first saw one in 1966. It could do a 3 million instructions per second.
I used to do CAD on a terminal connected to a VAX 11/780.
That mail, though :)
DEC's old logo colour was blue 9before it turned maroon); so it makes much more sense after you switched the red and blue signals.
As for compilers, there do exist versions of the VMS Consolidated Distribution sets. Which are massive multi-CD collections of pretty much every (DEC made) layered product for VMS.
Well, that learns me for replying mid-video; thirty minutes in and you mention already having a con dist set.
Oh man, now I *really* need a VAX, and also all those books. OwO
the MTA on our old vax system required a special syntax for internet email addresses. Something like in%"user@host"
"Don't go there!" ... of course I had to check it out ;)
This all reminds me of what I used to play around with in college, which was (hard to admit) like 20 years ago. These machines were old relics even then!
Here's some photos from back then:
www.logicprobe.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1001
(Including a picture of a VAXstation 4, which is a similar category of machine to what you're playing with here. Yes, we had a DEC monitor, keyboard, and hockey-puck mouse connected to it!)
Oh man, look at those racks! My god, is that an 11/750 just casually hanging out there?
Yup! I found it on the loading dock of an adjacent building (connected via tunnels/hallways) and managed to move it down there all by myself somehow.
This story all started, of course, when someone spotted the VAX 8530 being thrown out on the far end of campus. A bunch of us got so eager and excited, that we actually skipped class to go and move it down to that club room. (And a few years later, one of us actually succeeded in getting it up and running. It was the real challenge, because its "console" was a bit more involved than the serial terminals you'd expect.)
Your stuff is fun to watch and I'm always excited to see what you are working on! Do you have a patreon setup yet? Address to send donations to? I know an old VAX guy I could probably get you in contact with.
Woah woah woah, patreon? Am I there yet? I'll give that one another minute. Maybe at 1,000 subs.
That said, being hooked up with crusty old men with crusty old computers may just be my idea of a good time...
Update: Hmm. Apparently you can't send private messages on youtube. You learn something new every day. I guess try that_jojo on reddit?
IIRC that resize button was used in uwm (Ultrix WM), which predates twm, but is also DEC software. So I'm guessing it originated with DEC. I'm not sure if uwm predates XUI or not.
There was a way to send windows to the back on Acorn's RISC OS.
That green book is printed on very good paper: it hasn’t yellowed at all…
(Source: I’ve worked in the book publishing & paper industry)…
I think that memory card should probably work on the KA655. I think it shared the same memory boards with the KA650, and that sure looked a lot like the 8MB card I repaired on my VAX.
On second look, the manual seems to suggest that while the KA655 uses MS650 boards, it does not indicate that the 8MB boards will work, only the MS650-BA which are 16MB boards.
@@joesvax maybe it's just a bad board? I was chatting with JP a little about this recently and he sure seemed to be under the impression that it should work as well.
@@TrackZeroFutzin might be worth looking up the failed tests to see what they might mean. on the ka650, t 9e gets you a list of the tests, at least. Not sure about the ka655.
@@TrackZeroFutzin also, this is all the memory subsystem info I figured out on the KA650, at least some of it should apply to the KA655. gunkies.org/wiki/DEC_KA650_Memory_Subsystem
@@TrackZeroFutzin I managed to turn up an old usenet post. "The MS650-A* series memories only work on the KA650 series processor, in other words, and not with the KA655 series processors. The MS650-B* series memory works with both processors."
The board you have is an MS650-AA, 8MB. I guess they dropped support for those on the KA655.
groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.dec/c/mxPvy4jtk4Y
EDIT: also found in a DEC manual, "The KA655 CPU supports only the MS650-BA (16 Mbyte) memory module. The MS650-AA (8 Mbyte) is not supported because of its slower access speed.", from pg 1-4 of EK-306AA-MG-001 (www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/655/EK-306A-MG-001_655Mnt_Mar89.pdf)
Fairly certain the spray tool originated in MacPaint. Here's Bill Atkinson demonstrating it in 1984: th-cam.com/video/1tQ5XwvjPmA/w-d-xo.html
DECterm is pretty interesting because it supports ReGIS graphics. Apart from a real vt340, working ReGIS emulation seems to be a bit rare.
Holy crap, WHAT? Will this thing never stop generating cool things to play with? Sounds like another video to me...
@@TrackZeroFutzin Try to run DATATRIEVE and plot a wombat...
Hello I just subscribed to your channel. My husband has a VAXstation 3500 server. He thinks he fried the graphics card. I hope this video helps him lol. If not can he ask you some questions?
VAX is Fun, I will stick with my Two PDP11/03's.....
So you say you’ve got a PDP-11 spare, is what I’m hearing?
$ show device
$! in DECterm
$! and look for TTxn: or TXxn: terminal devices (OPA0: is the system console)
$ show terminal TXB3: /full
$! to view configuration, baud rate; parity etc
▶ You need a copy of Lunar Lander which shipped with the original VAXstations
As mentioned in the video, half of the issue is that it doesn't appear in the device list at all! There was like a whole day not shown of me screwing with sysgen and the base address and vector switches. It's probably a conflict or something, but frankly I needed to put a video out. I was actually able to successfully manually attach the driver in sysgen, but even after writing it would be gone again as soon as I rebooted.
I am, however, VERY interested in tracking down lunar lander. That sounds boss.
@@TrackZeroFutzin
$! Must be good news connecting serial multiplexor with correct csr/vector
$ mcr sysgem
$ connect ...
$ write current
$ exit
$! rather than 'write active' which is discarded after reboot
$! VMS will probably attempt to autobaud, so if the terminal emulator doesn't respond correctly, you might have to use the permanent qualifier on the 'set terminal' command in sys$manager:systartup.com
$ set terminal TXB3:/speed=9600 /device_type=vt100 /...other_stuff /permanent
@@Proculopsis I'm going to try this as soon as I can. Thanks for the pointers!
Where do we donate a pair of wire strippers? 😛
YOU DON'T
@@TrackZeroFutzin 🤣Love you, bro!
OpSec says you shouldn't show your hands typing the password on video 🤣
Haha. In case I forget, everyone make sure to remember this so you can remind me: password1
@@TrackZeroFutzin ....on the other hand, to a modern day "hacker" a VAX is like a car with a manual transmission! 😁 They don't know how to drive it.
Not sure why you dis the book so much. After all its called the "Introduction" to... It was obviously written for folks who had limited or no experience with a graphical environment. And back in 91 or before, running everything from command line was the norm.