July 2024 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Re: DECStation 3100 on a RPi2040...

by John Stoffel

>>>>> "Jon" == Jon \"maddog\" Hall via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: > The DECstation 3100 (aka the PMAX) was a system based on the same > motherboard as the VAXstation 3100, except with a MIPS processor. > It was the first time that Digital had built a system using another > company's chip architecture. That's an interesting statement. I would think it was the same case and port setup, but a different motherboard since you couldn't just slot a MIPS processor into a VAXstation processor. > We had a choice between supporting the MIPS R2000 chip as "big > endian" or "little endian". We chose to support "little endian" to > be compatible with PDP-11s, VAXen and Intel chips, rather than be > compatible with other manufacturers. This, in my mind, was very > important since it let us share data over NFS and give greater > compatibility with programs and libraries of applications already > running on other Unix-like systems such as Ultrix, BSD, etc. Sun > experienced this grief when they ported Solaris off the big endian > Motorola and SPARC chips to little endian Intel. > One of the few issues of the DECstation 3100 (and 2100, known as the > "PMIN" after that) was that the serial I/O port did not support > hardware handshaking. To save a couple of pennies per system the > VAX hardware designers determined that having full hardware modem > control (DECstandard 52) on the board was not needed, because "very > few workstation users hook a modem up to their serial line". What > they meant was that "very few VMS workstation users hooked a modem > up to their serial line", opting for DECnet to handle their > networking. Therefore the pins necessary to support hardware modem > control were missing from the DECstation product lines. Yes! It's coming back to me, the 3100s were horrible for serial, though I think they had fixed it for the 5000 series systems, since the DECstation 5000 and the DECserver 5100 were identical, except the DECStation had a graphics card and cost 10-20% _less_ than the DECstation 5000. So we bought DECStations and used them as servers. :-) I used to live and breathe the DEC options catalog, which was something like an inch thick book in purple (maybe blue? maybe changed each year?) with all the various options and configurations you could get. > Unix users, on the other hand, often had modems hooked up to their > workstation, to handle cu(1), uucp(1) and other serial line > protocols. We eventually got around this by better refining > software modem control, but it was painful. The EE department had Sun 1s at WPI, and they have the 9600 baud bitnet connection running of a VAX 11/780 at the time. > The proposal, design and release of the DECstation 3100 was a > top-secret project inside of DEC, kept secret from even many people > in the Digital Unix group in Nashua, New Hampshire. The > development of the system was done in Palo Alto's WorkStation > Engineering group and the software engineering was done in the > Western Software Labs in Palo Alto, albeit by taking key engineers > from the Nashua facility and transplanting them temporarily to Palo > Alto. > The implementation was kept so secret that it caught Dave Cutler, > then working on DEC's next-generation operating system and chips, by > surprise when it debuted at a Board Meeting in Maynard, > Massachusetts. Shortly after that board meeting Mr. Cutler left > Digital and moved (with some of his team) to Microsoft. Do you think that was just the straw that broke the camel's back? > The DECstations only were manufactured for a couple of years, as the > DEC Alpha processor replaced MIPS in Digital's lineup. Although > originally promised that OSF/1 would be ported to the DECstation > line, this port was dropped due to realizing that there would never > be an application base to support the customers of a DECstation > OSF/1 port. It was better for ISVs and customers to maintain the > Ultrix base for the DECstations than to split the base into Ultrix > and OSF/1. Yeah, we had a ton of DECstations and a bunch of various early model Alphas at WPI which we beta tested for DEC. The AS2100 with 8 DEC StorageWorks canisters (which Netapp used on their early F220, F330, F740 NAS systems) holding 3.5" disks, dual ported, hot-swapable. Nice gear. The move from Ultrix to DEC OSF/1 was a bit painful, but not terrible as I recall, but I'm sure I've blocked all the bad memories from then. Thanks for the walk down memory lane! John

July 6, 2024

You-Do-It Founder

by gmcaplan＠gmcaplan.org

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/bostonglobe/name/john-ahigian-obituary…

July 6, 2024

Re: DECStation 3100 on a RPi2040...

by Jon "maddog" Hall

The DECstation 3100 (aka the PMAX) was a system based on the same motherboard as the VAXstation 3100, except with a MIPS processor. It was the first time that Digital had built a system using another company's chip architecture. We had a choice between supporting the MIPS R2000 chip as "big endian" or "little endian". We chose to support "little endian" to be compatible with PDP-11s, VAXen and Intel chips, rather than be compatible with other manufacturers. This, in my mind, was very important since it let us share data over NFS and give greater compatibility with programs and libraries of applications already running on other Unix-like systems such as Ultrix, BSD, etc. Sun experienced this grief when they ported Solaris off the big endian Motorola and SPARC chips to little endian Intel. One of the few issues of the DECstation 3100 (and 2100, known as the "PMIN" after that) was that the serial I/O port did not support hardware handshaking. To save a couple of pennies per system the VAX hardware designers determined that having full hardware modem control (DECstandard 52) on the board was not needed, because "very few workstation users hook a modem up to their serial line". What they meant was that "very few VMS workstation users hooked a modem up to their serial line", opting for DECnet to handle their networking. Therefore the pins necessary to support hardware modem control were missing from the DECstation product lines. Unix users, on the other hand, often had modems hooked up to their workstation, to handle cu(1), uucp(1) and other serial line protocols. We eventually got around this by better refining software modem control, but it was painful. The proposal, design and release of the DECstation 3100 was a top-secret project inside of DEC, kept secret from even many people in the Digital Unix group in Nashua, New Hampshire. The development of the system was done in Palo Alto's WorkStation Engineering group and the software engineering was done in the Western Software Labs in Palo Alto, albeit by taking key engineers from the Nashua facility and transplanting them temporarily to Palo Alto. The implementation was kept so secret that it caught Dave Cutler, then working on DEC's next-generation operating system and chips, by surprise when it debuted at a Board Meeting in Maynard, Massachusetts. Shortly after that board meeting Mr. Cutler left Digital and moved (with some of his team) to Microsoft. The DECstations only were manufactured for a couple of years, as the DEC Alpha processor replaced MIPS in Digital's lineup. Although originally promised that OSF/1 would be ported to the DECstation line, this port was dropped due to realizing that there would never be an application base to support the customers of a DECstation OSF/1 port. It was better for ISVs and customers to maintain the Ultrix base for the DECstations than to split the base into Ultrix and OSF/1. md On Fri, Jul 5, 2024 at 9:02 AM John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: > > My first real Unix workstation, reduced. > > https://github.com/rscott2049/DECstation2040 > > This brings back memories. I think they had 8mb of RAM and 525Mb > 5 1/4" full height hard drives in external SCSI enclosures way back in > the late 80s.... > > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/W47HD… >

July 5, 2024

DECStation 3100 on a RPi2040...

by John Stoffel

My first real Unix workstation, reduced. https://github.com/rscott2049/DECstation2040 This brings back memories. I think they had 8mb of RAM and 525Mb 5 1/4" full height hard drives in external SCSI enclosures way back in the late 80s....

July 5, 2024

Re: You-Do-It Electronics is dead, long live You-Do-It Electronics

by Tim Keller

Sadly I only went to You Do it once and it was really amazing. It was before the pandemic in their full glory. My co-worker is a big ham guy and he needed some stuff to repair a couple radios as well as some connectors for his various antennas. He was in there all the time and immediately was greeted by a sales guy who dove right into a deep conversation about dipole yaggi's, etc. I wandered the aisles, just amazed. They had a pretty decent 3d printing corner as well. Sadly, I think the market for building your own electronics is continuously shrinking. Tim. On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 2:46 PM John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: > >>>>> "gmcaplan---" == gmcaplan--- via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: > > They're gone already, it was pretty quick, I missed being able to make > a trip too. > > > This is terrible news! Have they closed already? I was planning to > > go there on Tuesday (July 2) when I have a medical appt. in > > Newton. They were probably destroyed by the Web, BUT their location > > was not ideal. The traffic in that area was horrible. > > > On 2024-06-28 4:53 pm, Jeff Moyer via WLUG wrote: > >> Hi, David, > >> > >> David Glaser via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: > >> > >>> You-Do-It Electronics went out of business. It was a very nice > >>> resource. Does anyone know of a similar electronics store that is > >>> within a 1 hour drive of Woosta? > >> > >> That is sad. I don't know of another store that is as big as > >> You-Do-It, but there is Electronics Plus in Littleton: > >> http://www.electronicsplus.com/ > >> > >> They are more like a radioshack in terms of size and inventory. > >> > >> -Jeff > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > >> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > >> Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > >> Change Settings: > >> https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > >> Web Forum/Archive: > >> > https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/WSZ6C… > > _______________________________________________ > > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > > Change Settings: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > > Web Forum/Archive: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/DPXGK… > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/KWIQU… > -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

July 2, 2024

Re: Keeping your package manager happy in Ubuntu and Debian -- from prior upgrade discussion

by John Stoffel

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Voorhis via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: Mike puts out some great info, but I just want to make a single comment here, because my main system at home has gone from Debian 9 (I think!) to 10, 11 and now 12. Lots of cruft has built up over the years, and this was a great set of commands to help clean stuff out. > Does your machine harbor software not attached to any software repo? > (these are AKA "Obsolete packages") Learn the shocking truth: > aptitude show '~o' | grep Package | awk '{print $2}' | sort | fmt This really needs to be: aptitude show '~o' | grep Package: | awk '{print $2}' | sort | fmt because sometimes aptitude shows package info across two or more lines.

July 2, 2024

Re: You-Do-It Electronics is dead, long live You-Do-It Electronics

by John Stoffel

>>>>> "gmcaplan---" == gmcaplan--- via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: They're gone already, it was pretty quick, I missed being able to make a trip too. > This is terrible news! Have they closed already? I was planning to > go there on Tuesday (July 2) when I have a medical appt. in > Newton. They were probably destroyed by the Web, BUT their location > was not ideal. The traffic in that area was horrible. > On 2024-06-28 4:53 pm, Jeff Moyer via WLUG wrote: >> Hi, David, >> >> David Glaser via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: >> >>> You-Do-It Electronics went out of business. It was a very nice >>> resource. Does anyone know of a similar electronics store that is >>> within a 1 hour drive of Woosta? >> >> That is sad. I don't know of another store that is as big as >> You-Do-It, but there is Electronics Plus in Littleton: >> http://www.electronicsplus.com/ >> >> They are more like a radioshack in terms of size and inventory. >> >> -Jeff >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org >> To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org >> Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ >> Change Settings: >> https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ >> Web Forum/Archive: >> https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/WSZ6C… > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/DPXGK…

July 2, 2024

Keeping your package manager happy in Ubuntu and Debian -- from prior upgrade discussion

by Michael Voorhis

On 7/1/24 9:34 PM, gmcaplan--- via WLUG wrote: > John, Thank you for your help with my recent Linux problems. Sorry I > did not say anything sooner. I'm coming late to this discussion; sorry about that. Re: "old packages from a previous upgrade" ... in Ubuntu, the "do-release-upgrade" script is supposed to clear those out. But if do-release-upgrade crashes out, people can get lost as they don't know how to duke it out with the package manager. My standard "update the software" in Ubuntu/Debian looks for deletable and orphan packages specifically. Nuking orphan stuff and removing old cruft beforehand, is THE WAY to make your upgrades work better. The only other source of complication is old additional software repos in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/[...] which are NOT supported in the OS release you're upgrading INTO. Does your package manager want you to delete stuff? dpkg -l | grep '^r' | awk '{print $2}' | sort | fmt ... this command should return no output if your system is clean. Does your machine harbor software not attached to any software repo? (these are AKA "Obsolete packages") Learn the shocking truth: aptitude show '~o' | grep Package | awk '{print $2}' | sort | fmt ... this command should also produce no output on a happy machine, other than perhaps one-shot .deb files installed from downloads (i.e., if you download the zoom client by hand and install that without using a repo, etc). The more cruft, the worse your major-version-upgrade experience will be. The upgrade is performed entirely by the package manager, so that part of your OS needs to be happy before you can start an upgrade with confidence. --MCV.

July 2, 2024

Re: Seeking Ubuntu Help

by gmcaplan＠gmcaplan.org

John, Thank you for your help with my recent Linux problems. Sorry I did not say anything sooner. George Caplan On 2024-06-26 9:39 pm, John Stoffel via WLUG wrote: >>>>>> "gmcaplan---" == gmcaplan--- via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> >>>>>> writes: > >> I hope one or more of you can help me. >> I upgraded today from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS on my desktop >> computer. (I know I am way behind, but I can do this only in the >> summer >> etc., etc.) >> I used the built-in Ubuntu update feature. >> It worked better than I expected and took less that two hours. The >> data >> backups I did ahead of time took much longer. > >> Anyway, 20.04 is running but I have two problems. > >> Number One: > >> Many terminal commands give this message: >> Errors were encountered while processing: >> linux-image-4.15.0-212-generic >> Processing was halted because there were too many errors. >> W: Can not find PkgVer for 'linux-image-extra-4.4.0-122-generic' >> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) > >> In particular, here is what happens when I try to remove 4.4.0-212. > >> sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-image-extra-4.4.0-212-generic >> Reading package lists... Done >> Building dependency tree >> Reading state information... Done >> E: Unable to locate package linux-image-extra-4.4.0-212-generic >> E: Couldn't find any package by glob >> 'linux-image-extra-4.4.0-212-generic' >> E: Couldn't find any package by regex >> 'linux-image-extra-4.4.0-212-generic' > > This is funky. I suspect that you have an old package from a previous > upgrade, did you come from Ubuntu 16.x or earlier on this same system? > > You might try to run the following, all as root or with sudo: > > apt clean > apt update > apt install --fix-missing > apt upgrade > > and see what each command says. So please share the full and complete > outputs. You might also be able to do: > > apt purge linux-image-extra-4.4.0-212-generic > > But maybe you can share the output of: > > dpkg-query -l | grep linux-image-extra > > and see if that package is listed and share with us the full details? >> From the looks of it, you DID do a previous upgrade from Ubuntu 16.0 > at some point, but didn't didn't do: > > apt autoremove > > once you finished the ugprade to 18.x, but I think we can make this > work with a bit of finagling. > > Also, please look at these instructions, and once we get this fixed, > I'm going to suggest you go right to 22.04 LTS, and then just stick > with LTS versions if you can't upgrade very often. > > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades > > But the last thing to try, if none of the above works might be to do: > > dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq > linux-image-extra-4.4.0-212-generic > > and see if _that_ does the trick. > > John > > > > >> Number Two: > >> I cannot get audio out of Line Out to my speakers. And I cannot get >> audio into Line In to make recordings. I *do* get audio from the audio >> output on my HDMI monitor. This might be related to the need for >> codecs, >> but when I try various terminal commands to load more codecs, I get >> problem Number 1 ! > > Yeah, let's fix your apt-repo, which seems to be in a wierd state. But > maybe you can also post what your hardware is, including the output > of: > > lspci > >> Some of what I read on the Web mentions tex files that could cause >> Number 1. I do have TeXstudio installed. I tried to uninstall >> texstudio and texlive, but when I do that, I get the message ant >> Number One! > > Yeah, I doubt that's the problem, but we'll try to help here. > > Do you have any special stuff in /etc/apt/sources.list or do you have > any extra file in > > ls /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ > > and what I'd probably do is remove all extra sources in there for now, > just to make sure things are ok. > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/Y23FW…

July 2, 2024