OS/8 Strangeness

From: Rick Bensene <rickb_at_pail.enginet.com>
Date: Sat Mar 20 12:46:55 1999

I recently acquired a complete PDP8/E system, with 2 RK05's and High Speed
Tape Reader/Punch. I have one disk pack that seems bootable into OS/8.

I can boot up just fine on this pack, but when I try a command, such
as "DIR", I get the error message:

CCL 3G OVERLAY & MONITOR INCOMPATIBLE
SWITCH NOT ALLOWED HERE

At this point, it seems that CCL is not running.

Once this happens, I get a Keyboard Monitor prompt, and I can run DIRECT
with "R DIRECT", and get directory listings of the disk
just fine. The CCL.SV file is on the SYS: device (18 blocks long).

I don't know what I did to confuse it, because when I booted up the first
time, everything was fine...I did a VER and it returned information
indicating
that the OS/8 version was V3Q and the CCL version was V1F.

Next time I booted up, I started getting this CCL error.

Now when I try a VER command, I get the error message above.

I found another pack that has a CCL.SV on it (but this one is 17 blocks
long), and used FOTP to move the CCL.SV on the boot pack to CCL.XX, and
copied over the CCL.SV off the other pack, and rebooted. It seemed to
come up OK, and CCL is running. Now, when I do a VER
I get OS/8 version of V3Q, but it reports the CCL version as
(CCL VERSION A). A definite change.

If I delete CCL.SV completely and boot, I get a Keyboard Monitor
OK, and then I did "R CCL.XX" to load up and run the V1F version
of CCL, and I get "SWITCH NOT ALLOWED HERE", and CCL not is running.
This leads me to believe that the CCL V1F bits are somehow screwed up.

With the "VERSION A" CCL loaded, I can execute some
CCL commands, but there is some weirdness. For example, the SET and HELP
commands don't seem to work properly. HELP does weird things when
run from the CCL command line, for example, just typing HELP results
in the . prompt returning, with no output.
Typing HELP followed by a keyword, like "HELP SET" results
in "LINE TO LONG IN FILE#1".

If I run HELP via "R HELP", it seems to work OK.

The SET command seems beset with similar
problems, for example typing "SET TTY NO PAUSE" results in
? OLD BASIC

Some SET commands seem to work, but many do not.

I think the weirdness with HELP and SET are related to something with the
BRTS files, but the strange part is that with the V1F version of CCL, and
nothing
else changing (to my knowledge anyway) HELP and SET worked great.

I think that I'm experiencing is that the original CCL.SV (V1F) on the
bootable pack somehow got corrupted, and when I copied over the other
CCL.SV (VERSION A) that I found, I'm running into some kind of CCL versus
utility program version incompatibilities. Anyone have a paper tape with
CCL V1F on it that I could borrow?

I used OS/8 years and years ago, and have forgotten a lot. I've got a copy
of the OS/8 handbook (First Printing, 1974), which is very helpful for
refreshing the memory cells in my brain, but it doesn't seem to be helpful
with regard to this kind of problem. The OS/8 handbook just says "The
version of CCL being used is not compatible with the Keyboard Monitor
present on the system. Type R CCL to retry". Well, their advice isn't real
useful here.

Another big problem I have is that I have no good way to get stuff
from Unix or PC to the 8. I need to get KERMIT sources over to the
8 from a PC, so I can build KERMIT and then use it to move bits between
a laptop PC and the 8. However, since the machine has no other means
of 'input' of data other than the paper tape reader (I don't have any
punch capability on any of my PC's or Unix machines) and the console tty,
there's no real easy way. All I can think of is using "split" on the
Unix side to break the KERMIT source file into small chunks, copying
the chunks to a laptop, then hooking the laptop to the 8, and
using TECO in "insert" mode, copying a chunk into the buffer, writing
out the chunk into a file (or maybe using PIP FILE.PA<TTY:), doing this
with each chunk one at a time, then once all the chunks are over there,
using TECO to re-assemble them all back into single files for assembly.
But...that sounds like a real pain, plus I'm not sure the 8 can take
stuff very fast, and there's no flow control to speak of that I can tell,
at least on the 8 side of things.

Anybody out there have any ideas that may help? I'm not dead in the water,
just inconvenienced by the weirdness, and I'd like to get the system back to
100% again.

Either that, or anyone have a later version (V3Q?) of the entire OS/8
distribution on tape that they'd be willing to either copy and send
(I'll pay all expenses) or borrow so I can BUILD a good solid boot disk with
utilities? The system came with a number of tapes, but the set seems
incomplete, and rather old. It all seems to be V3D stuff, whereas it appears
that the version on the bootable disk is V3Q, which, at least by alphabet,
seems newer.

Any leads, help, suggestions, or questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Many thanks,
Rick Bensene
Received on Sat Mar 20 1999 - 12:46:55 GMT