INFO-VAX Sat, 10 Mar 2007 Volume 2007 : Issue 137 Contents: I Lost It with the Tape Drive v1.1 (Lyrics) OpenVMS Alpha Source Code listing QB-MT1AB-E8 Re: OpenVMS Alpha Source Code listing QB-MT1AB-E8 Re: OT: IBM's Power to power Boeing's 787 Re: Problem with sysdump.dmp Re: SAMBA on OpenVMS with OS X client Re: Time zone/DST change question. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Mar 2007 14:54:50 -0800 From: "AEF" Subject: I Lost It with the Tape Drive v1.1 (Lyrics) Message-ID: <1173480890.418363.305650@64g2000cwx.googlegroups.com> DST getting you down? Here's a slight rewrite of my tape drive lyrics. All right, enough doom and gloom. It's time for a little SYS$HUMOR! To the tune of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine": I Lost It with the Tape Drive (v1.1) Ooh, I bet you're wonderin' how I knew 'Bout your plans to make me blue With the tape I trusted to your clutch You know that data, I needed much It took me by surprise I must say When I heard it grind away Don't you know that I Heard it in the tape drive Not much longer would it be alive Oh, I heard it in the tape drive Now I'm just about to lose my mind Honey honey, yeah (Heard it in the tape drive Not much longer would I have my data, ooh, ooh, ooh) I know a man ain't supposed to cry But these tears I cannot hold inside Losin' you would end my job you see 'Cause that data, my boss he needs You could have told me just as much that my tape you were about to scrunch Instead I lost it in the tape drive not much longer would it be alive Oh yeah, I lost it in the tape drive And I'm just about to lose my mind Honey honey, yeah (Lost it in the tape drive Not much longer would I have my data, ooh, ooh, ooh) People say believe half of what you see Son, and none of what you hear But I can't help being confused If my data's gone, please tell me dear Do you really want to do this to me After all the cleaning tapes I fed to thee? Don't you know I Lost it with the tape drive Not much longer would it be alive Baby, I lost with in the tape drive Ooh I'm just about to lose my mind Honey honey, yeah (Lost it with the tape drive Not much longer would I have my data, ooh, ooh, ooh) Honey, honey I knew That my data is through 'Said I lost it with the tape drive Repeat and fade Lost it with the tape drive Lyrics mutated by Alan E. Feldman &-) ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 2007 22:28:57 -0800 From: vmshobby_au@yahoo.com.au Subject: OpenVMS Alpha Source Code listing QB-MT1AB-E8 Message-ID: <1173508136.923165.28090@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com> Hi Group, I am a hobbyist in Sydney, Australia and I am thinking about get a copy of the OpenVMS Alpha Source Code listings. Anyone have any idea of approximate price in Australia? Is there a hobbyist discount? Is it possible to buy the CD and get a hobbyist licence to use? Thanks Jason ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 2007 22:39:53 -0800 From: vmshobby_au@yahoo.com.au Subject: Re: OpenVMS Alpha Source Code listing QB-MT1AB-E8 Message-ID: <1173508793.169750.133520@n33g2000cwc.googlegroups.com> Hi Group, Should have mentioned I currently use the fische version 4.0 - 4.3 and I was wanting to upgrade as alot has changed in 14 years. How many CDs are in the set for Alpha 8.3? Thanks Jason ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 19:37:59 -0000 From: "John Wallace" Subject: Re: OT: IBM's Power to power Boeing's 787 Message-ID: <45f1b799$0$8733$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net> "Michael Unger" wrote in message news:55ciujF2441kgU1@mid.individual.net... >I am not aware of "VxWorks for Alpha". SPD number 51.39: "VxWorks[[R]] Realtime Tools for Alpha is a set of programs, utilities and tools used for the development of dedicated, embedded, and distributed realtime applications. VxWorks features a small and efficient kernel, high-level language support, powerful debugging, testing and profiling utilities and extensive networking facilities. The development environment is layered on the Digital UNIX operating system. The runtime environment is a standalone Alpha[[TM]] or Motorola[[R]] 68K target system." It was sold and supported by DEC, based on a 64bit port of Wind River's VxWorks (some version of VxWorks pre Tornado, iirc) and a load of other changes which distinguished it from (and made it somewhat incompatible with) the WRS product. The commercial details followed the usual DEC approach, which was rather different than WRS (which might be a "project based" one-off pricing and licensing scheme). Don't know where VxWorks for Alpha AXP ended up when the OEM/E+RT folks were sold off. In addition to the VxWorks option, Green (not Greel) Hills had a set of embedded-system development tools for Alpha: http://www.ghs.com/news/archive/94sep_dec.html and the current line up appears at http://www.ghs.com/products/Alpha_development.html with the footnote "please contact us directly for additional information". Both of these were the kind of setup you could build a true dedicated embedded system on, unlike VMS. That used to matter a lot in the days when real disks were usually required to provide enough storage for an OS. These days, solid state non volatile memory (ie Flash) is sufficiently cheap and convenient (Flash->IDE adaptors?) that there could be an interesting discussion to have around whether VMS might be technically just as appropriate in non-cost-sensitive applications (subject to fine tuning e.g. system startup would need some care and attention). In reality that VMS-related discussion seems unlikely to happen; there's usually much more to choosing a platform than just the OS technology. E.g. there's a well-established "ecosystem" around VxWorks and related tools and processes (e.g. getting VxWorks certified for some safety-related stuff could well be trivial relative to certifying VMS). Then again once upon a time some folks would have said Windows for Warships was a pretty stupid concept, but the gossip says it's due to launch Real Soon Now, so times and markets can change, sometimes unpredictably. > I am not aware of any _low_ power Alpha chip. You most probably won't > find an Itanic chip in these applications either. Low power is a relative term. Much of today's desktop/server x86 kit uses levels of power which would have been unthinkable not that long ago. Who knows what a modern Alpha would currently use, especially at a "system" level, given the amount of integration which could have been on the chip. Needs in the embedded market can of course be rather different than the volume x86 market. DEC did design and produce "industry standard" VMEbus cards based on EV4 (21064) and EV5 (21164) Alphas, using pretty much industry standard VME power and cooling arrangements (give or take a bit). Prior to that there had been a 21066/68-based VMEbus card too, with even lower power (for those who haven't heard of it, 21066 was the high-integration but low-performance EV4-derived chip used in Multia, I forget what the codename was). I think the DEC VMEbus products were sold off with the OEM/E+RT group to SMART Modular Technology, and from there to Motorola (somewhat ironically in the circumstances). Some of the cards are probably still in operation but often they're not the kind of applications which can freely be talked about. That being said, there is/was some stuff which is out in the open. E.g. for those who wanted to buy a complete DEC-compatible Alpha-based computer and just put their standard software on a flight-capable box without worrying too much about trivia like designing their own power and cooling, shock mounts, etc, folks like Raytheon would happily oblige (for a price, obviously) e.g. http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/jstars/ (apologies to readers who are already well aware of JSTARS). If you want *real* low power, you clearly look elsewhere than Alpha and Itanium. The Power/VxWorks combination has the right technical and commercial qualities to suit a lot of embedded applications where the circumstances don't justify 100%-custom silicon or 100%-custom software but do require mostly-COTS hardware and software and a reasonable power/performance tradeoff. At the serious volume end of the market, such as the cellular handset market and maybe the "set top box" or "SoHo router" market, the considerations are different again. The Linksys WRT54G SoHo DSL router is a recent case in point where moving from embedded Linux to VxWorks allows them to use half as much Flash and RAM to deliver the same base functionality; the resulting hardware cost saving multiplied by the number of units sold more than pays for the extra VxWorks licence. Deep down inside, the WRT54G has a MIPS processor in application-specific form (a Broadcom chip); MIPS is still selling by the shedload that way. Summary: Horses for courses, one size does not fit all (whatever MS/Intel might hope). I'm not sure what conclusion one draws from the fact that Alpha-based embedded products existed over ten years ago but were (and are) largely invisible, even to readers of this newsgroup; perhaps one obvious conclusion is that this part of the market is tiny in terms of volume *and* value, so why should a self-confessed "industry standard" chip/system/software vendor care about it? I'd be amazed if Itanium was in any way relevant to these market sectors. Sometimes I'm amazed. Itanium might get to fly (in the aerospace sense) if some major project or contractor is already committed to VMS (or HP-UX) and has made the mistake of not having a committed longish-term Alpha (or PA-RISC) supply. The significant development costs involved in the kind of thing Raytheon do may make Itanium unattractive vs its commodity(ish) competitors, given the perceived limited market and limited lifetime which Itanium has (unless Intel HQ have the kind of government-level contacts that allow tenders to be written such that Itanium is the only answer). hth John ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:41:06 +0100 From: Wilm Boerhout Subject: Re: Problem with sysdump.dmp Message-ID: <45f1b856$0$19696$ba620dc5@nova.planet.nl> on 9-3-2007 13:40 mb301@hotmail.com wrote... [snip] > Have > > DUMPFILE_DEVICE = "$1$DGA77" > DUMPSTYLE = 13 ! compress select off system disk > DUMPBUG = 1 > DUMPFILE = 1 > > Am I right in think you can't use autogen to create the dumpfile to > the correct size? No, you're wrong. AUTOGEN does exactly what you tell it to do. DUMPFILE=1 means disregard all calculations and do the override with file size equal to 1 block. Reading carefully in SYS$SYSTEM:AGEN$PARAMS.REPORT (or such) would have told you. /Wilm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:49:26 +0100 From: Paul Sture Subject: Re: SAMBA on OpenVMS with OS X client Message-ID: In article <00A645ED.385CEFB1@SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: > >> To whomever is working on this at HP, Samba has got to work with ODS-5 > >> volume shares. > >> > > > >Roundly seconded. > > As long as it is not a problem when using a Micro$hite Weendoze machine, > there's no way they're going to bother with this issue. Well, didn't you say you had access to such an abomination? Just for testing purposes only of course, to eliminate the OS X side. But, seeing your directory named [GigsOfPixOfGigs] has reminded me of another potential problem facing you, namely that OS X chokes on large Samba directores, which you see in the Google discussion below. http://preview.tinyurl.com/yqfkec I tested this at the time and found similar. It appears that Windies is caching something which OS X doesn't. If you thought large directories on VMS were slow pre 7.3 (?), you ain't seen nothing yet, and at the moment I'm seeing over 1400 Bufios/sec on my PWS 600au. Not pleasant at all. BTW, for anyone who wants to generate a large bunch of text files for testing purposes (search engines or whatever), download the WIZARD.ZIP file - it contains over 8,000 text files. -- Paul Sture ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 2007 11:07:09 -0800 From: "n.rieck@sympatico.ca" Subject: Re: Time zone/DST change question. Message-ID: <1173467229.847465.48100@64g2000cwx.googlegroups.com> "Stephen Hoffman" wrote in message news:espsv3$t93$2@pyrite.mv.net... > n.rieck@sympatico.ca wrote: >> On Mar 7, 9:07 pm, bradhamilton wrote: >>> bradhamilton wrote: >>> [...snip...] > > It's the POSIX TZ stuff, as this has the positive hour values west of > Greenwich, where UTC has negative values in the same regions. Read the > timezone definitions -- seriously. The definition files are text files, > and the comments can make for some interesting reading. (I've posted > some related material over at the new HoffmanLabs web site.) And stay > as far away from GMT as you can, as it's very ambiguous. > I just read your blog items on DST. I agree with your position: in cases where the hardware clock doesn't record TZ we should all set our systems to UTC. (I still think someones gone off the deep end in the POSIX world with switching plus for minus). Neil Rieck Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/links/cool_openvms.html ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2007.137 ************************