Symbolics LISP Engineering

Symbolics LAN - Overview

Sun, 09 May 2021 21:34:56 +0000

Over the past two weeks, I set up a small Symbolics LAN, and thought I would share some of the process and findings. I will write a post about each item, but the topics already concluded cover:

Performance challenges of the Merlin Ethernet under load, and modern 10Base5 to 10BaseT transceivers
An improvement to the stability of my first XL1201 which I was unstable, some five years ago
Y2k problems with the QFILE protocol under Chaosnet, and a “hotfix” to Genera’s QFILE client to bypass them (this is deprecated, but was fun to try out)
IP subnets and routing under Symbolics Namespaces
Setting up the three Symbolics XL computers as a small LAN with a Linux NFS server

Later, I hope to cover some more topics, including:

Symbolics XL LAN Challenges

Wed, 05 May 2021 22:26:17 +0000

I recently set up a LAN of my three XL Symbolics machines at home. The XL1201 which was having stability issues has been largely stabilized (thanks to help from David Schmidt). I will post more about this LAN soon, but I thought I would mention an interesting problem.

The machines connect to the LAN via an AUI to 10BaseT transceiver, to my core LAN which is a mixed 10G/1G LAN. The core router is a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Pro which is attached to UNMS, their central management tool. When I connected these machines to the LAN, I was getting Merlin (the name of the CPU board) Ethernet errors on occasion, and eventually the computer would crash. I put the Symbolics computers on a separate segment connected only to a small Netgear switch and the EdgeRouter, but the computers kept crashing.

Aiband, a Clojure Unity Roguelike

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 19:30:24 +0000

I’ve decided to participate in ProcJam 2016 this year.

For a change of pace, I’m building a small roguelike in Clojure with a Unity3D front-end. This is an interesting challenge as Clojure allows for (even strives for) purity, but doesn’t have a well-integrated, easy to use state monad and related syntax like Haskell, making it hard to use (for example) random numbers purely.

So, I’m making an almost-pure version, with the impurities of the random numbers “allowed,” for now. I may explore writing/refactoring my code to allow for the use of Clojure’s threading macros.

CLIM on Genera 8.3 [Updated]

Sun, 28 Aug 2016 18:55:07 +0000

In preparation of doing some actual software engineering on Genera, I decided to take a look at the CLIM implementation on my MacIvory III Genera 8.3.

There are a few steps to do first:

Load System CLIM: This will take a while. It loads a lot of files and several subsystems, including:
- Loading system CLIM version 66
- Initializing subsystem CLIM Utilities
- Initializing subsystem CLIM Silica
- Initializing subsystem CLIM Standalone
- Initializing system CLIM version 66
- Loading patches for system CLIM version 66
- Patches for CLIM (Current version is 66.3):
If you attempt to use CLIM at this point, however, it won’t work because there is no driver (in my parlance only, I’m not sure the official term). The example code will fail: Error: Cannot find port type: :GENERA
Load System Genera-CLIM will install the remaining parts

This whole process takes probably 15+ minutes of compiling and crunching, so you might want to save the world and restart after this (although I didn’t do this yet).

Ivory CPU Heatsink and Instability

Sat, 06 Aug 2016 14:13:58 +0000

One of the theories about the instability of my Symbolics XL1200 is that the CPU has no heatsink and so it is suffering from thermal problems after a while. (15-30-ish minutes)

David K. Schmidt was kind enough to send me an old heatsink. It’s 38x38x5 mm and has 11 fins on it, as you’ll see on the pictures; slightly smaller than the Ivory CPU itself.

First I cleaned the old epoxy from the heatsink using acetone, which was surprisingly easy to do.

Telnet to MacIvory

Fri, 29 Jul 2016 04:12:24 +0000

Just a quick note about how to enable telnet to your MacIvory III running Genera 8.3.

First, Edit Object Site NAME (obviously, use your NAME and not mine) in the Namespace Editor and add your network to the Secure Subnets. For example, for typical home networks you might add INTERNET 192.168.1.0 or your office might be INTERNET 10.0.0.0. Save the object.

If you are logged in, it usually turns remote access off. This can be odd because you can telnet in when you first boot, but not as soon as you start doing anything on the local console. To turn remote access back on even when you’re logged in, (neti:remote-login-on) is your command. (See Networks pages 13 and 21.)

XL1201 Moment of Truth

Sun, 24 Jul 2016 21:17:33 +0000

UPDATE: No joy. Still self-reboots.

So, I put the Merlin II card back into the XL1201, connected the power and console, and powered it up.

Nothing. Blank screen (which means the monitor was at least getting a signal) but no boot, nothing. I hit the reset button a few times and powered it off and on a few times, and tried to reseat the card. Not a thing.

So, removed the Merlin II and took a very close look at it, comparing my before pictures to everything, to make sure every chip was in the right place and every pin was in its slot.

XL1201 Merlin II Chip Reseating

Sun, 24 Jul 2016 19:48:20 +0000

UPDATE: I clipped and removed the broken capacitor. Replacing it will be the task of another day.

I spent two days removing, cleaning and reseating each DIP chip on the Symbolics XL1201 Merlin II Main (CPU) board. Earlier I closely examined the solder side of the board and found a few minor discrepancies. This time I also encountered three discrepancies:

Bent pin on chip BB27 - unbent
Broken bypass cap next to chip GG7 - I clipped this one off entirely and will replace another day
One long bodge wire running along the entire top has come loose. This could get snagged on something and fall off.

Additionally, I removed and resocketed the Weitek Floating Point co-processor without doing any cleaning. It looked sparkling clean.

Detailed Inspection of XL1201 Merlin II Solder Side

Sat, 23 Jul 2016 19:18:35 +0000

To see if I can isolate the cause of the XL1201 instability, I am going to physically inspect the two main cards with a loupe and flashlight. If I see anything suspect, I’ll take a picture with a (cheap) USB microscope.

I am doing a detailed inspection of the solder side of the Merlin II CPU card first.

Overview picture:

Discrepancies

There are only two that are concerning to me, but several others were found. The two of most concern are:

Enhanced X11 Keyboard

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 04:15:00 +0000

Well, after living with the default keyboard mapping for Genera under X-Windows, I decided to make an optimized one for an 87-key ANSI layout. The design goals were:

Utilize all the 16 top row keys efficiently, with most common functions in logical places
Utilize the 6-key quadrant for other common functions
Leave the arrow keys for cursor motion (because even though I have been using Emacs for at least 26 years I like my arrow keys)

Some of the important things that these led me to were:

Reloading Translations Files

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 00:47:27 +0000

Just a brief hint…

After you modify the file that has your translations (e.g., sys.translations), to make the new changes active, call (load-patches). Per Site Operations guide, page 514, section Translations Files.

Genera Xquartz Keyboard

Sun, 17 Jul 2016 19:42:01 +0000

It has taken some effort, but I finally created a reasonable (and close-to-default) keyboard layout and mapping for Genera for using a modern, 87-key “tenkeyless” keyboard under Xquartz. I became reasonably familiar (at a reading level) with Flavors and Genera’s X implementation while reverse engineering all this stuff. I also used the apropos function a lot, of course.

This layout stays very close to the default one provided by Genera while adding a few tweaks such as:

XL1201 Stability Update

Sat, 16 Jul 2016 15:47:51 +0000

In an effort to rule out the power supply causing the XL1201’s instability, I sent it out for overhaul by Power Clinic. After reinstalling it, I booted the XL1201 and just let it sit in the Document Examiner.

Unfortunately, the computer decided to reboot itself after about 15-16 minutes. So, the power supply would seem not to be the problem.

I will have to disassemble the XL1201 and give it a thorough examination to see if there are any obvious physical defects. If none are found, I will try to remove, clean, and reseat all socketed chips, and see if that helps.

MacIvory III Transplant

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 03:57:38 +0000

Space is a premium in my little vintage computing paradise, so I had the bright idea of transplanting my MacIvory III from a desktop Quadra 650 to a tower Quadra 950 and clear some desktop space. David K. Schmidt said this was a simple matter, and he was entirely correct. I effectively put the Quadra 650 hard drive and the MacIvory card into the 950, rebooted, and blam, it “just worked.” (I actually put a clone of the Quadra 650 drive from 3 years ago in to test first.)

Todd MAX-354-1252 Power Supply for XL1201

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 23:28:33 +0000

So, I learned something about the Todd MAX-354-1252 power supply in the Symbolics XL1201 today that I thought I’d share. Not that I understand it, mind you.

The power supply has six trim pots. Four are obviously labeled for adjusting the four output voltages:

5V at 50A
12V at 8A, 12A peak
-12V at 2A
-5.2V at 10A (for ECL circuits)

However, according to the expert engineers at Power Clinic “The two [remaining] trim pots in question are related to the front-end boost circuits. One is for operation frequency and the other is for boost fold. NEITHER should ever be adjusted.”

MacIvory III Setup and X11

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 04:57:57 +0000

As I haven’t had the time to continue to debug the XL1201 hardware problems, I turned back to the MacIvory III and an Intel i7 NUC I had.

First I set up Ubuntu 14.04 on the NUC with NFS and the “time” service, so I could use it as an always-on server for the Symbolics computers. This way I can put the full size SCSI computer away when I’m not actually imaging SCSI drives.

MacIvory and MouseKey 1.2

Sun, 10 Jul 2016 22:37:38 +0000

Well, I couldn’t find MouseKey 1.0 or 1.1.1 software anywhere on the Internet. Logitech has 2.0 on their web site, and I found 1.1 elsewhere.

However, the 1.1 software can’t see my mouse and the 2.0 software crashes.

So, I decided to buy NIB ADB Logitech MouseMan from eBay if I could find one, and lo-and-behold, this one has MouseKey 1.2 software in it.

Let’s see if MacIvory Genera 8.3 on Mac OS 8 can see my three button mouse…!

More XL1201 Crashes

Thu, 07 Jul 2016 03:56:51 +0000

Well, tonight I had more crashes using the XL1201. Each time the computer crashed after about 20 minutes. This indicates to me that there’s something odd going on somewhere.

Before the first crash, I put the Fluke 289 on 1-second measurement mode of the 5V rail. It was steady the whole time, even after the first crash at 20 minutes.

I then took a few hours break.

Later, I removed both Merlin II and Merlin I/O cards, put contact cleaner on all the socketed chips, and pushed down on them.

XL1201 Instability Next Steps

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 02:44:36 +0000

Well, the instability on the XL1201 has been disheartening. However, I have a few suggestions and plans to see if I can figure it out.

Kalman Reti would like to see backtraces to see if it’s a software problem. I will definitely get these for him; awesome to have a Symbolics expert offering to help - thank you.
I’ll put the Fluke 289 data logger on the 5V power supply rail and see if the voltage has any spikes or “events” when the computer reboots or acts strangely. If not, I’ll try the other three rails too (12V, -12V, -5.2V).
There are a number of tantalum bypass capacitors on the RAM, Merlin II and I/O boards. If any are going bad, they could short, heat up, “heal” and then work again for a little while.
- Test the tantalum caps for resistance (briefly, as the resistance will change as they charge) - anything under 6 ohms might be bad. This will be very difficult to do with the backplane caps, though; I may have to learn to disassemble the XL1201 chassis.
- After the problem happens, quickly power down and remove the boards to see if any components appear overly hot on the FLIR one IR camera.
Remove the cards again and push on all the socketed chips to make sure they’re all seated properly. Possibly apply contact cleaner to the socketed chips. Maybe the whole board - they seem dirty. Not sure if this “whole board” is safe or not.
Remove the cards and all socketed chips, clean the chip and socket, and reseat them. This would take a long time as there are a ton of chips and I haven’t pulled chips in literally decades. I would need to get a chip pulling tool and be super careful as this stuff is, as far as I’m concerned, irreplaceable.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a way to run the Merlin II without it being installed in the XL1201 chassis so I can’t test the caps directly or watch the heat signatures directly without doing a massive disassembly and hack job on the computer chassis, backplane, power supply, etc.

Power Supply, Memory, Crashes

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 04:03:54 +0000

I don’t have the time to post all the details before going to sleep, but I did a few things tonight including measure the power supply voltages, install new RAM, and have a lot of problems and crashes.

XL1201 Power Supply Voltages

I tested the voltages of the XL1201 power supply with a Fluke 269 multimeter and a Rigol DS1000E, while the system was on and sitting at the FEP command prompt.

Multiple Crashes

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 17:34:46 +0000

I have been having a hell of a time today with the XL1201. It keeps crashing to the FEP from Genera. Very frustrating. You can Continue but it will crash again very soon afterwards.

Does anyone have any ideas, please?

Lisp stopped itself
Error trap 1001032504 not in emulator mode at #<DTP-EVEN-PC 37001102553> referencing #<DTP-PHYSICAL-ADDRESS 00001310200>.
(Use :Debug and c-M to record more information for a bug report.)
FEP Command: Debug (Keywords)
Error trap 1001032504 not in emulator mode at #<DTP-EVEN-PC 37001102553> referencing #<DTP-PHYSICAL-ADDRESS 00001310200>.
SI:AUX-HALT (PC = 40)
 --Defaulted args:--
 Arg 0 (SYS:FEP-COMMAND-STRING): NIL
→

FEP on Serial

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 17:26:41 +0000

Getting the FEP display on the serial port isn’t hard - as long as you want to use the serial port built onto the console. So far I haven’t seen a way to tell the FEP to use the serial port built onto the I/O Board.

FEP Command: Show Configuration
XL1200 4.0 Processor; Serial number SN-582; Reveision level: 1.0
I/O Board 0; Revision level: 5.0
2048k words physical memory at 00000000000
2048k words physical memory at 00010000000
Black and white Moniterm console 0

To get the FEP to talk to the serial port on the console simply connect a normal DB25 serial cable to the back of the console and to your serial port (or USB-to-serial in my case).

Auto-setting Time

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 17:21:45 +0000

Every time Genera boots, it asks for the time. However, Genera clearly uses the RFC 868 Time Protocol. So, I thought I’d try to make my local Linux server (named HELIUM in our namespace) serve it up.

This is handled by the openbsd-inetd package in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. This can be enabled by editing /etc/inetd.conf and adding two lines:

linux:~# fgrep time /etc/inetd.conf 
#daytime		stream	tcp	nowait	root	internal
# Port 37 time protocol for Symbolics computers
time		stream	tcp	nowait	root	internal
time		dgram	udp	wait	root	internal

You can reload the inetd server but it’s just as easy to do a shutdown -r now.

Genera X11 Fonts on Mac

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 17:50:53 +0000

Although away, I have my laptop with me and decided to try to get Xquartz running with the Genera X11 fonts.

Find the Genera X11 fonts (in bdf format) and transfer them to your Mac. I put them in ~/x11/fonts/genera/. On Genera system they will be in the LMFS somewhere and can be transferred using NFS.
- If necessary: On the Mac, rename the fonts to lower case and get rid of any Genera version number. tr is good for case conversion and for i in * ; do echo $i `echo $i | sed ’s/\.~.*//’` ; done works to remove version numbers. (Man, this blog software makes it difficult to put commands with backticks and backslashes into code blocks.)
Alternatively, you can mount the ISO9660 partition of your Genera 8.3 distribution CD on the Mac using a command like mkdir /Volumes/CD ; sudo mount_cd9660 -e /dev/disk3 /Volumes/CD and then copy the bdf and other X11 font files. (By default macOS mounts the HFS partition so you will only see the MacIvory files.)
- Add the g option to the mount_cd9660 to see the Genera version numbers appended to the filenames - but you’ll have to remove these when you copy the files.
- (Add the r option to the mount command to see the file system without Rockridge format, for curiosity sake. This also changes the version number format and makes them all caps. You can also use the j option to disable Joilet.)
- sudo umount /Volumes/CD to unmount it; the regular diskutil unmount and other Mac utilities won’t unmount this.

AdmiralA:~/x11/fonts/genera$ diskutil list
...
 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
 0: Apple_partition_scheme +636.7 MB disk3
 1: Apple_partition_map 32.3 KB disk3s1
 2: Symbolics_ISO9660 615.4 MB disk3s2
 3: Apple_HFS MacIvory Support 4.2 21.0 MB disk3s3
...
AdmiralA:~$ ls -l /Volumes/CD/sys.sct/x11/fonts/bdf/genera/ | head -5
total 6476
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 14302 Dec 19 1989 13fgb.bdf.~3~
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 10623 Dec 19 1989 16fg.bdf.~3~
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 12451 Dec 19 1989 18fg.bdf.~3~
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 17481 Dec 19 1989 20vr.bdf.~3~

In the directory with all the font files, run the mkfontdir program, which will make a file called fonts.dir which seems to contain a mapping from a filename to a font name.

AdmiralA:~/x11/fonts/genera$ mkfontdir
AdmiralA:~/x11/fonts/genera$ fgrep genera-cptfont fonts.dir 
cptfont.bdf genera-cptfont
cptfontb.bdf genera-cptfontb
cptfontbi.bdf genera-cptfontbi
cptfontc.bdf genera-cptfontc
cptfontcb.bdf genera-cptfontcb
cptfontcc.bdf genera-cptfontcc
cptfonti-german.bdf genera-cptfonti-german
cptfonti.bdf genera-cptfonti
cptfontr.bdf genera-cptfontr

In the Xquartz xterm window, add this font directory to the font path (xset fp+ ~/x11/fonts/genera) and activate it (xset fp rehash).
Using FontForge I looked at various fonts and determined that genera-cptfont seems to be the normal Genera console font.
Test that the fonts are installed by using one: xterm -fn genera-cptfont -fb genera-cptfontb. Note that as it turns out, these two fonts are not compatible with xterm’s needs (identical bounding boxes) so just use xterm -fn genera-cptfont.

Goals

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 14:59:22 +0000

Last Updated July 2, 2016

Current Goals and Plans

Maintenance

Expand LMFS on main XL1201 Genera boot drive
Set up CrashPlan on Linux NFS server

Usability

Autoboot world
- Serial access to FEP
- Telnet access to Genera Command Prompt
- Ability to Start X from Telnet or auto-start X
Genera X11 on Xquartz
- Reasonable keyboard mapping
NFS
- Disable NFS password request
- NFS UID mapping
- .sct filesystems and Genera versions
Set up Genera screen/status line in lispm-init
- Show web site URL?
Genera Service Configuration
- File transfers/servers enabled
- Remote login enabled
- Time server/setting enabled

MacIvory

Transplant MacIvory III from Quadra 650 to 950
Set up Genera 8.3 on the same site as XL1201
Get Logitech 3-button mouse working with Genera

Software Development

Automatic publishing of Genera versions into GitHub repository commits
Get Quicklisp working (?)
Build a Z-machine interpreter and port some classic games (port this?)
Build a roguelike
Run a web server and site on the computer
Build an SSH client and/or server
“Here’s another Symbolics project for you: A cl-ssl workalike for Genera that trampolines through a little server on another device, so your bolix doesn’t waste its time doing crypto very very slowly.” (suggested by eschatologist)
Other projects from CLiki

Hardware

Measure PS voltages and ripple in XL1201
Measure PS voltages and ripple in Console
- Figure out where to get a good ground and which pins are which voltages
Recap XL1201 power supply and adjust voltages
Recap XL1201 boards & backplane
Recap Console power supply and adjust voltages
Recap Console deflection board
Adjust Console CRT picture

Blog

Configure GitHub to look Symbolicsish
Configure YouTube to look Symbolicsish
Modify Ghost theme to show the console content wider

Long Term Goals and Plans

Hardware

Replace broken SCSI header on XL1201 backplane

Acquisitions

A Symbolics ADB adapter
A wedge-style Symbolics keyboard
An XL1200 with full set of graphics cards
A color console for the XL1200
Get a 1x SCSI CD-ROM drive like the AppleCD 150
Get Mac OS 8 drivers for the 3-button Logitech ADB mouse
Xerox 3-button optical mouse (and then make an adapter to Symbolics mouse)
UX1200 in a Sun host

Networking

Write CHAOSNET Internet router

Hardware Creation

Buy/make custom keycaps for Apple Design Keyboard/Apple Extended Keyboard II for Genera
Build a Symbolics keyboard to USB keyboard converter
Build a USB mouse to Symbolics mouse converter (to use a modern optical 3-button mouse)

Completed

Genera - Completed

Get an entirely clean, hard-drive based Genera 8.3 install running on the XL1201
Set up a new Site on XL1201
- Site name: ADMIRAL
- Symbolics computers named after noble gasses
Set up TCP/IP networking
Set up an NFS server on Linux
Genera X11 fonts on Mac

Blog - Completed

Create personal icon (combine Lisp and Haskell imagery)
Modify Ghost theme to include Symbolics pictures
- Made a Keyboard banner image
- Made Favicons
Add LISP language syntax highlighter

Autoboot Serial/Telnet and X

Sat, 02 Jul 2016 01:43:26 +0000

I’ve decided to take a minor detour when I get back from the gaming convention to make a disk image for someone with an XL400 without a working console. My goal here will be to make a world which will auto boot into the FEP with the serial port I/O enabled for FEP commands if possible, and then auto-load and start a world which will put a Genera/Lisp command prompt on the serial port and/or be listening on (TCP) Telnet on a defined private IP address for remote connections. Then, using Telnet, the user can run Start X Screen and use Genera from an X Windows server. Hopefully this will get him up and running until he has an opportunity to repair his console.

Content

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 02:31:02 +0000

An organized list of the content available on this site.

Symbolics Hardware
Using Genera
- Lisp Configuration Notes
- [Genera Scrolling](Genera Scrolling)
- Useful LOCAL Commands
- Clean Boot of Genera 8.3
- Genera 8.3 Setup, Part 1
- Genera 8.3 Setup, Part 2
- Displaying Genera on iMac via X11
Genera Internals
MacIvory-specific
- MacIvory & 3-button Mice
SCSI
Misc

Displaying Genera on iMac

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 19:11:12 +0000

Well, on a whim I decided to see if I could get Genera running on my iMac’s X display. (This way I can spare the 3620 Console from use while I figure out how to recap it.) It was a frustrating few hours fighting with XQuartz, actually.

First, I installed the latest XQuartz and made it listen on port 6000.¹

Then I set up my iMac as host NEON in the Genera Namespace Editor and typed Start X Screen NEON :Geometry 1600x1200+100+100. Boom, Genera just showed up on my iMac X server.

Symbolics Filesystems (Updated)

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 15:17:00 +0000

Update 1: Added FEP Kernel image.

ams asked me for a few clean filesystems so he can analyze how they work. Happy to oblige.

They’re here.

Configuration:

Device used: SCSI2SD v5
Created using Genera 8.3 clean world on XL1201
“Disk” initialized to all ASCII character ‘D’ bytes
80,000 blocks of 1,280 bytes allocated

The disk was dumped after each of these three steps:

Created Initial FEP Filesystem: fepfs-empty.dd.xz
Initialize LMFS on there: fepfs-lmfs.dd.xz
Create one text file, one directory, one text file in that directory, in each of the FEPfs then the LMFS: fepfs-lmfs-files.dd.xz
After running Copy Flod Files :Create Hello File Yes :Disk Unit 10 :From Directory FEP7:>: fepfs-lmfs-kernel.dd.xz

A transcript of the Lisp session is provided, using dribble, in make-fs-2.text. (Genera uses four letter file types, I saw no reason to change this here.) There’s also a README.txt that says much the same thing here.

Genera 8.3 Setup, Part 2

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 04:07:18 +0000

Good evening with the XL1201 tonight. TL;DR:

Got NFS working on Genera, mostly
- Need to fix UIDs
- Showed editing a file on NFS server
Showed the SELECT-P peeking stuff
Saved file listings for downloading
Fine lines on the console

Continuing on from Part 1…

NFS Server, part 2

Let’s export /genera for use in all our Genera servers, and make a UID/GID especially for that. I’ll also export the root read-only directory just in case I want to access any of my other files on this server.

Clean Genera 8.3 FEPfs

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 11:46:00 +0000

I was asked to provide a full list of all the files on the XL1201 Genera 8.3 hard drive I received from David K. Schmidt. Here they are in screenshot form from the first boot this past Thursday.

Setting Up Genera 8.3, Part 1

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 04:48:00 +0000

I’m setting up Genera 8.3 on the XL1201 using a clean hard drive. Literally all this hard drive has on it is Genera 8.3 and these patches:

Genera 8.3 y2k patches
Copy world patch
Fepfs patch

This hard drive was sold by David K. Schmidt and has had most things set up already, so we’re not actually doing a full installation from CD-ROM.

Let me preface this by saying that I have read a lot of the documents on Bitsavers but have no actual experience with Genera and haven’t had almost any guidance on what I’m attempting to try. My goal here is two-fold:

XL1201 Power Consumption

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 21:32:29 +0000

I was asked how much power is used by the XL1201. Here are a few data points…

XL1201 with only SCSI2SD: 222-233W
Console: 106W

With the XL1201 sitting idle it takes the same amount as calculating (fib 36), so apparently the CPU is running at a constant speed at all times.

When the console goes into sleep mode (after 20 minutes by default), power usage doesn’t appreciably drop.

Console sleep mode: 105W

With the XL1201 running a 15,000 RPM Seagate Cheetah X15 drive (ST318451LW), it doesn’t really take all that much more power.

XL1201 and SCSI2SD v5 128GB

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 20:50:44 +0000

I’m attempting to use the SCSI2SD v5 with a 128G microSD card.

You can find out the size of an SD card attached to a modern Mac with diskutil list and then diskutil info /dev/disk8 (or whatever device it’s listed as). This microSD card is reported as:

# diskutil info /dev/disk8
 Device Identifier: disk8
 Device Node: /dev/disk8
 Whole: Yes
 Part of Whole: disk8
 Device / Media Name: SD USB_3_0 Read

 Volume Name: Not applicable (no file system)

 Mounted: Not applicable (no file system)

 File System: None

 Content (IOContent): None
 OS Can Be Installed: No
 Media Type: Generic
 Protocol: USB
 SMART Status: Not Supported

 Total Size: 127.1 GB (127103139840 Bytes) (exactly 248248320 512-Byte-Units)
 Volume Free Space: Not applicable (no file system)
 Device Block Size: 512 Bytes

 Read-Only Media: No
 Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (no file system)

 Device Location: External
 Removable Media: Yes
 Media Removal: Software-Activated

 Virtual: No
 OS 9 Drivers: No
 Low Level Format: Not supported

So, the microSD has 248,248,320 sectors.

SCSI 50 to 68-pin Adapters

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 04:52:17 +0000

Well, it seems that not all SCSI 50-pin female to 68 pin female adapters are created equally.

I bought several of these from Amazon, made by Monoprice. (Pictures below.) My SCSI chain in the XL1201 was then:

SCSI on Backplane -> 50-68 adapter -> cable -> ST318451LW -> cable (same cable) -> terminator

The terminator is built into the cable and is labeled “Foxconn Ultra 320.”

This was able to boot my SCSI2SD v5 card (with another 50-68 pin adapter) but not the ST318451LW.

Console Internals

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 18:09:57 +0000

This is a Symbolics Model PE36-PCONS, Part No 365404 Rev C console. My serial number is 21811. (“There are many like it, but this one is mine.”) An album of detailed internal photographs is available including full size versions of all the below images.

The console seems to be in good shape, with all electrolytic capacitors intact (not bulging or leaking). I should probably test the power supply outputs as there are trimmers for the voltages to adjust them.

3-button Mouse on MacIvory Fail

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 06:49:33 +0000

TL;DR: Still no luck using 3-button mouse on MacIvory. Need to find MouseKey 1.0 or 1.1 software.

My MacIvory III in a Quadra 650 running Mac OS 8 has a Logitech Mouseman (Model M-AH32), which is a three button mouse from Logitech. However, I never got that three button mouse working with Genera. I did just manage to get my hands on the MouseKey 2.0 software, though.

There are directions in the MacIvory User’s Guide section Configuring the Logitech MouseMan for Use with a MacIvory. I recall, however, reading things on the Internet saying that only certain versions of MouseKey will work, and I think those versions are 1.0 and 1.1 but not 1.1.1. (Thanks Google) I don’t recall reading anything about 2.0.

XL1201 Mini-benchmark

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 04:09:00 +0000

UPDATED July 28, 2016: More mini-benchmark results added.

I was asked to do a simple benchmark of the XL1201 by Jerome Ibanes and share the results. Here is his requested code:

(defun fib(n) 
 (if (or (= n 0) (= n 1)) 
 1 
 (+ (fib (- n 1)) (fib (- n 2)))))
(compile 'fib)
(time (fib 30))

He asked for a few timings with values from 20 to 38.

For comparison, here is the output from LispWorks Personal 6 on a 2015 MacBook Pro with a 3.1 GHz Core i7:

Status and Next Steps

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 14:13:13 +0000

Status

XL1201 running clean Genera 8.3 on X15 drive from DKS
MacIvory III running clean Genera 8.3
All physical drives ddpt’d for backup

Next Steps

Preparation
- Permanently mount X15 drive and SCSI2SD into XL1201 and close it up
- Install new 8MW RAM into XL1201
- Copy all ddpt backups to Google Nearline for offsite backup (using Arq)
Genera work
- Set up one computer as a namespace server (probably MacIvory)
- Set up both with Sites
- Set up both with TCP/IP
NFS and backup work
- Set up a NFS server
- Back up LMFS from XL1201 “original” SCSI2SD to NFS
Document all of the above in blog posts with pictures
- Make the HTML pre code blocks wider
Concurrently: review console hardware and document all electrolytic capacitors and order replacements when the computer isn’t running

Questions

XL1201 Known Working Disks

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 04:42:55 +0000

Note: After formatting a disk to 1280-byte blocks on Genera, make sure to hard power cycle reboot the computer before trying to use it for a FEP file system or any other purpose.

From my own trials, these drives work:

Seagate Barracuda ST336918N - 36G drive (up to 4,096 bytes/sector)
Seagate ST39173N - 9G drive
Seagate Cheetah ST19101W - Tall 9G drive

Per David K. Schmidt on June 23, 2016:

Seagate 18 GB drives known to work:
- Cheetah X15 ST318451LW
- ST118273N/W
- ST318416N/W
- ST318417N/W
- ST318418N/W

It seems that Seagate’s later SCSI drives will only format to 528 byte maximum block sizes per the PDF manuals. For example:

Large SCSI Disks and XL1201

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 02:57:49 +0000

TL;DR:

SCSI disks with 20M 1280-byte blocks work
SCSI disks with 25M 1280-byte blocks work
SCSI disks with 28M 1280-byte blocks work
SCSI disks with 28,870,145 1280-byte blocks works

Both Narrow and Wide single-ended SCSI drives work - the wide ones with appropriate

Chances are I was having problems with the full ~28.9M blocks initially because I didn’t power-off reboot the XL1201 after the full .

Details

I have a Seagate Barracuda ST336918N, a 50-pin narrow SCSI drive which is formatted at 1,280 byte blocks. Unfortunately, the XL1201 cannot create an FEP filesystem.

Clean Boot of Genera 8.3

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 00:04:00 +0000

The XL1201 now boots nicely from a new ST318451LW Cheetah drive that David K. Schmidt sent (sold) me. It loads FEP version 333 and a clean Genera 8.3 distribution world with just a few patches:

Genera 8.3 y2k patches
Copy world patch
Fepfs patch

Does anyone know what the hold.fep file is?

Broken SCSI Pin on XL1201

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 00:03:00 +0000

Well, I was installing a new hard drive into the XL1201 today and just before I connected the SCSI cable, I noticed a pin seemed to be missing on the 50-pin SCSI male connector on the backplane. On closer inspection, it’s definitely missing.

Fortunately, it seems to be pin 1, which is a Ground pin on both single-ended and differential SCSI. Since half the pins are ground on single-ended SCSI, that’s fine, and there are still quite a few ground pins on differential, so we’re fine. It’s the bottom left pin in the picture here.

Current Symbolics Goals

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 14:31:38 +0000

Updated as of June 23, 2016

My Symbolics goals:

Get an entirely clean, hard-drive based Genera 8.3 install running on the XL1201
Get the MacIvory III running 8.3 as well (which it already is)
Set up a new Site with both these computers, networked using CHAOS
- Site name: Element
- Symbolics computers named after noble gasses
- File transfers/servers enabled
- Remote login enabled
- Time server/setting enabled
Set up TCP/IP networking on both computers
Set up an NFS server on my SCSI Linux host and get the Symbolics computers able to store and back up files to it

For maintenance, I need to:

Clean Install Genera 8.3 on XL1201

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 02:19:00 +0000

Attempting a clean install of Genera 8.3 on XL1201 using just a CD-ROM drive and a blank hard drive. However, from preliminary results, this seems to require a working Genera to install Genera again.

References:
- Genera 8.3 Software Installation Guide for XL Family Machines
- Formatting SCSI Disks

Format SCSI Disk

I have connected three devices with these SCSI IDs to the XL1201:

0: SCSI2SD originally purchased, with 12G partition - boot
1: Seagate ST336918N (TODO: URL to PDF) to install
3: Second SCSI2SD with Genera 8.3 Install CD
4: Second SCSI2SD with Genera 8.1.1 Install CD

Process:

Repairing Symbolics 3600 Keyboard

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 14:09:40 +0000

When I purchased the XL1201, it came with a Model 3600 keyboard. Unfortunately, several keys didn’t work, including both hypers, and the left control and super. I disassembled it and couldn’t see anything obvious wrong, so I assumed the key switches went bad. However, this keyboard uses hall effect switches, which have no electrical moving parts. (The keypress moves a magnet, which is sensed by an unmoving electrical component.) So, there aren’t many things to break. I put it back together to deal with later.

Console Monitor Adjustment

Sat, 18 Jun 2016 15:49:39 +0000

There are 10 controls for monitor adjustment. Two large finger controls, a group of 6 small multi-turn trim controls for vertical, and a group of 2 small multi-turn trim controls for horizontal.

You can access these controls by unscrewing the four screws at the back of the monitor and sliding out the rear panel. They will be at the right side (looking at it facing the screen).

I’m not sure what exactly all of these do, and don’t have any manuals about them, so if anyone knows what they do I’d welcome the information. (Try me using symbolics at the last two parts of the domain name of this site.)

Lisp Configuration Notes

Sat, 18 Jun 2016 14:29:26 +0000

Reprinted “Cliff’s” notes from various manuals.

Keyboard

XL’s User’s Guide - The Keyboard

You can have keys repeat if they are held down. This feature is disabled by default, but you can enable it by setting si:*kbd-auto-repeat-enabled-p* to t

(setf si:*kbd-auto-repeat-enabled-p* t)

The speed of repetition is controlled by the variable si:*kbd-repetition-interval*.

You can exempt certain keys from auto-repetition using the function si:set-autorepeat-p. For example, to make SQUARE one of the keys that do not auto-repeat, you would type:

Genera Scrolling

Sat, 18 Jun 2016 03:56:34 +0000

Keyboard Scrolling

SCROLL - one window down
m-SCROLL - one window up
s-SCROLL - one window right
m-s-SCROLL - one window left

These seem to work only when keyboard input is active. It won’t work during Disk wait for example.

Mouse Scrolling

Clicking in a scroll bar

Middle - Move the top/left side of the scrollbar to the clicked position
Right - Move the top/left line of the window to the clicked vertical/horizontal location in the screen
Left - ???

These seem to work even when the SCROLL button won’t.

Errors

Sat, 18 Jun 2016 03:41:55 +0000

Error Recovery

XL’s User’s Guide - When Things Go Wrong with the XL

Wait for User Input to appear instead of Run with a steady/flashing underline in the bottom center of the screen
Try these if the clock is running:
- ABORT
- c-ABORT
- c-m-ABORT
See section Recovering from Errors and Stuck States - TODO: WHERE???

Crash to FEP

Site Operations - Warm Booting

Show Status - FEP Command to get information after a Lisp Crash
h-c-FUNCTION if you cannot get a Lisp Listener or it’s not responding to keyboard input. (On UX machines, only works from cold load stream, so switch with FUNCTION SUSPEND.)

Running Lisp

1

XL1021 was idle in Lisp for about 2 hours and then I got this:

Credits

Sat, 18 Jun 2016 00:52:59 +0000

Credits for things I used on this site:

Lisp Machine Font
Bitsavers Symbolics Documentation
Hugo Static Blog Generator
- Earlier versions used Ghost version 0.9
- Odin theme converted from Ghost to Hugo
Antigravity CLI to convert from Ghost to Hugo (on Arch Linux)
Koken image manager
Lisp Syntax Highlighter
Debian Linux
Let’s Encrypt

Helpful people:

trinitr0n - Symbolics help
David K. Schmidt - Symbolics supplies and help
ams - Symbolics help
Lord_Nightmare - Symbolics help
Lucas Moreira - CSS help

Other credits:

Formatting SCSI Disks

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 04:02:09 +0000

How to format a SCSI disk on the XL1201.

First, boot into Lisp.

Command: Format SCSI Disk (SCSI address) 1 (keywords) :Sector Size (sector size in bytes [default 1280]) 1280
SCSI device 1 is a SEAGATE ST39173N, conforming to protocol SCSI-2,
 with a logical block size of 1280 bytes/block,
 with a physical sector size of 1280 bytes/sector,
 with a non-changeable interleave value of 1.
Format it at 1280 bytes per sector? (Y or N) Yes.

Then, it will go through a very long format. The status line at the bottom will say CL USER: SCSI.

XL1201 Mouse

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 04:02:02 +0000

The XL1201 mouse is a Logitech 3-button mouse, model number P7-3F-SZ. It has an 8-pin modular jack with a key on one side (in other words, it’s very close to a standard RJ-45 jack but has more plastic sticking out the side so it won’t fit in an N-base-T Ethernet port).

It’s apparently about 360 DPI. It’s a mechanical mouse with a ball. Disassembly reveals three button switches, plus two optical rotary encoders, each with an (infrared?) LED and phototransistor. There are two logic ICs, 74LS09 and 74LS05, a few passive components (two resistors and two capacitors) and what looks like a resistor array marked “L807-472G 2880” in a blue 8-pin SIP.

XL-1201 PROM/FEP Boot Sequence

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 03:50:59 +0000

This discusses the initial boot of the XL1201 including the PROM and FEP before Genera is fully running.

Initial PROM Boot Sequence

If you power the XL1201 on and immediately hit a key, you will see this:

XL1200 Device PROM version 325 (Ivory Device PROM 331.0)
Auto-loading FEP kernel -- type any character for menu

0: Load kernel from disk
1: Load kernel from tape or CD-ROM
Enter a choice, or abort to return to automatic mode:

If you then choose 0, you will see:

Useful LOCAL commands

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 03:28:32 +0000

Useful LOCAL commands on an XL1201 with the PE36-PCONS model console (part no. 365404)

XL User’s Guide - Using Local Commands on the XL

LOCAL-D/B Dims/brightens screen
LOCAL-Q/L Quiets/loudens bell
LOCAL-G Rings bell
LOCAL-n LOCAL-C Change contrast; n = 1 to 4 (4 is great) LOCAL-T/O Enter/exit test mode LOCAL-ABORT Reset all LOCAL settings

Questions

I thought there was a LOCAL command that put the display to sleep (like Lisp does after 20 minutes of idle).

Symbolics XL1201 Capacitors

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 03:44:50 +0000

Updated July 8, 2016: For the latest used in my Symbolics XL1201, please see the full capacitor list here.

Old Information

Key:
E = Radial A = Axial

Power Supply

Manufacturer: TODD Products Corp, Brentwood, NY
Model: MAX-354-1252
Input: 115V 8A
Outputs: +5V @ 50A, +12V @ 8A/12Apk, -5.2V @ 10A, -12V @ 2A (Note: -5.2V is used for ECL.)

Current:

	#	F	V	ºC	Color	Dia mm	Len mm	Notes
E	2	1,200 µF	200V	-40 +85	Blue	~36	~50	Cornell Dubliner Mktg., 380122M200A05, Misapplication hazardous, 658-9233-016
A	1	2.2 µF ± 10%	250V	?	Silver/Pink	~30	~13
E	1	47 µF	?	105	Black	~8	~8?
E	1	?	50V	105	Orange	~14	~21
E	5	3,300 µF	25V	?	Brown	~16	~34

Backplane

	#	F	V	ºC	Color	Dia mm	Len mm	Notes
A	3	39 µF ± 10%	20V	+T110 (?)	Silver	~7	~17	864910 KEMET, Silkscreen: C2, C3, C4

Sandbox

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 17:00:00 +0000

This is a test post I use for testing various stuff.

(defun xplusone (x) (+ 1 x))

(defun x (y)
 (+
 (- 3 4)
 (+ 5 6)
 (* 4 2)))

function showMilitaryTime() {
 if (document.theForm.showMilitary[0].checked) {
 return true;
 }
 return false;
}

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){

 int dividend, divisor, quotient, remainder;

 printf("Enter dividend: ");
 scanf("%d", &dividend);

 printf("Enter divisor: ");
 scanf("%d", &divisor);

 // Computes quotient
 quotient = dividend/divisor;

 // Computes remainder
 remainder = dividend%divisor;

 printf("Quotient = %d\n",quotient);
 printf("Remainder = %d",remainder);

 return 0;
}

Unstyled
Should look like what?