Genera on 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.

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).

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.)

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.

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.

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
→

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.

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.

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 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.

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:

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?

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: