Difference between revisions of "User talk:Vaxorcist"

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:: Thanks! I wonder why Web search engines don't know of them? They must have robots.txt files, or something. Alas, I didn't see any PDP-11 information there, though! :-) [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 13:45, 31 May 2022 (CEST)
 
:: Thanks! I wonder why Web search engines don't know of them? They must have robots.txt files, or something. Alas, I didn't see any PDP-11 information there, though! :-) [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 13:45, 31 May 2022 (CEST)
  
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== CMI clarification ==
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== Template:Nav PDP-11 red links ==
  
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I think we need to be more careful the [[CMI]] material. It turns out that is only one large backplane in the 750, into which plug:
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Hey, when you added the PDT'S, etc, to [[:Template:Nav PDP-11]], you should write them at some point, so they don't show up as red links in the nav box! I don't care enough about them to do it myself, alas. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 21:05, 13 June 2023 (CEST)
  
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* the KA750 cards (which have internal busses, such as the MBus and WBus, running between them)
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: You're right, red links in the nav box are not optimal, but at least there's a hint now that there are some more (special) PDP-11s. I'm in my first steps to VAX MACRO-32 right now, and at the moment I need all my available resources to cope with that. I will cone back later and start PDT pages. [[User:Vaxorcist|Vaxorcist]] ([[User talk:Vaxorcist|talk]])
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* /750 CMI option cards (RH750, etc)
 
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* memory array boards (in a separate section of the backplane, with different connectors from the other two types of boards)
 
  
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The CMI appears on the CPU backplane, and goes to some slots/cards, but most of the 'main' slots (specifically, slots 1-6 and 10) are 'special'; i.e. they are customized to a particular board, which ''has'' to go in that slot - and that slot can't hold anything else. (An example is the MIC board's slot, 10; the CMI runs to it, but the internal memory bus to the memory array boards - which does not seem to have a formal name - also goes to this slot.) Similarly, according to the KA750 TD, pg. 15, the MBus and WBus both run to the DPM, MIC and FPA cards/slots; but the UBI card/slot has only the WBus, but not the MBus. The CMI runs to some cards/slots - MIC and UBI - but not others: not the DPM, nor the FPA.
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:: All sounds good! 20:32, 16 June 2023 (CEST)
  
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So it would be wrong to describe the FPA as a 'CBI' card. It's not; it's part of the KA750, and plugs into the /750 backplane which carries the CMI to ''other'' slots, but that's all.
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== Split up Category:DEC VAX systems? ==
  
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I think we shouldn't put much weight on whether boards plug into the 'main' slots (1-10) on the /750 backplane, because that section holds a mix of special-purpose slots, and 'CMI option' slots (7-9). Although cards that the CMI goes to (MIC, UBI, RDM, WCS) are in some sense 'CMI' cards... because they have dedicated, customized, slots, I would rather reserve the term 'CMI card' for the cards that can go in the CMI option slots: RH780, etc.
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See [[Category talk:DEC VAX systems#Split up category?]] It is pretty big. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 21:20, 11 August 2023 (CEST)
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Does this make sense? [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 19:10, 2 June 2022 (CEST)
 
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: Yes, you are right! I read some manuals again caring how DEC named its components.
 
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:There is neither a "Memory Backplane" nor a "CMI Backplane", but only ONE "CPU Backplane" with 10 "Extended hex slots" for CPU cards including 3 "CMI option slots" (7, 8, and 9), and 9 "Hex slots" for memory boards. The 9-slot UNIBUS Backplane DD11 is a separate unit, of course.
 
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:So there is a CMI bus, and there are three CMI option slots in the CPU backplane, but there is no CMI backplane.
 
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:May I leave the corresponding corrections to you? [[User:Vaxorcist|Vaxorcist]] ([[User talk:Vaxorcist|talk]]) 13:18, 3 June 2022 (CEST)
 
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:: Yes, I would be happy to do them; in fact, I have been thinking since last evening how best to arrange the overall 750 description. (And I uploaded that wonderful block diagram, [[:File:VAX750block.jpg]], which I believe should be central to most articles about the 750.) Let me go re-do the main 750 article (as the first step). [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 15:45, 3 June 2022 (CEST)
 
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::: Wonderful diagram indeed - go ahead! [[User:Vaxorcist|Vaxorcist]] ([[User talk:Vaxorcist|talk]]) 18:31, 3 June 2022 (CEST)
 
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:: OK, all done. In addition to trying to clean up the main /750 article, I also tried to rationally allocate content between it, and the KA750, MS750 and CMI pages. E.g. I left the 'CMI configuration' table in the CMI page, as it could logically go either there or the main /750 page, but leaving it in the CMI page meant the /750 page was shorter.
 
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:: Thank you for putting up with my 'help' on the /750! :-) [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 23:50, 3 June 2022 (CEST)
 
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== Category: DEC Hardware ==
 
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Category:DEC Hardware is for (as the header [[:Category:DEC Hardware|says]]) "ancillary mechanical hardware". So not boards of any kind. (Although there is a [[:Category:DEC Boards]], they mostly all go into separate categories [[:Category:DEC Memories]], [[:Category:DEC Peripherals]], etc - actually often sub-categories of those, such as [[:Category:UNIBUS Memories]].)
 
  
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There are some pages in the Category:DEC Hardware (e.g. [[Three cycle data break]]) which aren't mechanical, and should probably be elsewhere - but the question is 'where?' We don't have a category [[:DEC Electronics]], or anything. Maybe time to add one, or something like that? Do you have any suggestions?
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== Uniform naming ==
  
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I see that [[MicroVAX I]] uses [[Template:InfoboxVAX-Data]], which automagically adds any page that uses it to [[:Category:DEC VAX systems]], so that page does have a correct category already. (I think that is probably the best category for it. If you do a separate page for the processor board, that can/should go in [[:Category:DEC VAX Processors]] - and probably in [[:Category:QBUS Processors]] too. Actually, by analogy with [[:Category:PDP-11 QBUS Processors]], probably in [[:Category:VAX QBUS Processors]]; I see we have several already, I will set that sub-category up, and move them into it.)
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The only thing uniform about my naming choices is that I ''uniformly'' use the name DEC used in their documentation. So if you see an 'RAxx Disk Drive' and an 'RAyy disk drive', go argue with DEC. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 00:47, 17 August 2023 (CEST)
  
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I am not wild about templates adding pages to categories; I feel that it is better to do it explicitly, where anyone working on the page can easily see exactly which categories it is in. I have left this template alone, though, as I am not up for changing '''all''' the pages that use that template to have an explicit category. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 23:56, 14 June 2022 (CEST)
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Did you find a DEC document calling it 'RA82 Disk Drive'? Because I did find EK-ORA82-UG-001, which calls it "RA82 disk drive". (I don't use the name as given in the manual titles; book titles are often capitalized. So I look in the early text to see what they use. Both "About This Manual" and "1.1 General Information" use that.) Please, don't 'fix' things unless you have the time to do some research, and do it right. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 14:00, 17 August 2023 (CEST)
  
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: So, there's a good example of why having templates automagically add pages to categories is a bad idea! I went to set up [[:Category:VAX QBUS Processors]] and move pages into it, and discovered that [[Template:InfoboxVAXCPU-Data]] was adding them to [[:Category:DEC VAX Processors]]! @%$^$!! So I removed that 'feature', and now we can assign pages to categories as we see fit. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 00:09, 15 June 2022 (CEST)
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== Cut and pasting manuals ==
  
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==3BSD==
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I notice that much of the content in the new page [[VT36 Color Graphics Display Control System]] seems to be cut and pasted from the brochure. If you will notice, at the bottom of the 'edit' page, the page says:
  
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Everyone seems to call it just plain '3BSD': that is certainly what the people who did it called it - see e.g. Kirk McKusick [http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050505095249230 here]: "an enhanced version of 3BSD for the use of the DARPA community". (You will find the same thing in Peter H. Salus' book, "A Quarter Century of Unix".) The original documentation doesn't seem to include a short name; see e.g. [https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3BSD/usr/doc/vmunix/setup.t Setting up the Third Berkeley Software Tape]. (If you do Web searches for "3.0BSD" and "3.0 BSD", almost all the hits are for BMW car parts.)
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You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
  
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The 'BSD X.Y' form did not really arrive until 4.1BSD (see [https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.html here]: "Rather than continue shipping 4BSD, the tuned-up system ... was released as 4.1BSD in June, 1981"). So, I'm going to move it back to the '3BSD' name.
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This text is not anything I wrote; I am not sure if it is still applicable (and I do not know if HP cares about the copyright on DEC content anyway), but it is probably good advice. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 22:31, 3 October 2023 (CEST)
  
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When I said/say "Follow naming system', I was referring to not using names of the form "DEC xxx". Although some pages are called "{organization} {thing}" (e.g. [[Interlan NI1010A/NI2010A Ethernet interface]] (which is actually slightly incorrect; Interlan called it the 'Ethernet Communications Controller'; I will have to fix that), in general I don't use 'DEC' to start page names unless either i) the rest is a common term that might be used by someone else (e.g. [[DEC Alpha]]), or ii) it is a natural part of the name (e.g. [[DEC standard power wire colour coding]]). (Yes, I know that making DEC pages special is itself inconsistent! But the page names would all be longer, if not: 'DEC PDP-10' instead of [[PDP-10]].)
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:Ha, you caught me – I forgot the introductory headline. Would a sentence like "I would like to quote the VT36 brochure (I couldn't word it better):" be OK? [[User:Vaxorcist|Vaxorcist]] ([[User talk:Vaxorcist|talk]])
  
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But in general I try and follow the rule 'use what the original contemporary documentation used' - mostly because that is easy to find out, and then one does not have to think about choosing something! There are some places which fail to do that (e.g. [[KL10]] - although now that I [http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/KL10/EK-OKL10-TM_KL10_TechRef_Aug84.pdf look], that might be correct): [[KA11 CPU]] should be 'KA11 Processor' (because I started calling all the PDP-11 CPU pages 'xx11 CPU' - although DEC has a lack of consistency in their naming for them; e.g. they call the [[KD11-E CPU]] just [http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/1134/EK-KD11E-TM-001_KD11-E_Central_Processor_Maintenance_Manual_Dec76.pdf "KD11-E"]). But I am slowly fixing many of them. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 13:07, 22 June 2022 (CEST)
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== Reproduction of that sample table you sent me ==
  
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== Template:Nav PDP-11 red links ==
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[[User:Jnc/750Backplanes|Here]] is a sample I put together which more or less duplicates that [http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/jpg/tmp/vtbl.png VAXC-11/750 backplane diagram] that you sent me. So with the 'VerticalTextUp' and 'VerticalTextDown' templates, we do, I think, now have all the tools one needs to replicate such diagrams. (Although I did have to move the slot numbers up to the top; the Mediawiki 'wikitable' mechanism depends on the 'header line' to tell it how many columns the table has. So I had to have ''something'' up there; I decided to use the slot numbers.)
  
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Hey, when you added the PDT'S, etc, to [[:Template:Nav PDP-11]], you should write them at some point, so they don't show up as red links in the nav box! I don't care enough about them to do it myself, alas. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 21:05, 13 June 2023 (CEST)
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That mechanism was not really designed to allow precise control of things like the sizes of all the boxes (although use of HTML attributes may allow a lot of that - e.g. for positioning text inside boxes), but I do not have a lot of experience in using them. E.g. the 'M9202' is not centered in its box; I may try and fix that. There are 'kludges' that fix some things; e.g. [https://gunkies.org/w/index.php?title=User:Jnc/VerticalTable&diff=34157&oldid=34155 this change] used a lot of 'nbsp' characters to increase the height of the third row boxes, so they more or less match the first and second rows. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 15:53, 15 April 2024 (CEST)
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: You're right, red links in the nav box are not optimal, but at least there's a hint now that there are some more (special) PDP-11s. I'm in my first steps to VAX MACRO-32 right now, and at the moment I need all my available resources to cope with that. I will cone back later and start PDT pages. [[User:Vaxorcist|Vaxorcist]] ([[User talk:Vaxorcist|talk]])
 
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:: All sounds good! 20:32, 16 June 2023 (CEST)
 
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== Split up Category:DEC VAX systems? ==
 
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See [[Category talk:DEC VAX systems#Split up category?]] It is pretty big. [[User:Jnc|Jnc]] ([[User talk:Jnc|talk]]) 21:20, 11 August 2023 (CEST)
 

Latest revision as of 10:31, 16 April 2024

Duplicate links

The Wikipedia Manual of Style's guidance on 'Duplicate and repeat links' seems sound (good) to me: "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but it may be repeated if helpful for readers". Not that it is a real problem to have a repeated link in a page! Jnc (talk) 17:49, 22 May 2022 (CEST)

750 option manuals

Do you have documentation for the CI750/DR750? I looked, but was unable to find anything on them (even the 1986 'VAX Hardware Handbook Volume 1') I did find mention of the second DW750 (I forget where I saw it - probably in the KA750 TD). Jnc (talk) 19:12, 29 May 2022 (CEST)

I will add that, I promise! Vaxorcist (talk) 21:56, 29 May 2022 (CEST)
That was not a 'push' to add content, but a real query. :-) RH750 Massbus Adapter mentions them, but I was unable to find any DEC documentation that mentions them. (Oh, I see BitSavers has the CI750 FMPS.) Jnc (talk) 23:38, 29 May 2022 (CEST)

750 Revision Control document

I am curious; where did the VAX-11/750 & VAX-11/751 Revision Control document come from? (It is a very interesting document, by the way; thank you for putting it online.) It does not seem to be online anywhere else. Did you scan/OCR a physical document that you have? Or did some VMS or diagnostics release include it? Jnc (talk) 00:29, 31 May 2022 (CEST)

See new page: "DEC MDS" Vaxorcist (talk) 09:26, 31 May 2022 (CEST)
Thanks! I wonder why Web search engines don't know of them? They must have robots.txt files, or something. Alas, I didn't see any PDP-11 information there, though! :-) Jnc (talk) 13:45, 31 May 2022 (CEST)

Template:Nav PDP-11 red links

Hey, when you added the PDT'S, etc, to Template:Nav PDP-11, you should write them at some point, so they don't show up as red links in the nav box! I don't care enough about them to do it myself, alas. Jnc (talk) 21:05, 13 June 2023 (CEST)

You're right, red links in the nav box are not optimal, but at least there's a hint now that there are some more (special) PDP-11s. I'm in my first steps to VAX MACRO-32 right now, and at the moment I need all my available resources to cope with that. I will cone back later and start PDT pages. Vaxorcist (talk)
All sounds good! 20:32, 16 June 2023 (CEST)

Split up Category:DEC VAX systems?

See Category talk:DEC VAX systems#Split up category? It is pretty big. Jnc (talk) 21:20, 11 August 2023 (CEST)

Uniform naming

The only thing uniform about my naming choices is that I uniformly use the name DEC used in their documentation. So if you see an 'RAxx Disk Drive' and an 'RAyy disk drive', go argue with DEC. Jnc (talk) 00:47, 17 August 2023 (CEST)

Did you find a DEC document calling it 'RA82 Disk Drive'? Because I did find EK-ORA82-UG-001, which calls it "RA82 disk drive". (I don't use the name as given in the manual titles; book titles are often capitalized. So I look in the early text to see what they use. Both "About This Manual" and "1.1 General Information" use that.) Please, don't 'fix' things unless you have the time to do some research, and do it right. Jnc (talk) 14:00, 17 August 2023 (CEST)

Cut and pasting manuals

I notice that much of the content in the new page VT36 Color Graphics Display Control System seems to be cut and pasted from the brochure. If you will notice, at the bottom of the 'edit' page, the page says: 

You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

This text is not anything I wrote; I am not sure if it is still applicable (and I do not know if HP cares about the copyright on DEC content anyway), but it is probably good advice. Jnc (talk) 22:31, 3 October 2023 (CEST)

Ha, you caught me – I forgot the introductory headline. Would a sentence like "I would like to quote the VT36 brochure (I couldn't word it better):" be OK? Vaxorcist (talk)

Reproduction of that sample table you sent me

Here is a sample I put together which more or less duplicates that VAXC-11/750 backplane diagram that you sent me. So with the 'VerticalTextUp' and 'VerticalTextDown' templates, we do, I think, now have all the tools one needs to replicate such diagrams. (Although I did have to move the slot numbers up to the top; the Mediawiki 'wikitable' mechanism depends on the 'header line' to tell it how many columns the table has. So I had to have something up there; I decided to use the slot numbers.)

That mechanism was not really designed to allow precise control of things like the sizes of all the boxes (although use of HTML attributes may allow a lot of that - e.g. for positioning text inside boxes), but I do not have a lot of experience in using them. E.g. the 'M9202' is not centered in its box; I may try and fix that. There are 'kludges' that fix some things; e.g. this change used a lot of 'nbsp' characters to increase the height of the third row boxes, so they more or less match the first and second rows. Jnc (talk) 15:53, 15 April 2024 (CEST)

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