• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

micro-power pascal for RT11 software availability?

peterbbu

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2016
Messages
81
Location
Midlands - UK
Is the Micro-Power Pascal for RT11 available anywhere?

I have tried a few searches and all I can find is the Introduction documentation.

Are image copies of the disks available?

Thanks

Peter
 
Can I bump this thread and see if anyone has found either documentation or media for MicroPower/PASCAL in the intervening time please?

Cheers,

Dave
 
Sources would be very interesting. I only have binaries for RSX...

Three different, incompatible Pascal systems are being talked about here, UCSD, Oregon Software, and Micropower Pascal. Which one do you have?
 
Three different, incompatible Pascal systems are being talked about here, UCSD, Oregon Software, and Micropower Pascal. Which one do you have?

Damn, you're correct. :)
I was thinking of Oregon Software. But I commented on UCSD. My bad...
 
I am specifically looking for MicroPower Pascal for RT-11.

I am sure others would be interested in the other offerings though as well.

Dave
 
I've got the complete V2.3 kit, I think, including sources and binaries. I'm not sure I've
ever tested the kit though. If you're still looking I'll put it up somewhere on the web.
 
Hi,

Welcome to VCFED...

Yes please :)!

I can give it a run under SIMH first in no time at all.

By any chance have you also got the documentation?

Dave
 
Many thanks Ian.

>>> Sorry to take so long

No problem.

I have downloaded the documentation and disk image.

Got SIMH running RT-11 and managed to get the * prompt up from RUNning PASCAL and MPP etc.

However, after that I manage to get all sorts of errors!

I have my main RT-11 disk write protected at the moment - so that won't help!

I suppose I will have to RTFM now won't I!

I must enquire about RUST at some point in the future...

Cheers,

Dave
 
Well, good luck and all that, but let me know if you get stuck. While SimH is much
more powerful than my V11 emulator, V11 and Rust are specifically designed for
debugging systems software and I'd also like to see MPP spring back into life.

It's beautifully written software. There were two reasons why it didn't get more
widespread usage: (1) it arrived to close to the end of the PDP-11's life cycle,
and (2) it arrived when Pascal was starting to give way to C as the language
of choice. Pascal wasn't thought of as a real-time language (Per Brinch
Hansen's SOLO system was an exception--and I have a complete kit for
that in my archives--I'll put that up on GitHub at some point).

Porting MPP to RT-11 was a monster task which was solved by rivet-testing
RT-11/XM's memory management software, and my guess will be that this
interface will be the root cause for some of the many of the gotcha's you'll
come across.

One hint: when I ran up PASDBG (or perhaps it was PASCAL), it complained
that a driver was missing (I think it was TD:). I got around that by simply
assigning TD to NL.
 
I have managed to get a fair way tonight.

I am running RT-11 V5.03 from DL0: and I have the MPP disk as DL1:.

I had to copy two (2) files from DL1: to SY:. These were PREDFL.PAS and MPP.SAV.

The Pascal compiler seems to look for SY:pREDFL.PAS and the built configuration file (DER2.COM) invokes MPP with an 'R' instead of 'RUN'.

I also had to ASSIGN DL1: to DK:, LB: and TMP:. This may (or may not) be absolutely necessary. I am making it up as I go!

I have successfully built an image file for a KXT11-CA (from the default CFDKTC.MAC) and copied the example CARS2.PAS to DER2.PAS.

I have just got stuck with the PASDBG - for two reasons:

1. It complains about no clock - there is one in my SIMH configuration (I may have to throttle it).

2. The TD device was/is missing (ASSIGN TT0: TD: will probably solve the problem).

I will want to use the serial line from my PDP host to my KXT11-CA - so there is some milage in getting the TD: device to work!

That's it for today I think...

Dave
 
I just couldn't let it get the better of me...

Yep, throttling SIMH seemed to fix the CLOCK problem.

I just get errors now trying to load a non-existent KXT11-CA over a non-existent serial line :)!

I will go back to the 'baseline' disk tomorrow and redo everything again from scratch to make sure I have documented the process correctly.

I will then look at performing a system configuration on my RT-11 disk to support multiple DL serial lines. But that may have to wait for a bit.

Dave
 
I had the same problems with PASDBG.

I assigned TD: to NL: for the TD: issue, and that fixed the problem a few days ago but tonight it went on to
complain that TD: wasn't functioning correctly, after a long time out. It had the same problem with TD:
assigned to TT:. It's probably better to put up with the first error message (that TD: is missing). PASDBG
keeps going after the error message.

TD: seems to be the serial communications handler that it uses to talk to the MPP client machine.

I patched PASDBG for the clock problem. I would have included it in the kit because there was one
version of 100 or more blocks on the distribution, and a shorter version on a debug disk. I've copied
the patched shorter version to the GitHub site (PASDBG.PAT). I'll put it on the DL: disk and
upload that again tomorrow.
 
Back
Top