Subject: DECmate III help

From: [email-masked] (alex svirsky)
Date: 18 Jul 1994 22:39:12 -0400

Hi!  I just bought a DECmate III at a ham flea market, and I am
looking for some help in getting the most out of it.
	Will it run anything else besides WPS?  It makes a great
terminal.  What can os278 do for the DECmate III, and where could I get it?
How can I get a working copy of Kermit on the DMIII?  I have seen these
in the ftp sites, but I have no idea how to get these from there into
the DMIII.  I only have WPS right now.
	I have a copy of a DEC games disk from my mother's DECmate II. 
It doesn't work in my DMIII.  What could be the difference between the
two machines that would cause this?
	
	Any help would be appreciated!

	Thanks,
	Alex Svirsky		[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Charles Lasner)
Date: 20 Jul 1994 01:08:25 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>looking for some help in getting the most out of it.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that we need a FAQ file for new 
DECmate owners!

>terminal.  What can os278 do for the DECmate III, and where could I get it?

The III is the baby of the line.  Without a hard disk, it can only do 
what you can do on either the III+ or the II with floppies only.  Also, 
no MS-DOS board was ever sold, so only APU and graphics board options 
ever appear in the picture.  Most of the software revolves around no 
option boards anyway, so not to worry.

>the DMIII.  I only have WPS right now.

First you need OS/278 V2 that coincidentally is going into the archive 
tonight.  What I mean is that one area of the archive on sunsite.unc.edu 
is concerned with source and binary files geared to those interested in 
the system at that level or deeper.  The diskimage area is for those who 
want or need an entire image of a disk or disks.  A working copy of 
OS/278 V2 already setup with Kermit-12 will be in there shortly, etc.

All of the current files in the pdp-8/diskimages/teledisk area are in 
.ZIP format needing the PC PKZ204G version of PKUNZIP or equivalent.  
This in turn produces .TD0 files that are used with TELEDISK to produce 
RX50 diskettes directly on the PC.  *LOW* density media are required and 
must be created on a *HIGH* density drive.  This is because the RX50 runs 
at the same frequency as DSDD diskettes yet has the same *track* density 
as HD diskettes.  As a frill, printable label files are also included 
that are suitable for printing on 4-line address labels 3.5" x 15/16 to 
produce a nice diskette label, etc.

>	I have a copy of a DEC games disk from my mother's DECmate II. 

Please specify which diskette you have.  I assume it's one of the known set:

DECmate Games Disk V1, or V1.1, or V2.0, or possibly Advent.  All but 
V1.0 will be available shortly in the archive as time permits the 
transfers, etc.  (V1.0 is obsoleted by 1.1.)

>two machines that would cause this?

This is a common problem.  The DM III requires a much newer version of 
the slushware than does the II.  Same for a III+.  To my knowledge, there 
is never a problem with abandoning older slushware.  Slushware updating 
is accomplished using the System Test Diskette.  Version 4.5 (last known 
version) is present in the archive and will impart Version 422 (last 
known version) to any bootable diskette using the system update feature, etc.

Anyone have any experience with attempting this on a DECmate III+ with 
*only one drive*? (Perhaps it uses an area of the hard disk, since that's 
always present?  Master Menu supports doing disk copying that way, etc.)

The working copy of OS/278, as well as several (but not all!) of the disk 
images in sunsite have already been updated.  However, several release 
disks have not been.  Thus, DM III  and + users have to update the 
diskettes themselves, etc.

Additionally, there are reports that the provided comm port printer 
handler doesn't work as written on a III (and presumably a + ?) due to 
quirks that happen to work on a II, which was the only machine in 
existance when the code was written, etc.  Future development efforts 
should eliminate this snag.  In any case, using the printer port handlers 
isn't a problem.

>	Any help would be appreciated!

Just about anything you need to know, or never imagined actually existed 
regarding the problem of using a PC to acquire the diskette images is 
available on the sunsite archive in the docs directory as rx50faq.doc.  
The referenced files are commonly available on the net.  Sunsite will 
likely eventually carry all of them, etc.

>	Alex Svirsky		[email-masked]

cjl

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From: [email-masked]
Date: 20 Jul 94 10:41:22 MDT

> .ZIP format needing the PC PKZ204G version of PKUNZIP or equivalent.  

The full path, for those of us with short memories or that are new, is

	/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-8/diskimages/teledisk

(took me a while to find it yesterday, due to brain rot...).
-- 
----------------+------------------------------------------------------
Roger Ivie      | Don't think of it as a 'new' computer, think of it as
[email-masked] |     'obsolete-ready'

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From: [email-masked] (Charles Lasner)
Date: 20 Jul 1994 21:29:57 GMT

>(took me a while to find it yesterday, due to brain rot...).

This long path encourages rot :-).

When I'm logged in on sunsite, I have a symbolic link to it as merely 
pdp-8, so I avoid all of the /pub/academic/computer-science/history part.

Is there some way to impart this capability to an anonymous ftp user?

cjl

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From: [email-masked] (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
Date: 20 Jul 1994 22:02:21 GMT

>From article <[email-masked]>,
> Is there some way to impart this capability to an anonymous ftp user?

It's called world wide web, also available using services such as Gopher
and Panda (originally, WWW and Gopher (or Panda) were two different
things, but as time passes, they're converging).  I've just gotten around
to exploring what you can do with WWW (or rather, with NCSA Mosaic, as a
web client), and it's quite impressive.

A WWW document is a hypertext object, and it can include pointers to
other WWW documents, files in ftp directories, and other such things.
I'll start to organize some WWW pages fairly soon to put all of the
stuff I have in order for public access, and I strongly encourage others
to do so as well.
					Doug Jones
					[email-masked]