.PS 60,72 .LM 9 .RM 70 .NHY .LITERAL V V A X X V V A A X X V V AAAAA X The Page Swapper V V A A X X V A A X X The Newsletter of the VAX/VMS SSSSSSS III GGGGGGG S I G Special Interest Group SSSSSSS I G GG S I G G SSSSSSS III GGGGGGG .end LITERAL .C 70; March Vol. 1 No. 1 1979 .s 1 Contributions to the Page Swapper should be sent to: .nf.nj .lm 18 .s 1 Donald Golden, Editor The Page Swapper Litton Resources Systems 3930 Westholme Drive Houston, Texas 77063 .lm 8 .f.j .s 1 Information about successes and problems, hints, inquiries to other SIG members, summaries of SPR's and fixes and SIG business items are all appropriate for publication. The newsletter will include neither advertising nor pricing information but testimonials when appropriately worded will be included. Information to be excluded from publication should be explicitly marked. .s 1 All contributions to The Page Swapper should be on a flexible diskette as an ASCII text file. The contributions will be compiled and printed on a Diablo letter quality printer for publication by DECUS. RUNOFF will be used with the following parameters: .lm 18 .nf.nj.s 1 _.PAPER SIZE 60,72 _.LEFT MARGIN 8 _.RIGHT MARGIN 72 _.NHY (no hyphenation) .LM 8 .F.J.S 1 Label your diskette and include a directory listing. The diskettes may be in either RT-11 FLX format or in Files-11 format. Make certain that the files containing contributions are readily identifiable. .s 1 To have your diskette returned promptly, label it carefully and include an addressed envelope with appropriate postage. Otherwise it will be available at the next Symposium. .s 1 For those of you who find the above procedure impossible, the newsletter will accept camera ready hardcopy on 8#1/2#X#11 paper with 1 inch margins. The above listed RUNOFF parameters are suitable for preparation of such copy. Please keep the amount of 'white space' (unused area) to a minimum to keep the cost of printing and mailing within reason. .pg At the Fall Symposium at the San Francisco Hilton the SIG sessions were well attended and the VAX momentum we all expected was in evidence. Your SIG is guided by a five person steering committee comprised of: .lm 18 .s 1 .nf.nj Roger Vossler, Coordinator, 213-535-0312 Al Siegel, East Coast Representative, 614-424-4664 Dennis Perry, West Coast Representative, 505-667-7193 John Thompson, SIG Librarian, 301-657-3775 Don Golden, Newsletter Editor, 713-781-8871 .f.j .lm 8 .s 1 The VAX sessions were quite interesting and informative, although it would have been desirable to have had more papers from the user community. Nearly all the sessions were full to overflowing and a quick show of hands indicated that half the people there represented sites with installed VAX's, one fourth had machines on firm orders, most of the rest were pushing for a VAX in their organization and only a few had only a passing interest. .s 1 A VAX was available for serious SIG Library work at the Symposium and a library tape was compiled by John Thompson. Information on how to obtain a copy of this library tape appears elsewhere in this edition of The Page Swapper. .s 1 I feel that the SIG owes a large debt of appreciation to Roger Vossler for all the extracurricular work and time he invested in planning a very successful set of sessions. We also appreciate the efforts of Peter Conklin and the remainder of the DEC personnel who put on some very high quality presentations. If we can maintain the quality shown in San Francisco, no one should have trouble justifying Symposia attendance to her or his management. .s 1 Don Golden, Editor, The Page Swapper .s 1 .tp 18 .LIT To: VAX Users Interested in ARPANET From: John Thompson Intermetrics, Suite 415 4733 Bethesda Ave. Bethesda, Md. 20854 Phone: (301) 657-3775 Date: December 21, 1978 Subject: Planning for Interfacing VAX Systems to ARPANET .END LITERAL .B; .P; DEC hardware is well represented when one looks at the current ARPANET logical map of computer systems tied into the net. But there aren't any VAX's on ARPANET, at least none connected in conventional ways as far as I have been able to determine. .P; What is going to happen with respect to putting a VAX on ARPANET? Who is going to do it? How fully will the VAX/ARPANET software/hardware be developed? What might a time table for this implementation look like? And finally, how do I get whatever hardware/software that is necessary so that I can put my VAX on ARPANET (assuming appropriate government agency sponsorship is available for my ARPANET needs). .P; These are questions for which some of us need to determine answers in the near future. .P; At present I know of three people beside myself who are interested in pursuing further information. They are: .B; .LM 16 Al Lehotsky, DEC .BR (617) 493-4896 .BR Matt Goodman, Harvard High Energy Physics Lab .BR (617) 495-5889 .BR Dennis Hall, Lawrence Berkeley Labs .LM 8 .B; DEC is from what Al tells me very interested in this project and is actively working on some aspects of it. The rest of us would like to see our VAX's connected within roughly 6 to 18 months. .P; A lot of groundwork has to be done in order to get things moving. As a start the VAX user community should put itself collectively on record as wanting this done. We within the VAX SIG would like to determine from the VAX user community who is interested and qualified for VAX/ARPANET connection. Interested VAX users should be aware of the general requirements for ARPANET use as defined in the ARPANET Information Brochure, particulary the fact that one needs a sponsoring government agency before one can get on the net. If you are clear as to who your sponsoring agency might be, call or write me to tell me about your VAX/ARPANET needs. .P; Once we have collected this information we will arrange a meeting in the Washington DC area with appropriate representation from interested VAX users and ARPANET people to further explore connecting VAX's to ARPANET. We would like to hold this meeting in early February, so get your responses in to me quickly. .tp 18 .LIT To: VAX SIG From: John Thompson, VAX SIG Librarian Intermetrics, Suite 415 4733 Bethesda Ave. Bethesda, Md. 20854 Phone: (301) 657-3775 Date: December 21, 1978 Subject: VAX Library and DECUS VAX Tapes .END LITERAL .b .p By the time you read this the DECUS FALL 78 VAX Tape should be available from your friendly VAX LUG. The contents of this tape is a pot pourri of utility programs, DEC standards, sample device drivers, games, and documentation files. The single biggest problem with the software on this tape is the lack of documentation describing the software (program modules, program compilation and linking, and how to run the program). Where possible I have tried to put together *.HLP files to remedy this situation. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do it for many programs so you are on your own. I would appreciate your contributing this kind of documentation for any of the programs you find on the tape that you know something about. I also will accept better versions of the software on the tape. .p Let me say a few things about the future direction of the VAX Library. First, let me point out that there is a big distinction between the relatively "raw" stuff that will be acceptable on a DECUS Symposium Tape and that which will ultimately get put into the VAX Library proper. We intend to quality test submitted software and put good material into the DECUS Library under VAX/VMS software. Send me all software that you want distributed and include with it documentation of the type described below. All software I obtain prior to the next DECUS Symposium will appear at that Symposium's VAX DECUS TAPECOPY FACILITY. I do not intend to accept programs for inclusion on the TAPECOPY TAPE at the Symposium itself. Software submitted will be farmed out to a group of users for review and testing. When we are happy with it we will put it in the VAX Library. Initially Library Tapes will be distributed through the VAX LUGs. Later the VAX SIG will submit suitably qualified VAX Library software to the DECUS VAX Library and distribution will be through DECUS. .TP 16 .p The names, regional areas, and telephone numbers of the persons to contact for copies of the DECUS FALL 78 TAPE are: .br .lm 16 .b Roger Vossler, Los Angeles, (213) 535-0312 .br Dennis Perry, New Mexico, (505) 667-7193 .br Don Golden, Texas, (713) 781-8871 .br Rich Greco, Oregon, (503) 244-6161 .br Al Siegel, Ohio, (614) 424-4664 .br David Schmidt, Pennsylvania, (412) 683-9533 .br John Thompson, Washington DC, (301) 657-3775 .br .lm 8 .b I suggest you call your nearest source and make arrangements with him for getting a copy of his tape. .p Now a word about documentation. With your submissions of programs you must submit some kind of machine readable documentation. Name the file "program-name.HLP" to facilitate identification. Include the following information please. .b .literal Name of program Brief program description Responsible person Date Revision level of program Names of all modules (source, obj, exe, dat, etc.) How to compile the sources (submit *.com files maybe) How to link the program (again maybe *.com files) Instructions for using the program Other information including more detailed description as you desire. .end literal .br .p So in summary, please keep sending me all those good programs etc, document them and get your copies from your nearest LUG distribution center. [Editor's comment-I received my copy of the VAX library tape along with John's excellent documentation of the installation and copying procedures. If only all vendors would document their distribution kits the way John does. Needless to say the installation went flawlessly and the quantity and quality of documentation provided with the various programs is much better than one generally expects. I look forward to getting copies out to the various VAX users near the Houston area.] .s 2 .s 2 .tp 5 Another few words about The Page Swapper. I got the first edition to the DECUS office in December, but alas it contained only two pages. Maryann, the publications coordinator, suggested that, in the interest of keeping costs down, the information from that newsletter could be extracted and published in DECUSCOPE. I agreed and reset the issue counter to 1,1. Well, here it rolls around mid-January without a whole load of contributions. The main reason for this is that the SIG membership is not informed on how and where to contribute since that information was in the now defunct Volume 1 number 0. That is why this issue is so thin and why I hope you will all get on your terminals and crank out some useful contributions. .s 1 On one long December evening one of the behind the scenes workers in the SIG converted the attendance lists Roger Vossler kept hawking throughout the Symposium into a machine readable form. This was sent to DECUS where a SIG mailing list is being produced. Those of you who are not SIG members should eventually get membership forms which will get you firmly onto the mailing list. .s 1 VAX/VMS SPR's of interest: .s 1 [Editor's note- In this column we wish to present SPR's that are useful, informative, interesting, aggravating... The purpose is to share common problems and solutions. This column is also designed to fill in the gaps left by the absence of a VAX/VMS Software Dispatch. Another purpose is to disseminate DEC's SPR responses which solve problems for many users. The final purpose is to get real solutions to SPR's which DEC has closed without solving. Send me copies of SPR's (and responses if approporiate) and I'll try to put the essence into this column.] .s 1 Several SPR's on RMS BCK seem to have been fixed in Release 1.01, especially the fatal error when trying to backup a file which came in from mag tape. .s 1 Leading zero suppression for FORTRAN IV-PLUS hex output will be corrected when the compiler supports the Zw.d form of the specification. (When this change to the compiler is scheduled for release was not mentioned.) .s 1 An SPR complaining that a tape mounted with the /NOLABEL qualifier ended up as though it were mounted with the /FOREIGN qualifier was answered as follows: "The /NOLABEL qualifier is a tape-only qualifier, which is equivalent to the /FOREIGN qualifier, which is a tape and disk qualifier." The remainder of the response states that the documentation will be updated to indicate this equivalency. This is not really a solution. The user feels that /NOLABEL should mean that label processing is to be bypassed and that /FOREIGN means that the tape is not in a DEC standard format. .s 1 FORTRAN IV-PLUS will allow only sixty calling arguments while the calling convention will support 255. The response is that this limit will be relaxed in a future release of the compiler. This is a case of language incompatibility. .s 1 Several SPR's dealing with /FOREIGN tapes all focus on the inability of VMS/RMS to allow multi-volume /FOREIGN tape data sets to be handled without circumventing the operating system. The problem is that dismounting the volume sets the volume invalid bit and renders the drive useless to the program since there is no documented, callable facility for mounting /FOREIGN tapes. Worse yet, when the online/offline button is physically pushed on the drive itself, a status change interrupt sets the volume invalid bit. This prevents faking out VMS/RMS by just changing the tape without telling it. This problem should be fixed. .s 1 XDELTA doesn't let you know what the PSL is. When you get a system crash because of a LDPCTX or an REI, it would be very nice to be able to examine the PSL. .s 1 One last /FOREIGN tape SPR response is an interesting example of an SPR response which does not really address the problem. If one issues a QIO with FUNC=IO$__ACPCONTROL!IO$M__DMOUNT to a tape mounted /FOREIGN, all you get back is an error status that the tape is mounted /FOREIGN. The response to this SPR says in effect, "Yep, you are right. You cannot dismount a /FOREIGN tape. We'll fix the documentation." Changing documentation will not make the need to dismount a /FOREIGN tape go away. .s 1 Doing a manual rewind of a tape and then hitting the on-line button can cause the system to hang until the rewind is complete. This SPR is in work and may require a hardware ECO to correct it. .s 2 Nice Thing To Know: .s 1 If you are ever in DEBUG and want to examine a location which is defined as a floating point number in hex, the following works: .s 1 .I 10 EXAMINE X .I 10 EVALUATE \ .S 2 It is assumed that all articles submitted to the editor of this newsletter are with the author's permission to publish in any DECUS publication. The articles are the responsibility of the authors and, therefore, DECUS, Digital Equipment Corporation, and the editor assume no responsibility or liability for articles or information appearing in the document. .s 2 .c 68; c 1979, DECUS