PDP-8 Tips

Fixing the Fortran Distribution provided with Bob Supnik's PDP-8 simulator

Here's some email that asks and answers this question:

From: David Gesswein 
Subject: Re: Problem With OS/8 Fortran Compiler
To: mcquiggi@sfu.ca (Kevin McQuiggin)
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 7:59:16 EDT
Cc: pdp8-lovers@zach1.tiac.net
X-Mailer: Elm [revision: 109.14]

> Hi All:
> 
> I'm trying to use the FORTRAN compiler under OS/8, but keep getting SY
> error messages. This is generated by FORTRAN and is documented in the
> language reference manual. SY apparently indicates either that PASS2 or
> PASS3 aren't found (they're on the boot disk), or that there's insufficient
> disk space.
> 
There are two problems, the fortran stuff must be on sys and one of the
files are named wrong.  This is the procedure I sent to someone else on
how to get it working.

You can make a rk05 bootable versions with plenty of space with the 
following steps.

Boot the emulator with rx0 and rx1 attached to the two floppy
images and rk0 to a new file for the rk05 images and boot.

.ZERO RKA0:
.COPY RKA0:<RXA0:
.COPY RKA0:<RXA1:
.R BUILD
$DELETE SYS
$SYS RK8E
$BO
WRITE ZERO DIRECT?N
SYS BUILT
.RENAME PASS2O.SV<PASS20.SV

Now you have a bootable rk05 image with all the files.  The distributed
image has the PASS2O file named incorrectly, it has a zero instead of
a O. You will get a SY error if it is not renamed

Making a Bootable Disk

Here's how:

You can make a rk05 bootable versions with plenty of space with the following steps. Boot the emulator with rx0 attached to the bootable os8_rx.dsk image, and with rk0 attached to a new file. The example shows creation of a new bootable disk for rk0:

.ZERO RKA0:
.COPY RKA0:<RXA0:
.R BUILD
$DELETE SYS
$SYS RK8E
$BO
WRITE ZERO DIRECT?N
SYS BUILT

Now you have a bootable RK05 disk.