Well, ChicagoVPS was bought out, and then they kind of downgraded me from a Xeon to an Atom.. And now they are creeping up the rates. So I saw a special on lowendbox.com for Joe’s Datacentre. I’ll be moving onto a dual proc Xeon L5420 CPU. Â Maybe not the highest end of boxes, but better than some atom.
I don’t think it’ll mean anything for anyone, other than a blip of an outage when I shut down KVM, and transfer over the blog VM, and update DNS.
I’ve already moved over my BBS and it’s running just fine. Not that it matters but I moved out the ‘vpsland‘ share to another low end cheapo dedicated box at Joe’s for well over a month now, making my decision to move justified.
The new hosting is in Kansas City MO, which is still geographically central in the United States of America. Id love to host it in Hong Kong, but I’ve only received absolutely insane prices out here. And even though I do have a commercial grade internet connection, getting more IP addresses has been an impossibility.
And from the announcement on the SIMH mailing list:
For the past couple of years or so, I have been working on a SIMH-based
simulator for the CDC1700 series, a 16-bit system from the mid-1960’s, using
the documentation and software available at bitsavers. It has now sufficiently
stable to allow others to make use ot the software. The base system implements:
a 1714 CPU with:
1705 multi-level interrupts and direct storage access bus
up to 32KW of memory
memory protect system
Optional 64KW support
1711-A teletypewriter
1721-A paper tape reader
1723-A paper tape punch
1740 or 1742-30 line printer
1738-B disk pack controller with up to 2 disk packs:
(853 disk pack – 1.5MW)
(854 disk pack – 3.0MW)
1733-2 cartridge disk controller with up to 4 drives:
Each drive has 1 fixed disk and 1 removeable disk:
(856-2 CDD – 1.13MW per disk)
(856-4 CDD – 2.25MW per disk)
1732-A or 1732-3 magtape controller with 4 transports
The simulator is able to boot the diagnostic tape (SYSTEM17_SMM_DIAGS.TAP at
bitsavers.org) and successfully execute tests for each of the above
components. Some test sections fail due to various reasons; lack of
documentation, timing issues, feature not implemented etc.
The simulator is also able to boot and install MSOS 5 from an installation
tape (MSOS5_SL136.tap at bitsavers.org) onto a 1733-2 cartridge drive. This
is a copy of a distribution tape provided by CDC to run on a 64KW system at
Exxon.
I would like to thank Doug Gwyn for answering questions about the system
architecture and providing details about specific diagnostics tests and
Al Kossow for for peripheral documentation so that I could get MSOS 5
installed.
And now it runs on Windows 10 (probably lots of Windows NT as well) thanks to EMX+RSXNT.
I put a Windows binary build on sourceforge, with the needed termcap and rsxnt.dll to run. Â It works best if installed into the root of a drive, but it doesn’t matter which drive letter (I suppose you could even use subst). Â I was patching around the stock NetHack 1.3d, but considering the weird issues I was having with it ‘mostly’ working, it was easier to just lean on the NetHack 1.3d revived project. Â I should also say this is what I also used to get NetHack 1.3d running on the x68000.
I’ve been able to save, restore and go up, down and even die without it crashing so it seems OK to me.
It’s kind of cool to build it with GCC 1.40 on Windows 10, and get a native executable. Â Maybe pointless in the golden age of emulation / virtualization as you could just as easily build stock 1.3d on a 4.2 BSD VAX, or even 386BSD 0.1 system.
Maybe I’ll finish the work to see if I can get it running on OS/2 or MS-DOS via EMX, but for now the project stuff is on sourceforge.net
Just saw mention of this, the Nintendo Classic Mini
It includes a USB controller, HDMI, and you have to bring your own USB +5v power supply. It’ll come with 30 pack in games, but no mention of any additional games.
The only thing that stuck out to me is that Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!,  is reverted back to the original Japanese Mr Dream.  Kind of lame, but I guess that is licensing for you.
There is more information at the Nintendo page, with a shipping date of November 11th, 2016 for the UK.
I suppose I should have managed it better. Â I don’t even know what is there, but I shelled out the $18 HKD to at least keep it for now.
I know Microsoft has long dreamed of being SaaS, instead of being a traditional software vendor. Â Is there hope for buy it and own it software as we approach 2020’s?
Either way, if you have onedrive, migrate, fix it, or pay for it.
While I’m waiting for my real PC-9821 to arrive, I’ve been playing with various software. Â One fun thing was the old DJGPP, as the version 1.x had a customized version of go32 to support the PC-98 hardware. Â This is cool, but I’d love to perhaps start down the road of porting something to the PC-98. Â There is no VGA adapter, and the I/O is mapped differently so naturally this is why they are only loosely compatible. Â So while I was looking for any kind of source code using DJGPP, I found the FCE: Family Computer Emulator (NES). Â It includes source code, which is great but it builds against DJGPP 2.x What makes it more interesting is that it has DPMI hooks in place, unlike the old DJGPP 1.x’s DOS extender which is DPMI incompatible. Â So how do you magically get a DPMI environment for MS-DOS? Â Well one way is to run it under Windows 3.0 or higher. Â And certainly with MS-DOS 3.30 that is an option. Â However lurking in the disk images of MS-DOS 5.00A was a fun program DPMI.EXE . Â Well now that is interesting!
MSDOS 5.00A native memory
Using a generic config.sys I have 600kb of low RAM available, and 7MB of extended RAM.
As you can see this is pretty much the 386 enhanced portion of Windows 3.0! Â So you get all of the DPMI services offered by Windows as part of the OS.
MSDOS 5.00A DPMI activated
As you can see, with DPMI running I have access to EMS, and XMS memory now available. Â Additionally with paging you can even over commit memory.
My only question, is why was DPMI not an added in feature of the English versions of MS-DOS? Â Granted there was a LOT of OEM bundling with new machines so you were forced to purchase a copy of Windows along with MS-DOS on all new computers, regardless of what you were going to do with them, and this would have been a bit more interesting.
This kind of environment was extensively documented in the “Unauthorized Windows 95“, by Andrew Schulman that showed how DOSX.EXE could chain load Win386 + command.com achieving the same thing.  The DPMI environment from MS-DOS 5.00A is dated 11/11/1992, I wonder if he knew about this going into the Windows 95 book.  It’s been too long since I’ve read it to remember, but I don’t recall any details about Japanese PC-98 releases of MS-DOS.  There was also a ‘MSDPMI’ environment created for the beta versions of Microsoft C 7.0, but I’ve been unable to find one to verify.  MSC 7.0 was released in 1992, so it fits in the same timeframe, but the shipping products used QEMM’s DPMI server instead.
I guess the bad power supplies really are quite bad.
So now I have a project instead of something to do something. Â I guess it doesn’t matter, I don’t have a keyboard, video cable, diskettes or anything.
If you choose to use the MIDI you’ll have to map them to a MIDI-OUT port, and I used the default Microsoft GS Wavetable. Â Of course you could use MUNT, or any other MIDI mapper or port. Â Also you may want to setup the serial port MIDI as a backup plan.
Serial MIDI
The sound effect settings work best for the PC-9801-86 audio board.
Select the correct board!
I’ll save installing MS-DOS, and installing DooM for another fun episode, but to configure DooM.
Run setup.exe to setup DooM!
Setup menu
The menu is simply:
1 graphics
2 Background Music
3 sound effects
4 not sure
5 controller
Graphics
The PC9821A driver works best from what I’ve done in my limited testing. I guess if you had a different emulator, or a real PC-98 you’ll get more out of this.
Next is the BGM or music
BGM
You really have 2 options here, #3 for the PC9801 driver which uses the YM2608 chip. Or the General MIDI either option 4 or 6. I didn’t notice any difference between the two of them, they both sound kinda slow, but workable.
Now for the audio board, select the PC-98
Doom sound drivers
The PC-9801-86 is what you want here. Now with either a 100% PC-9801-86 config, or a 50/50 of the MIDI/PC-9801-86 we are ready to run DooM! Selection option 6 and away we go!
Save settings and run DooM
And all being well you’ll get the start of DooM!
DooM starting up
Otherwise, you’ll get this fun error:
DX386 error
In this case I had emm386.sys in my config.sys which conflicts with the dos extender DX386.
Personally, I find it easier to boot off the #1 install diskette which will automatically start DooM!
injecting networking was no more difficult than it was in version 10. Â It’s only a few changes to pc.c, if you look at the USENETWORKING define you’ll see them. Â The best notes are on the forum.
I haven’t changed or improved anything it still requires manual configuration.
Downloads are available on my site as pcem_v11_networking.7z.  You’ll have to defeat the password protection, as always.  I included the source, it ought to be trivial to rebuild.
*For anyone using an old version the ‘nvr’ directory is missing, so PC-em is unable to create new non volatile ram save files, meaning you always loose your BIOS settings. Â Sorry I missed that one.
