Software for Rational R1000 series 400?

Software for Rational R1000 series 400?

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

The Danish Computing History Association (DDHF) has received a Rational
R1000 series 400 from Terma.

I was invited to assist in opening the crate and inspect the hardware
and documentation yesterday.

Apparently the disks in the machine have been erased before the machine
left Terma, so DDHF is looking for a source for the operating system
software for the R1000/400.  Since the disks in the machine seem to be
plain SCSI disks, we hope that a raw disk copy will be enough to get it
up and running again.

Please contact me or Poul-Henning Kamp ("phk" &
Ada.Characters.Latin_1.Commercial_At & "phk.freebsd.dk"), if you have
any information regarding software for the Rational R1000 series 400.

There will (soon) be photos of the machine on <http://datamuseum.dk/>.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
"Hungh. You see! More bear. Yellow snow is always dead give-away."

Some photos (Was: Software for Rational R1000 series 400?)

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

I wrote:

> The Danish Computing History Association (DDHF) has received a
> Rational R1000 series 400 from Terma.

The photos from the initial inspection yesterday can be seen here:

   http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Rational/R1000s400

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
�Later software patents have had a similar effect, they
 force us to stand on each other's toes instead of on each
 other's shoulders.�                       -- Per Abrahamsen

Re: Some photos

[Simon Wright]

Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk> writes:

> I wrote:
>
>> The Danish Computing History Association (DDHF) has received a
>> Rational R1000 series 400 from Terma.
>
> The photos from the initial inspection yesterday can be seen here:
>
>    http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Rational/R1000s400
>
> Greetings,
>
> Jacob

I never got this close to one; the one we used (for my part, only
experimentally) was 135 miles away.

One of my colleagues found a way to crash it. "Look, if I do this it
stops working" ... took 45 minutes to reinitialize the VM. Not popular.

The IDE was basically Emacs (re-implemented in Ada, I suppose!) but at
the time space-cadet keyboards were outside our experience, and in any
case we had to use Sun 3/50's so the key bindings were extra weird. 

Re: Some photos

[Oliver Kellogg]

On Friday, June 1, 2012 11:58:59 AM UTC+2, Simon Wright wrote:
> [...]
> The IDE was basically Emacs (re-implemented in Ada, I suppose!) but at
> the time space-cadet keyboards were outside our experience, and in any
> case we had to use Sun 3/50's so the key bindings were extra weird.

I never actually used one of these, just saw a presentation.
At the time, they seemed to have pretty impressive technology (incremental compilation etc.) - but pricey :)

Thanks to Jacob for posting.

-- Oliver

Re: Software for Rational R1000 series 400?

[erlo]

On 06/01/2012 10:02 AM, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:
> The Danish Computing History Association (DDHF) has received a Rational
> R1000 series 400 from Terma.
>
> I was invited to assist in opening the crate and inspect the hardware
> and documentation yesterday.
>
> Apparently the disks in the machine have been erased before the machine
> left Terma, so DDHF is looking for a source for the operating system
> software for the R1000/400.  Since the disks in the machine seem to be
> plain SCSI disks, we hope that a raw disk copy will be enough to get it
> up and running again.
>
> Please contact me or Poul-Henning Kamp ("phk"&
> Ada.Characters.Latin_1.Commercial_At&  "phk.freebsd.dk"), if you have
> any information regarding software for the Rational R1000 series 400.
>
> There will (soon) be photos of the machine on<http://datamuseum.dk/>.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Jacob

The disks are SCSI, as you guessed. The R1000 will nly work with a few 
disk types, one of the types is Fujitsu. This is due to some hard coded 
disk geometry things in the machines disk controller, as far as I remember.
You will need a tape with DFS, which is diagnostics and microcode. The 
you will need the environment itself. These things might be hard to get, 
even Rational didn't have the installation tapes back in 2003....

Try IBM, they bought Rational at some point and have been able to locate 
machines and spares.

/Erlo

Re: Software for Rational R1000 series 400?

[erlo]

On 06/01/2012 10:02 AM, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:
> The Danish Computing History Association (DDHF) has received a Rational
> R1000 series 400 from Terma.
>
> I was invited to assist in opening the crate and inspect the hardware
> and documentation yesterday.
>
> Apparently the disks in the machine have been erased before the machine
> left Terma, so DDHF is looking for a source for the operating system
> software for the R1000/400.  Since the disks in the machine seem to be
> plain SCSI disks, we hope that a raw disk copy will be enough to get it
> up and running again.
>

Not sure about that...something with the machines ID that must match the 
s/w...

Erlo

Re: Software for Rational R1000 series 400?

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Erlo wrote:
> On 06/01/2012 10:02 AM, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:

>> Apparently the disks in the machine have been erased before the
>> machine left Terma, so DDHF is looking for a source for the operating
>> system software for the R1000/400.  Since the disks in the machine
>> seem to be plain SCSI disks, we hope that a raw disk copy will be
>> enough to get it up and running again.
>>
>
> Not sure about that...something with the machines ID that must match
> the s/w...

Thanks for the warning.

Jacob
-- 
Better save than sorry!

Re: Software for Rational R1000 series 400?

[erlo]

On 06/01/2012 10:08 PM, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:
> Erlo wrote:
>> On 06/01/2012 10:02 AM, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:
>
>>> Apparently the disks in the machine have been erased before the
>>> machine left Terma, so DDHF is looking for a source for the operating
>>> system software for the R1000/400.  Since the disks in the machine
>>> seem to be plain SCSI disks, we hope that a raw disk copy will be
>>> enough to get it up and running again.
>>>
>>
>> Not sure about that...something with the machines ID that must match
>> the s/w...
>
> Thanks for the warning.
>
> Jacob
It just came to my mind that it is possible to change the machines ID, 
called CID, by means of some command in the DFS. I think it is in one of 
the binders you received with the machines. I will see if I can find 
some more info on this (if I remember to do it..)


Erlo