#PRO Questions
3 messages in this thread
It turns out one of our DECnet beta testers does a lot with Pros, and he
works for DEC, so he's working on finding an Ethernet card. Installation
has been a mystery so far. I got as far as reformatting and installing
v3.2, but the "install" command from the P/OS menu doesn't really install
things like DCL. I've got the four DCL disks, and I think the Toolkit is
on some of them. However, when I select DCL from the menu, I get an error
message stating that it can't find a .TSK file in a certain directory, and
guesses that I should contact the system administrator, because this
application needs special installation. I tried making the directories and
copying the file(s) in question, and poked around in the .INB files, but it
all came down to the same thing: it can't find "LB000:[zzprodcl] ca2.tsk" –
but I made that directory, and copied that file there. I think I put it on
the wrong volume. Which default volume name corresponds to LB000:?
And thanks for the help so far… I looked into the PDP11 forum. Is the
traffic there slower than here? About 1982 or so, I remember writing a
report for the department at the university, recommending the Rainbox over
the emerging IBM PC… so I'm at "home" here, too. Whoops, that's
Rainbow. 🙂
Yes, the PDP-11 forum traffic is just slightly (ahem) slower than here 😉
…
I have a suspicion that you may be installing the wrong version of DCL. I
think the one that used LB000:[zzprodcl] was part of the V2.x P/OS stuff. I
might easily be wrong. I know that the proper one _will_ install correctly
from the "install application" menu choice, though.
There are two different DCLs for the Pro. There's a DCL "application",
which is pretty minimal and doesn't include much in the way of useful
tools; and then there's the Toolkit. I think the Toolkit was more like 10
disks than 4, though.
LB000: should be the Winchester disk, DW1:, but it may also be a logical
name for a specific directory there. As of P/OS V3.0, DEC introduced a
multi-level hierarchical file system and set up all kinds of oddball
logicals, all part of making P/OS a multi-user system without breaking too
many pre-3.0 applications. I never did get a firm grasp on a lot of this
stuff; most of my Pro work was done with a Unix clone, though I did do a
fair amount with P/OS V2.x also.
I assume you're logged into the SYSTEM account when you're doing the
install? Otherwise, it won't work.
-Bill
Eventually, after scanning the manuals, I found that my problem was that I
wasn't installing the "system" part of each application. To do so, you
enter a special screen, then install, then install the app to the menu.
After I figured out that, everything went well, and I got DECnet up and
running over the serial port.