DtCyber and CDC NOS 2.8.1 with ICEMDDN

This page contains links to Tom Hunter's DtCyber CDC Cyber mainframe emulator and a ready to run NOS 2.8.1 system for that emulator with ICEMDDN installed.

The primary reason for creating this page was to allow people to use ICEMDDN (a mechanical CAD package) via Rene Richarz's Tek4010 Tektronix graphics terminal emulator.

License Notice

Desktop CYBER (DtCyber) is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3) license.
Copyright Tom Hunter, 2003-2019.

CDC NOS 2.8.1 and all related products are the property of BT Federal. They are NOT in the public domain!

In August 2016, BT Federal stated that hobbyists, researchers and institutions (such as museums) could freely use and share CDC material with the single proviso that NO COMMERCIAL USE IS ALLOWED.

By downloading the NOS 2.8.1 package linked to here, you agree to abide by this prohibition on commercial use.

Contact Information

This page was created by Nick Glazzard and if you have any queries or questions, please send them to:


  nick (at) hccc.org.uk

I will try to answer, but not necessarily quickly and I may well not know the answers in some cases! I have only used this particular NOS package to install ICEMDDN and check that it works (I usually use another version of NOS), so the information on what else is present that follows is only a brief outline.

I would be grateful if people would consult the material linked to in the Further Information section below in the first instance, though.

The NOS 2.8.1 package was created by Tom Hunter. I have only added the ICEMDDN software to it. Tom did all the hard work.

Obtaining and installing the Tek4010 terminal emulator

You can obtain Rene's Tek4010 code from GitHub:
https://github.com/rricharz/Tek4010

Some additional hints

Tek4010 is only for Raspbian and other Linux systems.
To clear the screen, use the [HOME] key ([Page Up],[PageDown],[Ctrl]+[UpArrow],[Ctrl]+[DownArrow] also do this).
For use with ICEMDDN, you need V1.4.3 (or later) which adds some important things to make GIN mode more robust.
Also when using ICEMDDN, you should start Tek4010 with the -keepsize option, otherwise the menus will appear with overlapping lines and other irritations will occur.
If you suspect the telnet program that comes with your system is defective (the ones that comes with Ubuntu 16.x and 18.x certainly are, in that they no longer correctly read .telnetrc to different degrees of failure) I recommend using a very simple C program with the same functionality which can be found here:
http://l3net.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/a-simple-telnet-client
I have found this very effective and it can easily be modified to log traffic for debug purposes.

What is in the NOS Package?

From Tom's description (apart from ICEMDDN):

Fully installed NOS 2.8.1 with many add-ons
Two pre-created users (user,pass and games,pass)
Support for 255x/CCP (NPU) based ASYNC terminals - connect to TCP port 6610 (up to 10 terminal sessions)
Support for Full Screen Editor (FSE) - use "screen,tterm" to select the TeraTerm PRO 2.3 terminal definition
Support for RDF and two-port multiplexer - connect to TCP port 6602 (up to two terminal sessions - but only one is functional)
A great deal of pre-installed software:
- ICEMDDN - a large mechanical CAD package.
- FTN5 - a Fortran 77 compiler.
- ALGOL5 - an Algol 60 compiler.
- PL/I - a PL/I compiler.
- Console games.
- Terminal games.
Support for file transfers via CONNECT, RMF, Kermit or XMODEM protocols (Kermit and XMODEM supported by TeraTerm PRO 2.3).

At present, APL is not included, so the APL features of Tek4010 cannot be exercised with this package.

Obtaining and installing DtCyber

Go to: here and follow the download instructions. These boil down to:

  svn co http://www.controlfreaks.org/DtCyber/trunk
  cd trunk
  make -f Makefile.(your_os)

There are individual Makefiles for 32 and 64 bit versions of Linux, Free BSD, Solaris and a single makefile for MacOS. I personally exist in a Windows free universe, but Tom has provided a Visual Studio 6 project which will no doubt do the job.

You will need a suitable development environment, of course. On "Unix-like" systems, this must include X11 and XQuartz will be needed on MacOS.

Some additional hints

The source code for DtCyber is kept in a Subversion source code control repository.
The svn co ... is telling a Subversion client on your computer to check out the latest version of the DtCyber source. This means (of course) that you will need a Subversion client on the machine you are installing DtCyber on. Such clients may often not be installed by default. (Just typing svn on my MacBook MacOS 10.12.6 system "works" ... but I have no idea where this came from now I come to think about it. It might come with MacOS ... or maybe not!).
It seems that the Git client TortoiseGit can also check out SVN repos (possibly via its TortoiseSVN component).
It also seems that the (now very old) Visual Studio 6 project will "auto-uplift" to VS2017, so that does indeed "just work".

Obtaining the NOS 2.8.1 Package

The NOS package is a gzipped tar file that can be obtained here. It is approximately 76MB in size and will expand to about 1.2GB. When uncompressed (tar xzf thunter-nos281-icem.tgz), there should be a directory called:

  thunter-nos281

created. In what follows, it will be assumed that this is at the same directory level as

  trunk

created when the DtCyber source was downloaded.

Running NOS 2.8.1

Once DtCyber is built and working, and the NOS 2.8.1 package has been downloaded, type:

  cd thunter-nos281/NOS803PKG

Then run DtCyber:

  ../../trunk/dtcyber

You should see a window appear, and after a short while, you should see this:

Press (return) and the automatic load option will execute. After a little while, you will be prompted to enter the date:

The simplest and recommended option at this point is to simply type (return). This will result in living in 1992, but it avoids any Y2K issues (NOS 2.8.7 with a patch is almost entirely Y2K safe, but I'm not sure about unpatched 2.8.1).

After a further short while, the deadstart (CDC's term for boot) will complete and you should see something very similar to this:

It is now possible to login to the Cyber mainframe.

Some additional hints on using the NOS console

There is a great deal that could be said about this, and J. Philip Draughon's document mentioned below is recommended for more detailed information. Some very basic essentials are:

If you make a mistake typing in a command, [ (open square bracket) will clear the line.
Backspace will also delete the last character entered.
Key rollover is intentionally not implemented. This means you have to type relatively slowly and deliberately.
An example of a "console game" can be seen with:
```
      X.ADC.
    
```
which shows Andy Capp strolling along. To end this use:
```
      D
    
```
To keep the system healthy, you will eventually need to run DFTERM to terminate various log files (dayfiles). Some information on this can be found in my "HCCC" document linked to below.

Running ICEMDDN

Only the minimum information necessary to start and run ICEMDDN will be presented here. NOS 2.8.1 is a large and sophisticated operating system with many facilities, but this isn't the place to describe any of those! Please do note though: NOS is nothing like Unix or Windows: it is very different from today's mainstream operating systems. It may be challenging to people who haven't used it before, although it is actually quite friendly.

I will assume that you have installed Rene's Tek4010 program and are familiar with it. To start Tek4010 and talk to NOS on the same machine that is running the emulator, use:

  tek4010 -keepsize telnet localhost 6610

You should see some messages about "connecting to host" followed by:

  FAMILY:

Just type (return) in response to this.

  FAMILY:

Then:

  USER NAME: user

That is, type user (return) as the name of the user to login as.

  PASSWORD: pass

That is, type pass (return) as the password.

You then need to "attach" the ICEMDDN program and start it.

  attach,icemddn/un=appllib.
  icemddn.

Just before pressing return after this, you should see:

You are then running ICEMDDN. I'll assume you know how to use this! I know only the very simplest basics of it at present. You will be prompted first for the baud rate. Use 9 for 9600 baud. Then for the terminal type. Use 1 for Tektronix 4014. Then you will asked about a digitizing tablet. Use 1 for no tablet. At some point I find it best to use m to turn on menu prompts, otherwise you really have to know ICEMDDN very thoroughly indeed!

An example of what you should see while entering straight line segments is:

Some additional hints on using ICEMDDN

Please note that I am a complete novice with ICEMDDN. Here are some key sequences you will need to know for sure.

On a Tektronix 4010/4014, the menus are necessarily displayed on the same screen as the graphics. Because of this, ICEMDDN turns off listing of the menu items by default. This is ideal for expert users but hopeless for beginners. To turn on listing of menu items, enter m after entering the sheet number.
You can descend through a series of nested menus by entering a set of item numbers separated by full stops (periods). E.g. 3.1 (delete by single selection) or 16.3.1 (horizontal dimension).
] completes or ends a command.
[ moves you back up one level in the menu tree.
r refreshes the screen.
To enter a position on the screen with GIN, position the crosshairs with the mouse, then use C to have ICEMDDN use that position.
To end entering a series of screen positions, use ] instead of C.
ICEMDDN stores its database in a local file called TAPE3. To associate this with a permanent file (so that you can keep and maintain your work) you can use:
```
      DEFINE,TAPE3=MYICEM.
    
```
to create a new "database file", or:
```
      ATTACH,TAPE3=MYICEM/M=W.
    
```
to access a "database file" you have already created (you need /M=W to allow write access to the file). You must do this before starting ICEMDDN, of course.

Logging off

Once you have exited ICEMDDN, you may want to log off. Just use:

  bye.

Shutting NOS down

It is essential to shut NOS down cleanly, as with most complex operating systems. To do this, go to the console window and type:

  CHECK POINT SYSTEM.

NOS will auto complete this for you after the first few characters (the console in this NOS package is set to UNLOCK state by default).

You should see this in the console window immediately prior to pressing (enter) after typing CHECK POINT SYSTEM.

After a while, this should be seen in the right hand "sub-window" of the console:

  CHECK POINT COMPLETE.

At this point type this in the console (it will be necessary to enter the full stop in this case):

  STEP.

You should then see this in the console window:

It is now safe to shutdown the DtCyber emulator. Go to the terminal window from which you started DtCyber and type:

  shutdown

DtCyber will then exit.

Further Information

There two documents that try to serve as an introduction to running a NOS system and (to some extent) what the various parts of NOS and the Cyber hardware on which it runs are.

These are:

J. Philip Draughon's Desktop Cyber 2.1 Operator's and User's Guide. . This is an excellent introduction to console operations and other things. The only problem is that it is for a version of NOS 1, not NOS 2. However, much of the information still applies. (Anything specific to the "MECC" system should be skipped.)
My own The HCCC CDC NOS 2.8.7 on Cyber 175 Emulated Computer System . This goes on a bit and the hardware being emulated on the ICEMDDN NOS package is a little different (it is a Cyber 170 model 865 rather than a Cyber 175). However, it does give a list of NOS commands and what they do, and explains the deadstart process and some other perhaps useful things, including some system administration tasks. The emulator it describes is a modified version of the "official" DtCyber, so some of the material doesn't apply for that reason. Note also that it contains no information on ICEMDDN at present.

There are two manuals that describe ICEMDDN here:

The ICEM Tutorial Guide is probably a good starting point.
More of a reference document is here .

There is also a large collection of manuals I have gathered over the years, arranged into categories described in the "HCCC" document. This is very large (about 1GB). It can be found here . Almost all of that material can be found on bitsavers, but it can be useful to have it gathered together in one place.

Acknowledgements

Tom Hunter and the ControlFreaks group of CDC experts for creating DtCyber and preserving a very complete set of operating systems, toolchains and software products for the 6000/Cyber series of machines.
BT Federal for permission to use CDC software for non-commercial purposes.
Rene Richarz for an excellent new Tektronix 40xx terminal emulator program. This really recreates the experience of using these devices.
Al Kossow and bitsavers for preserving a huge amount of documentation without which it would be impossible to create emulators for and run software on "vintage computers" of all kinds.
Neal Granroth for using the material linked to here, suggestions for improving it and for his knowledge of ICEMDDN.

Revisions

19-AUG-2019: First version.
21-AUG-2019: Many additions based on user input.
23-AUG-2019: Minor changes.