INFO-VAX Sat, 01 Nov 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 591 Contents: Re: Fortran, debugger and Alpha/VMS 7.3-2 Re: Most impressive VAX installations Re: Most impressive VAX installations Re: Most impressive VAX installations Re: Most impressive VAX installations Re: Most impressive VAX installations Re: Most impressive VAX installations Re: Most impressive VAX installations network issue with EISNER? (DECUServe?) Re: network issue with EISNER? (DECUServe?) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 1 Nov 2008 08:50:01 GMT From: "David Weatherall" Subject: Re: Fortran, debugger and Alpha/VMS 7.3-2 Message-ID: <6n2jhoFjhjamU1@mid.individual.net> Jeff wrote: > David Weatherall wrote: > >>>>>>> We finally upgraded the Alphas in our cluster from V7.3-1 > >>>>>>> to -2 last week. As expected, we never saw any problem > >>>>>>> until my colleague needed to use the debugger with her > >>>>>>> Fortran (V7.5...) program. > >>>>>>> It contains a Structure/record like > >>>>>>> structure /asd$record/ > >>>>>>> character*36 asd_name > >>>>>>> character*36 efile_name > >>>>>>> character*12 other_name > >>>>>>> ... > >>>>>>> end structure > >>>>>>> record /asd$record/ asd_record > >>>>>>> In the debugger we can > >>>>>>> EXA ASD_RECORD > >>>>>>> without problem but > >>>>>>> EXA ASD_RECORD.ASD_NAME > >>>>>>> generates the following error :- > >>>>>>> %DEBUG-E-INTERR, debugger error in DBGADDEXP\DETERMINE_TYPE > >>>>>>> unknown arg type or session corruption > >>>>>>> T'was fine on 7.3-1. Anybody know what's going on? John? > >>>>>>> Kristine, my colleague, is less than impressed. > > This is a bug and it was fixed by me many years ago. Pick up the > recent patch kit for DEBUG and you should be fine. > > As John likes to say, here are the details "for those keeping score at > home." The bug is not in the debugger, but in the Bliss compiler used > to build DEBUG. The compiler was generating bad code for the routine > DETERMINE_TYPE. I worked around the problem by disabling optimization. > The workaround was removed for V8.3 because a newer compiler is used > that fixes the bug. > > -Jeff Nelson Thanks for the info Jeff. However, our SysMan tells me it is the latest patch. We've got this one loaded :- Image Identification Information image name: "DEBUG" image file identification: "V8.3-008" image file build identification: "XA99-0060111007" link date/time: 14-JUN-2006 13:19:07.83 linker identification: "A11-50" Patch Information (C & P error - answer was None - DJW) Our initial answer from HP reflects your comment, ie, the F90 problem is fixed in the latest patch. However, I'm beginning to suspect that fixing the F90 problem has broken the F77 support and that's what we're still on. I'll give Thomas, our SysMan, the relevant F77/90 compiler versions for onward transmission on Monday. I started with the suspicion late Thursday night but I was tired and had too many hours in already. Friday I had off :) I did get as far as compiling the same Fortran module with both compilers, on the same machine, and ANALyzing the objects. There are some obvious differences in the GSD/DST records w.r.t Psect order etc. but I wouldn't expect myself to undertand much more than that. It just gave me an inkling of some of the differences, as I would expect the root of the problem to be the debugger's ability to process the Debug and Symbol information. btw - I presume you meant you disabled optimisation when using Bliss to compile DEBUG. Cheers - Dave. -- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 05:00:33 -0700 (PDT) From: FrankS Subject: Re: Most impressive VAX installations Message-ID: <5a870cdf-5d8a-4c98-8a18-1f9047ddcf27@q26g2000prq.googlegroups.com> On Oct 31, 9:15=A0pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" wrote: > I don't know of ANY VAX that actually supported four GB of memory. =A0I > don't recall the largest VAX memory I ever encountered but I doubt if it > was more than 128 MB. I have a client with VAX 6000 series that contain 1.25gb of memory. I was at the Sungard facility in PA this past week and they have a VAX 7630s with over 2gb+ installed. The spec for the VAX 7000 says 3.5gb maximum. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:37:12 -0700 From: "Tom Linden" Subject: Re: Most impressive VAX installations Message-ID: On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:00:33 -0700, FrankS wrote: > On Oct 31, 9:15 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" > wrote: >> I don't know of ANY VAX that actually supported four GB of memory.  I >> don't recall the largest VAX memory I ever encountered but I doubt if it >> was more than 128 MB. > > I have a client with VAX 6000 series that contain 1.25gb of memory. I > was at the Sungard facility in PA this past week and they have a VAX > 7630s with over 2gb+ installed. The spec for the VAX 7000 says 3.5gb > maximum. Just curious why they continue running theses as opposed to, say, ES47? -- PL/I for OpenVMS www.kednos.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2008 13:05:35 +0000 (UTC) From: moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) Subject: Re: Most impressive VAX installations Message-ID: Not a single system, but I came across comments in the disk shadowing code for a bugfix where a byte field was being treated as a negative number if it exceeded 127. That byte field was the number of nodes in a cluster, and it was found by a customer (I think I know who), not internal testing. Also the test followed a decrement of that field, meaning a node left the cluster, so the bug wouldn't have been seen unless there were 129 or more nodes in the cluster at some point. (Supported limit was/is 96) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:36:13 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Most impressive VAX installations Message-ID: <00A81F8D.BE9FA366@SendSpamHere.ORG> In article , "Tom Linden" writes: >On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:00:33 -0700, FrankS wrote: > >> On Oct 31, 9:15 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" >> wrote: >>> I don't know of ANY VAX that actually supported four GB of memory.  I >>> don't recall the largest VAX memory I ever encountered but I doubt if it >>> was more than 128 MB. >> >> I have a client with VAX 6000 series that contain 1.25gb of memory. I >> was at the Sungard facility in PA this past week and they have a VAX >> 7630s with over 2gb+ installed. The spec for the VAX 7000 says 3.5gb >> maximum. > >Just curious why they continue running theses as opposed to, say, ES47? Perhaps because an ES47 is an Alpha and not a VAX? -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM ... pejorative statements of opinion are entitled to constitutional protection no matter how extreme, vituperous, or vigorously expressed they may be. (NJSC) Copr. 2008 Brian Schenkenberger. Publication of _this_ usenet article outside of usenet _must_ include its contents in its entirety including this copyright notice, disclaimer and quotations. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:55:07 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: Most impressive VAX installations Message-ID: Dan O'Reilly wrote: > At 07:38 PM 10/31/2008, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: >> Dan O'Reilly wrote: >>> At 07:15 PM 10/31/2008, Richard B. Gilbert wrote: >>>> urbancamo wrote: >>>>> To anyone listening! >>>>> I was flicking through the VAX Architecture Reference Manual earlier >>>>> and it got me wondering about the ratio between physically installed >>>>> memory in a VAX setup and the maximum theoretical limit of 4 GB. As >>>>> far as I'm aware for VAXen the physical never to close to the virtual. >>>>> I remember when 64MB was an astronomic amount of memory, which was >>>>> around the time of the last VAXes, so I'm asking - how much RAM did >>>>> you see crammed into the latest or greatest of the VAXen (and what >>>>> else was interesting about the setups, for example maximum number of >>>>> users, storage etc) >>>>> Or just tell me to get a life ;) >>>>> Mark. >>>> >>>> I don't know of ANY VAX that actually supported four GB of memory. >>>> I don't recall the largest VAX memory I ever encountered but I doubt >>>> if it was more than 128 MB. >>>> >>>> RISC processors, such as the Alpha need a great deal more memory for >>>> the executable code, about four times as much as a VAX. With the >>>> Alphas, a GB or more was not only reasonable but also possible! But >>>> only if you were very rich! ;-) >>> We had a VAXcluster at MCI that I implemented that had 4 VAX 7640's, >>> I think 2gb of memory each, 4 star couplers, 10 HSC95's (all >>> fully-loaded with requestor cards), 10 EZ50 electronic drives and a >>> whole slew of 1gb drives (RA74?). It was for high-speed call >>> statistics processing. We also had VAXen that were really loaded >>> with memory, as we had a database system implemented in non-paged >>> pool, using user-written system services to access them (how cool is >>> THAT???). In addition, we had literally hundreds of VAX systems of >>> various sizes, some desktop but mostly servers. >>> Needless to say, when AXPs came out, it made things a WHOLE lot >>> easier and faster! >>> ..and then came UNIX and Windows...well... >> >> And, obviously, your employers had money to burn! Not only was the >> hardware expensive, the electric bill must have been out of sight! > > We were DEC's largest single customer outside of the gov't. The last > year I was there (1997), we let out something like $375m in > hardware/software purchases, let alone support contracts. We had a > whole sales unit dedicated to MCI. > > If I remember correctly, the VAX cluster I described ran something in > the neighborhood of $17m. It was single most expensive thing I ever > specified. > > It must be nice to have an employer who can and will spend that kind of money on your toys!! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:58:26 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: Most impressive VAX installations Message-ID: FrankS wrote: > On Oct 31, 9:15 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" > wrote: >> I don't know of ANY VAX that actually supported four GB of memory. I >> don't recall the largest VAX memory I ever encountered but I doubt if it >> was more than 128 MB. > > I have a client with VAX 6000 series that contain 1.25gb of memory. I > was at the Sungard facility in PA this past week and they have a VAX > 7630s with over 2gb+ installed. The spec for the VAX 7000 says 3.5gb > maximum. With what Sungard charges, I suppose they can afford it! Was that the Philly office? Been there, awesome collection of hardware!! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:09:45 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: Most impressive VAX installations Message-ID: <_cmdnaUfYuha7JHUnZ2dnUVZ_vSdnZ2d@giganews.com> Tom Linden wrote: > On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:00:33 -0700, FrankS wrote: > >> On Oct 31, 9:15 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" >> wrote: >>> I don't know of ANY VAX that actually supported four GB of memory. I >>> don't recall the largest VAX memory I ever encountered but I doubt if it >>> was more than 128 MB. >> >> I have a client with VAX 6000 series that contain 1.25gb of memory. I >> was at the Sungard facility in PA this past week and they have a VAX >> 7630s with over 2gb+ installed. The spec for the VAX 7000 says 3.5gb >> maximum. > > Just curious why they continue running theses as opposed to, say, ES47? > In the case of Sungard, it's necessary in order to support their clients. Sungard offers a disaster recovery site for companies that need such. If you have a contract with them and something horrible happens to your data center, you let them know, grab your backup tapes, go there, and restore your backups on their hardware. It ain't cheap but it does keep you up and running when lightning zaps your substation or or a 747 tries to land on your roof. They have an awesome collection of hardware over there! It's probably both bigger and faster than what you have because they have to support the largest customer with a contract at that site. They have a UPS that has to be seen to be believed. There are diesel generators in the back yard that they can fire up before the batteries run down. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:48:33 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: network issue with EISNER? (DECUServe?) Message-ID: <00A81FA8.9CBC8E6D@SendSpamHere.ORG> It is taking an inordinate amount of time to connect to EISNER. If and when I do, it is very slow to respond. Even setting my priority to an extremely high value, EISNER is sluggish and there doesn't seem to be anything running on it so I would conclude it is some network issue. Does anyone here see the same and care to comment? -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM ... pejorative statements of opinion are entitled to constitutional protection no matter how extreme, vituperous, or vigorously expressed they may be. (NJSC) Copr. 2008 Brian Schenkenberger. Publication of _this_ usenet article outside of usenet _must_ include its contents in its entirety including this copyright notice, disclaimer and quotations. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:24:49 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: network issue with EISNER? (DECUServe?) Message-ID: <00A81FAD.ADC41499@SendSpamHere.ORG> In article <00A81FA8.9CBC8E6D@SendSpamHere.ORG>, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >It is taking an inordinate amount of time to connect to EISNER. If and >when I do, it is very slow to respond. Even setting my priority to an >extremely high value, EISNER is sluggish and there doesn't seem to be >anything running on it so I would conclude it is some network issue. > >Does anyone here see the same and care to comment? Nevermind. Whatever it was seems to have been corrected. -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM ... pejorative statements of opinion are entitled to constitutional protection no matter how extreme, vituperous, or vigorously expressed they may be. (NJSC) Copr. 2008 Brian Schenkenberger. Publication of _this_ usenet article outside of usenet _must_ include its contents in its entirety including this copyright notice, disclaimer and quotations. ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.591 ************************