Hi Bob, Dave,
Has anyone volunteered for the KICKS project yet? I have some free time at the moment.
Regards, Gary
Sent from whatever device I am using.
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-------- Original message -------- From: Bob Bolch <Bob@...> Date: 4/15/22 3:39 PM (GMT-05:00) Subject: [h390-vm] Next VMCE release
Mark S. mentioned the next VMCE release, so here are some thoughts on that.?
As far as helping with the next release, please refer to the issue list at: The items marked "fixed in next release" are all included in the release candidate system I use for integration testing. Those items have code in place, HELP files added or updated, and "readme" file entries to document them. The items marked "wontfix" are not planned for the system.
The remaining entries are in various states between?almost ready and not yet started.
Because it has been almost a year since the last release, I want to get something out as soon as possible. That means some things won't be fixed in the next release, but will be delayed?until next year.?
If you see an item you want to work on, or need more info, please email me directly at Bob@... to let me know what you want to work on, and I can send you any partial work I may have done. Some expertise is required.?
Bob
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Re: BWBASIC V 3.2 - Issue
Mark, ? Well after a Little more research it appears the bug is actually in the code that parses decimal numbers. So if you enter, for example “print 3” it just loops printing “3”. I also hacked the code for “LET” so on a “Syntax Error” it drops through rather than exiting. So things like:- ? LET X = 3 ? Works, but produces a warning, whereas ? LEX X = X+X ? Works with no warning… … onwards and upwards…. ? Dave ?
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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Dave Wade via groups.io
Sent: 22 April 2022 10:50
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [h390-vm] BWBASIC V 3.2 - Issue? Mark, Sadly that bit works. It appears to have some weird string logic, and its looking for the “\0” null character at the end of a line in the memory buffer. Dave ? ? On Wed, Apr 20, 2022 at 03:25 AM, Dave Wade wrote: Has any one any idea why BWBASIC v3.2 doesn’t work well with CMS? After fixing the missing FOPEN_MAX in the H file for It compiles and builds cleanly. It “almost” runs but it gives syntax errors. It seems to be something to do with “End of line” detection in the editor buffers.
Dave,
Three things come to mind to check. What new line (end of line) characters is it searching for? CR & LF for DOS/Windows? LF & CR for Unix/Linux? Variable/Fixed length format for CMS?
I Hope This Helps.
?... Mark S.
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Re: BWBASIC V 3.2 - Issue
Mark, Sadly that bit works. It appears to have some weird string logic, and its looking for the “\0” null character at the end of a line in the memory buffer. Dave ?
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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mark A. Stevens via groups.io
Sent: 22 April 2022 02:02
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [h390-vm] BWBASIC V 3.2 - Issue? On Wed, Apr 20, 2022 at 03:25 AM, Dave Wade wrote: Has any one any idea why BWBASIC v3.2 doesn’t work well with CMS? After fixing the missing FOPEN_MAX in the H file for It compiles and builds cleanly. It “almost” runs but it gives syntax errors. It seems to be something to do with “End of line” detection in the editor buffers.
Dave,
Three things come to mind to check. What new line (end of line) characters is it searching for? CR & LF for DOS/Windows? LF & CR for Unix/Linux? Variable/Fixed length format for CMS?
I Hope This Helps.
?... Mark S.
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Re: BWBASIC V 3.2 - Issue
On Wed, Apr 20, 2022 at 03:25 AM, Dave Wade wrote:
Has any one any idea why BWBASIC v3.2 doesn’t work well with CMS? After fixing the missing FOPEN_MAX in the H file for It compiles and builds cleanly. It “almost” runs but it gives syntax errors.
It seems to be something to do with “End of line” detection in the editor buffers.
Dave, Three things come to mind to check. What new line (end of line) characters is it searching for? CR & LF for DOS/Windows? LF & CR for Unix/Linux? Variable/Fixed length format for CMS? I Hope This Helps. ?... Mark S.
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Re: BWBASIC V 3.2 - Issue
Folks, ? By the way the problem does not appear to be in the libraries. I get the same bug with both PDPCLIB and GCCLIB … ? Dave ?
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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Dave Wade via groups.io
Sent: 20 April 2022 09:26
To: [email protected]
Subject: [h390-vm] BWBASIC V 3.2 - Issue? Gentles, ? Has any one any idea why BWBASIC v3.2 doesn’t work well with CMS? After fixing the missing FOPEN_MAX in the H file for It compiles and builds cleanly. It “almost” runs but it gives syntax errors. It seems to be something to do with “End of line” detection in the editor buffers. ? Dave
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Gentles, ? Has any one any idea why BWBASIC v3.2 doesn’t work well with CMS? After fixing the missing FOPEN_MAX in the H file for It compiles and builds cleanly. It “almost” runs but it gives syntax errors. It seems to be something to do with “End of line” detection in the editor buffers. ? Dave
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Re: Additional Help Files
Mark, Easy mistake. I didn’t twig either until I looked at the code. Dave ?
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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mark A. Stevens via groups.io
Sent: 20 April 2022 02:19
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [h390-vm] Additional Help Files? On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 04:18 AM, Dave Wade wrote: The open error is because BWBASIC is looking for a “PROFILE BAS” file. Why does it need PDPCLLIB?
My bad. I'll sit down and shut up now :-)
Thanks for the correction.
?... Mark S.
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Re: Additional Help Files
On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 04:18 AM, Dave Wade wrote:
The open error is because BWBASIC is looking for a “PROFILE BAS” file.
Why does it need PDPCLLIB?
My bad. I'll sit down and shut up now :-) Thanks for the correction. ?... Mark S.
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Re: Additional Help Files
Mark, The open error is because BWBASIC is looking for a “PROFILE BAS” file. Why does it need PDPCLLIB? Dave ?
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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mark A. Stevens via groups.io
Sent: 13 April 2022 02:12
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [h390-vm] Additional Help Files? On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 05:53 PM, Mark A. Stevens wrote: bwbasic
?Bywater BASIC Interpreter/Shell, version 2.50
?Copyright (c) 1993, Ted A. Campbell
?Copyright (c) 1995-1997, Jon B. Volkoff
?
OPEN ERROR CODE '04' ON 'PDP000HD'.
I have figured out, if I use the following FILEDEF I get rid of the error. In addition, input and print to the terminal work better.
filedef pdp000hd terminal ( perm upcase
I Hope This Helps
?... Mark S.
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Re: Additional Help Files
David, Well sometimes its useful to step into history. The GCC on VM is also supported on MVS. In fact it started life on MVS 3.8. Paul that did the port and wrote his own run-time library because he didn’t like the GPL on the GNU libraries. From my point of view this was a good thing. ?His PDPCLIB is written almost entirely in “C” with just a couple of Assembler routines. It uses QSAM IO and nearly all the MVS Macros it uses are supported on VM. So it looked like an easy port to VM… ? There were a couple of things that I couldn’t get to work on VM, so to be blunt they were hacked and kludged. On MVS the compiler reads the “.h” files from a PDS so one DD is fine. I couldn’t get that code to run in VM (My assembler is pants) and so I resorted to reading them from separate files. This means I needed to be able to open files by name, so I came up with work around where the code issues a “FILEDEF” using SVC202 and uses those generated PDPnnnn DDs. The nasty side effect of this is that OS errors report the DD name not the name passed to open. But it worked, it ran and it let be start looking at REXX. ? So back to BWBASIC whilst I haven’t looked at the code, but if its standard “C” I can’t see why it needs to use PDPCLIB and why it couldn’t be re-compiled to use GCCLIB. ?I am sure it would work much better like that. Dave ?
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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of David Durand
Sent: 16 April 2022 01:29
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [h390-vm] Additional Help Files? I saw the followups online just after I replied from email, and realized that my reply was uselessly late, and my speculations a little ill-founded. Then I looked around a bit more and found that the C library was using the OS style IO. It just never occurred to me that anyone would write VM programs that require FILEDEFs unless they were also supporting OS. But I guess it makes sense if you are a Unix guy, and want to get a little closer to shell-redirected IO. I even dimly remember such stuff in some early port of C to VM, that I played with in the early 80's. For me though, C was part of my move to Unix, as it never seemed to fit that well in the VM world.
Anyway, sorry to have been a distraction. Wish my first post to the group was a little more clueful.
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Re: Additional Help Files
I saw the followups online just after I replied from email, and realized that my reply was uselessly late, and my speculations a little ill-founded. Then I looked around a bit more and found that the C library was using the OS style IO. It just never occurred to me that anyone would write VM programs that require FILEDEFs unless they were also supporting OS. But I guess it makes sense if you are a Unix guy, and want to get a little closer to shell-redirected IO. I even dimly remember such stuff in some early port of C to VM, that I played with in the early 80's. For me though, C was part of my move to Unix, as it never seemed to fit that well in the VM world.
Anyway, sorry to have been a distraction. Wish my first post to the group was a little more clueful.
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Re: Additional Help Files
On Fri, Apr 15, 2022 at 05:39 PM, Bob Bolch wrote:
PDP000HD is in the message, but FILEDEF says PDP00HD.
One of these days, I'll be perfect :-D ?... Mark S.
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Re: Additional Help Files
PDP000HD is in the message, but FILEDEF says PDP00HD.Bob
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Re: Additional Help Files
On Fri, Apr 15, 2022 at 04:18 PM, Dave Wade wrote:
I assume this is BWBASIC which has never run on OS but is a “C” Unix program.
When you see a DD name like “PDP000HD” it usually means that the “C” code has issued an open with a file name, and the “C” run time has issued a “FILEDEF” to open the file.
For some reason the options on the generated FILEDEF don’t match those the program needs.
ByWater (BW) BASIC is a port from Unix to VM, (https://sourceforge.net/projects/bwbasic/). The latest update is from 2017-07-07, and it needs the GCC C library, and thus the "PDP00HD" error. This port seems to have some problems with terminal I/O, by asking for input, before the prompt is printed. The FEILDEF doesn't fix that, so I probably should look into why. filedef pdp00hd terminal ( perm upcaseReady; T=0.01/0.01 15:52:56bwbasic wumpus1.basic?Bywater BASIC Interpreter/Shell, version 2.50?Copyright (c) 1993, Ted A. Campbell?Copyright (c) 1995-1997, Jon B. Volkoff?OPEN ERROR CODE '04' ON 'PDP000HD'.nINSTRUCTIONS (Y-N)? HUNT THE WUMPUS?I SMELL A WUMPUS!I SMELL A WUMPUS!YOU ARE IN ROOM? 2TUNNELS LEAD TO? 1? 3? 10?q?SHOOT, MOVE, OR QUIT (S,M,Q)? bwBASIC:Ready; T=0.64/0.66 15:53:38However, for CALL/OS BASIC, this problem with I/O doesn't occur. basic wumpus1INSTRUCTIONS (Y-N)? nHUNT THE WUMPUS?BATS NEARBY!YOU ARE IN ROOM? 19TUNNELS LEAD TO? 11???? 18???? 20?SHOOT, MOVE, OR QUIT (S,M,Q)? qReady; T=0.02/0.03 15:56:20My personal opinion is "PDP" is a carry over from the C library found on DEC systems of the day. Even if it isn't, it is fun to think that is the case. BASIC, when run, used to be used in an interactive environment, more often than not. The FILEDEF needed, especially for WUMPUS*-like programs, has to point to the terminal, and I so I left off the RECFM and LRECL, and used PERM and UPCASE, to allow for repeated runs, and emulate the uppercase environment of most early BASICs, such as IBM, Data General, DEC, CDC, and others. BASIC was typically an uppercase language in its heyday, hence the upcase option. Finally, if there is a request/need/wish for a wrapper EXEC, I would be happy to add one, and then I'd probably look closer at the FILEDEF problem. ?I Hope This Helps, ?... Mark S.
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On Fri, Apr 15, 2022 at 01:37 PM, Dave Wade wrote:
I think CBT593 has everything you need
Yup. That's where I started. Thanks! ?... Mark S.
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Re: Additional Help Files
David, ? I assume this is BWBASIC which has never run on OS but is a “C” Unix program. When you see a DD name like “PDP000HD” it usually means that the “C” code has issued an open with a file name, and the “C” run time has issued a “FILEDEF” to open the file. For some reason the options on the generated FILEDEF don’t match those the program needs. ? Dave ? ?
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From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of David Durand
Sent: 15 April 2022 21:15
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [h390-vm] Additional Help Files? The error from basic probably reflects that it's a port from OS, which would have had a DD card to map the PDP000HD file. I don't know about this implementation of basic, or its use of this the particular file, but given that output is broken I'd try something like:
FILEDEF PDP000HD TERM (LRECL 80 RECFM? V
Of course if it's supposed to mapped to a scratch disk file that won't help. I'm not able to test this right now, but it's worth a try.
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Re: Additional Help Files
The error from basic probably reflects that it's a port from OS, which would have had a DD card to map the PDP000HD file. I don't know about this implementation of basic, or its use of this the particular file, but given that output is broken I'd try something like:
FILEDEF PDP000HD TERM (LRECL 80 RECFM? V
Of course if it's supposed to mapped to a scratch disk file that won't help. I'm not able to test this right now, but it's worth a try.
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If VM/370 R6 supports it, I'd use VMARC files.
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Hi Mark,
? ?It's perfectly fine to do the port, if that's what interests you. A download with good instructions is a good way to gauge interest. I am wondering who would use this (as opposed to using the IBM ASM F level assembler)?
Also, there are lot's of open issues to work on at?? Email me if you want to be assigned one (or more) of them.
Thanks/Bob
?
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Mark S. mentioned the next VMCE release, so here are some thoughts on that.?
As far as helping with the next release, please refer to the issue list at: The items marked "fixed in next release" are all included in the release candidate system I use for integration testing. Those items have code in place, HELP files added or updated, and "readme" file entries to document them. The items marked "wontfix" are not planned for the system.
The remaining entries are in various states between?almost ready and not yet started.
Because it has been almost a year since the last release, I want to get something out as soon as possible. That means some things won't be fixed in the next release, but will be delayed?until next year.?
If you see an item you want to work on, or need more info, please email me directly at Bob@... to let me know what you want to work on, and I can send you any partial work I may have done. Some expertise is required.?
Bob
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Mark A. Stevens