Running MONGEN for TOPS-10 on PDP-10 KS10

PDP-10 KS10 TOPS-20 with DECnet and ANF-10 networking on DUP11 DUP0 and DUP1 lines

With the help of a kind friend, I managed to change the node-name and DECnet address of a TOPS-10 7.04 (GALAXY version 5.1) SimH-emulated PDP-10 KS10 by running MONGEN. I need to preserve the session for future reference, especially the questions and answers/responses. Hence this post.

I learned from the friend that MONGEN saves responses in [10,7,MON]BUILD.MIC and it is useful to save a copy of this file with the filename <nodename>.MIC for future reference. This makes it very easy to replicate the configuration on other KS10 installations.

I also learned that on TOPS-10 the directory [1,4] is SYS:, [1,5] is NEW: and [1,3] is OLD:. The convention is to put “experimental” programs in [1,5], "production" programs in [1,4] and old versions in [1,3].  Experimental programs in NEW: ([1,5]) should be moved after testing to SYS: ([1,4]). This includes the monitor, which is typically named SYSTEM.EXE. Using "expect" and "send" keywords, the SimH emulator allows selection of the monitor to boot at the "BOOT>" prompt. Examples are:

To boot the default monitor [1,4]SYSTEM.EXE:
expect "BOOT>" send "\r"

Or, we can specify the monitor and the location to boot, as in these examples:

expect "BOOT>" send "[1,4]SYSTEM\r"

expect "BOOT>" send "[1,5]SYS2\r"

expect "BOOT>" send "[1,5]SYSTEM\r"

The manual for running MONGEN on KL and KS TOPS-10 systems is on bitsavers (TOPS-10 Software Installation Guide AA-PS12C-TB).  It "provides the site administrator, system manager, system programmer, or software specialist with the information required to Install the TOPS-10 software on KL and KS processors."

Here is part of the session log from when I built a new monitor with the updated DECnet node name and address. This monitor supports two DUP lines on DUP11. DUP0 connects to DECnet network and DUP1 connects to ANF-10 network.