PDP-11 OS Release Dates
Zane H. Healy
reach people that might have info but don't normally read the PDP-11 groups.
I'm looking for release dates for the various PDP-11 OS's. For example for
RT-11:
RT-11 V4 was February 21st, 1980
RT-11 V5 was March 12th, 1983
RT-11 V5.6 was 1992
RT-11 V5.7 was October, 29th, 1998
Please note I'm interested in the other OS's as well.
Zane
Dennis Grevenstein
>
> I'm looking for release dates for the various PDP-11 OS's. For example for
> RT-11:
>
> RT-11 V4 was February 21st, 1980
> RT-11 V5 was March 12th, 1983
> RT-11 V5.6 was 1992
> RT-11 V5.7 was October, 29th, 1998
OS-11 1972
RT11 V1 1973
RT11 V2 1974
RT11 V2C 1976
RT11 V3 1977
RT11 V5.1 1984
RT11 V5.2 1985
RT11 V5.3 1986
RT11 V5.4 1987
mfg
Dennis
--
The long journey to world domination begins with a single step.
Illiad
hea...@noaracnetspam.com
> OS-11 1972
> RT11 V1 1973
> RT11 V2 1974
> RT11 V2C 1976
Interesting... This means that the dates for revisions in the copy of a V2C
manual I have must loosly translate to releases of RT-11. This is what I
was suspecting, but couldn't really believe.
Is OS-11 related to RT-11? I think this is the first I've heard of it.
Zane
Kelvin Smith
but I have SPD's for v10:
RSTS v10.0, July 1990
RSTS v10.1, Sep 1992
I got started with RSTS in 1976, using either v6A or v6B.
--
Kelvin Smith
Financial Computer Systems
Wilton, CT
(remove "1111" from address for email)
"Zane H. Healy" <hea...@shell1.aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:behgb...@enews4.newsguy.com...
Dennis Grevenstein
>
> Is OS-11 related to RT-11? I think this is the first I've heard of it.
I don't know it myself.
Randy Park
<fcs_sm...@snet.net> wrote:
>I threw out most of my old RSTS information when the office moved last year,
>but I have SPD's for v10:
>
>RSTS v10.0, July 1990
>RSTS v10.1, Sep 1992
>
>I got started with RSTS in 1976, using either v6A or v6B.
I started with RSTS/E V6A. All variables in BASIC-PLUS were a single
letter optionally follwed by a single digit. Version 6B introduced
EXTEND mode, i.e. long variable names, BASIC-PLUS. I also started
in 1976. Version 6B was introduced in 1977.
Ken Robinson
>For a start, I'd like to appologize for the cross-posting, but I'm trying to
>reach people that might have info but don't normally read the PDP-11 groups.
>
>I'm looking for release dates for the various PDP-11 OS's. For example for
>RT-11:
I'm not sure when IAS was releases for the PDP-11, but when I started a job
in March of 1977, version 1 had just come out. The only thing going for it
was a very good DCL that was closer to DCL on VMS than the DCL on RSX11M+
that came out later.
Ken Robinson
bob smith
BUT....
os8 experienced some success, and there is some distant memory of an
OS11. Just like RTS8 was discussed as being labled RT8...but some
squabble seemed to make it change to RTS...but I could be wrong. Mybe
Barb recalls all those fights.
bob
jmfb...@aol.com
I wasn't involved in -11 land politics. I just typed in code,
diagnostics, docs and specs for them. John Everett did some
of the coding early on. He may recall mini naming wars.
OS is too generic. As a guess, I'd say that the SPDs needed
to be more specific about what the function of the operating
system was for.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Bob Koehler
>
> I started with RSTS/E V6A. All variables in BASIC-PLUS were a single
> letter optionally follwed by a single digit.
For some strange reason that was the early BASIC standard for
variable names. Made 6 character Fortran IV look good.
Randy Park
(Bob Koehler) wrote:
BASIC was created at Dartmouth College by Kenemy & Kurtz as a teaching
aid, hoping it would be easier than other languages to learn. I once
had a copy of their published text book. The short variable names
were probably for simplicity in writing the first BASIC interpreter.
John R. Strohm
news:adotgvse2kj54pl6f...@4ax.com...
Somewhere, I saw an interview with Kemeny. That first "interpreter" was a
full-up compiler with an interactive editor wrapped around it. Everyone
else, for some reason, hacked interpreters.
Elliott Roper
<den...@pcde.inka.de> wrote:
> In alt.sys.pdp11 hea...@noaracnetspam.com wrote:
> >
> > Is OS-11 related to RT-11? I think this is the first I've heard of it.
>
> It's mentioned in some RT-11 guide I have here.
> I don't know it myself.
It has been a long time, so I might be wrong. ISTR there was not an
OS-11 but there was a DOS-11 in the very early PDP-11 days. There were
remnants of it in the RSTS CIL.
Yep. I found this on Deja-Google from 1994
http://www.google.com/groups?q=DOS-11&start=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=o
ff&selm=940927100650.62%40arisia.gce.com&rnum=13
If Everhart said it, it is right.
Show complete thread when you get there. Some famous names are still
around here.
Zane H. Healy
> In alt.sys.pdp11 hea...@noaracnetspam.com wrote:
>>
>> Is OS-11 related to RT-11? I think this is the first I've heard of it.
>
> It's mentioned in some RT-11 guide I have here.
> I don't know it myself.
I just found the following post from Sept. 2002 from Tim Shoppa:
"The RT-11 Historical Overview states:
The year 1971 was an exciting time...A popular operating system
for the PDP-8, called OS/8, was the design model for the new PDP-11
operating system, tentatively called OS-11...
...in the fall of 1972...the groundwork was laid to make OS-11
compatible with OS/8 and TOPS-10...
OS-11 was renamed first to RTPS-11 (Real-Time Programming System),
then to RT-11 (Real Time). Version 1 of RT-11 was completed in the
fall of 1973."
Zane
jmfb...@aol.com
Speculation: I think it would have been difficult to trademark
a generic name like OS-whatever.
bob smith
boxes but I recall this is correct. There may have been some
perturbance in the 8/11 tensions later when Don White and the boys of 8
land put together that FPP8a thing and the bench marks made it fastet
(and more accurate) than certain mid range 11 models. And then there
was the 8 with a cache that was faser than the fastest 11...
bob smith
au contraire. Look in the front of most any book by digital and see the
trademearked names - Omnibus, Unibus, OS/8, PS/8. RTS8, RT11, and so on.
Oh, yeah and TOPS20, Tops10, etc.
Paul Sture
Thanks for that link. It brought back fond memories of RT-11, including
ones of RSX feeling tardy at times in contrast :-)
Bob Koehler
>
> Speculation: I think it would have been difficult to trademark
> a generic name like OS-whatever.
Didn't stop IBM from selling OS 360/whatever for lots of years.
Glenn Everhart
fpr RT11, which was initially often thought of and spoken of as
"OS-8 with the interrupts on".
DOS-11 existed from the earliest pdp11s, starting maybe 1971 or so
and by 1976 it was up to V10, used a variant of the RSX11D taskbuilder
as its linker, and had a fair bit of software in the DECUS library to
do interesting stuff with it. It was used to boot early RSTS and some
other pdp11 OSs and its internals had somewhat in common with RSX11C and
later RSX11B. (RSX11A was an entirely different animal.)
The main problem DOS had was that it used .read and .write calls for
most of its I/O. While its low level I/O was reasonably fast, .read and
.write did at least scores if not hundreds of instructions per byte in
formatting and checking for all the funny options those services had. As
a result when RT11 came along, and had apps do their own I/O, it looked
blindingly faster. A decent record system in DOS would of course have
equalized this.
I sometimes think of RMS when recalling this.
Glenn Everhart
Duncan Macdonald
been many years since I last used it) first see the light of day ?
And what (if anything was it based on).
Stanley F. Quayle
a good time for a Shameless Plug (tm) for CHARON-11 -- the PDP-11
version of CHARON-VAX. There are still PDP-11's out there...
--Stan Quayle
Quayle Consulting Inc.
----------
Stanley F. Quayle, P.E. N8SQ +1 614-868-1363 Fax: +1 614 868-1671
8572 North Spring Ct. NW, Pickerington, OH 43147
Preferred address: st...@stanq.com http://www.stanq.com
Glenn Everhart
suite enabled for magtape. Had a little in common with DOS
(DOS-11) for appearance but was its own thing internally. I first
saw it c. 1972 (since I was working with a group that had bought a
pdp11/45 with no paper tape anywhere). It was pretty new then and
DEC field service had trouble with diagnostics initially because
not all that much had been moved to tape at first. (They went and
borrowed an ASR33 teletype for that stuff for us..)
jmfb...@aol.com
Was OS 360 already trademarked? That might put a crimp in DEC
trademarking anything OS-whatever. Even if DEC could trademark
another OS-thingie, they might have wished to not have anything
that might be confused with an IBM product. Again, this is mere
speculation.
If I could remember if Tape Prep had jobs that renamed it in the
docs, then I could recall the conversations that went with the
job submissions :-).
Peter da Silva
Glenn Everhart <Everhar...@gce.com> wrote:
>The main problem DOS had was that it used .read and .write calls for
>most of its I/O. While its low level I/O was reasonably fast, .read and
>.write did at least scores if not hundreds of instructions per byte in
>formatting and checking for all the funny options those services had. As
>a result when RT11 came along, and had apps do their own I/O, it looked
>blindingly faster. A decent record system in DOS would of course have
>equalized this.
It seems to me that another way to fix this would have been to move
that option checking and formatting out of .read and .write and
into the equivalent of "open" and "i/o control".
>I sometimes think of RMS when recalling this.
GNU RT-11? :)
--
Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. 29.6852N 95.5770W WWFD?
"Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept"
-- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans)
Kelvin Smith
no confusion between variable names and keywords, an ambiguity that has
tripped up more than one programmer since variable names got longer. There
would also have been space considerations; it's easy to forget now just how
frightfully expensive RAM was back then ($1 or more per byte, IIRC). Most of
us were typing on 30cps (or slower) paper terminals, which encouraged
brevity. And K&K were, as you say, writing a teaching tool, not a language
that they expected serious programming to be done in.
--
Kelvin Smith
Financial Computer Systems
Wilton, CT
(remove "1111" from address for email)
"Randy Park" <rjp...@mindspring.nospaam.com> wrote in message
news:adotgvse2kj54pl6f...@4ax.com...
Thomas Dickey
> Well, at least one reason for the short variable names was so there would be
> no confusion between variable names and keywords, an ambiguity that has
> tripped up more than one programmer since variable names got longer. There
> would also have been space considerations; it's easy to forget now just how
> frightfully expensive RAM was back then ($1 or more per byte, IIRC). Most of
iirc, it was "core" back then (late 60's).
"RAM" wasn't a commonly-used term til the early 70's.
(still expensive, of course)
>> BASIC was created at Dartmouth College by Kenemy & Kurtz as a teaching
>> aid, hoping it would be easier than other languages to learn. I once
>> had a copy of their published text book. The short variable names
>> were probably for simplicity in writing the first BASIC interpreter.
>>
--
Thomas E. Dickey <dic...@radix.net> <dic...@herndon4.his.com>
http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com
sol gongola
>
> In comp.os.vms Kelvin Smith <fcs_sm...@snet.net> wrote:
> > Well, at least one reason for the short variable names was so there would be
> > no confusion between variable names and keywords, an ambiguity that has
> > tripped up more than one programmer since variable names got longer. There
> > would also have been space considerations; it's easy to forget now just how
> > frightfully expensive RAM was back then ($1 or more per byte, IIRC). Most of
>
> iirc, it was "core" back then (late 60's).
> "RAM" wasn't a commonly-used term til the early 70's.
All the RAM was core memory. There was also ROM. I remember getting a blank ROM
card. I programmed it by clipping diodes off the card. It was a boot program on
a diskless PDP-11 to conect and load application software from another PDP-11.
BTW, did anyone mention dectape?
Thomas Dickey
> Thomas Dickey wrote:
>>
>> In comp.os.vms Kelvin Smith <fcs_sm...@snet.net> wrote:
>> > Well, at least one reason for the short variable names was so there would be
>> > no confusion between variable names and keywords, an ambiguity that has
>> > tripped up more than one programmer since variable names got longer. There
>> > would also have been space considerations; it's easy to forget now just how
>> > frightfully expensive RAM was back then ($1 or more per byte, IIRC). Most of
>>
>> iirc, it was "core" back then (late 60's).
>> "RAM" wasn't a commonly-used term til the early 70's.
> All the RAM was core memory. There was also ROM. I remember getting a blank ROM
"perhaps". I didn't encounter the term applied to core memory before the
advent of semiconductor memory. Checking my PDP-11 processor handbooks
reinforces my recollection - the term "RAM" is not used in the older ones.
Dan O'Reilly
>In comp.os.vms sol gongola <s...@adldata.com> wrote:
> > Thomas Dickey wrote:
> >>
> >> In comp.os.vms Kelvin Smith <fcs_sm...@snet.net> wrote:
> >> > Well, at least one reason for the short variable names was so there
> would be
> >> > no confusion between variable names and keywords, an ambiguity that has
> >> > tripped up more than one programmer since variable names got longer.
> There
> >> > would also have been space considerations; it's easy to forget now
> just how
> >> > frightfully expensive RAM was back then ($1 or more per byte, IIRC).
> Most of
> >>
> >> iirc, it was "core" back then (late 60's).
> >> "RAM" wasn't a commonly-used term til the early 70's.
>
> > All the RAM was core memory. There was also ROM. I remember getting a
> blank ROM
>
>"perhaps". I didn't encounter the term applied to core memory before the
>advent of semiconductor memory. Checking my PDP-11 processor handbooks
>reinforces my recollection - the term "RAM" is not used in the older ones.
Well, at one time, you could also have more than one type of memory. You
could have fast (expensive, hot) bipolar memory and more conventional
memory. On RSX, at least, there was a PSECT attribute to allow the psect
to be loaded into fast or slow(er) memory.
------
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
| Dan O'Reilly | "There are 10 types of people in this |
| Principal Engineer | world: those who understand binary |
| Process Software | and those who don't." |
| http://www.process.com | |
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
Thomas Dickey
That's still much later (approaching 10 years) than the design of BASIC.
According to what I'm reading, BASIC was designed around 1964 (my own
recollection was that it was a little later, e.g., 1967, but that might
be tainted with some recollection about where it was adopted for use).
("bipolar" probably refers in this context to an SSI or MSI technology, perhaps
not what I would have meant by semiconductor, e.g., LSI or VLSI).
Douglas A. Gwyn
> Thomas Dickey wrote:
>>"RAM" wasn't a commonly-used term til the early 70's.
> All the RAM was core memory.
Early use of the term "Random Access Memory" often
pertained to disk, drum, or other storage. There were
even computers whose only storage medium was magnetic
drum (no core and certainly no transistor arrays).
> BTW, did anyone mention dectape?
DECtape is considered random access as opposed to
sequential access, even though it takes a while to seek.
Note that currently on eBay is a restored PDP-8 with
DECtape.
Dan O'Reilly
>sol gongola wrote:
>>Thomas Dickey wrote:
>>>"RAM" wasn't a commonly-used term til the early 70's.
>>All the RAM was core memory.
>
>Early use of the term "Random Access Memory" often
>pertained to disk, drum, or other storage. There were
>even computers whose only storage medium was magnetic
>drum (no core and certainly no transistor arrays).
Yep - used to work on a Xerox Sigma system that had drum storage...
Kelvin Smith
"Thomas Dickey" <dic...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote in message
news:bf13le$8pa$1...@news1.radix.net...
> In comp.os.vms Kelvin Smith <fcs_sm...@snet.net> wrote:
> > Well, at least one reason for the short variable names was so there
would be
> > no confusion between variable names and keywords, an ambiguity that has
> > tripped up more than one programmer since variable names got longer.
There
> > would also have been space considerations; it's easy to forget now just
how
> > frightfully expensive RAM was back then ($1 or more per byte, IIRC).
Most of
>
> iirc, it was "core" back then (late 60's).
> "RAM" wasn't a commonly-used term til the early 70's.
>
> (still expensive, of course)
It was still typically called core memory in the late 1970s when I got
started with PDPs; I don't remember if it was actually physical core memory
(i.e., the ferrite donuts with wires running through) or it had been
replaced with semiconductors by then. I forget that when I'm conversing in a
group like this, everyone actually understands what terminology like "core"
means (and perhaps even prefers such).
Rob Brown
> I remember getting a blank ROM card. I programmed it by clipping
> diodes off the card.
Wandering farther off-topic:
I remember the first time I saw one of these. It was about 1979, when
the term EPROM was in common usage, so I was quickly able to determine
that the card was an MPROM (Mechanically Programmable ...).
;-)
--
Rob Brown br...@gmcl.com
G. Michaels Consulting Ltd. (866)438-2101 (voice) toll free!
Edmonton (780)438-9343 (voice)
(780)437-3367 (FAX)
http://gmcl.com/
Bob WIllard
And the winner is -- 1964. See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DartmouthBasic
--
Cheers, Bob
Rob Warnock
+---------------
| Early use of the term "Random Access Memory" often
| pertained to disk, drum, or other storage. There were
| even computers whose only storage medium was magnetic
| drum (no core and certainly no transistor arrays).
E.g., the venerable LGP-30 [my first computer!] and RPC-4000.
+---------------
| > BTW, did anyone mention dectape?
|
| DECtape is considered random access as opposed to
| sequential access, even though it takes a while to seek.
+---------------
And OS-8 could even run with *only* DECtape as the "system disk", too!!
(*Heh-heh!*) But there's more...
My first task for John Alderman[1] in mid-1971 was to design a PDP-8
controller for a Sykes cassette tape and make it act like a DECtape
so we could run OS-8 on it. And, using a "synchronous chartware[2]"-like
design [which today would simply be called a "one-hot" state machine],
we succeeded!! Even though it took about 10-15 seconds to get from the
command prompt to a user program or back:
.r pip
[...(*whirr*)...(*clunk*)...(*whirr*)...(*clunk*)...(*clunk*)...]
[...(*whirr*)...(*clunk*)...]
[...(*whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*)...(*clunk*)...]
[...(*whirrrrrr*)...(*clunk*)...]
[...(*whirr*)...(*clunk*)...]
* ^C
[...(*whirr*)...(*clunk*)...]
[...(*whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*)...(*clunk*)...]
[...(*whirr*)...(*clunk*)...(*whirr*)...(*clunk*)...(*clunk*)...]
.
The same principle (pre-formatting the tapes with separate "header" and
"data" records, with enough space between blocks that you could reliably
over-write the "data" records, at least in the forward direction) had
earlier been used by someone (John? someone else at Ga. Tech?) to use a
plain 7-track *magtape* as an OS-8 system "disk" (really!), so that part
of it wasn't new. We even cheated a bit, since the Sykes cassette (which
used standard Phillips audio cassettes, though leaderless, like telephone
answering machines used to use) was 2-track, so we were able to put the
"header" records (or "sector marks", in disk terminology) on one track
and the "data" blocks on the other. (Made the overwriting easier.)
-Rob
[1] When he was still the Atlanta branch manager for ADR/CSD, before
he split off from ADR and started DCA (the company, not the agency).
[2] ChartWare(tm) was a set of DEC logic blocks for RTL data paths and
asynchonrous one-hot state machines, a.k.a. "PDP-14", meant mainly
for building industrial controllers.
-----
Rob Warnock, PP-ASEL-IA <rp...@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
Christian Corti
> Douglas A. Gwyn <DAG...@null.net> wrote:
> +---------------
> | Early use of the term "Random Access Memory" often
> | pertained to disk, drum, or other storage. There were
> | even computers whose only storage medium was magnetic
> | drum (no core and certainly no transistor arrays).
> +---------------
Exactly, that's why today most ROMs are RAMs. IBM did it the right way
by calling "ROM" ROS (read only storage) and "RAM" RWS (read write
storage).
> E.g., the venerable LGP-30 [my first computer!] and RPC-4000.
1';'i''
s1'daprt'uc2'h'lcl'e'l'l'o' 'w'o'r'l'd'.''
for'i'step'1'until'10'rpeat's1''
stop'''
or
c3w00'p0000'c3w04'i0000'c3w08'c3w14'c3w0j'p0000'c3w10'i0000'u3w00'z0000'
(that's 9.0)
As you might see, we have a running LGP-30 here (most certainly the last
working one on earth) :-)
Btw. I am looking for any kind of documentation and software for the
LGP-30.
Christian
Galen
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:54:44 GMT, "Kelvin Smith"
> <fcs_sm...@snet.net> wrote:
>
> >I threw out most of my old RSTS information when the office moved last year,
> >but I have SPD's for v10:
> >
> >RSTS v10.0, July 1990
> >RSTS v10.1, Sep 1992
> >
> >I got started with RSTS in 1976, using either v6A or v6B.
>
>
> I started with RSTS/E V6A. All variables in BASIC-PLUS were a single
> EXTEND mode, i.e. long variable names, BASIC-PLUS. I also started
> in 1976. Version 6B was introduced in 1977.
I too started with RSTS in (late) 1976 when I started college at CSUH
(Cal. State University, Hayward) and took my very first programming
class in Basic-Plus. I think it was something like RSTS V4 but was
soon upgraded to V5 and V6.
It was cool when they added the RT-11 and RSX emulation to RSTS, and
assembly language programming became available. I found a Macro-11
chess game somewhere that ran on regular RT-11 and easily made it work
on RSTS. I bough enough RT-11 documentation from the DEC office in
Santa Clara to do some serious programming, but my budget was too
small for RSX and it remained mostly mysterious to me until I started
using it in 1980 at Lockheed--where I also got to use a REAL RT-11
system, running in 24K or so of RAM on a dual-floppy (8 in. of course)
PDP-11/23.
Programming in Basic-Plus was a lot of fun back then. The
single-character variable names (plus a % suffix to indicate integer
variables and a $ for string variables) were a pain until Extend mode
came along. But virtual arrays were a really cool feature, given that
our system made only a small amount of memory available to student
users--I think it was only about 18K at first.
As a semi-trusted student assistant I even got to do some system
programming in Basic-Plus. I remember how mysterious the system
calls--which looked something like SYS(CHR$(127)+CHR$(etc...))--were
at first--almost magical.
Early on in my system-programming there, the system manager would
compile my program, then set the "privilege" bit on the compiled file.
He forgot to clear the bit that allowed me to overwrite the file,
though, and I quickly discovered that I could compile a DIFFERENT
program and overwrite the privileged one with it, thus letting me run
whatever privileged code I wanted, without him compiling it for me.
After an enjoyable but short period of non-destructive hacking
(basically just probing around to see how different SYS calls worked)
I revealed my discovery to him and thus won a bit more respect for my
honesty. (Of course, he started protecting the executables against
writing...)
Somebody used to distribute a Basic-Plus uncompiler, which was a
pretty cool and magical tool to impress other computer lab staff with.
Kevin Handy
> Randy Park <rjp...@mindspring.nospaam.com> wrote in message news:<5vrrgvg3h15mv1te9...@4ax.com>...
>
>
> pretty cool and magical tool to impress other computer lab staff with.
There were a few versions of the uncompiler (and I even wrote a
partial one). The trick is finding the source for the cross
reference program that worked by looking at the compiled code.
From that, enough detail is available to get started.
(bpcref.bas and bpcrf1.bas)
One company I worked for bought a copy of one of these (apparently
the guy who wrote it only sold a couple of copies). He made it
so that it would not un-compile itself, though. It actually
worked fairly well, except for getting 'while' and 'until' implied
loops backwards sometimes.
Douglas A. Gwyn
> And OS-8 could even run with *only* DECtape as the "system disk", too!!
I once ran RT-11 off DECtape on a PDP-11/70 in DEC's
Marlboro facility. It was amusing.
Douglas A. Gwyn
> It was cool when they added the RT-11 and RSX emulation to RSTS, and
Indeed. I ported Whitesmiths C (binary RT-11 release) to
the RT-11 Run-Time System on a RSTS/E system that friendly
folks at Employee Incentive Plans in Austin allowed me to
use while my employer awaited delivery of the PDP-11/34a
that became our 6th Edition Unix platform. (The latter
supported a couple dozen concurrent users quite nicely; I
wrote the DZ11 driver with a delay to allow the silo to
ripple down and continued driver processing so long as
there was something ready to do, which greatly reduced the
number of context switches compared to "competing" drivers.)
Douglas A. Gwyn
> It was cool when they added the RT-11 and RSX emulation to RSTS
Of course later on VAX/VMS provided an RSX run-time system.
There was also an RT-11 emulation for Unix (developed by HCR
of Toronto); we used it mainly to run ADVENT and MACRO-11.
paramucho
I (like many others I guess) built a driver that would handle an RT-11
disk structure on a magtape. That was fun to watch -- one of those big
buggers.
--
Ian
Impressive If Haughty - Q Magazine
Thomas Dickey
> Thomas Dickey wrote:
>> That's still much later (approaching 10 years) than the design of BASIC.
>> According to what I'm reading, BASIC was designed around 1964 (my own
>> recollection was that it was a little later, e.g., 1967, but that might
>> be tainted with some recollection about where it was adopted for use).
>>
>> ("bipolar" probably refers in this context to an SSI or MSI technology, perhaps
>> not what I would have meant by semiconductor, e.g., LSI or VLSI).
>>
> And the winner is -- 1964. See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DartmouthBasic
I was reading something like that (skimmed several hits from google). My
reference to recollection was what I was told about BASIC back in the mid-70's.
However, just because I read it on the web - or in a professional journal -
doesn't make it true. I have in mind an article which appeared 10-15 years ago
in one of the latter which was a recap of the early history of microprocessors.
Most of the dates cited were wrong, as much as 2 years. For instance, it
quoted the release date for the Intel 8008 as that of the 8080. Not even
close...
Christine Ricketts/Andrew Stewart
news:4b2dndNoSs4...@comcast.com...
Interesting. The RT-11 V5.5 SPD does not mention the PDP-11/70
yet p257 of the RT-11 V5.5 Mini Reference Manual has bit 14 of
the Configuration Word 2 is set if it is a PDP-11/70 processor.
Was this used for the RT-11 Emulation under RSTS/E and/or RSX,
or did RT-11 run native on this beast?
Thanks, Andy.
PS. I was told RT-11 runs on the VAX-11/780,
very easily on the LSI-11 console processor,
at least once in compatability mode for testing purposes. :-)
Phil Budne
Christine Ricketts/Andrew Stewart <u12...@uxnxixtxe.com.au> wrote:
>PS. I was told RT-11 runs on the VAX-11/780,
>very easily on the LSI-11 console processor,
>at least once in compatability mode for testing purposes. :-)
What sort of "compatibility mode" would an LSI-11 need to run RT?
There was a package called "RTEM" that allowed you to boot RT-11 on a
VAXen that had PDP-11 compatibility mode. It seemed very fast in
comparison to my PDT-11/50!
Megan
>Interesting. The RT-11 V5.5 SPD does not mention the PDP-11/70
>yet p257 of the RT-11 V5.5 Mini Reference Manual has bit 14 of
>the Configuration Word 2 is set if it is a PDP-11/70 processor.
RT-11 does indeed run on 11/70s, though for some reason I forget after
so many years, we couldn't specifically say that it was supported on
same.
>Was this used for the RT-11 Emulation under RSTS/E and/or RSX,
>or did RT-11 run native on this beast?
It runs native... I used to run it all the time back in the V3 days
on an 11/70 at DEC in the ed services lab at PK2 (when ed services
was in maynard).
>Thanks, Andy.
>PS. I was told RT-11 runs on the VAX-11/780,
>very easily on the LSI-11 console processor,
>at least once in compatability mode for testing purposes. :-)
I never tried running it on the Console of the VAX, though it would
probably work just fine (though one drive is a bit cramped). As for
running on a VAX, only on one which has RTEM installed.
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | email: mbg at world.std.com |
| Member of Technical Staff | megan at savaje.com |
| SavaJe Technologies, Inc. | (s/ at /@/) |
| 100 Apollo Drive | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Chelmsford, MA 01460 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (978) 256 6521 (DEC '77-'98) | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
Paul Sture
The 11/780 console floppy was an RT-11 volume.
jmfb...@aol.com
"Christine Ricketts/Andrew Stewart" <u12...@uxnxixtxe.com.au> wrote:
>"Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAG...@null.net> wrote in message
>news:4b2dndNoSs4...@comcast.com...
>> Rob Warnock wrote:
>> > And OS-8 could even run with *only* DECtape as the "system disk",
too!!
>>
>> I once ran RT-11 off DECtape on a PDP-11/70 in DEC's
>> Marlboro facility. It was amusing.
>>
>
>Interesting. The RT-11 V5.5 SPD does not mention the PDP-11/70
>yet p257 of the RT-11 V5.5 Mini Reference Manual has bit 14 of
>the Configuration Word 2 is set if it is a PDP-11/70 processor.
>
>Was this used for the RT-11 Emulation under RSTS/E and/or RSX,
>or did RT-11 run native on this beast?
I thought I was running native RT-11 when I did DECnet certification
for PDP-10s. There was an RT-11 disk pack that I mounted on
the 11/70 and it booted up just fine. It also ran just fine.
IIRC, I didn't have to do the full suite of certification against
RT-11. Things are hazy, but I think I only had to do the DTR/DTS
stuff (whatever the hell that means ;-)). I didn't do the NCP
suite.
<snip>
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Bob Kaplow
REAL DecTape, or that hightmare that was TU58? I always wanted to meet the
engineer that came up with the TU58, with sharp impliments in hand...
Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD"
>>> To reply, remove the TRABoD! <<<
Kaplow Klips & Baffle: http://nira-rocketry.org/LeadingEdge/Phantom4000.pdf
www.encompasserve.org/~kaplow_r/ www.nira-rocketry.org www.nar.org
Save Model Rocketry from the HSA! http://www.space-rockets.com/congress.html
ken
RT11 runs fine on LSI/11's both in a standalone, but also in some third
party networked applications. A company in the Netherlands, Techlan,
made redundant token passing network cards for Unibus and Qbus, booting
them of a central RT11 server. They went very well indeed in a diskless
environment, used for process control by companies such as Outokumpu
the Finish mining comglomerate and in conjuction with Gamma 11 systems
from DEC/Philips.... so should have run fine on an console LSI-11
Ken Kirkby
K. J. Kirkby and Associates P/L
Bill/Carolyn Pechter
>
>I never tried running [RT11] it on the Console of the VAX, though it would
>probably work just fine (though one drive is a bit cramped). As for
>running on a VAX, only on one which has RTEM installed.
>
> Megan Gentry
> Former RT-11 Developer
The RT11 console was on the 86x0.
I don't think the stuff that ran on the 11/780 was RT11 although
it used that disk format.
RT11 worked best on 11/785's which had more memory than the 11/780... IIRC
The 11/780 had only 16k or was it 12k. I don't think it was just 8k..
The 11/785 IIRC had 24k of memory on the 11/03 (on the upgraded boxes)
New ones used to use the LSI 11/2.
Bill
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Bill and/or Carolyn Pechter | pec...@shell.monmouth.com |
| Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in |
| a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Bob WIllard
By the summer of '65, we had a TTY terminal in my office tied through a
Bell (103?) modem over dial-up lines to a time-shared GE system in
Phoenix running a version of Dartmouth Basic. So, 1964 seems pretty
credible to me.
{In the same time frame, we had a "terminal" used to dial into an IBM
host (7044?) in upstate New York running the version du jour of Quiktran;
that "terminal" (IBM 1030?) included a card reader and a printer.
Basic was primitive, but pretty reliable; Quiktran was more ambitious
and not at all reliable. Phone lines were extremely unreliable and
protocols were, by current standards, nonexistent: for Basic, if the
character echoed did not match what you'd typed, delete it and retype
it.}
--
Cheers, Bob
Glenn Everhart
that booted and ran from DECtape also, though DOS had a built in
limit to the number of files it allowed to be opened on a DECtape
at any one time that limited its usefulness there. It could have
been lifted but DOS swapped so much that I ran out of patience
trying to use it. Many other machines also could boot from
DECtape; I believe even some of the old pdp10s did this. I used
to boot KM9/15 off DECtape every day too.
By modern standards 576 blocks of 512 bytes isn't much space, but
somehow we got a lot done with it back then.
Glenn Everhart
Lars Poulsen
>> And OS-8 could even run with *only* DECtape as the "system disk", too!!
Douglas A. Gwyn wrote:
> I once ran RT-11 off DECtape on a PDP-11/70 in DEC's
> Marlboro facility. It was amusing.
Three phrases: VAX-11/730. TU-58. Microcode load.
The TU-58 was a cassette tape (actually, a miniature QIC, IIRC)
interfaced through a DL-11 UART, used as a block device, usually
with an RT-11 file structure. It made a DECtape look good.
I heard to my amazement, that the Soviet VAX-cloning group cloned
the 730, TU-58 and all. That was so stupid. They should at least
have replaced the TU-58 with an 8080 controlling a floppy disk.
--
/ Lars Poulsen +1-805-569-5277 http://www.beagle-ears.com/lars/
125 South Ontare Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 USA la...@beagle-ears.com
Douglas A. Gwyn
> REAL DecTape, or that hightmare that was TU58?
Real DECtape.
paramucho
<Everhar...@gce.com> wrote:
>OS/8 booted from real DECtape. So did RT11. I had a DOS-11 version
>that booted and ran from DECtape also, though DOS had a built in
>limit to the number of files it allowed to be opened on a DECtape
>at any one time that limited its usefulness there. It could have
>been lifted but DOS swapped so much that I ran out of patience
>trying to use it.
That's why RT-11 went through all the pain of a position-independent
KMON -- so that they could keep it in memory as long as possible to
reduce trips back to reload it from DECtape. It wasn't necessary
performance-wise with a disk-based platform.
> Many other machines also could boot from
>DECtape; I believe even some of the old pdp10s did this. I used
>to boot KM9/15 off DECtape every day too.
>
>By modern standards 576 blocks of 512 bytes isn't much space, but
>somehow we got a lot done with it back then.
It seemed like a vast expanse to me at the time.
Douglas A. Gwyn
> That's why RT-11 went through all the pain of a position-independent
> KMON -- so that they could keep it in memory as long as possible to
> reduce trips back to reload it from DECtape. It wasn't necessary
> performance-wise with a disk-based platform.
RT-11 was *not* a disk-based platform. Of course you had
to load it from somewhere, but once loaded it was resident.
That is obviously important for a real-time system. In
fact, most contemporary PDP-11 operating systems, Unix
included, kept the kernel resident.
paramucho
RT-11 *could* act like a memory-resident system, but only if you
obeyed some pretty strict memory usage guide lines. If you requested
all background memory then the system would mark KMON non-resident and
it would be reloaded from the system device the next time it was
required. The same sort of thing happened with the USR. In terms of
Unix, KMON was equivalent to the Shell application, which was also not
memory resident.
Thomas Dickey
> On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 13:31:28 -0400, Glenn Everhart
> <Everhar...@gce.com> wrote:
>>OS/8 booted from real DECtape. So did RT11. I had a DOS-11 version
>>that booted and ran from DECtape also, though DOS had a built in
>>limit to the number of files it allowed to be opened on a DECtape
>>at any one time that limited its usefulness there. It could have
>>been lifted but DOS swapped so much that I ran out of patience
>>trying to use it.
> That's why RT-11 went through all the pain of a position-independent
> KMON -- so that they could keep it in memory as long as possible to
> reduce trips back to reload it from DECtape. It wasn't necessary
> performance-wise with a disk-based platform.
I'd thought the position-independence was because not all of the commands would
fit into the available memory (or perhaps I'm thinking of a different level).
I patched the monitor so that if the date wasn't set, typing any command would
branch to the date command - forcing people to remember to set the date. From
that I seem to recall that the commands were organized into 3-4 overlay
sections. (This was version 2, iirc, in 1976).
Peter da Silva
paramucho <i...@hammo.com> wrote:
>RT-11 *could* act like a memory-resident system, but only if you
>obeyed some pretty strict memory usage guide lines. If you requested
>all background memory then the system would mark KMON non-resident and
>it would be reloaded from the system device the next time it was
>required. The same sort of thing happened with the USR. In terms of
>Unix, KMON was equivalent to the Shell application, which was also not
>memory resident.
I suspect this was a fairly common design at the time: CP/M did the same
thing with the CCP (Console Command Processor), though given CP/M's history
it could well have been copying RT-11 there too.
--
Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. 29.6852N 95.5770W WWFD?
"Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept"
-- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans)
Paul Repacholi
> In article <4b2dndNoSs4...@comcast.com>, "Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAG...@null.net> writes:
>> Rob Warnock wrote:
>>> And OS-8 could even run with *only* DECtape as the "system disk",
>>> too!!
>> I once ran RT-11 off DECtape on a PDP-11/70 in DEC's Marlboro
>> facility. It was amusing.
> REAL DecTape, or that hightmare that was TU58? I always wanted to
> meet the engineer that came up with the TU58, with sharp impliments
> in hand...
We used to run the PDP-6 from DECtapes when the disks where scrod...
That was real DECtapes though, and quite reasonable.
I have also run a 11/44 from TU-58 as the system disk. I can promise
you, it is something you never want to do. To init it I set it going,
then went to the tavern across the road for lunch. I think that is the
only way you can, other wise you will kill off the `failed' init...
Light and blunt please, we want it to be *SLOOOOWWW* and painfull!
Pity no one did a RSP disk or floppy for diags and the like...
--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.
paramucho
wrote:
It was still reasonably simple code in V2. In V3 they added support
for the full DCL interpreter in the PIC KMON (and KMOVLY overlay)
code. You know, subroutines that maintain a value which they use to
compute how much the return path has been relocated by.
I recently found the text of A SHORT HISTORY OF RT-11 that I did for
the mini-tasker many years ago. I'll try to get it reformatted and
post it here later this year, although I'd like to catch with some
more recent versions of RT-11 first.
Frank Arnold
> I have also run a 11/44 from TU-58 as the system disk. I can promise
> you, it is something you never want to do. To init it I set it going,
> then went to the tavern across the road for lunch. I think that is the
> only way you can, other wise you will kill off the `failed' init...
>
> Light and blunt please, we want it to be *SLOOOOWWW* and painfull!
> Pity no one did a RSP disk or floppy for diags and the like...
>
http://www.SpareTimeGizmos.com/Hardware/TU58_Emulator.htm
Frank
Zane H. Healy
> The RT11 console was on the 86x0.
Wasn't the console for those either a Pro350 or Pro380 running some odd
verison of P/OS.
Zane
Douglas A. Gwyn
> RT-11 *could* act like a memory-resident system, but only if you
> obeyed some pretty strict memory usage guide lines. If you requested
> all background memory then the system would mark KMON non-resident and
> it would be reloaded from the system device the next time it was
> required.
I was talking about during the execution of the (foreground)
task. Unless the task made an explicit disk I/O request,
the disk was not used until after the task terminated.
Don Stokes
Galen <gspamt...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Somebody used to distribute a Basic-Plus uncompiler, which was a
>pretty cool and magical tool to impress other computer lab staff with.
We had one of these under RSTS/E. The company had installed a few
tur(n)key systems with smallish disks (MicroPDP-11s, mainly) where the
source to the accounting package on them wasn't provided. DECOMP (Or
DCOMP, I forget now) worked wonders on these cases.
"Here's a pdp11, a terminal with no screen editing capability, a line
printer, a stack of change requests and no source. See you in a couple
of hours."
"Gee, thanks."
-- don
Don Stokes
Quite a lot of things were. RT-11 volumes were (a) simple, (b) kind of
a lowest common denominator; ever pdp11/VAX platform support RT-11
volumes to some extent, e.g. through FLX or EXCHANGE. VAX consoles
(even the micoroprocessor ones) used RT-11 filesystems; the only ones
that didn't format their console media as RT-11 filesystems were the
Nautilus process with their DEC Pro consoles.
HSCs also used RT-11 filesystems. I'm sure quite a few other things did
too.
-- don
Christine Ricketts/Andrew Stewart
"Megan" <m...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:bfcqoj$s8j$1...@pcls4.std.com...[cut]
>
> >Interesting. The RT-11 V5.5 SPD does not mention the PDP-11/70
> >yet p257 of the RT-11 V5.5 Mini Reference Manual has bit 14 of
> >the Configuration Word 2 is set if it is a PDP-11/70 processor.
>
> RT-11 does indeed run on 11/70s, though for some reason I forget after
> so many years, we couldn't specifically say that it was supported on
> same.
>
> >Was this used for the RT-11 Emulation under RSTS/E and/or RSX,
> >or did RT-11 run native on this beast?
>
> It runs native... I used to run it all the time back in the V3 days
> on an 11/70 at DEC in the ed services lab at PK2 (when ed services
> was in maynard).
Most interesting. Thanks.
> >PS. I was told RT-11 runs on the VAX-11/780,
> >very easily on the LSI-11 console processor,
> >at least once in compatability mode for testing purposes. :-)
>
> I never tried running it on the Console of the VAX, though it would
> probably work just fine (though one drive is a bit cramped). As for
> running on a VAX, only on one which has RTEM installed.
>
> Megan Gentry
> Former RT-11 Developer
The VAX-11/780 had a bit in the PSW so that it would execute
a subset of PDP-11 instructions, aka "compatability mode".
No Memory Management, No Floating Point.
I was told that someone "munged" up some VAX-11 Boot Code
that set up the VAX-11 machine environment so that the
PDP-11 Compatability Mode could access devices in Bank 7,
then booted RT-11 SJ and/or FB.
Regards, Andy.
John Gemignani, Jr.
"Christine Ricketts/Andrew Stewart" <u12...@uxnxixtxe.com.au> wrote in
message news:3f1cc...@news.iprimus.com.au...
I played quite a bit with some of this, as the 780 was a very simple machine
to work with.
Comrades got 11M running the kernel by putting the machine into
compatibility mode after
loading the system image.
-John
paramucho
That's a cool idea. It would have needed some VM support. A VAX
converts PDP-11 interrupts into VAX signals -- so something would have
had to thunk them back to the PDP-11. Hardware interrupts would would
have been caught in native mode and thunked into the PDP-11 space as
well. Other code would probably have caught attempts to write to an
unmapped I/O page and then translated those as appropriate. It
wouldn't have taken much code though, and voila, a useful VAX.
John Santos
I think you're thinking of the 85x0/8700/88x0's, which had Pros with
P/OS as consoles. I can't remember if they were 350's, 380's, or both.
I think the 8600/8650 had a PDP-11 console with an RL02 instead of
a floppy. No idea what O/S (if any) was on them.
--
John Santos
Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
781-861-0670 ext 539
Bob Koehler
> In article <bfcqoj$s8j$1...@pcls4.std.com>, Megan <m...@TheWorld.com> wrote:
>>
>>I never tried running [RT11] it on the Console of the VAX, though it would
>>probably work just fine (though one drive is a bit cramped). As for
>>running on a VAX, only on one which has RTEM installed.
>>
>> Megan Gentry
>> Former RT-11 Developer
>
> The RT11 console was on the 86x0.
>
> I don't think the stuff that ran on the 11/780 was RT11 although
> it used that disk format.
The 11/780 console LSI-11 did not run RT-11, but it sure looked
RT-11 based.
Bob Koehler
> In article <4+Y7aD$kE...@elias.decus.ch>,
> Paul Sture <p_s...@elias.decus.ch> wrote:
>>The 11/780 console floppy was an RT-11 volume.
>
> Quite a lot of things were. RT-11 volumes were (a) simple, (b) kind of
> a lowest common denominator; ever pdp11/VAX platform support RT-11
> volumes to some extent, e.g. through FLX or EXCHANGE.
VMS' EXCHANGE utility runs just fine on Alphas, too.
Christopher McNabb
> In article <bdc65a53.03071...@posting.google.com>,
> Galen <gspamt...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>Somebody used to distribute a Basic-Plus uncompiler, which was a
>>pretty cool and magical tool to impress other computer lab staff with.
>
> We had one of these under RSTS/E.
Just looking on my pdp-11/83 I see that I have the source for a Basic-Plus
un-compiler. It consistes of two files located in PPN [111,111] titled
unbac.bas and unbac1.bas. According to the copyright statement in the
files, they were written in 1979 by Bill Lortz.
paramucho
(Bob Koehler) wrote:
Well, that's wierd because the RT-11 RL01/RL02 device driver had
extensive (and extremely horrible) modifications to support the 11/780
console disk. Perhaps it just didn't *say* it was RT-11.
Kevin Handy
I've tried to locate him, but without success. It's probably still under
copyright by him under his old company, but I'm not sure.
It would be great for someone to locate him and get copyright release
for this program.
Kevin Handy
I've tried to locate him, but without success. It's probably still under
Sam Seiber
If the Bill Lortz you are talking about is who I think he is, he is
easy enough to find at http://people.yahoo.com
Use CA for the state. He was a good friend of mine in high school
('75), and
spent the early part of his career programming PDP-11's. He knew his
RSTS/E. Pretty sure it has to be the same guy. I havn't talked
to him for a few years, so I am not sure if he is still in CA.
Worth a try at least.
Sam Seiber
Kevin Handy
This one would have been from Idaho, and spent a lot of time here.
Last I heard was that he was in Tennessee, but that was many years
ago.
Sam Seiber
Yep, Skyline High school, Idaho Falls, ID. As of about 3-5 years
he was in the LA area of CA. I would try the number for Bill C Lortz
as shown at people.yahoo.com. That is what I did a few years
ago when I got ahold of him. It may take a few tries as he
is pretty busy.
Sam Seiber
Bob Kaplow
> In article <bdc65a53.03071...@posting.google.com>,
> Galen <gspamt...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>Somebody used to distribute a Basic-Plus uncompiler, which was a
>>pretty cool and magical tool to impress other computer lab staff with.
>
> We had one of these under RSTS/E. The company had installed a few
> tur(n)key systems with smallish disks (MicroPDP-11s, mainly) where the
I thought I was the originator of that. For many years, back around the mid
80s, my .sig or mail header or whatever was "There is no N in Turnkey!"
> source to the accounting package on them wasn't provided. DECOMP (Or
> DCOMP, I forget now) worked wonders on these cases.
Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD"
>>> To reply, remove the TRABoD! <<<
Kaplow Klips & Baffle: http://nira-rocketry.org/LeadingEdge/Phantom4000.pdf
www.encompasserve.org/~kaplow_r/ www.nira-rocketry.org www.nar.org
Save Model Rocketry from the HSA! http://www.space-rockets.com/congress.html
Christopher McNabb
> Yep, Skyline High school, Idaho Falls, ID. As of about 3-5 years
> he was in the LA area of CA. I would try the number for Bill C Lortz
> as shown at people.yahoo.com. That is what I did a few years
> ago when I got ahold of him. It may take a few tries as he
> is pretty busy.
>
> Sam Seiber
Well, if someone can contact Bill Lortz and get permission, I will gladly
host the unbac sources on my machine here at Virginia Tech.
Bob Kaplow
> "Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAG...@null.net> wrote in message
> news:4b2dndNoSs4...@comcast.com...
>> Rob Warnock wrote:
>> > And OS-8 could even run with *only* DECtape as the "system disk", too!!
>>
>> I once ran RT-11 off DECtape on a PDP-11/70 in DEC's
>> Marlboro facility. It was amusing.
>>
>
> yet p257 of the RT-11 V5.5 Mini Reference Manual has bit 14 of
> the Configuration Word 2 is set if it is a PDP-11/70 processor.
As many have already noted, RT-11 was never supported on the 11/70. But in
my experience it worked fine. There was even an 11/70 console light blinking
pattern built into the RT-11 idle loop.
[Each PDP-11 OS had a unique blinken lights pattern on the 11/70. I long
since forgot what they all were.]
Kevin Handy
>
> Yep, Skyline High school, Idaho Falls, ID. As of about 3-5 years
> he was in the LA area of CA. I would try the number for Bill C Lortz
> as shown at people.yahoo.com. That is what I did a few years
> ago when I got ahold of him. It may take a few tries as he
> is pretty busy.
>
> Sam Seiber
Yup. That's the one. Didn't know where he ended up, and no search
turned up anything useful when I tried it a couple of years ago.
Bob Koehler
>
> Well, that's wierd because the RT-11 RL01/RL02 device driver had
> extensive (and extremely horrible) modifications to support the 11/780
> console disk. Perhaps it just didn't *say* it was RT-11.
>
Not suprizing tofin that end up in the RT-11 kernel, but the 11/780
console did not have the full RT-11 command set.
Zane H. Healy
> I think you're thinking of the 85x0/8700/88x0's, which had Pros with
> P/OS as consoles. I can't remember if they were 350's, 380's, or both.
> I think the 8600/8650 had a PDP-11 console with an RL02 instead of
> a floppy. No idea what O/S (if any) was on them.
That's what I was thinking of. The consoles started as 350's and then when
they ran out of them switched to 380's. I've got the console (380) and
d|i|g|i|t|a|l badge off of one, that a coworkers Dad scrapped a few years
ago.
Zane
Jerome H. Fine
Jerome Fine replies:
I used RSTS/E many, many years ago - probably around 1975 to 1979.
There was a COMPILE command which saved the source file as a
*.BAC file as opposed to the normal *.BAS file. When saved in that
form, there was a definite advantage, but I can't remember what that
advantage was. Can anyone else remember?
However, whenever I did what was usually done with a *.BAS file
(to look at the source) to a *.BAC file, the source code also appeared
automatically. Can anyone confirm this?
Also, what am I remembering when I relate this? The *.BAC file
doesn't sound like a truly compiled and linked form!
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
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Jerome H. Fine
> >In article d...@news.daedalus.co.nz (Don Stokes) writes:
> > Quite a lot of things were. RT-11 volumes were (a) simple, (b) kind of
> > a lowest common denominator; ever pdp11/VAX platform support RT-11
> > volumes to some extent, e.g. through FLX or EXCHANGE.
> VMS' EXCHANGE utility runs just fine on Alphas, too.
Jerome Fine replies:
The last time I used EXCHANCE on a large hard drive
that was being used under RT-11 (actually a magneto
optical media for the Sony SMO S-501 which holds
295 MBytes per side), EXCHANGE allowed me to
look at ONLY the first partition on the drive.
In order to look at the other 8 RT-11 partitions, I was
forced to abandon the ability to look at RT-11 partition
zero and place the VMS file structure there - which
wasted the first 32 MBytes of the drive. In those first
32 MBytes, I managed (over a period of a few days)
to figure out how to set up VMS files of 65536 blocks
in the exact locations of the other 7 RT-11 partitions
PLUS one additional file of about 47000 blocks at
the end of the media where the last RT-11 partition
was located.
Since only about 6 of the 9 RT-11 partitions were
actually being used, it was not a problem to give up
RT-11 partition zero. Under RT-11, partition zero
was always left untouched and each of the RT-11
partitions that were needed by the VMS system
were copied to the next RT-11 partition up - where
the successive VMS files were located.
I thought the solution rather elegant, but maybe NOW
EXCHANGE allows the user to specify the RT-11
partition number as opposed to using ONLY RT-11
partition zero. Does anyone know?
Also, now that RT-11 is able to handle dates up to
2099, does EXCHANGE also know about the
new layout of the DATE word for RT-11 files?
John Santos
> >Christopher McNabb wrote:
>
> > >On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 02:55:42 +0000, Don Stokes wrote:
> > >> Galen <gspamt...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >>Somebody used to distribute a Basic-Plus uncompiler, which was a
> > >>pretty cool and magical tool to impress other computer lab staff with.
> > >We had one of these under RSTS/E.
> > Just looking on my pdp-11/83 I see that I have the source for a Basic-Plus
> > un-compiler. It consistes of two files located in PPN [111,111] titled
> > unbac.bas and unbac1.bas. According to the copyright statement in the
> > files, they were written in 1979 by Bill Lortz.
>
> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> I used RSTS/E many, many years ago - probably around 1975 to 1979.
> There was a COMPILE command which saved the source file as a
> *.BAC file as opposed to the normal *.BAS file. When saved in that
> form, there was a definite advantage, but I can't remember what that
> advantage was. Can anyone else remember?
>
> However, whenever I did what was usually done with a *.BAS file
> (to look at the source) to a *.BAC file, the source code also appeared
> automatically. Can anyone confirm this?
>
> Also, what am I remembering when I relate this? The *.BAC file
> doesn't sound like a truly compiled and linked form!
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Jerome Fine
Basic-Plus is a push-pop compiler (like UCSD Pascal and Java.)
When source code is read in (from a .BAS file) or typed in
interactively, it is parsed and compiled into instructions
for a virtual stack-oriented (push/pop) system. The COMPILE
command saves the push/pop code in a disk file (.BAC file), so
it can be reloaded and re-executed without being parsed or
compiled. (This makes it *much* faster, a fraction of a
second to load and start executing a .BAC file vs. 10's of
seconds for a .BAS file.)
Michael Ross
Kaplow) wrote:
>[Each PDP-11 OS had a unique blinken lights pattern on the 11/70. I long
>since forgot what they all were.]
IIRC, one had a 'snake chasing its tail' pattern - several LEDs would
light in sequence, starting on the left, running across to the right
and disappearing, then starting on the left again...
?RSTS???
Mike
http://www.corestore.org
The avalanche has already started
It is too late for the pebbles to vote...
Don Stokes
Michael Ross <aba...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>On 22 Jul 2003 14:26:32 -0500, kapl...@encompasserve.org.TRABoD (Bob
>Kaplow) wrote:
>
>>[Each PDP-11 OS had a unique blinken lights pattern on the 11/70. I long
>>since forgot what they all were.]
>
>IIRC, one had a 'snake chasing its tail' pattern - several LEDs would
>light in sequence, starting on the left, running across to the right
>and disappearing, then starting on the left again...
>
>?RSTS???
Yep. And on machines with supervisor mode (until recently when
supervisor mode got used for real work), they did something clever with
the addressing so that the same pattern, in reverse, appeared on the
address lines. It looked like the snakes were chasing each other around
and around the two rows of lights. It looked bloody good in a darkened
room full of 11/70s...
- don
Stan Barr
>On 22 Jul 2003 14:26:32 -0500, kapl...@encompasserve.org.TRABoD (Bob
>Kaplow) wrote:
>
>>[Each PDP-11 OS had a unique blinken lights pattern on the 11/70. I long
>>since forgot what they all were.]
>
>IIRC, one had a 'snake chasing its tail' pattern - several LEDs would
>light in sequence, starting on the left, running across to the right
>and disappearing, then starting on the left again...
>
>?RSTS???
Yep. The blinkenlites on my 486 "fake" PDP-11 (E11) do that.
--
Cheers,
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(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)
The future was never like this!
Christian Corti
> Yep. And on machines with supervisor mode (until recently when
> supervisor mode got used for real work), they did something clever with
> the addressing so that the same pattern, in reverse, appeared on the
> address lines. It looked like the snakes were chasing each other around
> and around the two rows of lights. It looked bloody good in a darkened
> room full of 11/70s...
With what OS?
And what about 11/45s? At least mine shows a nice pattern with RSX11M.
RT11 shows nothing interesting at all, neither does any version of UNIX.
Christian
Paul Repacholi
> I played quite a bit with some of this, as the 780 was a very simple
> machine to work with. Comrades got 11M running the kernel by
> putting the machine into compatibility mode after loading the system
> image.
Are you sure you are not thinking of `ZIGLET' on the 750s? It could
boot un modified 11M or M-PLUS.
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Kevin Handy
>
> I used RSTS/E many, many years ago - probably around 1975 to 1979.
> There was a COMPILE command which saved the source file as a
> *.BAC file as opposed to the normal *.BAS file. When saved in that
> form, there was a definite advantage, but I can't remember what that
> advantage was. Can anyone else remember?
Speed mostly, but some small memory size help too. The system
didn't need to spend time parsing the source every time it was
run, and didn't need to allocate room for the source. It also
hid the source code from prying eyes.
> However, whenever I did what was usually done with a *.BAS file
> (to look at the source) to a *.BAC file, the source code also appeared
> automatically. Can anyone confirm this?
The BAC files are a "push-pop" compilation of the source.
Not readable to mere humans. The original code is converted
into an RPN (reverse polish) format somewhat akin to java.
The opcodes used were not native PDP-11 codes.
> Also, what am I remembering when I relate this? The *.BAC file
> doesn't sound like a truly compiled and linked form!
It isn't compiled down to machine language (you need basic+2 for
that, and even then it's not much different from push-pop).
You could probably write a run-time for other machines,
but you would need to also write code to handle the PDP-11
floating point formats.
Christine Ricketts/Andrew Stewart
"Zane H. Healy" <hea...@shell1.aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:bfk7o...@enews3.newsguy.com...
> In comp.os.rsts John Santos <JO...@egh.com> wrote:
> > I think you're thinking of the 85x0/8700/88x0's, which had Pros with
> > P/OS as consoles. I can't remember if they were 350's, 380's, or both.
>
when
> they ran out of them switched to 380's. I've got the console (380) and
> d|i|g|i|t|a|l badge off of one, that a coworkers Dad scrapped a few years
> ago.
DEC PRO 350s as consoles? The SECV got the first VAX 8500 in Australia.
It had a DEC PRO 380. Our later VAX 8800s used them too.
The last VAX 8820 had a MicroVAX II as the console processor.
The Pro had an CTI option with Intel chips that gave one 8 bit parallel
output port, one 8 bit parallel input port and one 8 bit parallel
bidirectional port. I'm fairly sure this was how the Console Processor
interfaced to the VAX.
> > I think the 8600/8650 had a PDP-11 console with an RL02 instead of
> > a floppy. No idea what O/S (if any) was on them.
It was a Qbus PDP-11/23 with an RLV12 controller.
A Qbus extender fed into the VAX circuity.
Regards, Andy.
Bill/Carolyn Pechter
Zane H. Healy <hea...@shell1.aracnet.com> wrote:
>In alt.sys.pdp10 Bill/Carolyn Pechter <pec...@shell.monmouth.com> wrote:
>> The RT11 console was on the 86x0.
>
>verison of P/OS.
>
> Zane
Nope the Pro3x0 Vax console happened after I left DEC on the 88xx
and 87xx IIRC. The console on the 86x0 was a T11 with RL02.
Bill
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| Bill and/or Carolyn Pechter | pec...@shell.monmouth.com |
| Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in |
| a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Bill/Carolyn Pechter
Christian Corti <Christi...@studserv.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
>And what about 11/45s? At least mine shows a nice pattern with RSX11M.
>RT11 shows nothing interesting at all, neither does any version of UNIX.
>
>Christian
You need to sysgen RT11 for the light pattern.
It has a pretty slick one. IIRC it had one light on each end moving
to the center bit -- they touch, then bounce out to the ends and then
two lights do it and then three.