On 07/02/2012 02:41 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
MRRT-11 (Memory-Resident, RT-11) is what you are trying to think of.
You needed an RT-11 license for the load (and create) host, then
licenses for each MRRT-11 system. I used this when I was a DEC OEM for
a while.
Is this around anywhere? It sounds like lots of fun.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 07/02/2012 10:58 AM, Bob Armstrong wrote:
Was that the RTOS used with the T-11 (the first single-chip PDP-11?)
I seem to remember that it was used as the RTOS in the LA-120 printer.
Did the LA120 have a T11 in it? Wow - makes me want to go take mine apart
and look :-)
I just picked up four more LA120s with some 11/84s and a bunch of
RA90s. (very happy!) I will check tonight if you don't look at yours
by then.
For example, the RFxx drives (all of 'em, I think) used a T11 and I'm
pretty sure ran some variant of RSX-11S.
Wow, I didn't know that, that's neat!
The HSC controllers had PDP-11s in them, didn't they? I don't remember
which model but I bet the OS was another RSX derivative.
The HSC50 uses an F11, the HSC70 and HSC9x use J11s.
Some of the bigger DECserver terminal servers were PDP-11 based (not T11,
but an 11/53 for example). Don't know if the little ones (e.g.
DECserver-100, 200, etc) were T11 or 68K based.
The -200 is 68K-based. I don't know about the -100. The -550 is the
one that's basically a PDP-11/53 with different EPROMs.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 2012-07-02 21:49, Phil Mendelsohn wrote:
On 12-07-02 09:13 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
To comment a tiny bit of what I know on RSX. RSX-11M was a clean
reimplementation of RSX by Dave Cutler.
To split hairs, -11M was a redo of -11D, which Cutler brought with him
from DuPont.
I have no problems calling -11M a redo of -11D. As far as I know, it was not done by Cutler at DuPont, but something he did after starting at DEC. But that is just what I gathered from reading various sources over the years... I could very well be wrong.
One of the goals of 11M was to get something that could run on a really
small PDP-11 without an MMU, which 11M can. (I seriously doubt that
could ever be done with -11D.)
-11M+, which came later, was basically reimplementing some of the stuff
in -11D, since -11M+ had as the target the large PDP-11 systems.
Specifically the 11/70, as well as the never introduced 11/74. Which is
why -11M+ also have a very capable online reconfiguration tool (that
turned out to be useful in general, but it was specifically written for
the 11/74).
So -11M+ requires even more hardware than -11D, but does things
differently than -11D.
One of my favourite Cutler stories was that Sales was trying to
differentiate the products by telling customers that -11M (the cheaper
OS) wouldn't support as much memory as -11D. No doubt this was a
bastardized version of saying that -11M didn't *require* an MMU. In any
case, D cost more than M, by a lot, but it wasn't readily apparent why.
Cutler was not pleased with this scenario for various reasons. He was
offended that someone would spend more money to waste resources when
they could have a tighter system cheaper, IIRC, but he was also mostly
just pissed because it was not true that M wouldn't handle as much
memory as D if you had it. So he sent his *own* letter to customers,
telling them that the price difference was not justified in terms of
expansion. Sales loved that<!>, but -11M has done fairly well since.
Indeed. -11M has done very well over the years. Especially if you include -11S and -11M-PLUS in that. All other versions of RSX faded into obscurity, more or less.
And Cutler seems to have been quite a person to deal with already back then. :-)
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
On 12-07-02 09:13 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
To comment a tiny bit of what I know on RSX. RSX-11M was a clean
reimplementation of RSX by Dave Cutler.
To split hairs, -11M was a redo of -11D, which Cutler brought with him from DuPont.
One of the goals of 11M was to get something that could run on a really
small PDP-11 without an MMU, which 11M can. (I seriously doubt that
could ever be done with -11D.)
-11M+, which came later, was basically reimplementing some of the stuff
in -11D, since -11M+ had as the target the large PDP-11 systems.
Specifically the 11/70, as well as the never introduced 11/74. Which is
why -11M+ also have a very capable online reconfiguration tool (that
turned out to be useful in general, but it was specifically written for
the 11/74).
So -11M+ requires even more hardware than -11D, but does things
differently than -11D.
One of my favourite Cutler stories was that Sales was trying to differentiate the products by telling customers that -11M (the cheaper OS) wouldn't support as much memory as -11D. No doubt this was a bastardized version of saying that -11M didn't *require* an MMU. In any case, D cost more than M, by a lot, but it wasn't readily apparent why.
Cutler was not pleased with this scenario for various reasons. He was offended that someone would spend more money to waste resources when they could have a tighter system cheaper, IIRC, but he was also mostly just pissed because it was not true that M wouldn't handle as much memory as D if you had it. So he sent his *own* letter to customers, telling them that the price difference was not justified in terms of expansion. Sales loved that<!>, but -11M has done fairly well since.
Cheers,
Phil M
On 2012-07-02 20:06, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
On Jul 2, 2012, at 11:47 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2012-07-02 16:40, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
On Jul 2, 2012, at 10:21 AM, Bob Armstrong wrote:
...
RSX-11S was the "embedded system OS" of the PDP-11 world (at least as far
as DEC's offerings went).
That and RT-11. And MicroPower-Pascal, of which I know nothing apart from its name. Was that the RTOS used with the T-11 (the first single-chip PDP-11?) I seem to remember that it was used as the RTOS in the LA-120 printer. Having a real OS allowed it to do fancy stuff like bidirectional printing, the first DEC printer to do so.
I'm not sure how practical the other ones were as embedded systems. The big point with RSX-11S is that it's all just one binary for the whole system. There are no disks. In fact, you can't even have things on disk in the sense that you think for other systems.
Without disks, you could put this all on PROM, flash, or whatever. Or (which I think was more common), download from the net, and then run.
As far as I know, RT likes a disk, or something disklike, such as DECtape (real or even the fake "DECtape II"). But Micropower, I'm pretty sure, is a deep embedded system that runs from ROM/RAM.
I remember MicroPower Pascal, but never used it, or even saw it.
-11S is always diskless and memory resident, so it's easy.
-11S, -11M and -11M-PLUS all share the same sources, by the way. (At least as far as capabilities are shared - there are sources that are M+ only for instance.)
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Paul_Koning at Dell.com
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2012 14:07
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] This is probably been asked already but....
On Jul 2, 2012, at 11:47 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2012-07-02 16:40, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
On Jul 2, 2012, at 10:21 AM, Bob Armstrong wrote:
...
RSX-11S was the "embedded system OS" of the PDP-11 world
(at least
as far as DEC's offerings went).
That and RT-11. And MicroPower-Pascal, of which I know
nothing apart from its name. Was that the RTOS used with the
T-11 (the first single-chip PDP-11?) I seem to remember that
it was used as the RTOS in the LA-120 printer. Having a real
OS allowed it to do fancy stuff like bidirectional printing,
the first DEC printer to do so.
I'm not sure how practical the other ones were as embedded
systems. The big point with RSX-11S is that it's all just one
binary for the whole system. There are no disks. In fact, you
can't even have things on disk in the sense that you think
for other systems.
Without disks, you could put this all on PROM, flash, or
whatever. Or (which I think was more common), download from
the net, and then run.
As far as I know, RT likes a disk, or something disklike,
such as DECtape (real or even the fake "DECtape II"). But
Micropower, I'm pretty sure, is a deep embedded system that
runs from ROM/RAM.
paul
MRRT-11 (Memory-Resident, RT-11) is what you are trying to think of.
You needed an RT-11 license for the load (and create) host, then
licenses for each MRRT-11 system. I used this when I was a DEC OEM for
a while.
-Steve
On Jul 2, 2012, at 10:58 AM, Bob Armstrong wrote:
Was that the RTOS used with the T-11 (the first single-chip PDP-11?)
I seem to remember that it was used as the RTOS in the LA-120 printer.
Did the LA120 have a T11 in it? Wow - makes me want to go take mine apart
and look :-)
It's good that you brought this up, because I was going to ask about
examples of devices that used embedded PDP-11s, probably mostly DEC made but
not always.
For example, the RFxx drives (all of 'em, I think) used a T11 and I'm
pretty sure ran some variant of RSX-11S.
Not the RF11 :-)
paul
On Jul 2, 2012, at 11:47 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2012-07-02 16:40, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
On Jul 2, 2012, at 10:21 AM, Bob Armstrong wrote:
...
RSX-11S was the "embedded system OS" of the PDP-11 world (at least as far
as DEC's offerings went).
That and RT-11. And MicroPower-Pascal, of which I know nothing apart from its name. Was that the RTOS used with the T-11 (the first single-chip PDP-11?) I seem to remember that it was used as the RTOS in the LA-120 printer. Having a real OS allowed it to do fancy stuff like bidirectional printing, the first DEC printer to do so.
I'm not sure how practical the other ones were as embedded systems. The big point with RSX-11S is that it's all just one binary for the whole system. There are no disks. In fact, you can't even have things on disk in the sense that you think for other systems.
Without disks, you could put this all on PROM, flash, or whatever. Or (which I think was more common), download from the net, and then run.
As far as I know, RT likes a disk, or something disklike, such as DECtape (real or even the fake "DECtape II"). But Micropower, I'm pretty sure, is a deep embedded system that runs from ROM/RAM.
paul
On 2012-07-02 18:26, Steve Davidson wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
[mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Bob Armstrong
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2012 12:10
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: RE: [HECnet] This is probably been asked already but....
The PRO was for later VAXen. 8800-range, I think.
That must be where I saw it, because I remember a VAX with
what was clearly a PRO attached to it. We used to joke that
it was the only way DEC could sell the PROs :-)
The 86x0 uses a T11, and runs RT-11.
Was it like a FALCON/KXT11 board based thing, or some
custom T11 board?
How (where) did they get RT11 for it? The T11 had a few
oddities (e.g. no bus timeout traps) and AFAIK RT11 was never
supported on T11 systems. I've heard that there was an
unofficial, hacked up, copy of some RT11 release that would
work but I never saw a copy.
The 86x0 does in fact run a real version of RT-11. The disk sub-system
was a RL0x (can't remember if it was 1 or 2). It had its own set of
quirks - to say the least! The sources have macros to deal with the
T-11 differences. They were in the middle of the changes to RT-11 just
as I joined the group. One of the guys spent quite a bit of time in
Marlboro, MA trying to get the sub-system to deal with the RL0x.. It
was a beast! :-)
It's an RL02.
Not sure what part of the RLV12 or RL02 that was a beast. It's a bog standard RLV12 and RL02. RT-11 in general supports this without any issues.
Yes, there is a Q-bus in a VAX-86x0. It's in the same box as the first Unibus. The Q-bus only have the RLV12, and no other/additional peripherials are supported on the Q-bus.
The FE runs RT-11, but normally a specific program is started at boot time, which manages the whole system. You can reboot the FE with a special switch to tell it to not run that program, and then you instead get to the normal RT-11 prompt, and can do the same things as on any RT-11 system. You can also run the FE application by hand at that point.
The FE is a VAX-86x0 specific board, so I'm not sure what peculiarities might be in the hardware, which this version of RT-11 is adapted to.
The Q-bus comes out of the 86x0 backplane on two flat cables, which goes into the expansion box.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
