On 2012-07-02 16:58, 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 didn't think it did, but I'm not entirely sure...
The VT240 have a T11 in it. As do the DEUNA. And FE for some VAXen.
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.
Cool.
The RQDXn controllers also used a T11, but I have no idea what firmware
was inside them.
I don't have an idea either. Didn't even know it was a T11 on them.
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.
Nope. RT-11 derivate. F11 or J11, I think. Depending on model.
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. Actually if we go down that
path there were a number of PDP-11 and PDP-8 based front ends for the -10
that were essentially "terminal servers" (although we didn't call them as
such in those days) - the DC68/680I, DN20, etc. I actually worked on a
couple of those, and they had "ad hoc" software that didn't use any official
OS.
The DECserver with a PDP-11 was the -500, I think.
DN20 and similar stuff was essentially an 11/34, I think. They were running some RSX-derivate, I think, just like the -20 FE.
Johnny
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.
Johnny
Actually, the 8600/8650's used the T11 chip on a special board.
They ran RT11 (a version of it that was standard enough to let me run
RT11 adventure on the front end of an 8650).
--
d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now!
pechter-at-gmail.com
On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Bob Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> 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.
Oh, and I almost forgot - the only use of RT11 that I know of for an
"embedded" system was the CFEs for the VAX 780 and 8600 (on a 11/03 in the
former and a PRO in the latter). Are there any more?
Bob
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.
Oh, and I almost forgot - the only use of RT11 that I know of for an
"embedded" system was the CFEs for the VAX 780 and 8600 (on a 11/03 in the
former and a PRO in the latter). Are there any more?
Bob
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.
The RQDXn controllers also used a T11, but I have no idea what firmware
was inside them.
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.
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. Actually if we go down that
path there were a number of PDP-11 and PDP-8 based front ends for the -10
that were essentially "terminal servers" (although we didn't call them as
such in those days) - the DC68/680I, DN20, etc. I actually worked on a
couple of those, and they had "ad hoc" software that didn't use any official
OS.
Bob
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.
paul
Bob Armstrong wrote:
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.
M can run without an MMU?? RSX-11S can, but I don't think 11M can.
OK, 11S is just a stripped down 11M, but it was still a separate product.
Can you actually gen an unmapped system with a 11M distribution?
I have RSX-11M V4.0 RL01 kit, RSXM32 volume is an unmapped RSX-11M.
--
RSX-11M V4.0 BL32 28.K (BASELINE)
>RED DL:=SY:
>RED DL:=LB:
>MOU DL:RSXM32
>@DL:[1,2]STARTUP
>* PLEASE ENTER TIME AND DATE (HR:MN DD-MMM-YY) [S]:
--
SYSGEN asks if generated system should be unmapped, so probably you an generate it :)
On 2012-07-02 16:21, Bob Armstrong wrote:
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.
M can run without an MMU?? RSX-11S can, but I don't think 11M can.
It can. It's called an "unmapped" system. That's when you really need to start playing with all those values after partition names... Both at the MCR level, and the TKB level.
OK, 11S is just a stripped down 11M, but it was still a separate product.
Can you actually gen an unmapped system with a 11M distribution?
Yes.
And -11S is stripped down rather seriously. There are no file systems in -11S. -11S is basically a memory only thing. (Perfect for net bootable systems, btw...)
Also, 11S could run without any kind of disk or mass storage (e.g. a
complete 11S image could be downloaded via MOP) but I don't think 11M ever
could.
Correct. In fact, -11S never have any file system. You can always have the disk devices, but they are without structure.
-11M is disk based, always. Mapped or unmapped.
RSX-11S was the "embedded system OS" of the PDP-11 world (at least as far
as DEC's offerings went).
Yep.
In an unrelated question - was RSX-20F (the CFE for the KL10) based on
11S? In ran on an unmapped 11/40, so I assume it must have been.
It's actually more or less an unmapped -11M. Same reason. No disks in -11S. RSX-20F is using the shared RP06 as storage.
Johnny
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.
M can run without an MMU?? RSX-11S can, but I don't think 11M can.
OK, 11S is just a stripped down 11M, but it was still a separate product.
Can you actually gen an unmapped system with a 11M distribution?
Also, 11S could run without any kind of disk or mass storage (e.g. a
complete 11S image could be downloaded via MOP) but I don't think 11M ever
could.
RSX-11S was the "embedded system OS" of the PDP-11 world (at least as far
as DEC's offerings went).
In an unrelated question - was RSX-20F (the CFE for the KL10) based on
11S? In ran on an unmapped 11/40, so I assume it must have been.
Bob
On 2012-07-02 15:39, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
On Jul 1, 2012, at 9:02 PM, Steve Davidson wrote:
...
IAS-11 was based on RSX-11D.
I worked on that for my first job at DEC, supporting Typeset-11, which was a newspaper typesetting and advertisement management system. It was originally implemented as a turnkey product on top of RSX-11D, then ported to IAS. There was also a Typeset-8, which was created by the group right next to it and used some of the same terminals, but whether anything else carried over I don't know.
The relationship between those two was very obvious, especially since we turned off the timesharing piece and kept only the RSX compatible real time piece of IAS.
Curiously enough, it seems (I never got very close to it) that RSX-11M (and M+) were completely unrelated to -D apart from having a mostly common API (as we didn't call it yet). RSX-11D very clearly went back directly to RSX-15 -- I once saw a listing of RSX-15 lying around because it was supported very close to where I worked, and a glance at the first few pages showed lots of data structures identical in name, purpose, and layout to what the RSX-11D kernel used.
Paul, you're a wonderful source of information, as usual (both the previous post on DECnet history), and this...
To comment a tiny bit of what I know on RSX. RSX-11M was a clean reimplementation of RSX by Dave Cutler. Allegedly done in a rather short time, with the aim of much better utilization of resources.
As such, it did indeed implement more or less the same API, but the internals are all different. So user applications compile fine on either. The programs might even work fine without recompiling, but I don't know for sure.
Device drivers, and all stuff that knows anything about the kernel is rather different though.
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.
Johnny
