On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 12:10 PM, Bob Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
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.
I've actually got a FALCON board, so it's more than just an academic
interest.
Bob
Hello!
Ah now we are getting somewhere. That's the family of boards I'm
interested in. Any suggestions for obtaining one or any of them,
around here? (I'm in NYC.)
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
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.
I've actually got a FALCON board, so it's more than just an academic
interest.
Bob
On 2012-07-02 17:01, 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.
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?
The 86x0 uses a T11, and runs RT-11. You can even get into the RT-11 system and play around, if you want to.
I'm not sure how complete a RT-11 system you had on the VAX-11/780, since it was living on a single RX01 (or was that RX02?)
The PRO was for later VAXen. 8800-range, I think. Anyway, that one ran P/OS, which is RSX derived.
Johnny
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 :)
