I was working in Software Services (Maynard, MA) in the summer of 1980.
VAXWRK:: (VMS) was connected to ASTRIX:: (RSX) via DMC-11. ASTRIX:: was
charged with routing out of the building (PK2) using another DMC-11. I
do remember it was a rather bumpy road for a while but eventually they
got it right. SET HOST worked well enough for me to connect to the
other remote sites in MA and NH that I only had to travel once a week.
Otherwise I would have been travelling much more often.
-Steve
-----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: Thursday, April 04, 2013 5:08 PM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] VAX/VMS 1.50
On Apr 4, 2013, at 4:59 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
On 04/04/2013 04:45 PM, hvlems wrote:
No ethernet in '79, no phase IV. So a DU11?
Hmmmm. Does SIMH emulate that?
It doesn't look like it does. And I don't know that VMS ever supported
that device, anyway. RSX did, but various other systems tended to stay
away from it because of the high software overhead. I do know that VMS
supports DMC-11 (or DMR-11, essentially the same at the driver level),
and there is support for that in the in-development release of SIMH.
paul
On 04/05/2013 09:54 AM, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
A DMC-11 is essentially a KMC-11 with programming fixed in ROM, rather
than dowloadable in RAM, plus a line card. The KMC-11 processor is a
custom engine, its instruction set looks somewhat like microcode. No
connection to any Intel chips, that couldn't possibly have come within a
mile of the performance requirements. Come to think of it, the first use
of a 808x series chip in DEC products I can think of is the head servo
control processor in the RA80. There may have been 8031s in some other
spots, I no longer remember where I saw those.
The RA80 came out in 1981, I think.
The 8031 is a member of the 8051 family (it's an 8051 without on-chip
program ROM), which was introduced in 1980.
The earliest use of an Intel processor in a DEC machine that I'm aware of
is the KY11-LB console control board in a PDP-11/34, which was introduced in
1976. That board uses an 8008.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 9:54 AM, <Paul_Koning at dell.com> wrote:
On Apr 4, 2013, at 6:44 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
...
My 1976 Peripherals Handbook has a description of the DMC-11 in it.
Best version of that book ever ;_0
A DMC-11 is essentially a KMC-11 with programming fixed in ROM, rather than dowloadable in RAM, plus a line card. The KMC-11 processor is a custom engine, its instruction set looks somewhat like microcode.
Right. Now it's coming back.
No connection to any Intel chips, that couldn't possibly have come within a mile of the performance requirements. Come to think of it, the first use of a 808x series chip in DEC products I can think of is the head servo control processor in the RA80. There may have been 8031s in some other spots, I no longer remember where I saw those.
The 11/34 had an 8008-1 that ran the keypad console and could actually DMA on the Unibus (al beit very slowly).
...
Positive. It was RSTS V4A-12, which did not use an MMU and required only 28 kW of memory (24 kW for a minimal install). RSTS started requiring an MMU in version 5, the first version that was called RSTS/E (for "Extended" as in extended memory).
Cool.
Clem
On Apr 4, 2013, at 6:44 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
...
But that's for terminals up to 9600 baud. For networking, you'd use a DMC-11 unless your OS supported the cheaper devices and money was that tight -- that one goes back to about 1976 and delivers up to 1 Mb/s depending on model (up to 56 kB/s long haul, given suitable modems).
Hmm - are the DMC and DMR that old? I remember fighting the firmware in the them to allow high speed serial networking. They had a dedicated microprocessor on them (8080A or 8085 IIRC - but it may have been something custom). They were expensive, which why Berk-NET used 9600 baud serial lines, until we got 3COM & Interlan Ethernet cards at Berkeley in 1983.
My 1976 Peripherals Handbook has a description of the DMC-11 in it. And I also remember it was used in Typeset-11, which had a custom network implementation specific to it that included Phase III style routing back in 1978. (No relationship to DECnet at all either in architecture or implementation.)
A DMC-11 is essentially a KMC-11 with programming fixed in ROM, rather than dowloadable in RAM, plus a line card. The KMC-11 processor is a custom engine, its instruction set looks somewhat like microcode. No connection to any Intel chips, that couldn't possibly have come within a mile of the performance requirements. Come to think of it, the first use of a 808x series chip in DEC products I can think of is the head servo control processor in the RA80. There may have been 8031s in some other spots, I no longer remember where I saw those.
...
But I do remember our college main timesharing system, in 1973, a PDP-11/20 with 28 kW of memory, RSTS V4A, and 16 terminals on 16 separate KL11 or DL11 interfaces. Oh yes, and a mean time between crashes of about 1 day.
Are you sure it was a 11/20, not an 11/40? I did not think RSTS could run without the MMU. With 16 DL/KL11's even with an 11/40 the interrupt rate had to been wretched.
Positive. It was RSTS V4A-12, which did not use an MMU and required only 28 kW of memory (24 kW for a minimal install). RSTS started requiring an MMU in version 5, the first version that was called RSTS/E (for "Extended" as in extended memory).
And yes, a box full of single line serial cards. Most of them ran at 110 Baud driving ASR33s; one or two were talking to TI Silent 700 terminals (300 baud printing on thermal paper), and one was feeding a Beehive editing terminal, don't remember what speed, almost certainly no higher than 1200 Baud because it was about 1000 feet from the computer. All this on 20 mA current loop connections, no RS232 as far as I remember. (The Beehive was for the London Stage project, an amazingly complex project to digitize and index a large body of historical reference books, back when OCR didn't really exist yet. There's a neat book about it, "Travels in Computerland" by the project director prof. Ben Schneider.)
Also an RK05 for system disk, an RF11 swap disk, and some DECtapes for additional file storage in case you wanted to save more stuff than could fit on the "large disk" (i.e., the RK05).
Because of the reliability issues, we had a long battle with DEC to get it fixed. The actual root cause may have been interference from the nearby campus FM broadcast transmitter (3 kW around 90 MHz). But whatever it was, we never got a real fix for that; eventually DEC threw in the towel and delivered a "replacement part" -- an 11/45 with a pile of new peripherals and a RSTS/E kit. :-) That did the job.
paul
There was the Algol derivative used mainly by the British armed forces. Coral66 was the name. I have a manual for it.
From: "Bob Armstrong" <bob at jfcl.com>
Sender: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2013 20:57:11 -0700
To: <hecnet at Update.UU.SE>
ReplyTo: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: [HECnet] Algol compiler for VAX/VMS?
Is there an Algol (probably the Algol68 dialect, but I m flexible) for VAX/VMS?
Thanks,
Bob
On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:22 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 04/04/2013 10:12 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
Yes. I had one on my 11/34a years ago; it was in an external expansion chassis. I did love that mux, though! I got one again a couple of years ago, not sure which machine I'll put it in.
How many external chassis did you have for that system?
Only one external Unibus chassis, but it was a BA11-F, the big one that
took up almost two feet of rack space.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Hello!
Oh that's what it is? There's a very big cat resting on it. He
believes he owns the entire building and the cats who are there work
for him. And he represents the individuals outside.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On 04/04/2013 10:12 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote:
Yes. I had one on my 11/34a years ago; it was in an external expansion chassis. I did love that mux, though! I got one again a couple of years ago, not sure which machine I'll put it in.
How many external chassis did you have for that system?
Only one external Unibus chassis, but it was a BA11-F, the big one that
took up almost two feet of rack space.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 2013-04-05 04:10, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 04/04/2013 10:01 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Apparently not. The reason I came up with the device is that I used a
PDP 11/40 with a DU11 to connect to a Burroughs B7700 using an RJE
like
protocol. It was called SYSTEM/SATCOM IIRC. The PDP ran RT-11 V4.
Other
than that, networks were built using 1200 baud modems on serial lines.
No DMF32 nor DZ11 in '79. How did one connect all those VT52's and
LA36's, via a DL11?
I thought DZ11s were around back then. But if not, the DH11 sure
was, 16
lines, DMA output.
Pretty sure they had DMA input too.
Nope. DMA output only.
Crap, really?
Yup. However, it at least have a decent input buffer, so with some good programming you don't need to have one interrupt per character, when things are getting bogged down.
But that's for terminals up to 9600 baud.
19.2K.
Not the original DH-11. 9600 was the highest, unless you count the
external clock ability they have.
Mine was a DH-11AD, and it definitely went to 19.2K.
I think you need to refresh your memory... :-)
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/unibus/EK-0DH11-MM-003_Apr75.pdf
But they DH-11 is way better than a DZ-11. The only problem being (as
mentioned), they were big. A whole 9-slot backplane for one controller.
Yes. I had one on my 11/34a years ago; it was in an external
expansion chassis. I did love that mux, though! I got one again a
couple of years ago, not sure which machine I'll put it in.
I think I might still have access to one stashed away, but for most of the time, I've actually used an Emulex controller that is DH-11 compatible, but a single card.
(And that one actually can do 19200, but only have a little more limited modem control.)
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 4 Apr 2013, at 22:10, "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 04/04/2013 10:01 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Apparently not. The reason I came up with the device is that I used a
PDP 11/40 with a DU11 to connect to a Burroughs B7700 using an RJE like
protocol. It was called SYSTEM/SATCOM IIRC. The PDP ran RT-11 V4. Other
than that, networks were built using 1200 baud modems on serial lines.
No DMF32 nor DZ11 in '79. How did one connect all those VT52's and
LA36's, via a DL11?
I thought DZ11s were around back then. But if not, the DH11 sure
was, 16
lines, DMA output.
Pretty sure they had DMA input too.
Nope. DMA output only.
Crap, really?
But that's for terminals up to 9600 baud.
19.2K.
Not the original DH-11. 9600 was the highest, unless you count the
external clock ability they have.
Mine was a DH-11AD, and it definitely went to 19.2K.
But they DH-11 is way better than a DZ-11. The only problem being (as
mentioned), they were big. A whole 9-slot backplane for one controller.
Yes. I had one on my 11/34a years ago; it was in an external expansion chassis. I did love that mux, though! I got one again a couple of years ago, not sure which machine I'll put it in.
How many external chassis did you have for that system?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
