6 Sep
2022
6 Sep
'22
9:21 p.m.
On 9/6/22 14:32, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Well, we'll do the best we can, and I'll learn those limitations. I
myself was never a PDP-10 guy; I cut my teeth on PDP-8, PDP-11, and VAX
systems. I'm slowly learning TOPS-20 on the SC-40 so we can open it up
for giving accounts to people here. (and elsewhere)
Our
VAX-11/780 will hopefully be up and running sometime this
winter, as will the second PDP-11/70. One of the DECsystem-2020s may
come up this winter as well, depending on volunteer time
availability. I just started putting together a MicroVAX-II
dual-booting VMS 4.7 and Ultrix, and will try to get DECnet running
under Ultrix on that.
The -2020 will be tricky to get up on HECnet, though. As far as I
remember/know, it only officially had Phase III. And you need to run
TOPS-20 V4.
Not sure if Tops-10 ever had DECnet on them, but if it did, I would
suspect it's the same story there. The -2020s I ever used just ran
Tops-10 with ANF-10. But let's hope you can get some of those other
systems up and online a
bit more.
We're doing the best we can. I think we've done very well with what
little help we've had. I've had a soldering iron inside just about
every one of those machines.
The MVI is another interesting beast. Not sure when
VMS stopped
supporting that one, but it was probably quite some time ago. Max 4MB of
memory is somewhat limiting. :-)
Yes, and having that memory directly on the Qbus is pretty limiting
too. But still, strangely, the machine has personality. I ran one (as
a VAXstation-I) back in the 1980s. It wasn't fast, but it was a VAX,
and it was mine, when all my friends were farting around with their
Commodore 64s! B-)
VMS officially de-supported the MicroVAX-I as of, I think, v6.2, but
I don't know if support was actually removed. That said, running a VMS
release that late on a -I would be extremely painful, so I'll probably
run 4.7 on this one, to get at least some performance out of it.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA