23 Dec
2019
23 Dec
'19
11:51 p.m.
On 2019-12-23 20:24, John Forecast wrote:
Poul took a look at the DECNET-8 sources, and figured it was actually
not phase I (I thought it was phase I as well). Poul thinks it's close
to, if not actually phase II. There are things in there that apparently
did not exist in phase I.
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 Dec 20, 2019, at 11:21 PM, Thomas DeBellis
<tommytimesharing at gmail.com <mailto:tommytimesharing at gmail.com>>
wrote:
Indeed; but there was a time when the PDP-11's 16 bit (64K) address
space and eight register file seemed positively generous. That's when
you compare it to the PDP-8's /single/ accumulator and 12 bit (4K)
address space.
I continue to be astounded what they managed to do with that.? In
addition to a nice package of languages, with a memory management unit
(essentially a bank switcher), they got the thing to timeshare.
That's right; TSS-8.? There's one still running at the Computer
History Museum on an 8/I.
So they got DECnet running on the PDP-8?? Wow.? I wonder how they did
that; whether they re-targeted a BLISS compiler to emit PAL.? I
remember looking at the source to PDP-8 VT (video) TECO.? Many awe
most inspiring kludges.? What a tour de force. Very humbling.
That was implemented on RTS-8 and looks like a Phase I implementation -
all hand-crafted PAL code. The floppies are available on the net and
includes full source code. When I joined the DECnet development group in
early 1977, there were a couple of PDP-8 developers as part of the
group. I don?t know if they were developing a Phase II implementation
but they disappeared after about 6 months - not surprising given the
difficulties we were having getting it to fit in a 28KW PDP-11.