23 Jun
2012
23 Jun
'12
12:33 a.m.
It's a midnight project, done while at DEC but not official. I did it first on RSTS
9.6, and in fact built a set of 3 or so floppies that can be used, along with a stock
microRSTS kit, to install that on a Pro. I subsequently ported it to RSTS/E 10.1 but
didn't repackage it as I did the first time.
Yes, new drivers for sure. New interrupt handling, too.
BTW, if you can write the correct bootstrap, the stock RSTS 9.6 INIT.SYS will boot on a
Pro, because the PRO supports bits made it into the official sources as far as the init
code goes. If you do, it will identify the machine type as a "GPK-350" or
"GPK-380". :-)
What's missing is CNA support (Ethernet). The chip used on that card sucks quite
severely, and I've never had enough energy to write the driver. But I have disk, and
display, and serial ports including the obscure 4-port card, DDCMP support in both sync
and async mode...
paul
On Jun 22, 2012, at 5:28 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 06/22/2012 05:25 PM, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
DDCMP over sync, yes. But DDCMP also works on an async line, and
that just requires protocol code that can talk to a raw mode TTY
device. That would work for what I need -- I have async DDCMP on my
PRO-380 running RSTS, and in fact it's a standard feature of some of
the PDP11 DECnet products. (I'm not sure if it was ever official in
DECnet/E, but the machinery is there in the latest versions of the
kernel.)
Umm, hang on...RSTS on a Pro-380? I didn't think RSTS had drivers for
the MFM controller in there, and I'm pretty sure the console I/O is very
different as well. Please tell me more.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA