15 Apr
2024
15 Apr
'24
10:10 a.m.
On Mon, Apr 15, 2024 at 8:00 AM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
A README in the root of 2.11 says:
The following manual pages are NOT in 2.10BSD but ARE in 4.3BSD:
and one of them is drum.4
so, I guess we need to look at a 4.3BSD system to find out what
drum they are talking about. I have a feeling this is a device
that works on the VAX but is actually not found on any PDP-11.
Why it automatically makes the device node is beyond me.
Likely because MAKEDEV was copied over from 4.3's version. We've grown
spoiled with dynamic device population, but even 4.4BSD had static creation
with MAKEDEV.
This is just the paging device for the system. It has nothing to do with
old-school hardware, apart from the name. It's a logical device that spills
over all the configured swap partitions / disks.
The PDP-11 2.*BSD never had /dev/drum that was functional.
Warner