11 Feb
2017
11 Feb
'17
7:48 a.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Noel Chiappa [jnc at
mercury.lcs.mit.edu]
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2017 10:08 AM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: RSTS V7 magtape images on bitsavers
From: Paul Koning
> When did V7 come out, BTW?
The files on the SYSGEN tape have a timestamp of
26-Sep-79, so "Fall
1979" sounds right.
Ow. I was looking for something a lot earlier than that. I used RSTS-11 in
the '72-'74 timeframe, so it's a version from that era I'd like to have.
Any
idea what version that would be - and if it's still extant?
I've used the V4A kit (DECtapes) to build that ...
(There's a V4A
sysgen manual on Bitsavers too ...)
When was that one?
> It would be really nice to have sources - are they
gone forever?
Some still exist. I know someone who has a RSTS source
kit, not sure
which version. I have pieces of source.
OK, better than nothing.
A complication with all of this is the question of
licensing. There's a
hobbyist license for RSTS to build and run it, but whether that carries
over to making sources available is an interesting question. I'm not
sure who to ask these days, either.
Hmm. I guess technically HP owns it now?
Noel
______________________________________________________
Not so sure of that. When Mentec went away the word was that some other
party had bought all of the old PDP-11 OSes (except maybe IAS) but I have
heard nothing about it in several years and fear a lot of it may now have
become lost. It certainly isn't being held in secret because of some percieved
commercial value.
RSTS was my favorite PDP-11 OS and I have long wanted to see it Open
Sourced in its demise as I always wanted to try porting it to other machines
just for the fun of it.
bill