batch on rt11 w/tsx+

Jerome Fine replies: Under RT-11, BATCH is supported via the BA(X).SYS device driver, as well as other hooks in the operating system. When TSX-PLUS is run, the Resident Monitor (RT11XM) is completely replaced along with the Keyboard (KMON) and the User Service Routine (USR). There are also minor changes to some of the device drivers. Most of the utility programs run as is without change. Since there is no BA.TSX device driver, you can't run BATCH under TSX-PLUS. Part of the reason may be that SL: (the RT-11 Single Line Editor - similar to some of the stuff done by DOSKEY in DOS) is built into TSX-PLUS rather than being a separate device driver as in RT-11 which uses SL(X).SYS to perform the functions. Since SL: and BA: can't run at the same time in RT-11 and since SL: seems to be built into TSX-PLUS, perhaps that is part of the reason that BATCH is not supported . However, I doubt if anyone knows the internals of both RT-11 and TSX-PLUS sufficiently to comment. Does this information provide enough of an answer? The answer Lyle suggested provides an alternative. A command file can be used to run the job, but the results might not be quite the same. On the other hand, once BATCH is running under RT-11, can you use the background job? Since I don't use BATCH myself (anything I want done I am not able to continue with anything else, so a command file is sufficient), please let me know if KMON is still available to the user? If only system jobs can still be run, that is not very useful. Under TSX-PLUS, any job can execute a command file at low priority and not interfere with interactive jobs. In addition, all interactive jobs have the same user interface under TSX-PLUS as opposed to RT-11 where system jobs MUST be activated via KMON and normally use ONLY the CSI (Command String Interpreter) syntax for the specific chosen program - quite a big reduction in the user friendly ability. ON THE OTHER HAND, when I am the ONLY user on a PDP-11 system, I find that the ONLY system jobs that I actually can effectively use are additional KEX editors sessions. Thus, under RT-11 I almost always run a command file called SKEX4.COM which contains: SRUN KEX.SAV/LEVEL:n/TERMINAL:n/NAME:Kn with the line being repeated for as many KEX sessions as I can place into memory and still run other jobs. Normally, n = 1,2,3,4 is sufficient. This requires a SYSGEN with multi-terminal support. On a real DEC PDP-11/83, I use a DLV11-J with 4 serial ports. Under E11, the E11 commands: ASSIGN TT0: CON1: (always default) ASSIGN TT1: CON2: ASSIGN TT2: CON3: ASSIGN TT3: CON4: ASSIGN TT4: CON5: substitutes for the hardware DLV11-J and allows the same monitor to be used via <ALT/Fn> to activate each CONn: screen. This latter hardware information applies to both RT-11 and TSX-PLUS. Note that under TSX-PLUS, ONLY CON1: is needed since TSX-PLUS allows the same physical serial port to support many jobs via the use of "<CTRL/W>n". This would substitute for using <ALT/Fn> under RT-11, but not suffer from the time to redraw the screen each time you switch under E11/TSX-PLUS since the monitor is effectively at DMA speed rather than serial line speed. Since I have not used TSX-PLUS under E11, I can't really be more specific. Have I answered your questions and concerns? Any other questions? Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.