22 Apr
2011
22 Apr
'11
5:01 p.m.
CRC wrote:
E11 has been seriously looked at in the past, but the
required additions and money constraints nixed going in that direction. Whenever time
permits he has been looking at alternates to the current hardware. However, this system
which has a rack of Fuji Eagles and a number of tape decks, has been running without much
repair maintenance for the last several decades. We recently had to work on one of the
Fujis and now are in the process of shot-gunning all the caps. We were totally amazed when
one of the drives became flakey and found that nearly all the caps were bad - luckily Earl
W. Muntz didn't work for Fuji...
I have discussed running RSTS/E under E11 with a number
of individuals running commercial installations. The saving
in the cost of power more than pays for the system over
a few years. I core 2 duo system runs the code at about
100 times the speed of a PDP-11/93.
I don't know how internet interfaces to E11, assuming you
are using it now on the PDP-11, but Zane seems to have
solved that problem - maybe. As for serial terminals,
E11 supports multi-port hardware if RSTS/E is being
used remotely.
I agree that a commercial license is a significant portion of
the cost, but perhaps John Wilson might agree to the payment
of that purchase over a number of years if the business is on
the edge of failing otherwise.
It sounds like your disk I/O controllers (or host adapters)
use standard DEC interfaces, so the customized aspect
of RSTS/E should not be a problem in the hardware area.
However, the current problem is not transporting the
applications, but contacting the current system. Remember that RSTS is multiuser and he
has no intention of also transporting his drones that also access the computer to the cool
mountains with him :) There are also a number of customers that dial in to get access to
data.
I know that E11 supports serial ports directly,
Has anyone used any of the serial port ethernet servers
(aka port directors) and how well did they work?
Eventually, the PDP-11 hardware will cost more to maintain
than using current PC hardware. I have found with E11 a
rather good solution to running RT-11 even though I could
still use the DEC PDP-11/83 with ESDI Hitachi 600 MByte
hard drives. If I was supporting a commercial site running
RSTS/E 24 hours a day, E11 would probably provide a
good solution, as it has other sites that still run RSTS/E or
RSX-11.
Jerome Fine