18 May
2004
18 May
'04
10:39 a.m.
In reading the factual portion of this RSTS birthday page, I noticed a
reference
to a "History of RSTS" back in the mid-1980s. Does anyone have a copy of
this
or know what this reference contains? If such a thing exists, does anyone
know
where a copy can be obtained?
Ashley
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Koning" <pkoning(a)equallogic.com>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 3:23 PM
Subject: Re: RSTS/E and PDP 11/23
>>>> "Ashley" == Ashley Carder <wacarder(a)usit.net> writes:
Ashley> Paul, you probably know the answer to this. I've seen this
Ashley> site before and wondered where the line is that separates
Ashley> fact from fiction. Somewhere around 1990, obviously, but the
Ashley> line has been craftily blurred by the author of this 100th
Ashley> birthday thing. I have done studied my DEC / RSTS / PDP-11
Ashley> history enough to pick out anything that is fictitious prior
Ashley> to stuff in the early 90s. Is everything up to 1990 fact?
As far I can tell, yes, pretty much. That fits, because it was
written for the 20th birthday bash.
There may be some historical errors. For example, I don't know if
RSTS has any relationship to IOX. I rather doubt it (but I've never
seen the IOX sources, and I only barely glanced at the docs around 30
years ago...) The cultural heritage is TSS-8, from what I've heard,
though I can't confirm that from personal knowledge either.
The change from .CIL to .SIL happened with RSTS V5B...
TECO did appear -- as a real RTS, not as two Basic programs -- in
V5A...
Some of the fantasy items have a connection to reality:
- There wasn't a Unix RTS, but Bob Fraser ported csh to RSTS.
- Basic for RT11 supported line numbers up to 65532.
- Directory and data cache can be displayed with SDA.
paul