10 Aug
2004
10 Aug
'04
4:46 a.m.
At 01:10 PM 22/11/2002 +1100, Kane, David (DPRS) wrote:
PDP-11/05 (or PDP11/10), core memory, Documation or HP brand mark
sense card readers, Memorex 751 floppy disk drives (these preceeded 8
inch floppys that most people would recognise) and a line printer.
System packaging varied greatly with the processor and drives racked
into desks or wheeled cabinets. They were in various Secondary schools
in Victoria, Monash University (for first year students before they
graduated to terminals) and some may have been used at Melbourne
University. Suggest C. Ching would have the best knowledge of these
systems.
The system
comprised a CPU and dual 8" floppy in a half height rack, on
top of which sat a marked sense card reader, and in the corner was a DEC
line printer. My memory of the CPU front panel is that it looks somewhat
like an 11/34 picture I found in the user manual PDF with the programmers
console. But I definitely remember it as an "slash zero" something model,
so I believe that it was an 04. However the only picture of an 04 I have
found to date has a rather basic looking programmers panel, by basic I
mean as it is simple white text on black panel and buttons. I seem to
remember the octal keypad had a border drawn on the pane and was a little
bit smarter looking, maybe there were updated cosmetic version of the
panel. The system booted straight to a local derivative of FORTRAN (MONECS
FORTRAN), so we were insulated from the hardware and I therefore have no
memory or interface card details.
The MONECS system we had at La Trobe for many years was an 11/23 (maybe >an
11/23+) although this was the prepackaged version from Digital known as the
DEAMON. For those of you outside of Australia:
MONECS - MONash (University) Educational Computing System DEAMON - Digital Equipment Australia / MONash
From memory the versions I maintained were PDP11/04
based, RX01, etc.
The 11/03, 11/23 would have been later machines.
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/museum/
Monash University developed a card based system where the user wrote code
(in FORTRAN, COBOL and ISTR a pseudo-assembler) and used pre-punched or
mark sense cards. You queued up to use the card reader, loaded your own job
and collected output almost immediately. I used the main frame based
(probably Burroughs) predecessor to lean to program FORTRAN in either 1969
or 1970. We used to send our cards by post to Monash and if we were lucky
would get one run a week....
Probably Fortran on the Burroughs B5500, maybe too early for the
B6700, this is before my time. Think both of these machines were
ex-Victorian Government Gas and Fuel Corporation mainframes and were
donated to Monash Uni by Burroughs for a token amount.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au
| "If God had wanted soccer played in the
| air, the sky would be painted green"