10 Jun
2009
10 Jun
'09
12:05 p.m.
From: Zane H. Healy
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 11:44 AM
On Wed, 10 Jun 2009, Ian King wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
>> bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Floren
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 10:46 AM
>> At this point, Multics does not run anywhere
in the world and, to my
>> knowledge, nobody even has the hardware to run it... well, CHM has
>> DOCKMASTER, but can that still run?
> No. It is missing the swapping disk. Replacing
it could be done, but it
> would be a non-trivial (and non-cheap) enterprise. -- Ian
Ian is not quite correct in this statement. The HDAs from the Winchester-
technology disk drives were removed before the machine was moved out of its
computer room. It's not *just* the swapping disks, it's *all* the disks.
What kind of hardware are you talking here? Looking
at
http://www.multicians.org/site-dockmaster.html I assume you're talking about
the "4 MW paging device (bulk store)", though the same page mentions that
CHM didn't recieve the disks. Are the drives all the removable diskpack
type? We used mainly fixed disks, but had a few removable packs.
These appear to be CDC drives (9670?) similar to the DEC RP07. A search
throughout the Honeywell universe turned up no surviving examples of these
drives, nor HDAs for same.
Does anyone know what it takes to connect IBM DASD to
a DPS-8, and if
Multic's would support it? I know that it is possible with GCOS-8, but I do
not know what model, or how it would be connected. As *INSANE* as it
sounds, someone dropped one of the two DASD units for the site I worked at
off the back of the truck, and it wasn't replaced (not sure why), as a
result we were unable to bring the IBM DASD online.
IBM DASD can connect to a Multics system using an interface created by one of
the long time Multicians for one of his customers. The first issue is that you
have to replace the bus-and-tag connectors with FIPS standard connectors.
As of this last weekend my Honeywell manuals are out
of storage, and at
home. I'm just not sure where they are in the garage, though I've a pretty
good idea. It will be interesting to see just what I have manuals for as it
has been years since I've seen them. I'm sure I don't have anything on
Mulitics, as I worked at a GCOS-8 site. I'm not sure what I might have on
hardware. I do know that when I can find the time, I want to go through and
refresh my memory on GCOS-8. I haven't touched it in nearly 16 years.
We have been told (by eminent Multicians) that there are differences in the
electronics between a DPS-8 (GCOS) and a DPS-8M (Multics) CPU.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
http://www.pdpplanet.org/