7 Apr
2013
7 Apr
'13
4:34 a.m.
On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 10:59 PM, allison <ajp166 at verizon.net> wrote:
Yes. 150MB, not GB. Modern habits.
Either way a RX02 or RX50 was the common simple and
cheap storage
that offered portability. RL packs were over 160$ new and didn't like to
be bounced. FYI drives like RL02 were nearly as expensive as the base
machine ($8-12K).
When I was using the BA11N system I described, I owned an RL01
because I couldn't afford an RL02.
FWIW, I was messing with this system just last month. It's still intact.
Yes, you can even in 16bits. I also have a tiny
system using M8186 in a
12 slot dual wide cage running 512KB ram (4 boards), MRV11 (boot),
DLV11J for serial IO, and TU58 for storage. It boots the TU and copies
it to VM: and reboots from there making for a small but very fast
RT-11 system. The OS only use the 28KW and the rest is a virtual
disk (ram disk) big enough to copy the whole base os and a few
useful apps.
That sounds like a fine RT-11 system.
A large Qbus
system would be the full 4GB of RAM, Ethernet, a
disk larger than an RQDXn can take (meaning over 150GB),
usually SMD, ESDI or SCSI disk.
I think you meant 150MB for RQDXm for its upper limit. For larger
there were large disks but that was uncommon for Qbus 11s.
Agreed.
As one example, I'm thinking of the system that was the target
for my work at the time (1986-1987)... KDJ11 w/4MB of memory,
RLV12 + RL02, RQDX3, some RDn boot drive, and an ESDI
controller with a Fujitsu Eagle (~400MB) for scan data (the
purpose of the machine). It was *not* a cheap system - several
tens of thousands of dollars when bought new.
I was happy that I was able to write code for it on my $400
(used price) system ($300 for BA11 + most of the cards I
listed + $100 for the RLV11, and repurposing most of the
peripherals from my PDP-8/a). I made my living from that
little PDP-11 for over a year. Good investment!
The transfer medium was an RL02 pack via an RL02 drive
that my boss loaned me. My boot drive and editing area
was all on my RL01. The RL02 contained a customer-
provided data file I used to write code against, and served
as the physical medium we'd carry onto the customer site
to deliver new releases. I'm pretty sure that at the time,
that RL02 drive cost several times more than my entire
computer.
The system I still use is the tall (50") rack
BA-11 CPU I used in my office
when I was in the Mill (ML03-6/B5) as a utility system for printing and
off line (non VAX work). Still fun to use and I even have a few
uVAX3100s running VMS for it to talk to.
Cool.
-ethan