17 Apr
2001
17 Apr
'01
11:20 p.m.
Daniel T. Burrows wrote:
At the moment things are basically under control. I
had a system in my van
that was to heavy to unload by myself and I had 5 pallets of equipment
waiting to be picked up at a local friends place that has a nice loading
dock. Thankfully the kids are all grown and moved out of the house so I
have taken over half the house while the mess gets cleaned up and a steel
building put up.
Jerome Fine replies:
It sounds simple, but I understand what a mess you are probably in - good luck.
There are many different distributions and IIRC some
layered products. I
have not looked closely at the RT11 stuff for a while. ( My background is
RSX11M+)
This sounds like you have at least one version of RT-11 that is from V5.0x.
If so and it is equal or later than the V5.03 that is on the internet, this is great
news. If not, then at least is sounds like real PDP-11 hardware will be allowed.
One question - if a later version that is not on the CD is available to that hobby
user, will it be legal to use it was well? i.e. is the CD the last word on which
versions are acceptable? Or is it just a sample of what is allowed and the
CD will be available so Mentec will not be bothered by hobby users looking
for the latest distribution?
Also, will the
CD be set up as Tim Shoppa set up the RT-11 Freeware CD
with DOS/W95/W98 files at the beginning and RT-11 partitions with
duplicates at the end? Or all DOS or all RT-11. Note that for DOS,
the first 64 blocks of partition zero in RT-11 are not available with the
raw SCSI media. With the RT-11 Freeware CD from Tim Shoppa,
this is not a problem, but could be if ONLY RT-11 partitions are
on the CD. For example, PUTR from John Wilson probably can't
read the first 64 blocks of partition zero under DOS if it had been
an RT-11 partition. Note that there are a number of ways around
this problem under DOS, but they are unnecessary if RT-11 partition
zero is devoted to DOS files.
I have had several thoughts on that and it will
depend on time. It will be
DOS, etc. readable. Hopefully, this
was not the trickle situation and these posts on classiccmp
are the best way and do not involve Mentec in any manner.
I only jumped in because
I did not want a bunch of people calling Mentec
about it now. I am waiting for something and hope it will be here before I
get tied up on service calls for the next 2 weeks. Can you use any
help? Have you a new target date at this point? Any
information would be helpful since probably most of us were not aware
it was even being considered. In fact, can you take a few minutes and
describe what is being considered?
It is basically finalized but I don't want
to have people rock the boat and
be calling wanting this and that added. It has been enough trouble to get
it to this point and everyone agreeable on its current contents. I have
wanted to include things but it will not be another DECUS type distribution.
The goodies like Al Baldwin's TCP package will not be on it. ( I tried but
things were to cast in stone when I got involved) Thanks but I have already gotten up 2)11/73's, an
11/84, M11, all with SCSI
disk and tape. I have a couple 11/84's, 11/44's that will be up when time
permits. These are all also on the network with the PC's and a 4100.
Remember I make a large part of my living supporting customers that are
running this hardware.
That part I understand. Perhaps when you have some time, you could provide
some help and advise us on how to transfer a SCSI hard drive that has ONLY
RT-11 partitions to a CDROM which can then be read on both a PC (except
for the first 64 blocks on partition zero) and a real PDP-11. I would like to
create an archive that is both inexpensive and long lasting.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine