3 Apr
2008
3 Apr
'08
8:07 p.m.
On Apr 3, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Brad Parker wrote:
Well, I had been exposed to VMS, so I knew a bit of DCL. Since
RSTS/E includes DCL as a runtime system from V9 onwards, I was
instantly comfortable with it. It's a pretty limited DCL compared to
that of VMS, but it's close enough for someone to sit down and start
working right away.
The notion of logging in and being dumped into a BASIC interpreter
didn't excite me at all, as I had an Atari 800 that did that just
fine. Granted BASIC-Plus is a damn nice dialect of BASIC, it still
wasn't enough to justify (to me) running two-and-a-half racks of
equipment over the Atari 800. The first OS I ran on my first PDP-11
was RSX-11M v4.2, and I liked it a lot, but once I found RSTS/E
(v9.4), I felt like I was right at home with DCL. I had written some
little programs under RSX and they moved right over (a BBS program
comes to mind) so I was able to keep hacking on my longer-term
projects after converting.
Doing a SYSGEN under RSX-11M at age 16 with just a doc kit and no
help was...fun. :)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
No way.
RSTS/E is, by far, my favorite PDP-11 OS...but only v9+.
I'm definitely not a fan of the pre-v9 RSTS/E releases. Most of my
early computer knowledge was gained on a v9.4 system.
Interesting. Could you expound on that a bit?
I'm pretty ignorant about v9+. I first touched RSTS very early on
- I'm
pretty sure I saw version 2A running (sneaking into the computer
lab at
Carleton). Later I actually got paid to use it around V6/V7 but after
that I moved on to other machines.
(Always likes rsts, however. something cool about basic+ and then
being
able to run rt11 also)
What would I notice/like/want running V9+ over running V7? I'd enjoy
hearing from someone who's used it a lot.