11 Mar
2011
11 Mar
'11
2:38 p.m.
On 2011 Mar 11, at 3:01 AM, Wolfgang Eichberger wrote:
There are some well known archives out there in the internet, but some
OSes mentioned in the PDP-11 faq and other sources are kinda hiding
from me.
Let's start here: As I was reading the Ersatz-11 documentation file I
stumbled upon "Fox 2/30 OS".
Does anyone now something about this OS? Did any copies of this system
or documentation and software survive? The only reference I have
found so far since I read the Ersatz-11 docs is here:
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Foxboro/
Foxboro.Fox...
(can't look at this file at the moment as I am on a slooooow internet
connection). All I found out is there's a strong focus on process
control in this system as well at it should be some kind of OEM.
I have a very passing acquaintance with a Foxboro system. When I
mentioned this on the list a couple of years ago Al supplied some
Foxboro docs via bitsavers. They seemed to suggest that the Fox-1 used
or was a minicomputer of Foxboro's own design and manufacture ca. 1969,
for their large-plant/heavy-industry computer-based process control
system.
It would be interesting then if the Fox-2 was PDP-11-based. That is,
did Foxboro give up on making their own hardware, take their
process-control software/OS and port it to PDP-11 hardware and then
sell rebadged PDP-11s?
I extracted a couple of photos from the Fox-2 doc at the
archive.computerhistory.org:
http://www3.telus.net/~bhilpert/tmp/foxboro/
So for PDP-11 experts, could the machine in the photos be a
rebadged/OEM PDP-11 ca. 1972 ?
There are some CPU specs in the Fox-2 doc and some hints that sound
like a pdp-11 (8 registers, 16-bit), and "The address space may be
filled by core memory and peripheral-device registers. The top 4,096
words generally are reserved for such registers."