VAX-11730 (was Any word on OS/2 for PDP-11?)

Indeed, the 730 CFE (Console Front End or FEP) was very much like the 780 - the commands were similar and the 730 even used indirect command files for functions like booting and power up loading of microcode. All the microstore on the 730 was RAM; the only ROM was a little EPROM that booted the 8085 operating system from the console TU58. Everything else - all the CPU microcode, the microcode for the IDC (integrated disk controller) the FPA microcode, and VMB - were all loaded from the TU58. Although the 8085 operating system was some custom thing DEC wrote themselves, the TU58s used an RT11 file system (again, just like the 780) and you could easily manipulate them with EXCHANGE or FILEX. The bad news was that TU58s are really, really, slow. With all the microcode and indirect files that had to be read from the TU58, your 730 could easily take ten minutes from power on to the point where VMB was even ready to start thinking about loading VMS. When working on one, you want to do everything you can to avoid turning off the CPU box power:-) Because everything about the KA730 microcode was "soft", it's fairly easy to change the CPU microcode, update the console TU58 and reboot to change the CPU behavior. I believe DEC even sold a set of microprogramming tools for the 730, but I've never seen them and I don't know what's become of them today. Bob