PDP 8 Kermit (was OS/8 Disk Server Release)

If you have an RX01 floppy on your machine, you can use the "restrx01" utility to copy an RX01 disk image that contains Kermit onto the machine. RX01 image files that have OS/8 and Kermit on them are readily found on various PDP8 related websites. The biggest problem is that most of the Kermit binaries on these images are configured to use device codes 30/31 for the second serial port, when the commonly-accepted configuration for the second serial port card in a PDP8 (at least the /E, /F, /M) is 40/41. You can re-strap the serial card in the PDP8 to use 30/31, or there is a patch PAL source that you can assemble and overlay on top of the loaded Kermit core image to patch the serial port locations. Kermit can also be loaded on a machine through use of the BIN loader (which can be loaded by the RIM loader, which is pretty easy to toggle in), using a paper tape image (again, which can be found on the various PDP8 sites), and sending the BIN image over the console serial port at rates up to 9600 through a terminal program. You need a terminal program that can send the tape image in raw form (TeraTerm works for me), and your serial port on your computer acting as a console needs to be configured as 8N1. Once Kermit is resident in memory, you can then save the core image out to whatever kind of mass storage (DECTape, Floppy, etc.) exists on the machine. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com