Enhancing RT-11 and Fixing RT-11 Bugs

Although this list is semi-public, I thought it best to keep this inquiry a bit more limited than immediately posting this in alt.sys.pdp11 and vmsnet.pdp-11. If I don't receive any replies from classiccmp, then I will try those two newsgroups, but any feedback from classiccmp would be greatly appreciated so that obvious (but not to me) aspects of this content that are inappropriate can be changed. Note that since V5.03 of RT-11 was released in 1985, I am abiding by the ten year rule. Please note that I realize that there is almost no interest in fixing bugs in RT-11, let alone producing enhancements. If you feel that such activity is best left to Mentec or you don't wish to participate, then read no further. As for why I enjoy fixing bugs in RT-11 and making enhancements, the reason must be the same as for someone who climbs Mount Everest - because it is there! As of November 2002, V5.07 of RT-11 was 4 years old, having been released in November 1998. Even if Mentec does eventually allow hobby use of versions of RT-11 subsequent to V5.03, especially V5.07, I just can't believe that Mentec will ever spend the money to decide to release another version of RT-11 when there are already insufficient sales to even support selling RT-11 and all of the layered products. My suggestion is that the very few individuals who are still interested in fixing bugs and writing code to enhance RT-11 pool their resources. While there are many minor and several major bugs still in RT-11, it no longer seems likely that there will be a further release. If you are interested in bug fixes and extensions to RT-11, along with support for V5.03 which may be used as a hobby version of RT-11 under the Supnik (SIMH) emulator, I would appreciate being part of, even leading if no one else is willing, a small group to share and define future extensions to RT-11 as well as fixing the current bugs. If no one replies, I guess I will lead a one person group. But even someone who is interested, but might only wish to comment on how and which bugs, along with any enhancements should be undertaken, would be extremely helpful. Also if you are only interested in using the enhanced features of a future RT-11 and NOT even in being a beta tester, you can still provide valuable help by stating which features would be of use. For example, at the very least and until the hobby license allows later versions of RT-11 after V5.03 to be used, a Y2K compliant V5.03 of RT-11 would seem to be reasonable. While I would rather spend my time fixing the bugs and making enhancements to V5.07, there may be sufficient interest to make V5.03 Y2K compliant until the hobby license for at least RT-11 (as opposed to RSTS/E and RSX-11) is extended. Another extension that would seem to be in order while there is sufficient expertise around is to allow for dates beyond 2099. For example, current VMS 64 bit implementations probably allow for the year 25,000. Extending the DATE value significantly beyond 2099 to at least 9999 will require at least 5 MORE bits to be used for the DATE value within the resident monitor and in random file directories. I also have looked at the implementation of a PH: (PATH pseudo device HANDLER) that could act like the Symbolic Name List in VMS or the PATH NAME in DOS. And an enhancement I have thought about would be the ability to boot and execute RT-11 within a DSK file, i.e. allow the LD: to be a System Device bootable using DUP. Another might be to allow more RT-11 partitions to be active for MSCP device drivers instead of only 64 RT-11 partitions - and if feasible, 256 RT-11 partitions depending on how RT-11 handles characters in the third character of the device name. Of course, 2 extra bits would need to be found in the queue element. As far as I understand, all future changes to RT-11 (both bug fixes and extensions) are unlikely to be used by any commercial sites. Further, in order to attempt to be compliant with the current and any future hobby license from Mentec, I suggest that all changes to RT-11 be made available ONLY for hobby use unless they have Mentec's approval for use by commercial users. If anyone at Mentec is reading this, I suggest that contact be made to arrange for this aspect of the use of any changes made to RT-11 that are not made by Mentec. Obviously, if there is no contact with Mentec, NONE of the changes will be approved of or supported by Mentec - which is probably the BEST solution since then the users will do all the work and coordination for the changes that are needed as well as being responsible to ensure that the changes are bug free and work correctly. However, a win/win solution might be for Mentec to allow V5.07 of RT-11 to be used by hobby users and for the bug fixes (especially the bug fixes) and enhancements to continue to be sold by Mentec to the commercial users after they are provided without charge to Mentec by the hobby community. I don't know if this arrangement has ever been made between the manufacturer and the hobby community, but I can't see how it would hurt Mentec. In this regard, a completely ISO 9000 compliant version of RT-11 might even be possible. About the only utility still needing 4 digit years is MACRO-11 and that is already done - in a private version I did in 1997. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- To obtain the original e-mail address, please remove the ten characters which immediately follow the 'at'. If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.