15 Apr
2004
15 Apr
'04
7:57 a.m.
Paul Koning wrote:
As for a Pro being the easiest route, I wouldn't say so.
A Pro 350 will most likely be cheaper than a equivalant 11/23+. A Pro 380
although it is an 11/73, is quite a bit slower thatn a real micro 11/73, but
is also cheaper.
The bus architecture is completely unrelated to that of
any other PDP11, and ugly/messy/baroque/bogus at that.
It uses a CTI bus and as far as I know it is the only DEC product (the 300
series) that uses it.
It does however, offer bitmap graphics, that is usually unavailable for most
pdp's. or you can run it from the serial (maintainace port) (lol)
There is NO DMA. The Ethernet card uses the worst
Ethernet chip I know.
And on top of that, is made from pure unobtanium :-)
Off the shelf software for a Pro is P/OS, a mangled version of RSX. believe there's
also an RT11 that works on it. At one time DEC created a Unix for it, then canceled that
a week before the product
was supposed to ship, and replaced it by a different unrelated Unix instead. Typical DEC
messed up management...
P/OS was released by DECUS and is public domain. In addition there is more
than enough free software available for it.
Good luck trying to find the RT-11 version for the DEC Pro series!!
No other OS runs (stock) on a Pro, though I have modified RSTS to do
that.
There is a (modified) version of BSD 2.9 that runs on the Pro350, and is
freely available
If you have a choice, a PDP11/73 would be a far better
choice, or one of the later ones in that small packaging. Or an 11/23, though those are
rather slow.
If you're dilligent, on Ebay a PDP micro-11/73 can go for between $100-300+,
and expect to pay between $30-70 for shipping, depending on what kind of
chassis it has. A DEC Pro 350 w/HDD will cost you less than $100. A pdp-11/23
will go for between $75-150+.
While It's true that an 11/73 is probably a better choice should you want to
run a variety of OS's, a dec pro will allow you to own a pdp-11/23+ cheaply.
Cheers,
Tom
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