18 Sep
2001
18 Sep
'01
6:20 a.m.
Very good
point. I was thinking that it would be nice to have a machine that
was a PDP-11 as soon as you flipped on the power, but probably not worth the
cost and hassle of the flash. Didn't some of the VAXen boot their microcode
from a floppy?
Yes, the VAX 11/780 does. Interestingly, the DEC DSSI drives are nearly already
"there" when it comes
to this sort of scenario. There already is a communications protocol that
lets you "log in" to the drive and talk to a variety of programs that are
stored in the Disk drives flash. It may actually have a real PDP-11 on it,
I don't know who might know what all the parts are on a DSSI drive.
I don't think the DSSI drives have a PDP-11, but they are pseudo-CI.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman(a)dittman.net
Check out the DEC Ethusiasts Club at http://www.dittman.net/