While I will admit that the DEC manuals are not the best source of information for the PDP-11 operating systems, I really don't believe that there is really any much better material. I agree that it helps a lot to have at least some familiarity with any of the operating systems to be able to begin to understand any of the operating systems very well. However, at that point, the DEC manuals really are that good source of information, at the very least for RT-11 which is what I am very familiar with and I use those DEC manuals at least an average of once a week. I have been running programs under RT-11, RSTS/E, and VERY rarely under RSX-11, although RT-11 has been the focus over 98 % of the time. I have been doing so for about 35 years. I have the privilege of having access to the full DOC set of RT-11 in hard copy (over two feet of shelf space) and I still need to check on a specific detail about every week or so. All of the RT-11 DOC set is available on bitsavers. I don't have the LINK handy. In general, unless you need something very specific, the HELP command under RT-11 is mostly sufficient for novice RT-11 users. If you need help with the RT-11 distributions, they are on the classiccmp site. If you can't find either of these LINKs, please ask and I will locate them for you. One thing that would probably help a great deal as far as any novice user is concerned is to have someone who is familiar with a specific operating system provide some hands on instruction for a few days. As with any subject, there seems to be a certain threshold of information that is needed to become comfortable. One that that I believe should really help in regard to initially becoming comfortable is the use of one of the emulators since at that point, you are not depending on hardware that may or not work correctly. Finally, in regard to RT-11, please ask all the questions you can think of and I will attempt to help! Jerome Fine

In the 80's I remember going up to DEC and taking a course on RT11. It lasted a few days and you would have class time and lab time on a PDP11 (I used a floppy based 11/34). The course was taught out of a bound book that you got to keep. The one I had was based on RT11 v4. However, they were going to start teaching v5. If you could dig up one of those course instruction books they were wonderful for learning RT11. They only got into the hands of people who took those courses and would be very rare. On 6/9/2013 12:04 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote: