19 Sep
2015
19 Sep
'15
1:49 p.m.
I would think the fixed head media swapped faster than the RK's
unlessthee fixed head media was really slow... Ed#
In a message dated 9/19/2015 10:45:53 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
aek at bitsavers.org writes:
On 9/19/15 9:44 AM, John Wilson wrote:
UW-M's TSS/8 supported that. It should be in the monitor sources that we
read.
later TSS/8s already supported RKs
as data disks, unless I've gone senile). No idea how they managed that
--
19 Sep
19 Sep
2:12 p.m.
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 01:49:38PM -0400, COURYHOUSE at aol.com wrote:
I would think the fixed head media swapped
faster than the RK's
unlessthee fixed head media was really slow... Ed#
The DS/RS disks certainly weren't slow ... but an RK could still be fast
enough to be useful. I'm thinking the hard part would be shoveling out
enough space for a sector buffer, so that it could do word insert/extract
operations and make the RFILE/WFILE calls still act more or less like the
DMAR/DMAW instructions on the DF/RF. My understanding is that RKs as
data disks used different calls (and weren't file-structured).
John Wilson
D Bit
3:30 p.m.
On 9/19/15 11:12 AM, John Wilson wrote:
but an RK could still be fast
enough to be useful.
When did the 4K user space(s?) actually swap? Did they round-robin or swap
based on activity? I would think they would stay in place until cpu-bound
jobs reached their time quantum. With only a couple of people on a 32k
machine, it may not even swap that much, depending on what the users were
running. I'd guess BASIC was pretty big.
4:45 p.m.
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 12:30:13PM -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
When did the 4K user space(s?) actually swap? Did they
round-robin or swap
based on activity? I would think they would stay in place until cpu-bound
jobs reached their time quantum. With only a couple of people on a 32k
machine, it may not even swap that much, depending on what the users were
running. I'd guess BASIC was pretty big.
My understanding is that it's round-robin among runnable jobs, one time
slice at a time. I.e. the simplest possible way. IIRC the monitor always
takes up two fields (not swappable). One more field (so, 12 KW total) is
the minimum necessary to run at all -- SI, FIP, and all the users can share
that field with frantic enough swapping (which causes a pretty lights show
on the RF08 panel). Any more memory than that means less swapping (or
none), so it's kicking out the LRU job as needed. I have a hazy memory
that SI and FIP *only* run in field 2? Could be wrong.
BASIC runs in your 4 KW with you. I've never seen its sources so I don't
know how clever it is about overlays and/or keeping your program on disk.
It's a very limited BASIC. Strings are 6 characters. Not max -- *always* 6.
Line #s max out at 2046.
John Wilson
D Bit
4:50 p.m.
On 9/19/15 1:45 PM, John Wilson wrote:
BASIC runs in your 4 KW with you. I've never seen
its sources
The source is in with the UWM stuff. Look under
http://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/ascii/basic
/TSS/8 BASIC COMPILER (BASCOM) VERSION 18
/
/REVISION: 13-AUG-71 IDC/GWB/PJK
/
/COPYRIGHT 1969, 1970, 1971 DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORP.
/ MAYNARD, MASSACHUSETTS
/
/ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY:
/ INFORMATION DEVELOPMENT CORP.
/ DEDHAM, MASS.
/
8:27 p.m.
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 01:50:00PM -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
How did I not notice that?! Awesome! Grabbed and reCRLFed.
Thanks!!
John Wilson
D Bit
BASIC runs in
your 4 KW with you. I've never seen its sources
The source is in with the UWM stuff. Look under
http://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/ascii/basic 
5:32 p.m.
On 9/19/2015 1:30 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
On 9/19/15 11:12 AM, John Wilson wrote:
Swapping was created I thought so you could run with only a few K of memory.
Ben.
but an RK could still be fast
enough to be useful.
When did the 4K user space(s?) actually swap? Did they round-robin or swap
based on activity? I would think they would stay in place until cpu-bound
jobs reached their time quantum. With only a couple of people on a 32k
machine, it may not even swap that much, depending on what the users were
running. I'd guess BASIC was pretty big.
3229
days inactive
3230
days old
6 comments
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participants (4)
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aek＠bitsavers.org -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
COURYHOUSE＠aol.com -
wilson＠dbit.com