On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 09:05:43AM +0100, James Wilson wrote: Not to brag, but I'm 28 :) And I know of two more below 30, but I guess the average is a bit higher. Congrats on the cherrypopping (not something I thought I would say on this list) Cheers, Pontus

Kirn Gill wrote: Ah! Someone looking for big challenges! I'm not sure about wget, as I've never looked at its source code, but I'll be quite impressed if you get gzip, or even just a generally usable zlib, running on a PDP-11. Eric

At 9:52 AM -0400 6/4/09, Dan Gahlinger wrote: I couldn't agree more, HOWEVER, there is the slight issue of TCP/IP support. That would pretty much limit him to RT-11. Of course if you put it on HECnet you can run pretty much anything except RT-11. Personally my preference would be for RSTS/E or RSX-11M/M+. My view is if you want to run UNIX on DEC hardware, either get a DEC PC, or a DECstation (MIPS). I've run UNIX on Alpha, but mainly because I had a spare, and was already running OpenVMS on several Alpha's and VAXen. Having said that, one of these years I'd like to get 2.11BSD installed on a Hard Drive for my /73 (I use removable SCSI HD's). Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

On 04/06/2009 15:26, Ethan Dicks wrote: On a couple of occasions I've taken a PDP-11/23plus with dual RL02s into Computer Science for Open Days, to show it running 7th Edition. Always used to get a lot of interest, exactly because there's enough similarity that people can find their way around, but enough things missing that they notice (one of those things is speed, of course!). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On 04/06/2009 16:42, John Floren wrote: Unless it does something that doesn't work on a KDJ-11 but does on a KDF-11, it should be fine. I *think* I've actually done that. Or maybe i tried and it didn't boot -- the last time I would have tried would have been at least ten years ago. It can definitely run on an 11/34. If you look in the sources, you'll find some references to "small machine" -- ie an 11/34, 11/23, etc. Not everything is possible, though. For example FORTRAN isn't there, nor BASIC, nor vi (because curses isn't fully implemented) but ed is. ISTR there are a few other utilities that are linked (not symlinks, as V7 doesn't have them IIRC) to a proglet that simply prints "Not, as yet, available for a small machine". Or words to that effect. The machine I have came from the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and was one of their original development machines. They were one of the distribution centres for Seventh Edition, so I got a good system when it was passed on, and a lot of information from the staff there, along with an original distribution magtape and licenses. But of course no TCP/IP or anything like that. I had great fun getting a reasonably modern (for 1992) kermit to run on it, because of the overlays required. I remember one of the first shell scripts (if that's not too grand a word for a three liner) I wrote was a recursive ls (no "ls -R" in V7). The important things all work. Wumpus, for example, runs fine :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: That sounds like a cool demo. I've loaded 2.9BSD (from real magtape) on an 11/24 w/dual RL02s, but it just wasn't enough room to be able to rebuild the kernel and load man pages, IIRC. 7th Ed. should fit better in 20MB. One of the things that always held me back in the 1980s when I tried to get 2BSD up on (my own) real gear was that I personally didn't own disks big enough to hold it comfortably. I had a pile of RL01s and RL02s, but couldn't afford RK07s or anything larger. I bought a KT24 and some memory from Terry Kennedy specifically to run 2.9BSD on the aforementioned 11/24, but ran up against the disk issue during the install phase (I had to run kinda stripped down, with the generic install kernel). By the time I could afford a MicroPDP w/at least an RD52, I was already running UNIX on old Sun gear, so that took the pressure off trying to get it running on DEC gear. I got my first tastes for DEC machines at work, but in the same way that I suspect many of us on the list also feel/felt, wanted to run the same stuff at home, single-user. To me, one of the great things about the DEC line (and the Sun line too, for that matter) was that OSes ran across a broad spectrum of hardware, such that I could use VMS at my day job, but I was still able to afford an 11/725 for my own use at home; or run RT-11 on a customer's 11/73, but do software development on my own 11/23. -ethan

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Jochen Kunz <jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> wrote: Heh... I just did that on yahozna.dyndns.org... well... it was more like "ps -ef^H^H^Haux". ;-) -ethan

Firstly it's a free world and there are probably as many differing views on this one as there are collectors. FWIW I set out to be a collector of anything made, sold, supported or given away by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1957 to 1997. If you have the freedom to do what you wish then you also have a responsibility to make sure you do not try to impose your choice on others. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ethan Dicks Sent: 04 June 2009 15:26 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: PDP 11/73 on the Internet On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote: Because you can explore the roots of UNIX? running Only because UNIX sprung from the PDP-11 and didn't spring from an Intel box. If I wanted to use a 286 for something other than DOS, I'd probably run Minix. I don't know if there ever was a proper "BSD" ported or back-ported to the 286 (Venix, Xenix, etc., are evolutionary backwaters and therefore uninteresting to me). those wonderful command lines I love RT-11 (having made my living on it 20+ years ago) and a variety of proprietary DEC operating systems, so I understand the sentiment, but even back in the day, we ran 4BSD and SysV and Ultrix-32 on our 11/750 as well as VMS. More than a few universities ran 2BSD on their PDP-11/70s, not RSX-11M+ or RSTS/E. The history of DEC is intertwined with the history of UNIX, especially at academic sites. there. Living with the 16-bitness of the processor? 4BSD on a VAX was at one point, "the pinnacle" of the UNIX experience ("All the world's a VAX"). Massive address space, no need for overlays, etc. 2BSD is more representative of what people went through before 1978, with enough similarity to a modern environment that you can dabble without getting lost (older UNIX is missing lots of stuff that most of us take for granted anymore). I've also done some work exploring how the C compiler works by compiling programs on a PDP-11 platform, then disassembling them to see what C constructs map to what PDP-11 instructions (and I found the exercise quite enlightening). All of this can be easily done with a simulator like simh (and I've done it, more than 10 years ago), but it still doesn't compare to running on real hardware. So that's why _I_ would run BSD on a PDP-11. -ethan

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 12:12 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote: I've only ever run Unix on a PDP-11 as a single-user, but I'm not surprised to hear it. I'd have to wonder if the machine was swapping, or if it was just CPU-bound. Depending on what those 10 users were doing, that could be quite a lot. 4MB should be plenty of memory for a number of users (since each process is essentially limited to 128K total I&D space), but if everyone was trying to compile something at the same time, I can easily see how individual response would be poor. -ethan

On Jun 4, 2009, at 7:51 AM, John Floren <slawmaster at gmail.com> wrote: I'll try to get that running on the 11/40 once I work out the hardware issues :) Josh

Dan Gahlinger wrote: Well, was going to install my copy of OS/2 for PDP-11 from TK50, but I didn't have the proper Matrox framebuffer, alas. Josh

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Jochen Kunz <jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> wrote: Yeah... there has to be *lots* of buffer-overrun-exploit potential on a 2BSD machine (gets() anyone?), but you have to know what to overflow the buffer *with* to get anywhere. -ethan

On Friday 05 June 2009, Dave McGuire wrote: Or, RT-11. Though, RT-11 is quite zippy even on an 11/03. :) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing -- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcac

Dave McGuire wrote: Sometimes that's a virtue. I don't have much RSX-11 experience, but I definitely like RSTS/E.

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: RT-11 screams on pretty much anything faster than a KDF-11. On a KDF-11, RT-11 always gave me acceptable single-user performance. On machines with a hard disk (not floppy-only), the console serial line speed always felt like the limiting factor. Running games, editing files with EDT, compiling MACRO-11 programs, etc., all "felt" fine, even on a machine that wasn't totally decked out. LSI-11s were a bit sluggish, though. -ethan

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Dave McGuire wrote: Okay, now you almost have me curious enough to get 2.11BSD up and running on my /73. I've run the others on /73's, but never UNIX. Last time I looked 2.11BSD doesn't have the necessary patches applied to the distribution to work with my Viking SCSI controller. Zane

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Dave McGuire wrote: Okay, that does not sound fun at all. Somehow that is more in line with why I've said I don't collect old UNIX boxes. All my old ones were much newer when I aquired them! :-) I like my UNIX fast and modern. I have a MicroVAX III that is currently in storage, but will soon be moving into our garage. I built it to handle those sort of things, and I have a SCSI box I can hook up to a Sun for the SCSI HD's on my PDP-11. That's the nice thing about the removable tray's on the PDP-11. The MicroVAX III handles reading and writing RL01 and RL02 images nicely. I'm glad you made me think of this, I need to be sure and leave room to get the row of 19" racks into the garage! It will be interesting to see how all the hardware has held up after being in storage for the past nine years. Though until I get the cooling and power issues solved I won't be able to run much. Zane

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Dave McGuire wrote: It was back before I switched to SCSI for my PDP-11's. Even my PDP-11/44 has a SCSI controller in it, so the main system I see it being of use for now days is the PDP-11/23 that resides in the same rack, as it only has RL01 and RL02 drives. It runs OpenVMS 7.2 and has a pair of RA72's and a pair of RA73's. It's a pretty nice system. IIRC though it's only 16MB RAM. It was running VAX/VMS 4.x on a RD53 when I got it, sadly the drive didn't last long enough for me to get a backup of it. I went with 7.2 instead of 5.5 to get better TCP/IP support, though used a 5.5 disk to bootstrap it. I did all this about 10 years ago. I'm most concerned about the PowerMac 8500/180, MicroVAX III, PDP-11/44, Atari TT030, and my two Amiga 3000's (the one 3000 was last booted about 7 years ago, at which time I had it running Amiga OS 3.9). I'm pretty sure my Amiga 500 is dead, as I couldn't get it running a couple years ago when I tried. :-( I'll probably also try to get an Apple ][e or ][gs up and running as well. My main Commodore 64 has been running off and on, so it should be Okay (last running around Christmas). I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest. My interests have changed a lot over the past 9 years. Realistically the only system I have a "pressing need" to get back up and running is my antique PowerMac 8500/180 and the UMAX scanner I have for it, as I want to be able to use the scanner to scan Medium and Large format film. In addition to shooting digital, I find myself shooting a lot of film these days, and am making the step up from 35mm to both Medium and Large format cameras. Zane

On Jun 5, 2009, at 4:54 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: That would be extremely yummy. Note that you typed "suck as PC" above...Freudian slip? ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: The main problem I see with porting it is that to do so would be in violation of copywrite. The second problem I see is that I'm not sure what exists in the way of source code. You would need some sort of Macro-11 to Macro-x86 compilier. An easier port might be something like RSTS/E, though the source code for it is somewhere around 150MB, IIRC. Realistically time might be better spent on writing a TCP Stack and running it under an emulator. Zane

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: It would be nice to see just about any OS that wasn't basically POSIX, or DOS/Windows running native on a PC. Zane

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Dave McGuire<mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: Plan 9! We don't pretend to follow POSIX, we just had Thompson and Kernighan do what they wanted. ;) John -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Dave McGuire<mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: Oh yeah, it's still being developed. My job is writing Plan 9 kernel code at a national lab. I'd say grab a basic PC, burn the CD, and go at it! Just read the 9fans mailing list archives *before* posting questions there ;) John -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba

Dave McGuire schrieb: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/ -- Regards Holger

On Jun 5, 2009, at 5:53 PM, derschjo at msu.edu wrote: Sick. SICK! -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Jun 6, 2009, at 3:00 PM, bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca wrote: [head explodes] -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Dave McGuire wrote: Interesting! Peace... Sridhar

At 2:00 PM +0100 6/6/09, Liam Proven wrote: I was actually thinking about TSX-32 when I wrote that. I've never run TSX-32, but have run TSX-11. I wasn't aware they were still around. I'm actually a little surprised that the website has been updated since I was last there. Although as the price list is from June of 2001, I have to question how alive they actually are. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

ROM BASIC? (Technically, it performs some of the functions of an OS) Standalone Forth? (there must be at least one..) UCSD P-system? CP/M-86? -tony

Tony Duell wrote: UCSD P-system? Now theres a name I haven't seen in a while.... 10 or so years ago I worked for a company in Bristol (UK) who supposedly had the rights to the P-System. Went by the name of Cabot Software, formerly Pecan Systems IIRC. Great system but didn't keep up with the times. We had the interpreter running on a selection of digital TV STBs with C as the preferred source language (no, not a logical choice for the P-System!). That led to them getting into the MHEG-5 market and eventually swallowed up by a TV manufacturer. Anyway, the story goes that the P-System was considered by IBM along with CP/M for the PC. Don't know how much thuth there was to that but even in my time we had several customers still running P-System natively on a variety of hardware - AppleII, a contemporary mini (can't remember which) at Norwich Union and some 68K based (Stride?) systems. Happy days! James

On Jun 7, 2009, at 1:16 PM, Tony Duell wrote: I have a Sage II, with a P-system boot disk. It's neat. I'd love to find CP/M-68K for it though. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Dave McGuire wrote: try http://www.sageandstride.org/

Thanks for that. I see the P-system disks are there too... I am going to have to get imagedisk running on my strange machine... And then dig out the Sage, and replace the chip I 'borrowed' from it (the fact that all ICs are socketed measn it was a prime candidate as a donor :-(). -tony

Al Kossow wrote: Sadly not. AFAIK none of the original staff are still with the company, now called "Cabot communications" (cabot.co.uk). A good contact, if you can find him, would be Gordon Wilkie who used to be the technical manager and knew the P-System inside out. (A quick bit of hunting shows him as a freelance - http://www.bristolitservices.co.uk/index.html). Good luck! James

James Wilson wrote: I know for a fact that IBM offered p-System for the PC, because I have a copy of *IBM's* p-System and all its manuals (binder-in-box) for the PC. The binders are blue. The PC-DOS ones are beige/tan, if my memory serves me. Peace... Sridhar

Tony Duell wrote: BASIC is definitely pink. Peace... Sridhar

Josh Dersch wrote: I have a DOS in tan. I have a BASIC in pink, and a BASIC in dark brown. I suspect age may have a part to play. Peace... Sridhar

Dave McGuire wrote: Ta-Dah! We have a winner. (chuckling). However, IBM's ROM BASIC manual was actually very dark olive green when printed, and if one purchased the basic program to run under DOS, THAT manual was pink. Warren

Fred Cisin wrote: As I understand it, the UC Regents sold the rights to Softech, who then sold it to Pecan. The PC version was from Softech. HP sold a heavily modified version for the 9836, called the Pascal Workstation, which was sold as an alternative to BASIC. CHM is in the process of getting HP to grant us a non-commercial license for the Pascal Workstation software. We have what survived from Colorado Springs for the product, just have to get the paperwork finished and the media holding the sources recovered.

"Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> writes: Some colleagues of mine are working on a PC operating system: http://rmox.net/ Definitely not classic hardware, but written in an extended version of a classic programming language, at least. You can port transputer applications to it fairly easily. There are various other unusual research-oriented and hobbyist operating systems around -- for example, EROS and its descendents, SkyOS, etc. -- Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> <http://offog.org/>

Ethan Dicks wrote: But are those executables dynamically linked? If so, wouldn't the static executables be way larger? Peace... Sridhar

Ethan Dicks wrote: That's a pretty good one-sentence summary of UNIX ;).

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ethan Dicks wrote: I've messed with Minix on a 286; I used to keep a copy of i86 Minix with the DOSMINIX laucher on a flash drive because it would run on NTVDM (Windows NT's DOS VM). I've also messed with DOS programming. It's a pain and a half and I avoided it like the plague; DOS is dead and not of any intristic value unless you enjoy playing corny-looking games or running horrid multitasking GUIs made by Microsoft. I know enough C to make compilers shut up when porting code; I have tried writing software on my own and I can show you some failed attempts I just left behind (also due to lack of motivation, I get tired of doing all the work myself) If the /pointers/ on a PDP-11 are 16-bit as well, then I know what I am up against. I've done a bit of coding with ELKS and (aforementioned) Minix for pre-386 chips. I wouldn't write any software on the machine, there's nothing useful I can think of writing that I would actually deal with using. The fact that the local 'vi' doesn't respond to ANSI/VT100 directional keys, and only responds to h, j, k, l instead is enough to make me hate it. And no, that's not going to motivate me to write a better editor. I don't know how. If I did, I would have already done it and the holy Emacs vs. Vi war would have been over, both sides having both lost.

(messing with what I don't know, I wasn't been invited to the party, I'm completely dumb on this subject) Why not port JOE (a wordstar clone) to it? :o)

At 2:36 PM -0400 6/6/09, Ethan Dicks wrote: Take a look at the Mac version if you can find it. I forget just how large of a screen it supports, but it's most of a 1024x1280 display (not all). Same with Warlords II, while on DOS you're limited to 640x480 for both. These are two of my favorite computer games. I really want to get my one Mac setup so I can play these and Harpoon again. I can still play Master of Orion on Mac OS X 10.4.11 on my G5. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

No, just a polytheist. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm rethreading my toothbrush bristles." -

On Jun 6, 2009, at 2:10 PM, Kirn Gill wrote: Emacs won that war ages ago. ;) [dave dives for cover] But seriously...Editors are usually complex, but they don't always have to be. I've done a lot of work with CamelForth on Z80 (I have two homebrew SBCs running it) and have added mass storage support to it. In support of that, I needed an editor. I wrote a very basic full-screen editor in Z80 assembler. I must emphasize that it is VERY basic, and it is very much tied to Forth system usage, but the assembler source file is only 728 lines long. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Actually, MSDOS is alive and well. It is commonly used as the "boot loader" for many, many systems. It's no longer under development by Microsoft, but they still make money from sales to people who need something on top of the bare hardware before their custom software starts up. -- Ian ________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Kirn Gill [segin2005 at gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, June 06, 2009 11:10 AM To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: PDP 11/73 on the Internet -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [snip] I've messed with Minix on a 286; I used to keep a copy of i86 Minix with the DOSMINIX laucher on a flash drive because it would run on NTVDM (Windows NT's DOS VM). I've also messed with DOS programming. It's a pain and a half and I avoided it like the plague; DOS is dead and not of any intristic value unless you enjoy playing corny-looking games or running horrid multitasking GUIs made by Microsoft. I know enough C to make compilers shut up when porting code; I have tried writing software on my own and I can show you some failed attempts I just left behind (also due to lack of motivation, I get tired of doing all the work myself) If the /pointers/ on a PDP-11 are 16-bit as well, then I know what I am up against. I've done a bit of coding with ELKS and (aforementioned) Minix for pre-386 chips. I wouldn't write any software on the machine, there's nothing useful I can think of writing that I would actually deal with using. The fact that the local 'vi' doesn't respond to ANSI/VT100 directional keys, and only responds to h, j, k, l instead is enough to make me hate it. And no, that's not going to motivate me to write a better editor. I don't know how. If I did, I would have already done it and the holy Emacs vs. Vi war would have been over, both sides having both lost.

Ethan Dicks wrote: Yes, but size of the executable is NOT the problem you're going to face with gzip or zlib on a PDP-11. Eric