On Mar 10, 2016, at 2:15 PM, Mattis Lind <mattislind at gmail.com> wrote: 2016-03-10 18:51 GMT+01:00 Richard Cini <rich.cini at verizon.net>: I have been using RT11 v5.3 on a LSI-11/2 (KD11-HA / M7270) machine with RX02 and 64kByte memory. I also tried RT11 V3B / MU-BASIC on this machine booting from RX02. http://www.datormuseum.se/computers/digital-equipment-corporation/pdp1103-l Long ago I ran RT11 V4 on a VT103 with LSI11/2 CPU and dual TU58. It was really very slow. I have the distribution kit somewhere on original TU58 but I am not sure about the state of those cassettes. So I am pretty convinced that the it should work. What about SimH or Ersatz-11? Does your image boot on those simulators if you set the up identical to your setup? I know that SimH had problems booting from TU58 but as far as I remember that should have been fixed. Try the latest SimH on Github. Do you have enough working memory in your system? Have you ran diagnostics? Maybe it is a good idea to create a bootable TU58 with XXDP. If you use SimH you can create your own bootable TU58 without to much effort. I did this when working on my 11/04. Use one of the RL02 images on bitsavers and try to follow the guide I have a bit down on this page: http://www.datormuseum.se/computers/digital-equipment-corporation/pdp-11-04 Good luck! /Mattis

On Mar 10, 2016, at 2:46 PM, Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote: The OP was specifically asking about RT11 on a Heathkit H11, not "just any ol' LSI-11". Very possible I'm completely incorrect here, but I thought I recalled that DEC gave heathkit a special price on H11 boards and OS license and such - so that Heathkit could produce the system for a price that the home user could actually afford back in the day. And because DEC was highly concerned that someone would buy a card or item from Heathkit and use it in a "real DEC PDP11" (business channel) where it would cost a lot more money normally - they did *something* to introduce an incompatibility of some sort between an H11 and a "real" pdp11? J

On Mar 10, 2016, at 2:54 PM, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: On 10/03/2016 19:28, Richard Cini wrote: I've got various RX01, RX02, RL01 and RL02 disks with RT-11 v2, 4.0 and 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 and 5.7 and run them on real hardware. It's a long time since I've run v2, but the rest all run on my 11/73 as far as I remember. It may depend on the exact config (SYSGEN) but it certainly won't work unless you have exactly the right boot block on the media.

On Mar 10, 2016, at 4:03 PM, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: I know v2 doesn't have SYSGEN but IIRC you still need to need to have things set up right, like the driver files. I haven't used V3 (I have some RX01 flopppies with that and MuBASIC) in several decades so I can't remember if that was when it changed. But for all versions you need to set up the correct boot block for the specific boot device. 4.0 is so straightforward I'm surprised if it won't run on Rich's H11 - 4.0 is contemporary with the LSI-11 and 11/03 and although the other cards are different I thought the H11 used a standard DEC LSI-11 processor. Maybe something vital isn't at the expected address? Or there's an unexpected interrupt or something? What exactly does it do (or was it doing) when it barfs and how far does it get? -- Pete

Sorry for the delay in my answer. I was out of town for the last 36 hours, so I just noticed this thread. For maximum flexibility, I would suggest V05.03 of RT-11. It is just about the most widely available and has the benefit of probably being completely legal to use on a non-commercial basis with SimH. V04.00 of RT-11 will probably run equally well, but obviously without some of the many additional features found in V05.03 of RT-11. In addition, you might want to check even later versions of RT-11, all of which still run on a PDP-11/03 CPU. Under V05.03 of RT-11, you can use either distributed Unmapped Monitor, RT11SJ or RT11FB. The size will be larger than from V04.00 of RT-11, but I suggest that the additional features are more than worth while. Since you have all 32 KW or memory or 64 KB, you will not have any problem booting RT-11. If you have any specific questions using Ersatz-11 with a PDP-11/03, just ask. That will make sure that the configuration and the boot device is set up correctly. Just for practice, you might try using Ersatz-11 with V05.03 of RT-11 with SET CPU 03. You will find that Ersatz-11 is trivial to use and that it supports emulation of all types of disk drives including TU-58, RK05, RL02 and SCSI, named, respectively, DD:, RK:, DL: and DU:, the same as DEC names them. Be warned that after you practice with Ersatz-11, you may find that an LSI-11, also called a PDP-11/03, is a bit slower than running with Ersatz-11, even on a 486. My experience with just a 750 MHz Pentium III is that RT-11 runs about 15 times as fast as a PDP-11/93. On a current I7 from Intel, I expect speeds more than 100 times as fast as a PDP-11/93. If you provide some of the information requested below, a version of RT-11 might be suggested which is a better fit. Otherwise, my assumption at present is that you want to use RT-11 since it is the only reasonable choice out of RT-11, RSX-11 and RSTS/E, although I am reasonably sure that RSTS/E can't run on a PDP-11/03. Further, you want to run RT-11 to be able to show that you can run RT-11 on the PDP-11/03 hardware that you have. That is quite different from the original reason a PDP-11/03 system was purchased, namely to run specific application programs which were able to run under RT-11. If I am incorrect, please let me know and advise otherwise. It does sound like you have the Heath Kit version of the hardware. If so, then you probably don't have a hard disk drive. A complete list of the actual hardware will be helpful. In addition, even more important from my point of view is why you want to use the hardware that you have to run RT-11 (most likely because it will not run anything else very easily) and then which specific application programs will be run after you are successful in getting RT-11 to run. Just as important is how you will interface with the PDP-11/03 and move the results from the PDP-11/03 to either printed output or a system that can share the results via the internet. Jerome Fine

To close this out, I want to report that with Malcolm?s and Mattis? help, I was able to get RT-11 v4 and v5.03 running on the H-11 using the TU58 emulator.

Thanks to all who helped push me along on this. I did create a separate Heath page on my Web site for it.