Is TSX-11 or TSX-11/Plus still available for non-commercial purposes? The S & H web site shows no info on this product. Bruce Ray www.NovasAreForever.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "R. D. Davis" <rdd(a)rddavis.org> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 11:42 AM Subject: Re: MicroPDP 11/73 +0100: animals: & such

Jerome Fine replies: (a) As far as I know, there are no hobby versions, as yet, for TSX-PLUS. However, if there is enough interest, perhaps we could inquire. I would certainly be willing to contact S&H to see if they might be interested. Since I was a sort of distributor for S&H at one point and I already have my own license, I would be able to support hobby users. SO!!!! Are there any potential TSX-PLUS hobby users out there who would like to have this software? (b) As for RT-11, I don't find it boring at all. In fact, since it is rare that a single hobby user can make much use of the ability to multi-program under TSX-PLUS, I find that I can gain 95% of the benefits that TSX-PLUS offers (like having 64 KBytes of address space for a program) to already be available right under RT-11. Of course, RT-11 still has a few bugs left and they are rather interesting to fix just for themselves. As for being able to use more than one job at a time, about the only use I have for that is to run multiple versions of KED. That is one thing that even RT-11 can do extremely well - I do a multi-terminal SYSGEN. On a real PDP-11, I use a number of VT100/VT220/VT320 terminals (actually 6 in all). On a PC with E11, one VT100 is usually enough connected to COM2: and the other 4 jobs running KED can use the <ALT>/<Fn> keys to switch between CONn: displays. That leaves the Background job free to run all the other programs, although on some occasions I do run a job via "SET TT: CONSOL=n" and have SDX.SYS running in hardware mode on the PC monitor. That keeps SD: out of the job's output on the VT100 beside me. (c) Since E11 arrived, I do most of my development on the PC under W95 (Double Yeck) at the moment and soon under W98 (Single Yeck). I am looking at a two year old Pentium III 750 with 256 MBytes of memory and an EIDE 40 GByte hard drive for the "newer" system. While my estimate of the existing Pentium 166 MMX is about 3 times a PDP-11/73, I seem to be looking at 15 times a PDP-11/73 on the Pentium III 750. Just for example, I compared two 32 MByte MSCP RAM: disks (yes, E11 is the commercial version) - about 30 seconds vs 5 seconds. (d) More if anyone is interested - usually not!

I am reasonably sure TSX-PLUS will NOT run without an MMU!

Jerome Fine wrote: Too bad, but then I can run it on one of my other machines, so I like to sign up for a TSX-11/Plus as well. Ed --

I've never understood why any hobbyist would want to waste good DEC hardware by running UNIX on it. Other platforms will run UNIX faster, cheaper, and often better. More importantly, there are all these cool OS's that only run on DEC hardware! Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | 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/ |