RSTS/E has just had its 50th Birthday...

[Paul Koning]

> On Jun 28, 2020, at 2:24 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: Peter Dick
> 
>> As I expect you know, RSTS was 'born' on 11th June 1970 as shown when
>> you print DATE$(1%) ...
>> This means RSTS/E, the Greatest Operating System ever, has just turned
>> 50 years old.
> 
> Err, I expect that that was RSTS-11 in June, 1970, not RSTS-E. Since RSTS-11
> (which I learned to program on; happy memories :-) was a BASIC-PLUS only
> system, and ran on a PDP-11/20, I suspect it was a fairly different operating
> system (although no doubt it's BASIC-PLUS interpreter was ported to RSTS-E).
> 
> I think RSTS/E needed the -11/45, introduced around June 1972; sources
> give 1973 for RSTS/E.
> 
> 	Noel

RSTS/E of course has a bunch of new stuff in it to deal with mapping, but the bulk of the code carries over from RSTS-11.  For example, the file system code is basically the same, as is a large fraction of driver code as well as core kernel services.

RSTS/E did lose some oddball things, such as the fact that RSTS-11 did BASIC-PLUS string garbage collection through a file processor overlay.  

	paul