Did anyone on the list get these tapes?

[Paul Koning]

> 
> On Sun, Mar 25, 2018 at 1:57 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> http://bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp11/dectape/LCM_Early_PDP-11

I looked over these, more precisely the ones that related to the PDP11.  Here are some notes.  The most significant item from my point of view is that it contains much of a very early RSTS (so early that it was still called BTSS).  Together with a scanned listing I have of the BTSS kernel it may amount to just about a complete system.  I need to get that scan run through OCR...

	paul

118647.tu56:

palx11.mac: PDP11 cross-assembler.  This was used to build PDP11
software early on, such as RSTS-11.

118652.tu56:

iox.p11: appears to be sources for the IOX "paper tape I/O" package,
described as "experimental I/O system".  That wasn't what it was
called when it finally shipped, I believe.

odtx.p11: ODT debugger for IOX.

rts.p11: Early Basic-PLUS for RSTS (referred to as "BTSS" in the
comments).

rtsdoc.rno: Brief documentation for some of the operation codes in
rts.p11.

sim11x.sav: I wonder if this might be the famous "Mimic".  Someone
with a suitable PDP-10 system should try to find out.

syslod.p11: tool to create a bootable DECtape.  Later on, "syslod" was
the name of the OS loader program, the one booted from DECtape to load
the OS (at least in the case of DOS).

118653.tu56:

oo.p11: RSTS file processor components.  It's not entirely clear but I
believe these are functions that were implemented as overlays.  Not
everything is precisely file I/O related; as in RSTS-11 V4, the
Basic-PLUS string garbage collector is implemented as a "file
processor" overlay.

rts.p11: Basic-PLUS, similar to the one in 118652.tu56 but appears to
be slightly newer.

118654.tu56:

dos.spp: design spec for DOS-11 V3.

edit11.man: user manual for DOS-11 EDIT program.

fort.spc: design spec for DOS-11 FORTRAN.

l.spc: design spec for DOS-11 LINK.

118656.tu56:

basic.p11: Multi-user BASIC (this is not Basic-PLUS)

syslod.p11: Another copy of the OS loader, essentially the same as the
one on 118652.tu56 but with a few comments cleaned up.

118660.tu56:

p.001 through p.011: software floating point library, appears to be
THREE word format (two word mantissa, one word exponent).  I believe
this was used in RSTS through version 3; in V4A, RSTS-11 switched to
the hardware standard 2-word or 4-word floating point format.

test.001 through test.009: appear to be test programs for the above.