Installing an operating system on an 11/83

[Rod Smallwood]

On 22/02/2022 00:55, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 4:32 PM Rod Smallwood via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>>     I have built an 11/83 in a BA23 box.
>>
>>     It has a KDJ-11B, 2mB PMI memory, an RQDX3 with an RX50 attached,
>>
>> Plus a CMD CQD 220A Disk controller with a digital RH18A 2Gig SCSI drive
>> attached.
>>
>> Diag sees drive as RA82.
>>
>> It boots and runs the diag disk and XXDP+ just fine.
>>
>> I do not have install distributions for any of the 11/83 operating systems.
>>
>> Daily driver system is a Windows 10 PC.
>>
>> So how do I install an operating system?
>>
>> Suggestions please.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Rod
>>
> Is the PC old enough to still have PCI slots? If it is, one option would be
> to pick up a cheap PCI SCSI controller, e.g. an AHA-2940, that you can use
> to write disk images to a SCSI hard drive. Then use SIMH to create disk
> images of an OS of interest that can then be dumped to the SCSI hard drive.
> Or pick up a SCSI2SD device to use with the CMD CQD-220A instead of a SCSI
> disk drive. Then copy disk images created using SIMH on the PC to an SD
> card.
>
> Is the CQD-220A a /TM version, or an /E version? If it's a /TM version you
> could also pick up a cheap SCSI tape drive, and create installation tapes
> for RSTS/E or 2.11BSD and boot from those to install on a SCSI hard drive.
> I've done that a few times just for the heck of installing from tape. If
> you have the /E version (or /T/M version) instead of the /TM version you
> can do either MSCP or TMSCP,  but not both at the same time.
>
> For RT-11, that is small enough it wouldn't be difficult to install from
> RX-50 disks, if you had a means to create disks from images.
>
Exactly, the best solution is an RX50 distribution.

I have never seen one or a way of making one.

If you have a PDP-11 with an RX50 then you would need one.

Rod