Installing an operating system on an 11/83

[Paul Koning]

> On Feb 21, 2022, at 10:11 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On Feb 21, 2022, at 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.
> 
> You can install RT-11, RSX-11M, and RSX-11M+ from CD-R, I couldn’t figure out how to install RSTS/E from CD-R.
> 
> Zane 

How did you get a CD-R image of kits for those OS?

I'm not sure if it has been done for RSTS but it should be possible.  I once did some work for Fred Knight when he was looking into creating a CD image of the OS and all its layered products; the question was whether a bootable CD could be created that would nevertheless look like it had a valid ISO file system on it.  The answer is yes and my RSTSFLX program (the V2 version) had a feature intended to produce such an image.  But the project faded away before it completed, and I don't know that such a CD was ever produced.

Still, a RSTS disk kit is a simple thing: a bootable disk with a RSTS file system on it, containing a few files needed to get the new system disk set up and all the remaining bits in the form of a collection of backup sets.  Boot the distribution device, use the "dskint" and "copy" options to copy the basic files to the destination disk, boot that disk, and run the installation script.  More precisely, those steps will all run automatically, triggered by the fact that the kit is a read-only file system.

A RSTS floppy kit is tricky only because the basic files don't fit on one floppy, so you have to split them across several and include marker files that trigger media swaps.  I've looked for the MicroRSTS kit building scripts but don't think I've seen them.  Reverse engineering them is certainly possible.  Not trivial; all that machinery assumes it's running on the RSTS team's main development machine, which isn't what I have.

As for the question why there aren't RX50 kits for many of the choices: that's because RX50 isn't a convenient distribution device, and DEC didn't sell configs such as the one we're talking about here, at least not for RSTS systems.  With RSTS, you got a choice of a handful of kit media, which typically were things you'd want anyway (like a magtape, good for backups).  So you'd get a system with that kind of configuration, and everything works painlessly.

BTW, Rod, do you have any kind of network interface?  An Ethernet device would be ideal.  With that, you could install just a core setup from floppies or other hairy procedures, then copy the remaining kits across the network and install from the local copies of the kits.

	paul