19 Nov
2010
19 Nov
'10
1:26 a.m.
Actually the 11/780 and 11/785 used an 11V03.(I believe they had either 12
or 16k of memory to start and when upgrading to the 11/785 the console was
upgraded to either 16 or 28k.
The OS was a very stripped down one. It used an RT11 filesystem, but I
don't know if it was RT11 based. I was told it wasn't.
The 11/750 was 8085 (IIRC) based. The 11/730, I think, used an 8088 or 8086
The 8600/8650 used a T11 chip on a special board and ran a version of RT11
IIRC.
The later (85xx) Vaxes often used left-over Pro350's and later Pro380's as
VAX consoles.
The biggest problem with RT11 on the Pro is they had to make the bitmap
display emulate a DEC standard terminal. (Not sure if it was VT100 or just
VT52 compatible...)
I gave away my Pro350. They'll get my Vaxstation when they pry it from my
cold dead hands. (Or my wife wins the argument).
Bill Pechter
been a long time since Field Circus...
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 1:57 PM, Norman Wilson <norman(a)oclsc.org> wrote:
Just to loop things around a bit:
Some of the larger VAXes used small PDP-11s (and their
bastard offspring) as console processors.
This started with the very first VAX, the 11/780, which
used an 11/23 as a console. The console ran a stripped-down
system, possibly based on RT-11 or RSX-11, I forget (and
am typing this on a train in the Outer Mongolia part of
Texas where it's hard to look up references).
I don't know the whole list of what was used as a console
for different VAXes, but I do remember that the Nautilus
series (8500-8550-8700-8800) used either a Pro/350 or a
Pro/380, running P/OS, which was slightly more satisfactory
than the rude English non-computer expansion of PoS might
imply, but only slightly. Especially for those of us who
wrote code to fit into UNIX on the VAX and talk to the
console processor.
I also vaguely remember that although Digital were
reluctant (at least early on) to make an RT-11 that would
run on the Pro-series systems, someone made a UNIX for
those systems.
I never knew a lot about this stuff and have forgotten much
of what I did know, but perhaps my words will trigger others'
memories.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
_______________________________________________
TUHS mailing list
TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org
https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs