From: Roland Huisman
I have a PDP11/20 and I would love to run an early
Unix version on
it. ... But it seems that the earliest versions of Unix do not need the
extra memory. Does anyone have RK05 disk images for these early Unix
versions?
Although the _kernel_ source for V1 is available:
https://minnie.tuhs.org//cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V1
most of the rest is missing; only 'init' and 'sh' are available. So
one would
have to write almost _everything_ else. Some commands are available in PDP-11
assembler in later versions, and might be movable without _too_ much work -
but one would have to start with the assembler itself, which is luckily in
assembler.
If I were trying to run 'UNIX' on an -11/20, I think the only reasonable
choice would be MINI-UNIX:
https://gunkies.org/wiki/MINI-UNIX
It's basically V6 UNIX with all use of the PDP-11 memory management
removed. The advantage of going MINI-UNIX is that almost all V6 source
(applications, drivers, etc) will run on it 'as is'.
It does need ~56KB of main memory. If you don't have that much on the -11/20,
LSX (links in the above) would be an option; it's very similar to MINI-UNIX,
but is trimmed down some, to allow its use on systems with less main memory.
I'm not sure if MINI-UNIX has been run on the -11/20, but it _should_ run
there; it runs on the -11/05, and the only differences between the /20 and the
/05 are that the /20 does not have the RTT instruction (and I just checked,
and MINI-UNIX doesn't use RTT), and SWAB doesn't clear the V condition code
bit. (There are other minor differences, such as OP Rn, (Rn)+ are different on
the -11/20, but that shouldn't be an issue.)
Step 1 would be to get MINI-UNIX running on an -11/20 under a simulator; links
in the above to get you there.
Noel