This thread made me a little curious so I went to eBay and found an 11/44 there: http://cgi.ebay.com/DEC-PDP11-44-Computer-Loaded-w-Cards-No-Reserve-/3902560 88856?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5add135718#shId There's also an FPGA SoC on opencores.com that runs 5th edition UNIX and 2.11 BSD UNIX: http://opencores.org/project,w11 The latter had been a little more than a passing interest for me, but I just haven't had the time to play with it. Pat On 11/13/10 8:59 PM, "Warner Losh" <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:

11/73: http://www.chookfest.net/computers/pdp1173.html BA123: http://gunkies.org/wiki/MicroPDP-11/83

Greg, I am in Melbourne and very interested in the 11/73. You might have noticed in my earlier posts I'm a 2.11BSD experimenter, it would be really, really great to have an 11 running 2.11BSD on my home network for experiments. Do you have a DEQNA? It would be well looked after, though space is a problem sometimes (as it is for everyone) and I may have to put it in storage from time to time in my father's warehouse, I keep a lot of my computer parts there. Like you, I am keen to see these important artifacts preserved. If for some reason I couldn't keep it, I would probably donate to the Australian Computer History Museum, the only problem with that is they're in Sydney. I would be really keen to see some of these computers staying in Melbourne where enthusiasts could access them... cheers, Nick PS. My wife will be furious ;) On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:

Quoting Warner Losh, who wrote on Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 06:59:46PM -0700 .. BA23 box. Well, sometimes. BA23 box was used for VAXstations, but there was also the BA123 box, which looks more like a dogs house. Both my BA23 11/73 and my BA123 MicroVAX are in my storage downstairs otherwise I would make some pictures. The PRO series ran P/OS (really.. weird acronym). I think there used to be an Ultrix variant for them too. Never used that, did use P/OS while I was at DEC in the late 80s for my graduation work. Pro350 was an 11/23 CPU (F11??), the Pro380 was an 11/73 CPU (J11?) Wilko

Warner Losh wrote: The MicroVAX and MicroVAX II postdate the microPDP-11 range (1985 and 1982 resp.), but do indeed use the same boxes: BA23 floorstanding (sometimes called the space heater, because of its shape) and the larger BA123 with casters (sometimes called the hostess trolley because of its shape). Anything else is not a microPDP-11, and any PDP-11 sold in one of those boxes is a microPDP-11 (as opposed to an 11T23, 11V23, etc). It's true that the BA23 chassis can be taken out of the floor cabinet and rack mounted but that's fairly unusual (I've only seen one that way, and it had been removed from its original floor case). It's also true that you can convert a MicroVAX to a PDP-11 by swapping memory and CPU - but there are some VAXstations that you can't convert. In general, the QBus machines are physically smaller and less power-hungry than Unibus systems and that's especially true of the microPDP-11s. Of course it's certainly possible to have a small Unibus system or a big QBus one! The first microPDP-11 was the microPDP-11/23 which is a variant of an 11/23-plus in a BA23; it was followed by the microPDP-11/73, usually in a BA23, and soon after by the micro-PDP-11/83 (same processor, faster clock and different memory) in either a BA23 or BA123. The microPDP-11/53 integrates the memory onto the CPU card and is cheaper but also slower. Later came the 11/93, which is faster -- and that, along with it's Unibus cousin the 11/94, was the last PDP-11 made. There's also an 11/84 Unibus machine to match the 11/83, and although its always a rackmount machine it uses the same CPU and memory as the 11/83 -- but a different CPU box with a different panel and a Unibus-to-Qbus converter. The 11/73 that Greg's photos show is slightly unusual; it uses a BA-11 chassis like earlier rackmount QBus machines. You quite often find 11/73s in that form as upgrades to what was previously an 11/03 or 11/23 system. The drive above the CPU box in Greg's system isn't original, and that rack was part of a system with a pair of RL02s. If it was originally sold as an 11/73 it would be called an 11/73S (but I don't think it is, because 11/73S systems had a black decal on the front to say so), or if it was the result of a CPU upgrade, it would originally have been an 11T03 or 11T23 system - probably the latter. You could get the 11/73 CPU card in two versions -- KDJ11-A is a dual-height card with just the processor and MMU; KDJ11-B is quad-height and incorporates serial ports, LTC, etc. Similarly there are dual- and quad-height 11/23 cards called KDF11-A and KDF11-B. The microPDP-11 series always used the quad KDx11-B cards. Rackmount PDP-11s usually have larger (physically) drives like RL01/RL02, RK06/7, RM0etc and/or RX01/2 floppies whereas the microPDP series normally have physically smaller RD or RZ series winchesters and RX50/33 5.25" drives and perhaps a TK or TZ series tape in a 5.25" form factor. You can run 7th Edition on an 11/23 and up (I have an original 7th Edition machine which is an 11T23). On anything less than 11/73 (like an 11/34, 11/23, etc) it has some limitations and needs some software tweaks (and an RL driver was not a standard piece of the code). Mine has 256KB memory, two RL02s (10MB each) and an RX02 (dual 8" floppy), and even something as simple as "ls" is slow and accompanied by quite a lot of very audible disk access. It would be better with more memory. You can run BSD2.11 on an 11/73 and up (I've got that running on an 11/83 in a BA23 box with 2MB of memory and a 150MB RD54 winchester). That runs quite well, and it's on my local Ethernet network. The PRO-325 and -350 are desktop machines and aren't really PDP-11s, though they do have an F11 CPU chip (same chipset as 11/23 and 11/24, different board). I think you'd have a hard job running Unix on them as they have a lot of custom hardware and no QBus or Unibus. Bitmapped graphics console, no DMA on any I/O devices, and a weird (for DEC) interrupt system. They normally ran P/OS which is a highly modified version of DEC's RSX-11 operating system. The later PRO-380 used a J11 processor (as in 11/73,83,84,53 etc). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York