9 Jun
2025
9 Jun
'25
8:39 p.m.
From: Vicente Collares
I'm more interested in its historical
signaficance.
If that's your interest, PDP-11's are absolutely _the_ way to go. The PDP-11
is _the_ machine that made UNIX. That choice has good points, and a very bad
point, though.
Good points are that QBUS PDP-11's are pretty easy to find, pretty small
(desktop PC-sized), and not very expensive. They're pretty robust, too - I
have a large stack of PDP-11 QBUS CPUs, and none of them had failed, as of the
last time that I powered them on.
The very bad point is that working mass storage for them is very hard to
find. The controllers are around, but not the drives.
Does anyone know if anyone is making a QBUS mass storage clone? Bridgham and
I were going to produce QBUS RK11/RP11 clone that used SD cards to hold the
bits. We got the prototype working, and it booted UNIX, but then I came down
with COVID and post-COVID myalgic encephalomyelitis, and that was the end of
that.
Noel
9 Jun
9 Jun
8:54 p.m.
New subject: Do you have any historical UNIX computers?
There's a nice UDA/KDA emulation that uses SD cards or basically anything
on the Linux side. I helped Dave Plummer (Dave's Garage fame) get it
working with 2.11BSD on an 11/85 as a second KDA which 2.11 did not want to
do. I suspect that's the way to go these days. He has it emulating
RA92's and a few other things. Since this is more about HW than UNIX
specifically, we should take it off line.
Clem
On Mon, Jun 9, 2025 at 4:40 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
From: Vicente
Collares
I'm more interested in its historical
signaficance.
If that's your interest, PDP-11's are absolutely _the_ way to go. The
PDP-11
is _the_ machine that made UNIX. That choice has good points, and a very
bad
point, though.
Good points are that QBUS PDP-11's are pretty easy to find, pretty small
(desktop PC-sized), and not very expensive. They're pretty robust, too - I
have a large stack of PDP-11 QBUS CPUs, and none of them had failed, as of
the
last time that I powered them on.
The very bad point is that working mass storage for them is very hard to
find. The controllers are around, but not the drives.
Does anyone know if anyone is making a QBUS mass storage clone? Bridgham
and
I were going to produce QBUS RK11/RP11 clone that used SD cards to hold the
bits. We got the prototype working, and it booted UNIX, but then I came
down
with COVID and post-COVID myalgic encephalomyelitis, and that was the end
of
that.
Noel
9:56 p.m.
New subject: Do you have any historical UNIX computers?
Hello Noel,
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 16:39:52 -0400 (EDT)
Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
If that's your interest, PDP-11's are
absolutely _the_ way to go. The PDP-11
is _the_ machine that made UNIX. That choice has good points, and a very bad
point, though.
Buying a PDP-11 has for a long time been a dream of mine. To start my
collection of historical computers however I think I'm going get a UNIX
workstation.
Good points are that QBUS PDP-11's are pretty
easy to find, pretty small
(desktop PC-sized), and not very expensive. They're pretty robust, too - I
have a large stack of PDP-11 QBUS CPUs, and none of them had failed, as of the
last time that I powered them on.
Good to know. I was under the impression that all PDP-11s where hard to
find, expensive and often required advanced tinkering to get working.
I'll definitely will be looking into these Q-BUS computers. Thanks!
Does anyone know if anyone is making a QBUS mass
storage clone? Bridgham and
I were going to produce QBUS RK11/RP11 clone that used SD cards to hold the
bits. We got the prototype working, and it booted UNIX, but then I came down
with COVID and post-COVID myalgic encephalomyelitis, and that was the end of
that.
I am sorry to hear that you had to deal with those health problems and I
sincerely hope you are now doing better.
Cheers,
Vicente
vicente(a)collares.ca
10 Jun
10 Jun
9:05 a.m.
New subject: Do you have any historical UNIX computers?
Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> writes:
If that's your interest, PDP-11's are
absolutely _the_ way to go. The
PDP-11 is _the_ machine that made UNIX. [...]
I have a couple of them running - two 11/23 machines running PWB 1.0
(i.e. 6th edition plus various improvements), and two 11/83 machines
with 2.11BSD on them.
The 11/23 boxes are newer than 6th edition, which didn't support MSCP
devices, so some work had to be done to get that retrofitted. There are
some notes on this on my web site: https://hamartun.priv.no/ (including
links to, among others, Noel Chiappa's excellent collection of PDP-11
information).
-tih
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8
days inactive
9
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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Clem Cole -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo -
Vicente Collares