From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clement T. Cole) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2018 10:46:44 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Other OSes? In-Reply-To: <20180709143937.GC29373@thunk.org> References: <82df833ae2a587b386b4154fc6051356a3510b19@webmail.yaccman.com> <129a13eb-de93-3d6b-b7b5-d0df13e60c87@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> <20180709015650.GA29373@thunk.org> <3bcafd7f-26be-8770-c754-b179e9cff4a5@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net> <20180709052333.GB29373@thunk.org> <20180709143937.GC29373@thunk.org> Message-ID: <0D6EEA19-AD29-4B6F-967E-A015C5D4D081@ccc.com> Your right it’s was called a 19” technology and physical platter was closer to 17 or 18 - we should ask Dan to measure it Sent from my iPad > On Jul 9, 2018, at 10:39 AM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > >> On Mon, Jul 09, 2018 at 08:52:00AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote: >> >> rIght and the RIM loaded was printed on front panel of the console. btw >> the disk was 19” in diamete. Danny Klein has the original disk platter >> from the one of the original PDP-8 - before marriage it used to hang in his >> living room. FYI that was the system at the computer museum from the EE >> Dept after it died in approx β€˜75 I was there the disk crashed. > > I don't think it was 19" --- the DF32 was mounted in a 19" rack, yes. > But the platter was in an enclosure which was distinctly smaller than > the overall width of the DF32, and the platter was smaller still. See > the pictures here[1] and here[2]. > > [1] https://www.pdp8.net/dfds32/dfds32.shtml > [2] https://www.pdp8.net/dfds32/pics/df32diskorig.shtml?small > > I once physically held the DF32 platter in my hands. My dad and I > pulled it out of the enclosure, wiped it down with alcohol, looked at > both sides of the platter to see which was less scratched up, and put > the "better" side face down on top of the fixed heads, and then > screwed the platter back into place. And it worked, afterwards, too! > You can't do that with today's HDD's! :-) > >>> Later PDP-8's would run more a sophisticated OS, such as OS/8, which >>> had a "Concise Command Language" (CCL) that was designed to be similar >>> to the TOPS-10 system running on the PDP-10. OS/8 was a single-user >>> system, though; no time-sharing! >> >> Be careful grasshopper. TSS/8 is available on those web sites although I >> admit it does not run on my PiDP-8 and I have not figured why (Something is >> corrupt and I have not spent the time or energy to chase it). Anyway, >> TSS/8. Supported 4-8 ASR-33 terminals, each had 4K words as you described >> before. There was assembler, basic, focal, Fortran-IV and an Algol circa >> 1965 extensions. > > I had forgotten about TSS/8. OS/8 was indeed only single-user, > although apparently there was a multi-user BASIC interpreter which was > available as an option. Our PDP-8/i only had 8k of core memory so > while in theory it was possible (barely) to run OS/8, we never did. > My knowledge of OS/8 was only from the manuals. (And indeed, how I > first learned binary arithmatic, and programming in general, was via > thet Digital's "Introduction to Programming" book[1] which I inhaled > when I was maybe seven or eight.) > > [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20051220132023/http://www.bitsavers.org:80/pdf/dec/pdp8/IntroToProgramming1969.pdf > > TSS/8 was so far beyond the capabilities of the PDP-8 in my father's > lab that I never spent much time learning about it. I think some of > the DECUS books we had referenced it, so I knew of its existence, but > not much more than that. > >> RIght this is really the model for RT11 which would begat CP/M and last >> DOS-86 (aka PC-DOS, later renamed MS-DOS). > > We had a PDP-11 at my computer lab in high school. It was actually > running TSX-11 (the time-sharing extension of RT-11), so it could > support a dozen or so virtual instances of RT-11, where we learned > PDP-11 assembler in the advanced comp-sci class. > > I remember two fun things about the TSX-11; the first was that when > you logged out of TSX-11, it would print the time used on the console, > and that was being printed by the underlying RT-11 --- so if you typed > control-S right at that point, it would lock up the whole system, and > all of the other users would be dead in the water. > > The other fun thing was if you could get physical access to the > PDP-11, and brought the secondary disk off-line, and then forced a > reboot, RT-11 wouldn't be able to bring the TSX-11 system up fully, > and so the LA36 console would drop to a RT-11 command line prompt > without asking for a password. This would allow you to run the > account editing program to set up a new privileged TSX-11 account. > (Basically, the equivalent of editing /etc/passwd and adding another > account with uid == 0.) > > My knowledge of these facts was, of course, purely hypothetical. :-) > > In any case, that was why the first Linux FTP site in North America > was named "tsx-11.mit.edu"; it was a Vax VS3800 running Ultrix that > was sitting in my office when I was working at MIT as a full-time > staff member. At first, tsx-11 was my personal workstation, but over > time it became a dedicated full-time server and migrated to larger and > more powerful machines; first a Dec Alpha running OSF/1, and later on, > a more powerful Intel server running Linux. Shortly afterwards, I > started working at VA Linux Systems, and while tsx-11 was operating > for a while after that, after a while we shut it down since the > hardware was getting old and I no longer had access to the machine > room in MIT Building E40 where it lived. > > - Ted