Re: [TUHS] Memory on Lion's v6

[jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Andrew Hume

    > the actual configuration of Lions; PDP 11/40 was
    >        128 Kbytes of core memory
    > ...
    > but note that because ... of addressing weirdness (the top 8KB were
    > memory-mapped to I/O registers), Lions' PDP actually had 112KB of main
    > memory

I think that '112KB' must be an error; the 8KB for the 'I/O page' (as DEC
eventually named ir, long after the rest of the world had started using the
term :-) were deducted from the _UNIBUS_ address space, meaning a UNIBUS -11
(the 'pure' UNIBUS -11's, i.e. other than the -11/70, -11/44, etc) could have
a maximum of 248KB of main memory (which is on the UNIBUS).

A pure UNIBUS -11 with 128KB of main memory (like Lions') has... 128KB of
main memory. The 'small memory management model' -11's (like the /40, /60,
/23, etc) can use at most 64KB of that _at any moment in time_ for user
processes (i.e. directly accessible by the CPU, in 'user' mode).

(The kernel on such machines is basically retricted to 56KB at any moment in
time, since one 'segment/page' - the terminology changed over time - has to be
dedicated to the I/O page: the memory management control registers are in
that, so once the CPU can no longer 'see' them, it's stuck. Long, potentially
interesting digression about, and ways to semi-work around that, elided,
unless people want to hear it.)


    > From: Noel Chiappa

    > The -11/40 (as it was at first) that I had at LCS had, to start with,
    > I'm pretty sure, 3 MM11-L units .. - i.e. 48KB. I know this sounds
    > incredible, and I'm having a hard time believing it myself, wondering
    > if my memory is failing with age

It is:

  # size /lib/c0
  13440+2728+10390=26558 (63676)

('c1' takes 14848+6950+2088=23886, FWIW.) So 'my' -11/40 must have had more
than 48KB. 

MINI-UNIX provides, on an -11/05 type machine with the maximum of 56KB of
addressable main memory (if you plugged in 64KB worth, the /05 CPU couldn't
'see' the top 8KB of that), up to 32KB for a user process. So that will
just hold the stock V6 C compiler.

I'm not now sure how much memory my -11 _did_ have initially, but it's not
important.

	Noel