From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: wkt@tuhs.org (Warren Toomey) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 19:46:48 +1000 Subject: [TUHS] First Unix that could run on a PDP-11 with QBUS In-Reply-To: References: <20140728132717.73DD218C0B2@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <46036519-b33d-48ec-af84-ed336e5df306@email.android.com> The old AUUG newsletters are all at http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/ Cheers, Warren On 29 July 2014 08:23:12 AEST, Dave Horsfall wrote: >On Mon, 28 Jul 2014, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> > I recall that there were other differences as well, but only minor. >In >> > my paper in AUUGN titled "Unix on the LSI-11/23" it will reveal all > >> > about porting V6 to the thing. >> >> I did a google for that, but couldn't find it. Is it available >anywhere >> online? (I'd love to read it.) I seem to recall vaguely that AUUGN >stuff >> were online, but if so, I'm not sure why the search didn't turn it >up. > >There was a project a few years ago to scan all issues of AUUGN >(Australian Unix Users Group Newsletter); the last I heard was that all > >issues had been obtained, and handed over to some Google mob for >archiving. Apparently the scanning process is destructive but makes >for >an ideal copy for as many as you like. The originals, being up to 40 >years or so old, would have been in bad shape anyway. > >A search for "auugn" reveals a few pointers, but AUUG itself dissolved >a >few years ago because we had achieved our purpose i.e. bring Unix to >the >mass market in Australia (its competition at the time was RSTS, RSX, >and >PICK of all things). Guess which one survived? Concurrent CP/M never >really had a hold, MS-DOS thankfully died (I was still using CP/M at >the >time; heck, I even had UUCP on it, which was pretty impressive >considering >that the Microbee didn't have a serial port), and I predict that >Windoze >will go the way of the Irish potato crop and for the same reason. > >Warren may know more about the archived issues. > >> > I vaguely remember that the LTC had to be disabled during the boot >> > process, for example, with an external switch. >> >> I think you might be right, which means the simulated 11/23 I tested >on >> wasn't quite right - but keep reading! > >It was hilarious, in a morbid sort of way. I cottoned on when the >bootstrap process crapped itself for no apparent reason (it got >interrupted when no ISR was in place), and we'd occasionally forget to >enable it... > >> I remember being worried about this when I started doing the V6 11/23 > >> version a couple of months back, because I remembered the 11/03's >didn't >> have a programmable clock, just a switch. So I was reading through >the >> 11/23 documentation (I had used 11/23s, but on this point my memory >had >> faded), trying to see if they too did not have a programmable clock. >> >> As best I can currently make out, the answer is 'yes/no, depending on > >> the exact model'! E.g. the 11/23-PLUS _does_ seem to have a >programmable >> clock (see pg. 610 of the 1982 edition of "microcomputers and >> memories"), but the base 11/23 _apparently_ does not. > >I never saw the -PLUS, so I can't help you there, and my shelf of DEC >and >Unix etc manuals disappeared during several moves. > >> Anyway, the simulated 11/23 (on Ersatz11) does have the LTC (I just >> checked, and 'lks' contains '0177546', so it thinks it has one :-). > >Quite likely. I came up with a battery of tests at boot time, in order >to >determine just what sort of a model it was e.g. did it have the SLR and >so >on. Same thing for illegal instructions, such as floating point. We >had >/40s all over the place (some dedicated ones had no MMU, and ran a >custom >program to talk 200-UT to a remote Cyber), two or three /70s (I had no >responsibility for those, but we shared code a lot), a /60 (interesting > >box), and a sprinkling of /23s. > >> But this will be easy to code around; if no link clock is found (in >> main.c), I'd probably set 'lks' to point somewhere harmless (054, say >- >> I'm using 050/052 to hold the pointer to the CSW, and the software >CSW >> if there isn't a hardware one). That way I can limit the changes to >be >> in main.c, I won't have to futz with clock.c too. > >Speaking of the CSW, we came up with some amusing idle patterns. The >boxes with the octal display displayed rotating 1s (I had to determine >whether it had an octal display or a real one somehow; I've long since >forgotten). > >> PS: On at least the 11/40 (and maybe the /45 too), the line clock was >an >> option! It was a single-height card, IIRC. > >Yeah; the aforementioned low-end /40s had quite an impressive program >that >scheduled by the use of co-routines (no LTC either). It emulated the >CDC >Remote Batch Station (we briefly had one of those too; it was S L O W). > >Fun days! > >-- Dave >_______________________________________________ >TUHS mailing list >TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org >https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: