[TUHS] pdp11 question

[pechter@gmail.com (Bill Pechter)]

Actually the 11/780 and 11/785 used an 11V03.(I believe they had either 12
or 16k of memory to start and when upgrading to the 11/785 the console was
upgraded to either 16 or 28k.

  The OS was a very stripped down one.  It used an RT11 filesystem, but I
don't know if it was RT11 based.  I was told it wasn't.

The 11/750 was 8085 (IIRC) based.  The 11/730, I think, used an 8088 or 8086

The 8600/8650 used a T11 chip on a special board and ran  a version of RT11
IIRC.

The later (85xx) Vaxes often used left-over Pro350's and later Pro380's as
VAX consoles.

The biggest problem with RT11 on the Pro is they had to make the bitmap
display emulate a DEC standard terminal. (Not sure if it was VT100 or just
VT52 compatible...)

I gave away my Pro350.  They'll get my Vaxstation when they pry it from my
cold dead hands.  (Or my wife wins the argument).


Bill Pechter
been a long time since Field Circus...


On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 1:57 PM, Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:

> Just to loop things around a bit:
>
> Some of the larger VAXes used small PDP-11s (and their
> bastard offspring) as console processors.
>
> This started with the very first VAX, the 11/780, which
> used an 11/23 as a console.  The console ran a stripped-down
> system, possibly based on RT-11 or RSX-11, I forget (and
> am typing this on a train in the Outer Mongolia part of
> Texas where it's hard to look up references).
>
> I don't know the whole list of what was used as a console
> for different VAXes, but I do remember that the Nautilus
> series (8500-8550-8700-8800) used either a Pro/350 or a
> Pro/380, running P/OS, which was slightly more satisfactory
> than the rude English non-computer expansion of PoS might
> imply, but only slightly.  Especially for those of us who
> wrote code to fit into UNIX on the VAX and talk to the
> console processor.
>
> I also vaguely remember that although Digital were
> reluctant (at least early on) to make an RT-11 that would
> run on the Pro-series systems, someone made a UNIX for
> those systems.
>
> I never knew a lot about this stuff and have forgotten much
> of what I did know, but perhaps my words will trigger others'
> memories.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
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