The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
To: Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: UNIX "Machine Layer" Standards
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2023 13:58:09 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAD2gp_TypvpzUB61c9s-6hKXgHD=WZnmF4f_5RnoWjKy4M686Q@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20230421143713.492DF18C0A3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 855 bytes --]

On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:37 AM Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:


> A little wrong on that date. Even the PDP-11/20 (the first -11) had a boot
> ROM:
>

The PDP-8/E, which came out in the same year, had a boot ROM if you were
using DECtape as the system device for OS/8.  The bootstrap for the TD8E
DECtape controller was a full device driver 128 words long, way beyond
human toggle-in capability.  It was put up in addresses 77600-77777, which
meant that you could only have 28 kwords rather than the full 32 kwords of
RAM.

In principle I suppose you could have toggled in the RIM loader (17 words)
and read in the TD8E bootstrap using either Model 33 or high-speed paper
tape, but I doubt if anyone did that.  RIM format alternated between
addresses and values, with each taking up two characters on the paper tape.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1591 bytes --]

  reply	other threads:[~2023-04-21 17:58 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-04-21 14:37 Noel Chiappa
2023-04-21 17:58 ` John Cowan [this message]
2023-04-21 20:36   ` Clem Cole
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2023-04-20 15:57 Paul Ruizendaal
2023-04-20 18:57 ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-04-20 20:18   ` Steve Nickolas
2023-04-20 14:56 Paul Ruizendaal
2023-04-20 16:04 ` Warner Losh
2023-04-20 19:04   ` segaloco via TUHS

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to='CAD2gp_TypvpzUB61c9s-6hKXgHD=WZnmF4f_5RnoWjKy4M686Q@mail.gmail.com' \
    --to=cowan@ccil.org \
    --cc=jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu \
    --cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).