On Mon, 17 Jul 2023 at 20:49, Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
    > From: Henry Bent

    > there will be a lengthy addendum shortly.

The most useful thing is probably this:

  https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/ken/low.s

which lists exactly what was there; not only the types, but how many of each
there are. This is from 'nsys', which is slightly before the actual V4, so
it's quite early. 'low.s' is inherently machine-specific; i.e. different
machines would share most kernel files identically, but _not_ this one -
unless they had _absolutely identical_ device sets. So this one is _probably_
the one from the /45 in picture.

It shows:

  RK11
  RF11
  PC11
  TC11
  TM11

  1xKL11
  12xDC11
  1xDP11        (synchronous serial)
  1xDN11        (dial-out asynch control)

  1xDR11C       (parallel port to -11/20)
  2xDC11        (Screw Works voice synthesizer)
  1xDR11A       (voice response unit)
  1xDR11C       (C/A/T typesetter)

(Line printer, card reader and RP11 are commented out; more about the RP11
in a later message.


There's also this:

  https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/ken/11-45

which is a bit hard to interpret, but I think might list what's in each rack:
the TC11, RK11 (early ones), RF11 and TM11 (early ones) were large custom
wire-wrapped backplanes which bolted into the front or back of a 19 inch
rack; this:

  https://gunkies.org/wiki/RK11-C_disk_controller

has an image of such an RK11. The "MOS 16-24" is probably a reference to an
MS11:

  https://gunkies.org/wiki/MS11_Semiconductor_Memory_System

which had to mount in the CPU backplane. The "MM" entries are likely core
memory units; probably MM11-K's:

  https://gunkies.org/wiki/MM11-K_core_memory

since they seem to be 4KW each. (Maybe MM11-E's or 'F's, though; those are
also 4KW each.) I'm not sure what they "PL"s are - probably Plessey core?
Anyway,it looks like the machine had 104KB total.


This file:

  https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/ken/conf.c

lists all the types of devices on the machine. One oddity is that it lists
two RK11's; but if you look at the RK11 driver:

  https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V4/nsys/dmr/rk.c

it's only set up to handle one physical controller. But there is this:

  #define       JRK     1       /* temp */

        if (bp->b_dev.d_major==JRK)
                d = bp->b_dev.d_minor;
        else
                d = bp->b_blkno%3;

so the two different major device entries appear to handle the same disks in
different ways ("d = bp->b_blkno%3" will spread a virtual drive across three
physical drives).


Memory, it would have been hard to say (UNIX even then sized memory at start
up) but then I found that '11-45' file. I also found a copy of the CACM
version of the UNIX paper:

  https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/unix.pdf

which says the machine had 144KB (so they had added 40KB more at that point).
(I seem to recall someone had scanned the SOSP version; I didn't save the
pointer, but if someone knows where it is, it would be interesting to look,
and see what it says - they seemed to update this paper on a regular basis -
the copy included with V6 talks about the -11/70.)

The system at that point had "a 1M byte fixed-head disk .. four moving-head
disk drives which each provide 2.5M bytes on removable disk cartridges, and
a single moving-head disk drive which uses removable 40M byte disk packs"

The RS11 disks for the RF11 were 512KB, so either they'd added a second one,
or switched to an RS04 (but that's a MASSBUS device). The big disk was an
RP03 so they had added an RP11, which wasn't present earlier.

        Noel

Noel,
Thank you very much for this thoroughly researched and documented explanation.  I hope that it will be of use to others as well.

-Henry