Regarding PDP-11/ and rt11 too

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <aaron_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Fri Oct 9 12:49:37 1998

On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, David C. Jenner wrote:

> Allison J Parent wrote:
> > So what else is there that is free (or very low cost) and can be run on
> > most of the LSI-11, PDP-11/23 or 11/73 series? IE: can be run on a
> > 11/03 with RX01 floppy or a 11/73 with RQDX3 MSCP disks (hard disks).

Having just gotten my 11/23 to come to life, I have been following this
thread with keen interest...

Obviously, I don't own a license for RT-11. And assume that the commercial
license from Mentec is probably much more than a hobbyist would pay to
tinker with old machines. Has anyone approached Mentec about the
possibility of a hobbyist-type license for _older_ versions of these OS's
(ala VMS hobbyist)? Perhaps if a group approached them with a proposal
they would be more apt to create one. From what I can tell, an old PDP
with no software license is virtually useless, except for
hacking/curiosity value. After a half hour of playing around with the
ODT commands, I shut down and picked up a book instead. Much like my VAXen
would be without the VMS-hobbyist license. I mean, who _really_ wants to
run BSD on all of your old hardware? It kind of defeats the whole
purpose of collecting the old machines if you have the same stupid Unix
prompt on your VAX, Sparc 1, Mac IIfx, 486PC, etc...


Just my $.02,

Aaron
Received on Fri Oct 09 1998 - 12:49:37 BST