My Collection

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Fri Apr 13 14:26:47 2001

>>Marian Capel wrote:
>
>> PDP8/F with TU56 and DSD440
>> PDP8/A with TU56 and RL01
>> VT100, hacked about to contain an 11/23, with external ST412, runs RX11.
>> Anybody has some RT11 manuals available.
>> Jos Dreesen
>
>Jerome Fine replies:
>
>Interesting collection. I had not realized that DSD made a controller for the
>PDP8, just for the PDP-11. Also I am really surprised that DEC made
>an RL01 controller for the PDP8.

They only made a controller for the PDP-8/a though, and it won't fit in
earlier models :^(

>AS for your VT100, it sounds like you might have a VT103 which was a
>>standard DEC product. Does it use a dual 11/23 but have added a 3rd
>party MFM controller with its own boot ROM or are you using a quad 11/23
>>and an RQDX1?

Actually he might have something that's totally third party. I've got a
VT100 that someone hacked into a close aproximation of a VT103. Actually
I've been thinking of digging it out of storage and getting it running as
I'm wanting to have a VT100 here at the apartment (or may just dig out a
plain one, would partially depend on what I can get to in storage).

>By the way, all this was running RT-11/TSX-PLUS. I have a friend who
>may be getting rid of his PDP-11 systems and there are probably some
>RT-11 manuals. But they are heavy. The shipping would be expensive.
>And he may want some payment, especially for the SCSI host adapter -
>Peter Turnbull are you interested?

Actually for a system with Doc's, especially if it also includes software,
I personally think shipping is a worthwhile expense.

>Also, I am not surprised, but no one seems to consider software as part
>of their collection. Is it because they are mostly copies that have been
>"acquired" or because software is not really considered collectable by
>most list participants? From my point of view, the software is far more

I'm guessing that it's either becuase they don't want to admit having it,
or people are simply considering it part of the package.

>important since eventually (100 years?, 200 years?) the hardware will
>not be able to be repaired, but the software should always be able to
>run under an emulator. For the PDP-11, I use the emulator 90% of
>the time at this point since I don't need to switch systems plus the emulator
>runs 3 times as fast as the actual DEC 11/83 hardware even under a
>Pentium 166 MMX. When I finally upgrade the PC to a 1 GHz system
>in a few years (assuming that I can still run W95/W98), the difference
>will be even greater.

Recently I went on a trip with my wife and we took her laptop and I had E11
on it and a fullsized keyboard. While I like running on the real hardware
I've got to admit that it was nice to

>Does anyone on the list run RT-11 still other than Megan Gentry?
>Do you tinker with the operating system code at all? Does anyone
>care about the RT-11 Operating System?

Yes, I'm still running it, in fact I had it up last Sunday.

                        Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh_at_aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
| healyzh_at_holonet.net (alternate)  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|                   and Zane's Computer Museum.                 |
|                 http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/              |
Received on Fri Apr 13 2001 - 14:26:47 BST

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