On Apr 26, 10:19, Bill Pechter wrote:
> > I'm slightly puzzled by what you say about DEC X-11, though. My
exposure
> > to it and XXDP is only in the form of the diagnostics available to end
> > users and third-party service organisations, and I suspect there's more
to
> > it than that. The reason I think of XXDP as the OS and X-11 as the,
well,
> > application in a way, is that all I see are the X-11 modules to run
build
> > and series of tests, whereas XXDP includes the monitor, system handlers
etc
> > (as well as the diagnostic programs and utilites, of course). To me,
> > that's the OS.
> >
> > --
> > Pete Peter Turnbull
> > Network Manager
> > University of York
>
> You're exactly correct, except the XXDP doesn't have drivers for
> the comm gear and other stuff, whereas DECX/11 can have modules
> running simulating disk and tape i/o, comm i/o and can do task
> scheduling and timeouts. Also DECX/11 is interrupt driven where most of
> XXDP polls status registers.
Yes, I knew about the polled operation.
> I stretched my view a bit. DEC training called XXDP a diagnostic
> monitor... which was ok until the DS> diagnostic supervisor got loose...
> and the names collided.
>
> The XXDP monitor is single tasking, non-interrupt driven, polling and
> can hang forever waiting for an event that never comes. DECX/11 won't.
> DECX/11 seemed much more os-like. Batch streams do exist in XXDP
> (the .ccc chain files) -- but that's just minimal scripting.
Yes, .ccc is of rather limited use. Enough for sets of diagnostics and not
much more, really.
Thanks for the information -- I'm enlightened. Did DECX/11 ever make it
outside of DEC's walls, other than in the form of strings of modules for
field confidence tests?
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Fri Apr 26 2002 - 12:57:32 BST