Introducing myself - RSTS/E

From: Bob Lafleur <bob_lafleur_at_technologist.com>
Date: Sun May 12 03:33:10 2002

My first experience with computers was with the Springfield, MA school
department's PDP-11 system running RSTS/E. Each junior high and high
school had an ASR-33 terminal and an acoustic coupler. My dad was a math
teacher at one of the high schools and he just happened to have the
school's terminal in his classroom. Sometimes he would go in to his room
in the evening to correct papers and he'd bring me to use the computer.

They had a program called PLAY which would allow you to play a number of
games. Each school was assigned a certain number of PLAYs per day, and
there were usually a few left over each day, so while my dad corrected
papers, I'd use up the remaining PLAYs. Well, one day, there were none
left, so my dad taught me how to write a simple BASIC program with line
numbers and PRINT statements. That was it -- I was hooked. From then on,
I wasn't interested in the PLAYSs, but I wanted to know more about how
to write programs.

This happened when I was about 12 or so. When I entered Junior High
school my dad told me who was in charge of the terminal at my school,
and made sure that I got time to work on it. Around this time, the
ASR-33's were also replaced by DEC LA-34 or LA-36 printer terminals.
While in Junior High I tried to get as much computer time as I could,
but it was hard because it meant I had to get another teacher to excuse
me from a class. Sometimes my art (I was terrible at that anyway!) or
music teacher would excuse me, but they didn't like to do it too often.
The procedure to use the computer was this: (a) Go to the guy in charge
in the morning, and ask him for a computer pass for a particular period.
If no one else had signed up for that period, then I could have one. (b)
When it came time for that class, go to the class and show the teacher
the computer pass, and ask to be excused. IF they agreed, then I could
go. (c) If I made it this far, I would go to the counselor's office
where the terminal was, and hope the room wasn?t locked. If it was, I
could either try to find someone with a key, or be out of luck. (d) If I
got into the room, I could then try to log on, and hope the system
wasn?t down, or all lines in use.

When I went to high school, it was a little easier to get access to the
computer terminals. For starters, they had more than one (at one time,
they had as many as six operating). We could go before the homeroom bell
in the morning, so I?d usually get to school at least 30 minutes before
that. There were also two periods a week which were designated to be
used for student interests, or extra study periods, so we could use the
computer terminals then. And we could use them during any class that we
could convince a teacher to excuse us ? I could sometimes get out of
studies, gym, or some music classes. During my 10th, 11th, and 12th
grade years, I also managed to have my homeroom teacher be the person in
charge of the terminals for my school, so that helped.

The Springfield School System?s PDP-11 system was run by the math
department, and the computer and peripherals were housed in the school
department headquarters, which just happened to be right next door to my
high school. There, they had VT-52?s (and later VT-100?s) which was a
huge step up from the printer terminals in the schools. Certain students
were chosen to be ?system managers? and were given privileged accounts.
Anyone who did not have a privileged account and wanted to use the
terminals in the computer room after school usually was assigned to make
runs to McDonald?s or other places for food, and if there happened to be
a free terminal when they got back, they might be allowed to use it.
Unfortunately, I never happened to have the opportunity to be a system
manager. On several occasions I found security holes in the system, and
I was honest and told the others about them, so I believe that I was not
trusted, and they thought I had other things I was still hiding. I
probably would have been better off to just keep quiet about the
security holes.

The main version of RSTS/E that I recall from those days is 7.07. I do
remember the earlier V6C, but I was still a ?beginner? then and didn?t
pay much attention to things like operating system versions. They might
have even been on a higher version by the time I graduated, but I
honestly don?t remember. I?m also not sure which model CPU it was they
had, but from the pictures I?ve seen on the net, I?d guess it was an
11/20.

There were some fine student programmers running the system in those
days. They had done quite a bit of customization to the RSTS/E CUSPs
that made it much easier for the students to use. One of the neat things
they did was to come up with a translation scheme to translate from the
[proj,prog] user notation to a 3 letter + 1 optional digit ?username?
scheme. The student would never need to know about ppn?s, or even be
aware that they existed. The way that this was done was by dividing the
proj number by 10, and indexting that into the alphabet, and then taking
the remainder and indexing it into a predetermined 10-character string,
then taking the prog number, diving that by 10 and indexing into the
alphabet, and if there was a remainder, adding that as a last digit. The
string for the middle letter was determined so that most school names
could be somehow abbreviated. For example, if ?H? was the 2nd letter of
the string, the project number for any CH account would be 21. CH
accounts were assigned to ?Classical High? (the school I attended).
Other schools had two-letter abbreviations for their school. The
computer administrator for each school always had the ?A? account, and
could run a privileged program that would allow them to administer
accounts (add, delete, change quota, etc) for their project. So the
administrator for my school had CHA, and could assign accounts like CHB,
CHC, CHD, CHD1, CHD2, etc. All the CUSPs were modified so that you could
log in with an account name, do directories of account names, they?d
show up in SYSTAT, etc. It was pretty neat, but I know also a headache
when a system update cmae out. I know the transition between RSTS V6C
and V7 was painful, as the system was down for quite a few days (maybe
even weeks) and it was even longer before all CUSPs accepted the
alphanumeric account names.

I did happen to have some access to the Springfield School System?s RSTS
systems a few years later when they were on a higher version, V9 I
think, and they had dropped the alphanumeric account system ? probably
because the CUSPs became too hard to modify, or too many of them were
no longer written in BASIC or had source code available.

Unfortunately, the way the computers were run in our school system was
not as condusive to learning and exploration as it should have been.
Those who had privileged accounts were treated, and acted superior. It
took me quite a lot of question asking before I could get any of them to
teach me about SYS calls; and of course, all the ones I wanted to
experiment with were privileged, and it was about impossible to get any
of the privileged users to compile my programs with privileges so I
could run them. As I mentioned before, the ?peons? were delegated to
food runs and other errands if they went to the central office to try
and use a terminal. Also, I was interested in other computers (by this
time, I had my own Commodore PET at home) and the other system managers
looked at this as a toy. I befriended one system manager, Dave Martinez,
who taught me a lot, and was open to letting me absorb as much
information as I wanted. Unfortunately, he was not among the ?favorites?
of the system managers. Dave somehow got involved with the installation
of a RSTS/E system at American International College (AIC), and when it
was first unpacked and installed, he called me up and said ?I?m going to
sysgen a new system from scratch? do you want to come over and watch??
Of course, I was totally blown away, as I had no idea what was going on
? I had never seen a SYSGEN before, or even heard of it at that. Once
their system was established, he allowed me to come to their terminal
room (where they had VT-100?s) and although I didn?t have a privileged
account, he?d allow me to write privileged code and he?d even leave his
keyboard open at times so I could compile my privileged programs without
someone looking over my shoulder. Unfortunately, I don?t know what
happened to Dave, or where he went, but he was a major influence in my
interest into system-level programming.

I?ve recently obtained Bob Supnik?s SIMH, and SYSGEN?d a RSTS/E V7-07
system myself. But it feels foreign to me, as much of the customized
system software I used in high school is not present, and the numeric
proj,prog account scheme really feels foreign to me. I may have some
paper listings of the customized CUSPs filed away somewhere, and it
might be an interesting albeit time consuming exercise to try and
reproduce the alphanumeric account environment we used in the school
system. There is other customized software we had (such as a MAIL
program, I don?t know if that was custom written but a student, or taken
from somewhere else such as DECUS or another school system), and a
HEARTS game implemented in a Run-Time System. I wrote a multi-terminal
UNO game (one logged-in user ran it, and added other players on
logged-out terminals) which I know I still have paper listings of, and I
might endeavor to retype it. It is remotely possible that I still have
that program in electronic form somewhere.

I am curious to know if anyone has been able to successfully run any
later versions of RSTS/E past V7-07 on a simulator. If I read it
correctly, the Mentec hobbyist agreement specifically states V7-07 only,
and I have not seen any versions later than this available publicly on
the net. I know that some later versions of RSTS/E, especially when the
DCL RTS was added, became somewhat more sophisticated than earlier
versions. I?d be very interested in being able to experiment with some
of these later versions in a simulator.

RSTS/E was my springboard into the world of computers, and the system
that I compared every other computer I used against for quite a while
(until I ?met? VMS)

   - Bob Lafleur
     Springfield, MA USA
Received on Sun May 12 2002 - 03:33:10 BST

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