resurrecting a PDP-11/10

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue Feb 25 19:38:00 2003

> > Serial pots were used for things other than terminals... Many printers
> > had serial interfaces, as did the TU58 (which is what started this
> > discussion).
>
> True, but serial terminals were not common when the PDP-11/10 was
> being sold new. In the DEC world, it was the day of ASR-33s and

What the heck is an ASR33 if not a serial terminal????

> parallel line printers on the low end. Five years later, serial
> printers were much more common (LA-36 and newer).

These machines were in use for a lot longer than 5 years (or at least
the ones I've resched were...). It was not uncommon for them to have
serial ports added later.

>
> > While timesharing was rare on machines without memory managemnt, it was
> > not uncommon to have 3 or 4 serial ports in such machines.
>
> Again, my experiences in the DEC world are that Unibus RT-11-class
> machines ( less than 28KW of RAM, one or two disk devices, no MMU )
> tended not to have multiple DL-11s. I'm not saying it never happened,
> it just wasn't common. It was much more common when the low end
> switched to the Qbus platforms.

COnsidering there's little, if any, difference between the 2 types of
machine _in software_, there's no real reason why Q-bus machines would
have multiple DL11-type ports and Unibus machines wouldn't. Other than
possibly the fact that DEC made a 4-port DL11 for Q-bus (DLV11-J) but not
for Unibus. 3rd parties made 4 and 8 port Unibus DL11s, though.

-tony
Received on Tue Feb 25 2003 - 19:38:00 GMT