decserver 550 in Kansas City

From: Jonathan Engdahl <j.r.engdahl_at_adelphia.net>
Date: Thu Feb 27 23:11:01 2003

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Johnson" <ssj152_at_charter.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 7:08 PM
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 4:36 PM
> > No, I simply find it a little odd that the main OS to be used on systems
> > built from DECserver 550 boards is 2.11BSD. In fact I'm not sure I've
> > heard of anyone running anything else on one.

> Zane, I would suspect that BSD is because it is FREE, multi-user, and
> multi-tasking. RT-11, RSX, etc. aren't free. I managed to purchase a RT-11

Another important factor is that 2.11BSD is FREE.

The availability of free Ancient UNIX is what got me interested in all this,
when I discovered the free license about a year and a half ago. Many thanks
to all those that made that possible. That motivated me to dig out some
11/23's that had been mouldering in the basement for the past 15 years and
see what I could do with them. Before then, all I had was the RT-11 that
came on them, and after playing with UNIX (mainly as a user) for the past
many years, I just could not get that excited over RT-11.

A main appeal of the PDP-11 and UNIX is that this is where much of the
technology that I've been using in my career sprang from: the C language,
UNIX, and even today, most microprocessor and DSP architectures seem to
derive in part from the PDP-11. For most of my career, I was isolated from
the actual PDP-11 machines by the locked door of the computer center, or was
using derivatives of that technology, such as the VAX, and SunOS. Now, it's
mine, all mine!

Just in the last couple weeks I got the networking up on 2.11. This brings
back many more old memories of the days when four words: telnet, ftp, mail,
and news, just about completely defined the Internet.

--
Jonathan Engdahl
http://users.safeaccess.com/engdahl
"The things which are seen are temporary,
 but the things which are not seen are eternal."  II Cor. 4:18
Received on Thu Feb 27 2003 - 23:11:01 GMT

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