Subject: RX8 vs. RX28.
From: Johnny Billquist <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: 1-Jun-89 18:13:16 +0200

There exists both the RX8 and RX28 drive for the omnibus,
RX8 using RX01, and RX28 using RX02, however, a paper of mine
states that the RX28 consists of the RX8-E and an RX02.
Is it possible to hang an RX02 drive to my RX8-E, use the
RX28 device driver, and just be happy?

	/Johnny
   --------

Date: Thu,  1 Jun 89 14:41:06 EDT
From: "Michael A. Patton" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  computer engineeing, a DEC view...
To: [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked]

    Date: Fri, 26 May 89 22:41:36 CDT
    From: Anthony Datri <convex!datri at uxc.cso.uiuc.edu>
    To:   pdp8-lovers at mc.lcs.mit.edu
    Re:   computer engineeing, a DEC view...

    [...] it was composed on a "DEC Word Processing system", [...],
    that probably means an 8/A or a WS78.  A PDP-8 in a VT52: what
    could be more perfect?

Exactly right!  I know one of the authors, John McNamara.  Digital
press even lent him a WPS-8 system so that all the authors and the
editors could exchange copy (on single density floppies).

Date: Fri,  2 Jun 89 07:59:07 EDT
From: "Christopher R. Zach" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Expansion and memory...
To: [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked]

Johnny:
	Dec did a lot of that stuff with certian devices HAVING to be in
certian places. I think the reason was so that field service would have an
easier time of finding the different parts of the system.
	However, for best system results, it is a good idea to place the 
memory as close to the cpu as possible (this allows the cpu to work with
the memory first, instead of going through a bunch of device controllers.
							CZ

Date: Fri,  2 Jun 89 08:00:51 EDT
From: "Christopher R. Zach" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  RX8 vs. RX28.
To: [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked]

Johnny:
	Forget it. The RX02 uses a different controller because it is a DMA
device (RX01 used interrupts). Also, the RX01 control doesn't have the extra
registers to handle DD disks.
							CZ

Received: from AI.AI.MIT.EDU (CHAOS 3130) by MC.LCS.MIT.EDU  3 Jun 89 01:09:06 EDT
Date: Sat,  3 Jun 89 01:08:58 EDT
From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  New people on the PDP8-Lovers mailing list
To: [email-masked]
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

I have added John MacDonald ([email-masked]) and Robert Malmgren
([email-masked]) to the PDP8-Lovers mailing
list.

John has a PDP-7 running; does anyone else out there have a PDP-7
or have experience with one?

On a different note, I've finally found living accomodations where
I have enough room that I can grab the 8/E from my parents' house
and get it fired up (best not to grab ALL the 8s from Mom and Dad's
place all at once, right Doug? ;-)  Anyway, I suspect that the front
panel is badly flaked out and maybe some other stuff wrong also,
but I can't be sure unless I *know* that the front panel can be
trusted.  Does anyone out there have an 8/e and a little bit of spare
time to spend on the phone with me twiddling switches and comparing
results?

                      ---Rob

Posted-Date: Sun, 04 Jun 89 15:43:49 -0700
To: "Robert E. Seastrom" <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Subject: Re: New people on the PDP8-Lovers mailing list 
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 89 15:43:49 -0700
From: [email-masked]

Rob.  I should have some time to get on the phone. I was trying to
      find out about a PDP7 the other day because of the UNIX which
      was believed to be available for it. Would it run on an 8?
      Give me a call 
                    213 336-6940     7am-4pm more or less
                        515-1544     later at night

Received: from AI.AI.MIT.EDU (CHAOS 3130) by MC.LCS.MIT.EDU  8 Jun 89 00:09:15 EDT
Date: Thu,  8 Jun 89 00:09:28 EDT
From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  What's a PDP-x ??
To: [email-masked]
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

If you folks have already seen this, please disregard it.  If
you haven't, keep it handy - it could come in handy some day.

                      ---Rob

PS: In case you didn't know (I didn't until 2 years ago), PDP
stands for Programmed Data Processor...

Date: Wednesday, 20 August 1986  03:42-EDT
From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
To:   [email-masked], [email-masked]
Re:   DEC's PDP's
Postal-Address: 1802 Hackett Ave.; Mountain View, CA  94043-4431
Phone: +1 (415) 968-1052

     A number of people have requested my list of all the DEC PDP's,
so I thought I'd bore you all with it.

     The PDP-1 was an 18 bit machine.  It was DEC's first computer,
and some of the first timesharing systems were designed for it.  It's
also unique in being one's complement; all later DEC computers were
two's complement.  Some machines, such as one of MIT's PDP-1s, were in
operation until the late '70s.

     The PDP-2 was a designation reserved for a 24 bit machine, but as
far as I can tell it was never even designed and definitely none were
ever built.

     The PDP-3 was a 36 bit machine that was designed but never built
by DEC.  However, Scientific Engineering Institute built one in 1960.

     The PDP-4 was an 18 bit machine that was intended to be a
cheaper, slower alternative to the PDP-1.  It was so slow that it
didn't sell well, although it was interesting for its
auto-incrementing memory registers.  It was not program-compatible
with the PDP-1, but its instruction set was the basis of DEC's future
18 bit computers.

     The PDP-5 was a 12 bit machine designed to be a small laboratory
system.  It used many of the ideas in the LINC (Laboratory Instruction
Computer, designed by Lincoln Labs at MIT, some of which were built by
DEC).

     The PDP-6 was a 36 bit machine and the first machine to implement
the most wonderful computer architecture known to man.  It was rather
expensive and difficult to maintain, and not many were sold.  As a
result, DEC cancelled 36 bit computers for what was to be the first of
many times.

     The PDP-7 was an 18 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-4.
It was a major price/performance win over the PDP-4 and the first DEC
computer to use wire-wrapping.

     The PDP-8 was a 12 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-8.  It
basically defined the term "minicomputer", and went through several
incarnations.  The original PDP-8 was followed by the extremely slow
PDP-8/S (as bad as the PDP-4 was to the PDP-1, but at least the /S was
program-compatible).  DEC recouped with the PDP-8/I (using MSI
integrated circuits) and the smaller PDP-8/L, and somewhat later came
out with the "Omnibus 8" machines -- the PDP-8/E, the PDP-8/F (a
half-sized version of the PDP-8/E), the PDP-8/M (an OEM version of the
PDP-8/F), and the final machine, the single board PDP-8/A.  The
PDP-8/A still exists after a fashion as a current DEC product.

     The PDP-9 was an 18 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-7.
It had a faster memory than the PDP-7 and was the first
microprogrammed DEC computer.  Modulo a 300 wire(!) ECO required in
the first machines, the PDP-9 was a reliable machine and some are
still in operation today.  There was a short-lived PDP-9/L.

     The PDP-10 was a 36 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-6.
It is especially noted for its software, which represents the pinnacle
of DEC software engineering and has never been equalled.  The first
KA10, largely installed in universities, created a whole generation of
timesharing hackers.  The follow-on KI10, with paging and using IC's
instead of discrete components but otherwise unexciting, mostly was
sold to commercial organizations.  The KL10 went through several
incarnations and is today the most representative of this marvelous
machine.  The KS10 was a small, low-speed (approximately KA10
performance) processor which was DEC's last successful implementation
of this architecture.

     The PDP-11 was a 16-bit machine that went through more
implementations and operating systems than can be counted.  Presently
it superceded the less powerful PDP-8 as the representative
minicomputer.  While the PDP-11 used octal, it was in its deep heart
of hearts a hexidecimal machine, and the first indicator of the
creeping IBMification of DEC that took full fruit in the VAX.  [I can
hear the flames now...]  Rather than fight it the customers loved it;
more PDP-11's have been sold than any other DEC computer (possibly
more than all the others combined).

     The PDP-12 was a 12 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-8.
It combined a LINC and a PDP-8 type processor in the same box and
basically was a new model of the LINC-8 which was the same thing.

     No PDP-13 was ever designed or built.  Even DEC gets
superstitious.

     The PDP-14 was a 12 bit machine with a 1 bit register.  It was
used as a process control engine in applications that were felt to be
too rugged for a PDP-8, and basically replaced a set of relays.  Later
DEC made PDP-8's suitable for this sort of thing, but it didn't stop
them from the ultimate silliness of building a PDP-14 that used a
PDP-8 as its console processor!

     The PDP-15 was an 18 bit machine and the final one of this design
built by DEC.  More PDP-15's were built and sold than any of the
others, and it went through several incarnations including some which
used a PDP-11 as a front end.  Apparently the cancellation of the
PDP-15 came as a great surprise to the "Tiger Team" who worked on it,
although considering its general ungainliness compared to comparable
performance PDP-11's it wasn't surprising.  In many ways the PDP-15
died for the same reason the PDP-10 did.

     The PDP-16 was a "roll your own" 16 bit machine based on various
"building blocks".  Every PDP-16 was essentially custom-designed by
the customer.  It got a fair amount of attention when it was announced
but evidentally didn't sell very well.

     There was no PDP-17 or any other designator.  DEC apparently
decided that "PDP" had a perjorative ring to it.

Address: "PoBox:36041, SE-100 71  Stockholm, SWEDEN"
Organization: Stacken Computer Club
Telephone: +46-8-669 9720
Date: 11-Jun-89 17:59:36 +0200
From: Peter Lothberg <[email-masked]>
To: PDP8-Lovers-Request <[email-masked]>, 
    [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], 
    [email-masked], [email-masked]
Subject: Re:  New mailing list

As we also have the KS-Owners mailinglist, we might be able to do
some coordination?

(I do not have any 36-bit system @home, as the KI is 4 times my
 appartment, it has to live in the basement.)

-peter
   --------

Date: Sat, 10 Jun 89 14:52:42 EDT
From: PDP8-Lovers-Request <[email-masked]>
Subject:  New mailing list
To: [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked], [email-masked],
    [email-masked], [email-masked]
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

This message is to announce a new mailing list, [email-masked]
We anticipate that, due to the small number of people strange enough to
want to have a 36-bit machine at home, this will be a low-volume mailing list.

KS-AT-HOME is intended for people who own, or are interested in someday
owning, a KS-10 (a/k/a DECsystem 2020).  

Subscription requests, etc. to [email-masked]

Date: Sun, 11 Jun 89 13:25:33 EDT
From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  New mailing list
To: [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], 
    [email-masked], 
    [email-masked], 
    [email-masked]

Ah, so YOU are the folks who run the KS-OWNERS mailing list?

Maybe you would like us here to do the North American distribution
of the KS-OWNERS mailing list.  A few of us here got the idea to do
this because we didn't know that a KS-related mailing list (with
the exception of KS-ITS) existed.  Perhaps you ought to officially
register your list... it got me a lot more subscribers on PDP8-LOVERS
when I did that...

        Let me know what you want to do...

                       ---Rob

Date: 12-Jun-89 20:22:02 +0200
From: Johnny Billquist <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: RL8A.

More questions on harware.

The RL8A is for the RL01 drives, according to my manuals.
However, would it be possible to add RL02 to the controller also?
I know that on pdp-11 you can add both RL01 and RL02 to the same
controller, but I don't know about RL8A.
Note. I do not have the RL8A manual, only a manual on omnibus
options.

Does anyone know if it is easy to lay my hands on a RL8A by the
way. I think it would be great to have disks larger than the RK05.
Especially if I get an OS that support larger disks than 4095 blocks.
(OS/8).
Anybody cares to guess on the price?

Also, what OS:es has different people tried. Could you give
me a summary of good and bad, and I'll put it together and
post it here if more people are interested.
I think that support for hardware, such as the FPP would
be interesting to know about, for example, also...

Should I add a disclaimer? Everybody else in any other list seems
to use them? Nah, what the heck...
   --------

Date: Mon, 12 Jun 89 21:17:23 EDT
From: "Christopher R. Zach" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  RL8A.
To: [email-masked]
cc: [email-masked]

Johnny:
	My guess is that the Rl02 will work on the RL8A. When Dec made the
RL01, they left room for possible expansion (then the masses got the 02). 
To tell you the truth, the Rl02 is just a RL01 with 2X the tracks. As far
as software goes, that's another story. You would have to hack the OS/8
driver to be able to access those extra sectors. Check the sourcecode.
You might have to only change a few things (like #tracks). Once the driver
is patched, the rest should go smoothly.
							CZ

Date: 20-Jun-89  0:42:15 +0200
From: Robert Malmgren <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Unix on the pdp8

I've found an very interesting list in a Unixbook I have, and quot some bits
 from it:

"Just how transportable Unix is can be seen by looking at the wide range of
machines that Unix already runs on. These are currently:

 - Amdahl 470
   ...
 - Digital Equipment Corp. PDP/11
 - Digital Equipment Corp. PDP/7
 - Digital Equipment Corp. PDP/8
   ...". 

Some pages later in the book is another interesting list giving a overview
of what is abailable on the Unix market now:

"System         Type         Machines        Supplier
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Unix            Very real    PDP 11/8/7  VAX     AT & T International
                                                 P.O. Box 7000-8
                                                 Baskin Ridge, New Jersey 07920
                                                 USA
...
"

This is the book that Johnny Billquist talked about before. Is there anyone
that have heard anything about *nix on the PDP-8, r have been  in contact with
it in the real_world?

/
Robert Malmgren
   --------

Date: 22-Jun-89 19:14:39 +0200
From: Johnny Billquist <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: PS/8

What is PS/8. Is it a predecessor of OS/8, or what?
I've seen references to it, and some OS/8 software mumbles about
it, but I've never seen any paper concerning it specifically.

Anybody who knows?

	Johnny

   --------

Date: Thu, 22 Jun 89 13:51:12 EDT
From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <[email-masked]>
Subject:  [Johnny Billquist:  What is PS/8. Is it a predecessor of OS/8, or what? ]
To: [email-masked]

Yep.  PS/8 was an OS/8 predecessor that would run with only 4Kwords
of memory.  As I recall reading, it was pretty stripped, and (maybe)
would only run with a DF-32 (32Kword fixed head disk) or on TU-55
DECtape.  My descriptions come from a book called "Introduction to 
Programming" (digital press, 1971).  Anyone out there actually
used PS/8?

Moreover, does anyone out there have the tapes required to
generate an RK-05 based TSS/8 system?  I have a partial TSS/8
distribution on paper tape, and sources printed out (it is
about a 3" high stack of paper), and I'd really like to get it
up and running.

            ---Rob

Date: Thu, 22 Jun 89 14:09:02 EDT
From: Clyde Roby <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re:  PS/8
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]

Johnny,

	PS/8 was the precessor to OS/8.  PS/8 stood for Programming
System for the PDP-8.  It was initially not a DEC product and when it
was productized by DEC, the marketing people made the name change.

	There was a lot of work done by PS/8 predecessors at Georgia
Tech (Doug Wrege now at CDC Atlanta) and others.  I worked on some
stuff at West Virginia University with Darryl Duffy and Tom McIntyre
(I think they both work at DEC nowadays).

	I can get more information when I get home (I think I've saved
some old PDP-8 stuff).

	By the way, anybody remember the LINC and DEC's LINC-8???

Clyde

=================================================================
Clyde G. Roby, Jr.                 Institute for Defense Analyses
[email-masked]                       1801 N. Beauregard Street
(703) 824-5536                     Alexandria, VA 22311-1772
=================================================================

Date: Thu, 22 Jun 89 14:17:23 EDT
From: Jonathan Dreyer - Sun ECD PC Distributed Systems <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Subject: Re:  PS/8

> What is PS/8. Is it a predecessor of OS/8, or what?
> I've seen references to it, and some OS/8 software mumbles about
> it, but I've never seen any paper concerning it specifically.
> 
> Anybody who knows?
> 
> 	Johnny

It is a predecessor of OS/8.  When I was in college ('72 - '76) it was
considered highly cool to be able to bring down the 32K timesharing
PDP-8/I running TSS/8 and bring up PS/8 and have all that raw power to
yourself.  OS/8 was just coming out then, if I remember, and it was
considered PS/8's successor.

Unfortunately I didn't use it enough to remember much about it now, but
I remember we were impressed that it had "device-independent i/o";
TSS/8 programs had to read and write to specific devices; e.g. to
compile a program on a dectape you had to first run COPY to get it onto
the disk.  (To get it from a paper tape, you had to run a different
utility, PIP!)  With PS/8, this historical curiosity went away.

Jon

Posted-Date: Fri, 30 Jun 89 07:05:29 -0700
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: PAL12
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 89 07:05:29 -0700
From: [email-masked]

Has anyone got source for PAL12? I am trying to collect everything I can
get a hold off. I have a .LS for PAL12 but can't find my original .PA
If anybody is looking for something, just let me know and I'll be happy
to send whatever. I expect to get things on a VAX and save it on mag 
tape. Here at my work, we still use the '8'. Mostly it is used for small
FORTRAN jobs - graphics. We have good interactive graphics. It is very
fast from the editor thru a running program using a silicon (RAM) disk. 

                          Wally Kalinowski
                          213 336-6940       work
                              515-1544       home