[geeks] New toy!

[Brian Hechinger]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 11:57:16AM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> 
> I don't really know anything about the differences.  From what I gather,
> RSX-11 was the most advanced.  My lack of a tape drive is going to make
> OS installation a pain.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, yeah, that is going to be a pain.  you can't get any
tape drives at all??  how about floppies?  i could put any OS on floppy for you
since i've got both 5.25" and 8" here.  let me know.

RSX-11 is closest to VMS of all of them, both in "feel" and in capability. it's
the predesesor[sic] to VMS, so if you've used VMS before, it won't be wholy
alien to you.  it'll be like using 2BSD after using 4BSD (not a direct 
comparrison, but i'm hoping you know what i mean)

RSX-11 is the one i have the most experience with.  i've just started farting
around with RT-11, and it's pretty similar too.  they are all very close it
seems, just with minor differences in capabilities.  i'll let you know what all
i find out.

> I'll have a look around, and on epay if necesary.  I could do with the
> 'skins' for it too - mine spent all its life rackmounted and is missing
> the plastic skin.  It's also missing most of the front cover.  The small
> part of it surrounding the panel buttons is present but damaged.

i got lucky.  the 11/23+ came in a MINT CONDITION BA23.  i mean, not even 
yellowed plastic, original color and everything.  it's sweet.  the 11/03 came
in a BA11-M in a 42" cabinet (with nothing else in it, talk about funny).

the only one that i need a home for is the 11/83 which came as a CPU card and
two 2MB ram cards in a cardboard box.  he didn't have the cage for it (it hadn't
fully deprieciated yet, so they pulled the guts out and left the cabinet so the
bean-counters had something to look at when they were doing their bean-counter
stuff since they would never look inside to be sure *evil grin*) so i'm working
on getting something to put it in, got a couple of leads, just gotta work out
the details.

[ESDI]

> Hrrrm.  Perhaps.

here's why i asked.  i had an ESDI contoller offered to me (for free) and i
just talked to a friend of mine who's dad has an old 150MB ESDI disk that he
would be more than happy to give me (for free) so for the cost of shipping the
ESDI controller (the drive will get shipped from my friend's work who will foot
the bill *G*) i can upgrade my 11/23+ from a 10MB MFM drive to a 150MB ESDI
drive.  not bad at all IMHO.  also, now i can put that 10MB MFM disk on the
11/03 and get that thing running fulltime as my RT-11 machine.  i'm thinking
about RSTS/RSX-11/2.9BSD on the /23+ but i haven't descided yet.  and the /83
gets either RSX-11 or 2.11BSD.  again, i haven't descided.  it all depends on
if the two SCSI controllers i'm picking up this weekend are supported by either
of those or not (won't know what model SCSI controllers they are until i go
pick them up, hope they are MSCP)

> Bill, didn't you mention that you had a PDP mailing list running on sunhelp?

www.pdp11.org

maybe it's time for a pdphelp at pdp11.org mailing list for us pdp11 geeks to get
our hardware working. :)

-brian