🚀 go-pugleaf

[mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) recently asked: 
|
|I know DEC-20's used 11/40's as front end machines.  Did they interface via
|a DL10?  Could someone briefly describe what services the 11/40 did?
|(Or it might have been labelled 11/35 -- same set of CPU cards.)

I can't answer about the DL10.  On the 10 side the interface was called
a DTE20 (DECsystem To Eleven).  The 11 didn't really have a great deal
to do while timesharing was going on.  It handled unit record peripherals
(remember the card reader/punch?  :-) and ran the console program that
handled booting.  It's primary use was running the diagnostic set (I
think this was the first DEC use of a free-standing maintenance computer.)
From the 11 it was possible to diagnose troubles when the mainframe's
clock was stopped!  If anyone is really interested in early diagnostic
lore, I'd be glad to bend your ear sometime.

(Is diagnostic architecture of interest to comp.arch readers?)


	- Dale (N1US)	Encore Computer Corporation, Marlborough, Mass.
INTERNET:	cook@encore.com
UUCP:		{buita || talcott || husc6 || bellcore} !encore!cook