🚀 go-pugleaf

Sigh.  Another PDP-11/RT-11 basher.  When will these guys realize that
some of us like to live in the past (before the 8080/CPM and its
descendents)?  [As your correspondent grins and continues typing on
his Sparcstation. . . .]

What follows are a few corrections regarding PDP-11's and RT-11, and a
request for more information about migrating to something more modern.

> Aw, come-on...  You got something against Artie's (RT's) three letter
> commands? :-) And they say Unix is cryptic.  Sheesh.

For many, many years, RT-11 has had a command processor that allows
commands to be spelled out in full or abbreviated to the minimum
ambiguous length (e.g. PRINT FOO.C, PRIN FOO.C, PR FOO.C).  These
include many non-intuitive command names and options like DIRECTORY,
TYPE/NOLOG, COPY/VERIFY and RENAME.  Many of these commands take
arguments which may be included on the command line or omitted.  If
omitted, RT-11 will later ask for what it needs.

Having spent about a month trying to recollect the "print aliases and
paths" command under UNIX, the full English word "which", I think it
safe to say that RT-11 has a long way to go before its commands are
more cryptic than those from UNIX.  On the other hand, as someone who
recently wrote a "make" program for RT-11 (don't laugh, people are
actually paying money for it!), RT-11's command line processor is a
pain in the neck to interface programs to.

> This will cost you a bundle as you have an 18 bit backplane and the 73
> is a 22 bit backplane.  If you had a 23 Plus it would be more
> reasonable.

Since the Q-bus is so slow, it is not that hard to convert an 18-bit
backplane to 22-bits, just { 4 wires } x { the number of slots }.  In
fact, with the right tool, you can even wirewrap DEC's non-wirewrap
backplanes.  If you would rather not perform a midnight wiring job,
replacement backplanes are not all that expensive.

This just leaves:

> Only the cost of the board swap.  The 73 is a better machine though.
> Maybe cost you $2,500, US just for a used processor board, KDJ11-BB in
> Digital Basics.  Now add $4,200 for a meg of memory...  Hope you like
> segmented architecture, cause thats all ya get.

I bet even if you bought this stuff from the Department of Defense it
would be cheaper than this (well, maybe not).  A KDJ11-A will probably
work fine in place of the KDJ11-BB and can be had at half the price.
If you know anyone who is buying Q-bus memory at $4000 per megabyte,
send him my way.  Have I got a deal for him. ;-)  For a while, Q-bus
memory boards were *cheaper* than the IBM MCA flavor.

I could go on about "excessive" system power requirements, one of the
neat deals you might be able to get on a PDP-11 source code license
(does $400 sound o.k.?  How about free?) but I have probably written
enough.  Believe it or not, I am interested in migrating from a PDP-11
to a more modern UNIX system (perhaps a 386).  Does anyone care to
continue this particular thread?

John Firestone
glug@geophys.washington.edu