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From: minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec,comp.sys.dec.micro
Subject: Re: Pro-350 questions
Message-ID: <1537@mountn.dec.com>
Date: 13 Apr 90 16:01:09 GMT
References: <28842@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: minow@thundr.enet.dec.com (Martin Minow)
Followup-To: comp.sys.dec
Distribution: usa
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 57

In article <28842@cup.portal.com> Azog-Thoth@cup.portal.com
(William Thomas Daugustine) asks about the PRO-350.

Here are a few, highly unofficial, answers.
>
>My friend, who is trading the Pro-350 with me, says that its basiclly
>a PDP-11 in a different box (excluding certian things, such as tape
>drives?). If this is true, will I be able to run PDP-11 software on 
>it?

Basically TRUE.  It has a private bus (not a Q- or Unibus) so there are
only a few cards available (Ethernet, serial line, telephone, and one
or two others).

>Right now, the machine is running Venix. A version of Unix? How close 
>is it? > Muli-user and -processing?

More or less a Unix V6 clone.  Don't expect sockets or NFS, but it should
be reasonably familiar.  I'm pretty sure you can use the second terminal
line as a programmer's terminal.

>He has other OS's for it, which Ill
>be getting, one is RT-11, and the other is POS (Professional OS). Im
>not familiar with RT-11, altho I do know that this is one of the OS's
>of the PDP-11 family. What is POS?

RT-11 is a small single-user executive.  It is the spiritual grandparent
of CP/M and MS/DOS, and the children are not necessarily improvements
over the parent.  Think of it as a small, fast, single-user system.

P/OS is a variant of RSX-11M for the Pro.  This is a multi-task system
that is very compatible with the RSX-11M that runs on PDP-11's and
VMS compatibility mode.  Executables *generally* transfer without
problems, but there are a few quirks with user id's and file name
conventions that might cause a headache or two.

If you can find Decus C, you'll have access to a language that is
compatible between the PRO and the -11's.

>Also, it has a 5meg hard drive (ST-506). Can I upgrade this to a
>larger drive? The ST-225 etc, are ST-506 compatable, but will
>it be able to support larger drives?

I think the PRO will support a 10 Meg drive.  Look around the surplus
market.

>And finally, not a big concern. He mentioned hi-res graphics. Just
>for comparasion sakes (no flames on this please!) which would iut
>be closer to? CGA, EGA or VGA?

There are high-quality color and monochrome displays.  The operating
system has a fairly complete set of graphics operations.  It's been
six years, so you'll excuse me if I don't remember how they work any more.

Martin Minow
minow@thundr.enet.dec.com
The above does not represent the position of Digital Equipment Corporation