Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!mintaka!ogicse!blake!erf From: erf@blake.acs.washington.edu (John Firestone) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro Subject: Re: Unix (or flavor thereof) for PDP 11/23 (18 bit backplane) Summary: Re: Unix for PDP 11/23 (18 bit backplane) Message-ID: <6201@blake.acs.washington.edu> Date: 10 Mar 90 19:52:25 GMT References: <10394@rls.UUCP> Organization: Univ of Washington, Seattle Lines: 60 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