PDP-11 Newbie Alert --- (gotta start somewhere)

[Pete Turnbull]

On Apr 14, 14:44, Robert D. Keys wrote:

> I am quite interested in the older unices, and especially the potential
> for home use on a smallish box of some sort.  (Nostalgia trip, but why
> are most of us here?)

> Anyway, I was noticing the pdp-11 system 5/6/7 binaries and the freebie
> sco licenses on Minnie, and was wondering where to go for info on how
> to bring the things up.  I saw one emulator for DOS? --- (neat way maybe
> to use an old 4 meg dos box?).  Can these things be made to run via
> a 386/486 bootstrap and emulator, on something like a minix/aix/FreeBSD
> sort of machine?  I would expect something like a maintenance boot disk,
> and a minimal file system to get the machine up and into the emulator
> proper, might be feasible, maybe?

Yes, you want one of the emulator packages and a disk image for that.  BTW, the
disk images I've seen don't have man pages, so you may want to download those
separately.

> Also, I see pdp-11ish things in surplus around here quite often.
> What would be needed to cobble together a system, for a minimal system 7
> sort of box to play with?  If there were a list of required boards and
> chassis for various levels of system, that might help a newbie get some
> sort of machine together.

There are so many permutations, it's hard to make a list.  There are two
general classes of PDP-11, QBus and Unibus.  Most even-numbered models are
Unibus, most odd-numbered models are QBus (but not all).  QBus machines tend to
be smaller.

As to operating system versions, 2.11BSD needs at least an 11/73 or 83 to run,
as it needs memory management with separate address spaces for instructions and
data.  7th Edition will also run on those machines, and if the kernel is
suitably compiled, will also run on smaller machines such as 11/23s, which are
quite common.  Early versions will run on a whole range of models.

Whatever you get, you'll need a processor (which might be a single card or as
many as ten), memory (256K will do fine for 7th Edition, but more is better),
at least one serial line unit for a terminal (or PC with terminal emulation
software), and a disk controller with a suitable hard disk.  Here again there
are lots of possibilities, you want at least 10MB for 7th Edition and a lot
more for BSD.

Others may wish to expand on what I've written.  Personally, I'd go see what
you can find, describe it to the list, and wait for the 101 pieces of advice
you'll get from all of us about its suitability/desirability :-)

-- 

Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Dept. of Computer Science
						University of York

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