[TUHS] /dev/drum

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Tue Apr 24 04:41:22 AEST 2018


    > From: "Ron Natalie"

    > I'm pretty sure that swapping in V6 took place to a major/minor number
    > configured at kernel build time.

Yup, in c.c, along with the block/character device switches (which converted
major device numbers to routines).

    > You could create a dev node for the swap device, but it wasn't used for
    > the actual swapping.

Yes.

    > We actually dedicated a full 1024 block RF11 fixed head to the system in
    > the early days

Speaking of fixed-head disks, one of the Bell systems used (IIRC) an RS04
fixed-head disk for the root. DEC apparently only used that disk for swapping
in their OS's... So the DEC diagnsotics felt free to scribble on the disk.
So, Field Circus comes in to work on the machine... Ooops!

    Noel




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