jim@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Mercer) (07/25/89)
a friend of mine has a PDP9 with 2 8" drives ram and some "software". he says i can have it if i want. is there anything useful this machine can do? i would like to have it run UNIX of one flavour or another. Is it too early a model? please reply email and i will post a summary of the perceived abilities of the PDP9. jim@lsuc attcan!lsuc!jim
mark@spot.megatek.uucp (mark thompson) (07/26/89)
jim@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Mercer) writes: >a friend of mine has a PDP9 with 2 8" drives ram and some "software". >he says i can have it if i want. >is there anything useful this machine can do? >i would like to have it run UNIX of one flavour or another. >Is it too early a model? Sigh. I wonder if dmr will see this posting? -mark
jpainter@tjp.East.Sun.COM (John Painter - Sun BOS Hardware) (07/27/89)
This is the machine that UNIX was first developed on/for (TTBOMK) the PDP-11 was the next in line. How downward compatible is UNIX??? (not very, I suspect) /Tjp -This signature intenionally left blank- The opinion of the author are just that.
jdm@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (James D Mooney,205K,7,2913548) (07/27/89)
From article <1989Jul25.155034.20792@lsuc.on.ca>, by jim@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Mercer): > > > a friend of mine has a PDP9 with 2 8" drives ram and some "software". > > he says i can have it if i want. > > is there anything useful this machine can do? > > i would like to have it run UNIX of one flavour or another. > Is it too early a model? > > please reply email and i will post a summary of the perceived > abilities of the PDP9. I tried an e-mail reply but neither of the author's addresses could be reached. I once maintained a PDP-9 system at Ohio State University around 1970. I still have some of the manuals. The PDP-9 was a preliminary version of the PDP-15. Compared to a PDP-8 it was powerful. We did some fairly sophisticated stuff on it, but I doubt it has the capacity to run UNIX. It had an 18-bit word size, and a maximum capacity of 32K words (all core). As I recall, our peripherals included a teletype, paper tape reader and punch, DECtape (which I still think is marvelous), a big line printer, and a bigger disk that occupied a corner of the room and had a capacity on the order of 1MB. We also used homebrew A-D equipment including a storage-type video display. The system software was decent but limited and strictly single-user. It was probably most similar to RT-11 for the PDP-11. There was a good macro assembler, debugger, and FORTRAN IV compiler, line editors and simple utilities, and lots of diagnostic software. Floating point was handled by software, in which we found a few bugs. An interesting note: while I was managing the PDP-9 at OSU, a small new company contracted to use our PDP-9 to develop some software while waiting for their PDP-15 to be delivered. The name of this company was CompuServe. I can probably answer some more detailed questions if you have any. Jim Mooney Dept. of Stat. & Computer Science (304) 293-3607 West Virginia University Morgantown, WV 26506 INTERNET: jdm@a.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu
mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) (08/09/89)
In article <627@east.East.Sun.COM> jpainter@tjp.East.Sun.COM (John Painter - Sun BOS Hardware) writes: >This is the machine that UNIX was first developed on/for (TTBOMK) >the PDP-11 was the next in line. How downward compatible is UNIX??? >(not very, I suspect) Actually, Unix was developed on the PDP-7, which preceeded the PDP-9 by a couple of years. The 7 and the 9 were largely compatible; in fact the 4, 7, 9, and 15 had more in common with each other than the various PDP-11 machines did. Unix on the PDP-7 was written in assembly language, as was the first version on the PDP-11. I don't think that there ever was a C version of Unix for the PDP-7, or for that matter a C compiler for any of DEC's 18 bit machines. DEC cancelled the 18-bit architecture in 1977 after the PDP-11, VAX, and PDP-10/DEC-20 squeezed it out of any market. Mark Crispin / 6158 Lariat Loop NE / Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2020 mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU / MRC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil / (206) 842-2385 Atheist & Proud / 450cc Rebel pilot -- a step up from 250cc's!!! tabesaserarenakerebanaranakattarashii...kisha no kisha ga kisha de kisha-shita sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, momo ni mo iroiro aru uraniwa ni wa niwa, niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru