EVERHART%ARISIA.decnet@GE-CRD.ARPA (02/23/89)
PRO 350 is a PDP11 which runs P/OS, an RSX11M+ derivative. It has slots, but they're a DEC format. Serial printer support is included (trivial really to do on a multitasking OS). While P/OS isn't quite RSX11M+ (unfortunately), nearly ALL the RSX tools developed over the years run on it. You generally need the native toolkit to do anything serious with the machine; make SURE you get that with any pro. (P/OS without it is good for running canned applications from menus and not much else.) There are a good fraction of a gigabyte of such tools in public domain. Some are available via the DECUS library. More can be found on the RSX SIG tapes (from 1977 to 1988 so far, and yes, there WILL be an important one for spring '89 including an update to DECUS C). Things like free C, Pascal, Basic, Focal, Lisp, Forth, and many more are available in languages. Numerous editors and some PD word processors (e.g. Brian Nelson's TED) are there too. With p/os V2 and the toolkit one must say "spawn .pip [*,*]*.*/pu" for example. Since there would normally be task name conflicts with a subsequent DIR (which uses the pip program) one then uses the other little RSX SIGtape gem TRN to rename all tasks. Just say TRN and everything at your "terminal" gets a new and unique name and off you go...no more name conflicts. Makes it easy to do stuff in background; as many things as you like generally. The PRO does not have windows at this level, though there is software to run applications in windows. They have to be designed for the windows though. The normal console acts like a terminal. Therefore you need to have SOME concern about what you're talking to. In practice, this is not a great limitation, since basically everything accepts commands from command lines and useful work can be accomplished via shooting one liner commands at different tasks. Things like PD memory disks for PRO exist also. For heavily overlain programs (like AnalytiCalc, my spreadsheet, which has 5 cotrees and a zillion leaves in the overlay structure) it is a MAJOR win to run the overlain program off a memory disk; factors of 10 in speed are possible. For most PRO programs this is not a factor. You can get rid of the thing if needed. A pro reads/writes ODS-1 RX50's. VMS comes with F11AACP (not always installed on microvaxen but present on distribution kits for vms) which can read/write these. Also micro-RSX can read/write them. I don't have immediately any ods-1 reader for MSDOS, though there is a PD RX50 driver for the 1.2 meg drive on IBM AT that can read/write RX50 in MSDOS format. I suspect one of the PD ods-1 readers for RT11 or Unix might be a way to go in forging such a link. Anyone have such a thing now? (Might be a good thing for the spring '89 RSX tape.) I hope this is helpful. By the way, I cannot overstate the value of multitasking. On a PRO you almost NEVER have to wait for the computer to be free if you get in the habit of using the multitasking. On a PC, I've sat waiting for long processes to finish every time I've used one (often). My home machine these days is an Amiga, which also multitasks. I NEVER have to give up the machine access due to long operations there! If you're computing experience has been that you have to wait for the last operation to complete before doing the next, let me urge STRONGLY that you move up to something that will multitask. The pro is a VERY inexpensive way to see this since the price cuts, and due to the availability, essentially free, of C and Pascal (plus non-free but cheap languages from dec) there's quite a lot you can do on the machine that will remain useful on other engines also. By the way, there's a working group in the RSX SIG which is devoted to helping folks with non-magtape media get hold of software off the sig tapes; Bob Uleski heads it. Glenn Everhart Everhart%Arisia.decnet@ge-crd.arpa
wjgilbert@poppy.waterloo.edu (William J. Gilbert) (02/24/89)
If you like Unix, you can run a plain vanilla Unix called VENIX on the Pro 350 and 380. However it does not have any characteristics of a personal computer. The console is just like a terminal on a mainframe. It does have the Unix command `plot' to produce hires pictures on the screen. There is also a printscreen command to print to DEC printers; this command has to be entered on the command line and you cannot use the key marked PRINT SCREEN on the keyboard. Of course VENIX does multitasking and as Glenn Everhart mentioned in discussing P/OS, this is a very important feature. I have found Venix to be much faster than P/OS; up to an order of magnitude faster when using some Pascal programs that use the hires screen. I have found very little other software that I would use on the Pro. Will Gilbert wjgilbert@water.UWaterloo.ca
dorian@pawl.rpi.edu (Dorian S. Garson) (02/25/89)
Speaking of DEC micros, I have a PRO 350 for sale to any interested parties. Color, 10 meg HD, 512K, running Venix, in perfect working order. US$695, buyer pays shipping. -Dorian-> |\ /\ ARPAnet: DORIAN@EDDIE.MIT.EDU \ "Lang loi! Lai dae foo hi | \/ __ UUCP: {*}!rutgers!unipress!dorian \ mae an sic?" | /\ / FoNet: (518) 276-4518 |/ \/ SloNet: 2002 White II, RPI, Troy, NY 12180-3590