What I'm looking for...RSX/VMS/VAX/PDP11

  This post is about things I'm looking for for my RSX/VMS/VAX/PDP11 collection. I'll be updating it periodically. If you have any of these things, let's talk - I have DEC stuff to trade, and money to spend...

RX01 diskettes

SORT for IAS
RMS11K for IAS
RSX11D any version besides 6.2 and 4
DECNET for RSX11S
DECnet for IAS or RSX11D
MicroVAX 2000 12 MB memory cards
Audio tapes of DECUS Symposium RSX Magic sessions
The DeVIAS newsletter (pre DECUS newsletter consolidation, circa 1984 and before).

DECUS SIG newsletters, including RSX11/IAS Multi-Tasker, DeVIAS, BASIC, Datatrieve, Networks...and others.

  Back in the day, when the earth was young and rock and roll ruled the airwaves, not too long after we slew the dinosaurs with our mighty slide rules, there was an operating system called RSX11M. There was also one called RSX11D, and one called IAS,but no one seems to remember much about them - but that's another story.

  It had an enthusiastic and devoted following. The faithful all read a newsletter from DECUS called "The Multi-Tasker". It was kind of like a fanzine for PDP11 system programmers. And DECUS Symposia were a lot like SF Cons, but, that too, is another story.

  This was long before there was a World Wide Web, where everything is online and freely downloadable. You would subscribe to the Multi-Tasker, and it would be brought to you every month (well, more or less) by a uniformed representative of the Federal Government.

  Those days are long past, as are the RSX family of operating systems, and PDP11s for that matter. But there was much wisdom in these newsletters (there was also much humor, drama and low cunning in these newsletters) that is still of value to the DEC historian and RSX11 hobbyist. I recently had to look for an article in one that I didn't have in my collection, and it took a middin' slug of effort to find it (thanks again, Alan Frisbie).

 There are some issues available on assorted RSX DECUS symposium tapes (a pretty good number of the 1984 and newer are there), and a goodly slug of several years of  them are on Bruce Mitchell's Machine Intelligence and Industrial Magic web site. but many issues are not to be found anywhere online.

  I decided to scan in my collection of DECUS SIG newsletters (Multi-Taskers and others as well)  and have them online here, in case any other hobbyists have a need for them. I'll update this entry as I get them done. These aren't done to the standards of Bitsavers - I just used the scanner built into my wife's printer - but, they're better than nothing...scanning documents is a bit of a pain in the sitz-platz - I have even more appreciation for the work done by Al Kossow than I did before starting this.

Let's start with the DeVIAS Letters (named for the Delaware Valley IAS LUG). I only have a few later issues. I'd really like to find some more.. If you have any you'd like to part with, or loan to me for scanning,  please let me know....

DeVIAS Letters
April 1983
August 1984
May 1985
June 1985

At times, the DeVIAS Letter and the Multi-Tasker were combined into one newsletter - most
likely due to the fact that IAS was being discontinued, and most IAS sites were going to
be switching to RSX.

DeVIAS Letter/Multi-Tasker combined
August 1983
September 1983
November 1983
December 1983
January 1984
February 1984
March 1984
April 1984
May 1984
June 1984


Here's the Multi-Taskers 

Multi-Taskers
December/January 1982
February 1982
March 1982
April 1982 
May/June 1982
July 1982
August 1982
Septermber/October 1982

Here's some Mini-Taskers, the newsletter of the RT11 SIG. RT-11 is OK - I use it on my old PDT-11/150s, but it feels a little limited when compared to RSX.

August 1983
October 1983
January 1984
March 1984
May 1984
December 1984    This ish had a great article on RT-11 internals.


Here's some BASIC SIG newsletters. Some of these have art from Vaughn Bode's JUNKWAFFEL comics.

May 1982
July 1982
April 1983
August 1983
September 1983
January 1984
April 1984
September 1984
October 1984

  The BASIC SIG morphed into the Commercial Languages SIG, which include BASIC, COBOL and DIBOL. They still had plenty of Vaughn Bode's art, though.

January 1985


  The Cache Buffer was the newsletter of the RSTS SIG. RSTS is a pretty good timesharing system. I never really warmed up to it because it was more user oriented - unlike RSX and RT, you didn't get a chance to work with the internals much. IAS, RSX and RT, you were practically invited to roll up your sleeves and start writing internals code.

The Cache Buffer

August 1983
November/December 1983
January 1985
April 1985

Networds, the Networks SIG newsletter

June 1982
May 1983
October 1983

The Wombat Examiner, the puckishly named newsletter of the Datatrieve SIG

June 1982
November 1982
December 1983
March 1983
January 1984
April 1985
June 1985

The Data Management Systems SIG newsletter, usually called The Schema  Some of these have a lot of good RMS info in them.

July 1981
September 1981
February 1982
November 1982


  I have a few copies of  "The Special Character Set", the newsletter of the APL SIG.

September 1983
March 1984
October 1984
April 1985


The Newsletter of the Large Systems SIG (big 36 bit systems), At Large.

March1984  This issue was after DEC announced the end of the 36 bit systems.
April 1985    This issue celebrates the 20th anniversary of the SIG.
June 1985   This issue contains the story "Alice's PDP-10". It's funny.

  The Office Automation, Personal Computer, Graphics, COBOL and DIBOL SIGs got lumped together into a single newsletter. Makes sense...sort of. I guess. It's interesting to read all of the optimistic talk about DEC's plans for Personal Computing....

September 1983
January 1984
March 1984
June 1984

  The UNIX SIG, UNISIG, newsletter was called "Toolkit". To be honest, I loathe UNIX with the white hot incandescence of a galaxy full of exploding supernovae,  but, I have the newsletter, so here it is....

April 1984


  The Languages and Tools SIG had a newsletter called "The Heap".

May 1985

RSX11 program to send morse code via the display register on PiDP11s and real PDP11s.

  I do a fair number of hobby projects here that need a microcontroller to run them. I usually use a vintage processor from the 70s - usually 6800s, and often the 6802, a 6800 that has on board RAM for a stack. Why? Because I read a lot about these processors  in the 70s, but didn't have the time to experiment  with them until relatively lately.

  Anyway, these sorts of projects are pretty minimalist - they don't usually have display or a terminal output. A way to see what's going on is needed during development and debug. An old trick of embedded developers is to use a spare IO pin to drive an LED, which is used  to flash messages about what's going on.

  I usually include this, and instead of just flashing the LED a number of times to communicate during debug, I use a routine that allows it to blink messages in Morse code. This allows me to easily communicate more complicated messages about what's happening than just counting flashes would.

  Like I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been doing a lot of work with my PiDP11/70 - an 11/70 emulator with a front panel. It occurred to me that having this capability on it would be useful when doing work where it is not practical to print a message to a terminal.

  I "translated" the routine I use on 6802s to MACRO-11, as a subroutine, MORSE.MAC. Subroutine MORSE is called with up to four arguments.

R0 - length of string to send
R1 - address of string to send
R2 - sending speed in ticks/element (default is 20)
R3 - LED(s) pattern to use (default is bit 0)

  If R2 or R3 are 0, then the defaults are used. If R2 or R3 specify a value, it is "sticky" - it becomes the default for future calls that have R2 or R3 0.

morse.mac


OK, so now I have a routine to call. But, I figured a program to demo the subroutine is in order, so I wrote MORDEM.MAC (stands for MORse DEMo). MORDEM is just the standard GMCL and CSI gingerbread used by just about all RSX utilties. It accepts a filename as input, and then uses MORSE to send the contents of that file to the display register, in morse code. You can enter TI: as the file argument, and it then takes input from the keyboard.

mordem.mac

To use
>mac mordem=mordem
>mac morse=morse
>tkb
TKB>mordem/pr=mordem,morse
/
task=...mse
libr=fcsres:r0 (or suplib=fcsfsl:sv)
//

Since this is a privileged task, address space is at a premium - and FCS
uses a lot of space.

Use FCSRES or FCSFSL in the taskbuild to conserve address space, or everything won't fit, and when you run it you'll get the message below...and it won't work.
INS -- Warning - privileged task not mapped to I/O page

>run mordem
MSE>ti:      (TI: for input from keyboard - or enter a file spec)
TEST STRING INPUT
SECOND LINE
ETC
^Z

The text entered, from  the keyboard will be blinked out on the display register as morse code.

Or specify a file
>run mordem
MSE>testfile.txt
>

Or install it and do it MCR command line style
>ins mordem
>mse testfile.txt
   or

>mse ti:

  You know, all the usual stuff.

  MORDEM supports a couple of switches...

    /SPE - specify the length in ticks of one element. 20 is the default.
    /LED - specify the bit pattern to blink. Bit 0 is the default.