[Info-vax] OT: obscure PDP11 OSes (even more dinosaury)

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Friday, 12 June 2015 18:26:37 UTC+1, Alan Frisbie  wrote:
> On 06/12/2015 07:14 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
> > Oh, and there was another from DEC that I think would have been in the same
> > class as VAXELN.  It was called IAS, I think.  But I know of no copies of it
> > still inexistence.  At least I have never been able to get a copy anywhere.
> 
> I have the distribution tapes for IAS v3.0.   They will be part of the
> archive of 9-track tapes I am creating (TPC and TAP container files).
> They are all 800 BPI, so they will get copied after I finish all the
> 1600 BPI ones (I will have to switch to a different system and tape drive).
> 
> IAS was a variant of RSX-11D, and I enjoyed using it back in the late 1970s.
> 
> Right now, the project is on hold until I can get a replacement CPU daughterboard
> for my Alpha XP1000.   It died last Friday, so I am currently Alpha-less.  :-(
> 
> Alan Frisbie

Good to hear that IAS isn't completely forgotten. I had the pleasure
of working with it on 11/70 in the late 1970s, after it effectively
replaced 11D. Another play one day might be fun.

DECUS proceedings were forever full of folk complaining about sysgens
on RSX. I didn't really understand, as SYSGEN was a largely foreign
concept on 11D and (especially) IAS.

John Harper's page on IAS: 
http://www.john-a-harper.com/ias.html

I *thought* I'd seen an IAS3.1 downloadable somewhere but can't
quickly find it, neither a local private copy nor a websearch
reference. 3.0 seems relatively widely distributed, often on
the darker fringes of the web, so a Known Trustworthy copy
would be handy. Manuals seem to exist for IAS3.4 but I'd moved
on to the world of VMS and UNIX by that time.

Another PDP11 OS was Venix11, from Venturcom. 

Bill may have been getting muxed ip between MicroPower PASCAL
(DEC-developed ROMable/netloadable RTOS with RT11 host toolkit
for low end PDP11) and VAXELN. That well known auction site has
a copy of Introduction to MicroPower Pascal AA-M388A-TC on offer
for $16.25 at the moment.

If it's just the manual's content you want, it's
already on Bitsavers (thank you) e.g.
/pdf/dec/pdp11/rt11/micropowerPascal/AA-M388A-TC_IntroToMicroPowerPascal_Jan82.pdf

There's also a slight chance Bill may be thinking of VENIX11 from
Venturcom, a UNIX V7 (?) derivative sold with alleged realtime
capabilities (iirc - it was a loooong time ago).

Have a lot of fun.