[Info-vax] What are the earliest DEC operating systems you worked with ?

[George Cornelius]

>Lee Gleason wrote:
>On 3/3/2021 12:24 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> What are the earliest DEC operating systems you worked with ?
>> 
>> For me, I started with a PDP-11 running RSTS/E V9.{something early},
>> then onto VAX/VMS V5.{something} and then onto Alpha VMS V6.{something}.
>> 
>> I have not touched any Itanium systems.
>> 
>> Simon.
>> 
>
>
>   IAS 3.0 on a PDP-11/70 was my first DEC system.
>

Hi, Lee,

I remember you from the RSX Sig Tapes!  I was there too - at
least in a small way.

Yes, we tried to get IAS but were talked out of it.  So my start
at that level was RSX11M 3.3 on a pair of 11/70's, soon upgrading
to 11M+ 4.0 .

Interesting that while the 11/70 was, performance-wise, a large
increase from the previous system, a clone of an IBM 1800, it had
a smaller address space (32K 16-bit words vs. 64K).  Since we
were doing something new - raster graphics - in that address
space, we were always running up against that limit.  M+ gave
us separate I&D space and supervisor mode libraries, and
RAM disk from DECUS (Stamerjohn, Everhart, Mitchell) gave us
fast overlays without the restrictions of the offically
supported PLAS-based memory resident overlays.

But my first DEC system was actually a PDP-8/I with two
DECtapes, a printer, high-speed paper tape, and a console
TTY.  A whopping 4K 12-bit words of address space, with,
again, special games being played at the assembler language
level to access more.

Oh, and it ran Dibol, which was its own O/S (like Mumps
on the 11's).  But I was also using OS/2, which I swear
was originally called PS/2.  I would trot it out when
I wanted to run a real O/S!

Oh, and we started in the Playboy (a.k.a. Palmolive)
Building! After I was there a month, though, we moved
to the John Hancock nearby, 2nd tallest building in
the U.S.

George Cornelius

>--
>Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR
>Control-G Consultants
>lee.gleason at comcast.net