[HECnet] Silly RSX questions....

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2012-07-08 15:39, Bob Armstrong wrote:
    Thanks, guys - I didn't know that M+ would run on a 11/23. I have kits for
M+ v4.3 and DECnet11-M+ v4.3 so that's what I'll try.

    As I remember the 11/23+ is pretty slow (like half or 1/3rd the speed of a
11/73) and an RD32 is not a huge amount of space (40Mb, although that's
probably plenty for RSX).   Any hints for what I should or should not include
in the SYSGEN?

As the 11/23+ don't have split I/D space, you are going to be running low on pool. Try to keep the number of devices, tasks, and other stuff down. Yes, 4MB is plenty of memory. But normal memory is often not the big issue in RSX, it is pool. Pool is the memory that the kernel uses for all kind of internal stuff, and it is restricted to what is addressable within 64K, minus what the kernel use for other stuff. On split I/D-space machines, all the kernel code are in I space, while pool is in D space. Without split I/D-space, both lots of the kernel code, as well as pool, must coexist in the same memory space.

Also, don't forget to have the options included to allow for networking in the kernel. :-)

Johnny wrote:
SYSGEN, NETGEN and everything in between is rather more cryptic in 11M,
just to warn you... :-)

    I guess I'm making the right choice :-)     FWIW, I've done M+ SYSGENs
before (years and years ago) and I don't remember those being exceptionally
user friendly!

Either you have never done an 11M SYSGEN, or else your requirements on "user friendly" are pretty high. The M+ SYSGEN gives you help and information at all times, gives sane questions that are understandable, and can be answered pretty straight forward.
11M SYSGEN on the other hand does not give much information, asks that you provide whole sequences of magic as responses sometimes, and is pretty much arcane. A manual beside you is recommended. :-)

Never did DECnet on a 11, however.   Actually I'd be tempted
to use M because of the smaller footprint, but I don't have kits for that.

I might be able to provide something. The smaller footprint is indeed a good thing here.
DECnet on 11M also means that you need to understand partitions, since you need to set them up specifically, and understand how large they should be, and so on.
M+ is pretty much just using the default memory partition for everything, and allocates stuff dynamically as needed.

    I'll probably just build the system on simh and, if it works, I can
transfer the RD32 image over to the real hardware.

You know that an RQDX and RD32 are bog slow? The actual CPU isn't the only reason why those systems are slow... The disk subsystems often is a big chunk of it.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                  ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol