RSTS on a Pro, was Re: [HECnet] DECnet User Mode Router - Encapsulation Formats

[Paul_Koning at Dell.com]

On Jun 22, 2012, at 8:56 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:

On 06/22/2012 05:33 PM, Paul_Koning at Dell.com wrote:
...

What's missing is CNA support (Ethernet).   The chip used on that card
sucks quite severely, and I've never had enough energy to write the
driver.

Urr?   Doesn't the CNA use an Am7990 "Lance" chip?   As I recall that
isn't too bad to program.   I must be misremembering what chip it uses..?

Intel 82586, which has the worst programming interface in the history of Ethernet.   It uses a single linked list, which is accessed both by the driver and by the chip, without interlocking.   Race conditions everywhere...

But I have disk, and display, and serial ports including the
obscure 4-port card, DDCMP support in both sync and async mode...

Wow, that is fantastic!   (I keep saying "wow"! ;))

Umm...are you willing to share that stuff? =)   I run RSTS 10.1 on many
of my PDP-11s; I'd LOVE to run it on my Pro-350!

Sure, if I can figure out a way to do it reasonably cleanly.

	paul