[HECnet] Questions about the E11 version 0.9 release

[Gregg Levine]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net> wrote:

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013, Gregg Levine wrote:


Hello!
In going over my collection of things PDP-11 I came across a some what
startling discovery. That of this one, I have nearly all the releases
of E11 from the 0.8 one all the way to the recent one.

The 0.9 release was retrieved from GENIE back when it was trying to be
the same as Compuserve, and that was around 1994. (Both have since
folded it seems.) At the time I was just beginning to understand
exactly what I had obtained from that site. I didn't. I do now.


Now that's going back a ways!


Now I've gone and read all or nearly all of the documentation file
that it came with. There are two instructions there, one of is the
SWITCH one, and I quote here:
"SET SWITCH n
SET SWITCH PORT n

            If PORT is specified, specifies the octal 80x86 I/O address of a
            word port which when read as a word, gives the current 16-bit
            switch register value.   Otherwise (PORT not specified), sets the
            value of the emulated SR to the octal number n. "

And the other one is named this DISPLAY one, and I quote here:
"SET DISPLAY NONE
SET DISPLAY PORT n

        If PORT is specified, specifies the octal 80x86 I/O address of a
        word port which when written as a word, sets the 16-bit display
        register.   If NONE is specified, then anything written to the DR
        by the PDP-11 is ignored (the default condition).   So if you
        want to see pretty blinky lights, get out your wire wrap tool
        and a couple of 74LS273s and whatever else."

And of course my question is one of, were those actually tested with
real hardware attached?

John I imagine you are aware that these early releases are floating
all over the Internet?
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."


--
Cory Smelosky
http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff
http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

Hello!
Yes and by sorting through the documentation between the versions we
can see how the entire business evolved. At one point John worked with
Bob of the SIMH fraternity to confirm that each function behaves
appropriately. Bob it turns out was part of the J-11 development team
back then.

For a lot of us its common to start our ideas using SIMH for testing
ideas, and that also includes networking configuration problems. And
when it becomes necessary to run them full time they'd get moved to
E11 obviously for the fun of it, as a hobbyist motivation

For myself regarding those two commands for the E11 version 0.9
release, I discovered that it might be possible to make work some of
my ideas. Now to track down the hosting hardware......
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."