[HECnet] NT 4 on AlphaServer es40

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-02-12 01:26, Gregg Levine wrote:
Hello!
What happened to Mentec and the PDP-11 support after DEC made the
silly decision to spin the division off? And yes you should. The
PDP-10 was an interesting system and one lived for a long time in the
basement of an MIT building during the middle 90s.

Mentec continued on for about 10 years, and then disappeared in a puff of smoke. However, during those 10 years (take or give a few), first DEC, then Compaq then HP continued to support and sell PDP-11 software, even though Mentec was the guys owning and developing.

When Mentec Inc. did disappear, the software bits were bought out by another company. And that is where it sits today. If we could get HP to actually release the IP for this software, then maybe something hobbyist-like could happen, but as it sits right now, HP control bits and pieces, making it a very complex situation. I'm not sure if you can still contact HP and get a new license for RSX, but it might be. But getting anyone to legally release the stuff seems difficult. :-(

The PDP-10 wasn't just an "interesting system". It was the foundation of parts of the Internet, and was very prolific in the 70s, into the 80s. However, DEC totally failed to come up with a replacement to the KL-10, and eventually they instead decided that it was VAX only (even to the unhappy PDP-11 people, as Paul referred to).

	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