[HECnet] Tops-20 ANONYMOUS FAL Preliminary Testing Results/DAP Query

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2019-12-23 20:24, John Forecast wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Dec 20, 2019, at 11:21 PM, Thomas DeBellis 
>> <tommytimesharing at gmail.com <mailto:tommytimesharing at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Indeed; but there was a time when the PDP-11's 16 bit (64K) address 
>> space and eight register file seemed positively generous. That's when 
>> you compare it to the PDP-8's /single/ accumulator and 12 bit (4K) 
>> address space.
>>
>> I continue to be astounded what they managed to do with that.  In 
>> addition to a nice package of languages, with a memory management unit 
>> (essentially a bank switcher), they got the thing to timeshare.  
>> That's right; TSS-8.  There's one still running at the Computer 
>> History Museum on an 8/I.
>>
>> So they got DECnet running on the PDP-8?  Wow.  I wonder how they did 
>> that; whether they re-targeted a BLISS compiler to emit PAL.  I 
>> remember looking at the source to PDP-8 VT (video) TECO.  Many awe 
>> most inspiring kludges.  What a tour de force. Very humbling.
>>
>>
> That was implemented on RTS-8 and looks like a Phase I implementation - 
> all hand-crafted PAL code. The floppies are available on the net and 
> includes full source code. When I joined the DECnet development group in 
> early 1977, there were a couple of PDP-8 developers as part of the 
> group. I don’t know if they were developing a Phase II implementation 
> but they disappeared after about 6 months - not surprising given the 
> difficulties we were having getting it to fit in a 28KW PDP-11.

Poul took a look at the DECNET-8 sources, and figured it was actually 
not phase I (I thought it was phase I as well). Poul thinks it's close 
to, if not actually phase II. There are things in there that apparently 
did not exist in phase I.

   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