[Simh] Hello and A Couple of Newbie Questions

[J. David Bryan]

On 5 Nov 2004 at 13:16, Zachary wrote:

> I'm wondering what sort of "Getting Started" guides might be available
> for legacy systems like RT-11, OS8, RSTS, etc. 

I am basically unfamiliar with DEC operating systems (we bought HP over DEC 
back in 1973 :-), so I don't know if there are any "friendly" guides, but 
many of the original DEC systems manuals appear on Bitsavers:

  http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/

If they are anything like the equivalent HP manuals, they'll go into 
substantial detail on operation of the systems.


> I boot them up, and realize that they are not the most friendly beasts
> in the world.

Indeed, in an era when every byte of storage was precious, system prompts 
and messages tended to be very terse.  One probably can't sit down and 
figure out one of these systems just from playing with it.  The manuals are 
an integral part of understanding.

                                      -- Dave