[Simh] T-11 RT-11 box from the design contest?

[Ethan Dicks]

On 6/19/07, Tim  Shoppa <tshoppa at wmata.com> wrote:
> Ethan Dicks wrote:
> > effectively leaving RT-11 as the only option...
>
> The modifications necessary to make RT-11 4.0 run on the Falcon
> are known as "FART-11" and are in the DECUS library as 11-605.

Good to know.  Thanks.

> While a T-11 is in the Falcon, there would presumably still be some
> further customizations necessary for block device drivers.

Given the nature of previous Spare Time Gizmos products, I'd expect
that any T-11 board wouldn't have a traditional DEC bus, but would
likely have either an ATA (IDE) interface or just a CF socket for
block devices.  The next requirement would be a new RT-11 driver to
use said IDE/CF interface, as was done for the SBC-6120.

> I won't advocate breaking licensing agreements but it wouldn't
> be hard for anyone to download RT-11 4.0, apply the patches,
> and make a Falcon-ready version.

Not hard, but again, not necessarily what you want to build a business
plan around.

> And there are so many RQDX3's out there I can't see any ethical
> problems in harvesting T11's from them.

The ethicality of harvesting T-11s from existing boards wasn't really
where I was going - it was more the case of asking one's self, "if I
make 100 boards, will my 100 customers be able to find T-11 chips or
want me to find them for them?"

> It's certain that the number
> of RQDX3's outnumbers the remaining working MFM hard drives :-).
> (Heck, I think that statement may have been true in 1990!)

Heh... I've replaced my share of drives hung off of RQDX3s.

I'm still curious about Bob's T-11 project, though.

-ethan