[Simh] Getting V7 to work with DZ11

[Brett Bump]

On Sun, 20 Apr 2008, Tim Newsham wrote:

> >> At first I tried attaching the device while the system was running
> >> by hitting ^E and entering "set dz lines=8" and "att dz <port>"
> >> for the <port> I chose.  As soon as I do this I get a panic:
>
>    set dz lines=16
>    attach -m dz <port>
>
> now it works.
>
> Tim Newsham
> http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/
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> Simh at trailing-edge.com
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>

This one really jogs the cobwebs a bit.  If memory serves me correctly, we
had 2 DZ11-A (unibus 20MA muxes) cards, that tied to 1 distribution panel
to run a wall of VT52's when we got our AT&T V7 distribution.  I think the
DZ11-B's were the RS232 versions (weren't these really RS423?), but maybe
I have the model numbers reversed.  You had to license V7 from AT&T so you
could legally get BSD 2.8 (I believe I did this in 1983) which is what we
were really after.

Knowing very little about unix (and gettydefs) in those days, my students
and I wrote some patches for the DZ11 driver so we could get more than our
LA36 running unix. ;-)  We sheduled our class labs based on which OS's we
were running (in the morning it was RSTS and in the afternoon BSD).

Just to show you how knowledgable people were about computers at that time
the computer center director reported me to the administration where I had
to explain to the president, vice-president, director of development and
the computer center director, why I was changing the OS on our PDP-11/45
back and forth every day.  It seems the computer center director had told
them that I was flipping the bits in the computer, "they don't like that"
and that, "the computers get used to one way of running".  They didn't
want me to prematurely wear the computer out. ;-)

Brett

PS. The computer center director was last seen in his office talking to
himself (a lot), and was fired for overspending his (and the college's)
budgets (by about 1/2 million).  The president has long since died, the
vice-president is in a nursing home and the director of development was
found to be embezzling funds from the college for years.  His last known
location of employment was in Orange County as a Chancellor of Finances.