[Simh] The lost disk of the PDP-15

[Bob Supnik]

Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse had a number of PDP-15s, including 
XVMs. Some are still be in the hands of a private collector. However, 
that person is unwilling to share materials, particularly software kits, 
from his collection.

If the RP disks follow normal SimH practice, then they are simulated as 
data files, without metadata. A PDP-10 RP would have blocks of 128 x 
36bit words, each word right justified in a 64b container; a PDP-15 RP 
would have blocks of 256 x 18bit words, each right justified in a 32b 
container.  For interchange, the two simulators would have to adapt a 
common container size. Alternately, the disk could be buffered in 
memory, and the format adjusted at attach (as is done with DECtapes).

/Bob

On 5/5/2016 6:01 AM, simh-request at trailing-edge.com wrote:
> Message: 5 Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 20:10:59 -0400 From: Richard 
> Cornwell <skyvis at sky-visions.com> To: simh at trailing-edge.com Subject: 
> Re: [Simh] The lost disk of the PDP-15 Message-ID: 
> <20160315201059.25711d9a at hobbit> Content-Type: text/plain; 
> charset=US-ASCII I suspect this might also be to the limited number of 
> XVM15 systems that were actually sold. I used one at Syracuse 
> University in the early 80's. We had the PDP11 and it talked to the 
> RK05 disk drive. I was told that there was only about 20 XVM systems 
> sold. We did not have any RP drives on the system. My KA10 simulator 
> supports RP01/RP02/RP03 disks, do you think there might be a need to 
> exchange disks between a PDP10 and a PDP15? If so we should probably 
> use a common format. When I add RP06 support for the KI10 version I 
> will make sure it is compatible with the KS10 sim so that packs can be 
> interchanged. We probably could add support for the RP03 to RSX, DOS 
> and Adss, since we have source. Rich
>> >