[Simh] 101 Basic Games for RSTS/E (was Re: PDP11 on Simh for public access)

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 23, 2019, at 1:54 AM, Mattis Lind <mattislind at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> onsdag 23 januari 2019 skrev Brett Bump <bbump at rsts.org>:
> 
> 
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2019, Paul Koning wrote:
> 
> On Jan 22, 2019, at 6:00 PM, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
> 
> In article <CABr82SJodd8HHSGZjY8O_L5Uqc3j1ORJb7hT90VizYkjdQ0aiA at mail.gmail.com>,
>    Mattis Lind <mattislind at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> I have some DEC EDU material which I can scan if there are interest (and if
> it isn't scanned already by someone else):
> 
> https://i.imgur.com/tqmcieK.jpg
> 
> I'd like to see this one about MINI-RSTS!
> 
> I remember seeing that before, quite possibly the same data sheet.  I never heard of it while at DEC (in RSTS development).  Perhaps it was a short lived early (V4 vintage) RSTS marketing exercise.
> 
> 
>         paul
> 
> 
> Yes. I forgot that I already scanned that one. Here is the mini RSTS flyer in full pdf. 
> 
> http://storage.datormuseum.se/u/96935524/Datormusuem/mini-rsts.pdf
> 
> Since the other documents are printed around 1972/1973 I guess that this one is the same vintage. 
> 
> /Mattis
>  
> 
> Paul and I had this discussion before about 12 years ago on Wikipedia:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RSTS-11&action=history
> 
> I believe RSTS-11 V4A-12 was probably given the name Mini-Rsts-11
> by the marketing department (somewhat the same as MicroRSTS later).
> MicroRSTS was a pregenned distribution with exactly the same code
> that came on the distribution tapes, starting with RSTS/E V8.0-06.
> There are many references to MicroRSTS, but I have only seen 2 for
> Mini-Rsts (below is a link for our colleges RSTS-11 receipt).
> 
> http://www.rsts.org/images/minirsts.jpg
> 
> I know that this original distribution was V4A-12 so the name was
> probably dropped by the time RSTS/E V5A-21 was released eight (8)
> months later.
> 
> Brett

Interesting that there is no date on that document.  The term "RSTS-11" makes it clear we're talking about RSTS V4 or earlier.  For that matter, so does the hardware configuration: a boatload of DL11s for the user terminals rather than a DH11 or DZ11 mux, because V4 only supported single line interfaces.

It's not clear if this is V4 or an older version. 24kW memory is a minimal V4 configuration, pretty marginal actually but possibly ok for 8 users max.  (In college I used V4A on a 28kW machine, 16 terminal lines, 16 users max though it tended to crash at around 12.)  The feature list doesn't mention some V4 (optional) features like "record I/O" so it's possible this was actually V3.

I also found the term "PDP-11/21" interesting.  Has that been used anywhere else?  It's pretty clearly an 11/20 configuration.

	paul