[Simh] Is it possible to simulate the first Vaxen I ever used?

[Dan Gahlinger]

all I can tell you is the vax 11/730 I used in high school, I was told had a pdp-8 fep.

william Dukelow was the primary admin, teacher, in charge of the system.  unfortunately he has just recently passed away.

I remember they opened the chassis a number of times to show off that bar, the part was indeed labelled "FUBAR", it was the source of some laughs.

the system had a mag tape drive and maybe a dozen terminals for student use, comprising of both xt and vt models 52, I think 82, and 100.  I still have my escape sequence cheatsheet for those from those days.

there was what I'd call a bug in the vms on that system.  you could rename a .dir that had files within it to say .dat then delete the .dat if you set it /nodirectory, and all the files within the dir would still use up disk space, even though there was now no longer any way to work with them. so you'd have this missing disk space basically forever, still counting against the users quota.
I know because I did that at least twice.

the 730 was at a high school in London Ontario called H.B. Beal Secondary, the vax served two other high schools as well, with terminals at those locations. I'm not sure how the links were done, except it was by phone.

from what I recall, they bought the 730 from the university, Western (UWO).  but I don't recall UWO ever having a 730.
I started at Western in 1976 at Alumni Hall which was using pdp-10 and/or topps-10.
I'm not clear on the distinction there.
computing at Western moved to Middlesex College in 1978 which housed the Vaxen, the 782 which might have just been two 780s clustered. that distinction may not matter.

the only surviving photos may be from yearbooks, not the best quality or detailed. but I'll check them and see if there's anything I can find.

three of the four teachers that were at Beal have now passed away.
Mr. Rudy Specht, Mr. Ron Collyer, and now Mr. William Dukelow.
the surviving teacher is the only link I now have to this past.

I've been trying to convince him to sell me some things, or barter, so hopefully in time I'll have something to share and maybe replicate.

these are things I don't want lost to the winds of time. by posting here, in some ways it'll live forever somewhere on the net....

those times were the best days of my life...

Dan


Try: https://www.grammarly.com
________________________________
From: Simh <simh-bounces at trailing-edge.com> on behalf of Robert Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com>
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2020 10:03:33 AM
To: simh at trailing-edge.com <simh at trailing-edge.com>
Subject: Re: [Simh] Is it possible to simulate the first Vaxen I ever used?

> Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>... extended microcode to run PDP-8 code faster.  But it was an 11/60
running RSTS/E.

  So it is true (well, sort of, but with a PDP-11/60 rather than a
VAX-11/730)??  Do you know any details of how it was implemented?  If it ran
RSTS then it was obviously still a PDP-11 at the same time it was emulating
a PDP-8.  Was there a -8 "compatibility" mode, something like the -11 mode
on the VAX?

Bob

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