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

[Timothe Litt]

On 23-Mar-20 13:53, Eric Smith wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 11:35 AM Robert Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com
> <mailto:bob at jfcl.com>> wrote:
>
>     > Timothe Litt <litt at ieee.org <mailto:litt at ieee.org>> wrote:
>     > KS10 ... The 8085 code is crammed into UV EPROMs.
>
>       Was all of the KS CFE code in EPROM?  On the 730 only a small
>     kernel of 8085 code (about 2K as I remember) was in ROM/EPROM and
>     the rest of the 8085 memory was RAM.  The first thing the 8085 did
>     at power on was to load the rest of the 8085 code from the TU58. 
>     That made it possible to issue updates to the CFE code as well as
>     the microcode.
>
>
> All the KS10 front end 8080 code (not 8085!) was in EPROM, up to four
> 2716 EPROMs for 8KB of code. There only RAM was two 2114 chips (each
> 1Kx4), for 1KB of RAM. The 8080 code would load the KS10 microcode
> from mass storage.
>
Typo on my part.  You are correct, the KS CSL is an 8080.  And all 4
EPROMs are full.  The code uses INT instructions with a function code
following to save bytes on subroutine calls.  Yet it provides full
remote diagnosis support, as well as a lot of RAMP (Reliability,
Availability, Maintainability, and Performance) features that were a
challenge on the KL.  The KL has a whole 11/40 FE with an OS...

Did I mention that when one of my colleagues came back from (LCG)
European DECUS when RAMP was announced, he reported that after the
session a helpful customer pointed out that in Dutch, "ramp" means
"disaster"...


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