On 2019-12-27 19:53, Dave Shevett wrote:
On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 1:39 PM Paul Koning <paulkon...@comcast.net> wrote:
You mean real RSX, not POS?

So, IIRC, P/OS was built on top of RSX11.  It was the menu system and
application framework, but under the covers, it was all RSX11.  I
remember if you had the (development option?) you could drop to a DCL
prompt and do whatever you liked with it.

Sortof. It's all definitely based on RSX, but P/OS did add some stuff of its own, which is separate from RSX. But for most things, RSX programs will run on P/OS, as long as they don't try anything too fancy, and they might not work from the menu system, but depends on the DCL environment. Sortof similar in the other direction as well. P/OS programs will run on RSX, as long as you don't try any P/OS specific stuff, or try to call the menu system.

Much of the sources are shared between P/OS and RSX, but not all of them, and RSX eventually grew to have much more capabilities than P/OS ever got.

1) I'm assuming RSX-11m is where I should be focusing my work - even
though my personal systems were RSTS based, (with an occasional boot
of RT11 to test stuff)  i feel RSX-11m is the more 'complete' and
modern OS (contextually speaking).  Does this make sense?

Not necessarily.  It depends a bit on what you want to do.  As Johnny points 
out, if you want TCP/IP, the only RSX will do thanks to his work.  (Or Unix I 
suppose, but I assume we're talking DEC operating systems.)  If you want to 
write device drivers, RSX or RT are options, RSTS is not.  (At least not in the 
sense of something you can do from documentation -- it *can* be done and has 
been but unless you were part of the RSTS/E engineering team it's quite tough 
to pull off.)  If you want something really fast and skinny, RT-11 is the 
obvious answer.  RSTS/E of course is the place for traditional timesharing.

If you are looking for places to run application programs you might have lying 
around, RSTS/E is probably a very good answer.  It has both RT11 and RSX 
emulation that's quite solid.  Some real time features may not be great, though 
they should be faked adequately.  For example, RSTS doesn't have ASTs or 
asynchronous I/O (except some disk and tape I/O in V9.0 and later) but the 
emulation will fake it.  Similarly, you can run user interfaces that feel like 
RT11 or RSX, at least superficially.  And DCL in V9 or V10 is very good.

It really does come down to "what do I want to do with this" doesn't
it?  I'm not a strong programmer outside of high level languages
(though I know a half dozen assembler variants)

Definitely boils down to what you want to do... Pretty much the same high level languages exists on both systems.

I was in college when I started most of my DEC experience, and that
was all on 11/730's.  Vaxen running VMS.  I wrote a ton of stuff in
BASIC-11 that used ReGIS to display stuff via the GIGI terminals.
When I worked for a DEC reseller later, the Pro/350's we had ran a
bunch of ReGIS demos that were awesome.  I think my ultimate goal is
to have a GIGI (or, I suppose, anything htat supported ReGIS, which
includes a VT240 I believe) connected to the PiDP11 running graphics
stuff.   RSTS/E or RSX11 will do either of these things just fine I
think.

Yes. Either will cut it.

I guess mostly I want DCL, EDT, ability to telnet in, and ultimately a
ReGIS terminal.

DCL and EDT you'll have on either. Not identical, but pretty similar.
telnet is either through the simulator for RSTS/E, or simulator or native with RSX.
Anything beyond, like ftp, is RSX only.
ReGIS terminals obviously does not care which OS you are running.

Oh, and if we're talking ponies, if I could play Empire... one last
time... :) :) :)

I have the binary. I also have sources, but not for the same version I have the binary for... :-) Runs under RSX, but I would suspect it would run under RSTS/E in the RSX RTS as well.

Right now I'm focusing on finishing up the PiDP11 front panel -
hopefully that'll be in the next week, then i'll have my blinkenlights
:)

Always a good start. :-)

  Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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