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From: vancleef@netcom.com (Henry van Cleef)
Subject: Re: Retro-Computing!
Message-ID: <vancleefD6nGKs.ByA@netcom.com>
Organization: Union Graduate School
References: <D5yxwn.5BG@sdf.saomai.org> <3l2b46$ro0@tools.near.net> <3l3gtu$15t@teena.ludd.luth.se>
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 05:29:16 GMT
Lines: 42
Sender: vancleef@netcom10.netcom.com

In article <3l3gtu$15t@teena.ludd.luth.se> ragge@teena.ludd.luth.se (Anders Magnusson) writes:
>In <3l2b46$ro0@tools.near.net> barmar@nic.near.net (Barry Margolin) writes:
>
>>In article <D5yxwn.5BG@sdf.saomai.org> esl@sdf.saomai.org (Eric S. Lamemond) writes:
>>>The Symbolics 3600
>>>series were so inferior to machines such as the VAX that they needed what
>>>was called a FEP (AMI bios in Pentium UNIX) to boot them!
>
>>The VAX 8000 series needed an 8086 PC front-end to boot them!
>Not really an 8086 PC, they have an PRO 380 which is an 
>micro-PDP11-based machine that runs some obscure RSX variant
>called P/OS. VAX systems use to have micro-PDP11's as boot-loaders
>(at least the older ones), compared to PDP10's which have _real_
>PDP11 computers as front-ends. (Not counting in '2020 here).
>
I'm sitting here in front of a dark blue coffee mug with gold letters
that say "Venus, the VAX mainframe."  This was the 8600, which used an
LSI-11---I think, a T-11, if I recall the letters correctly---and a 10
meg disk (RP-02?) to boot and monitor the environmental stuff.  It ran a
hacked-up RT-11.  The 8650 was an 8600 with the clock jacked up from 50
to 70 Mhz.  These two machines had parallel internal machines.  The
"Nautilus" used the same ECL technology, but in a pipelined
architecture.  The boot monitor was a PRO-350.  Nautilus machines could
be configured as double-CPU machines.  Polar Star was an upgrade to
Nautilus to allow 4-CPU operation and an upgrade of the boot-monitor
console to a Microvax.  I have forgotten which 8000-numbers went with
which of the three projects, except for the Venus machines.  

Been years since I touched any of them, but I spent 1982-87 on the Venus
and Polar Star projects, working console stuff, microcode, etc.  The
console code was all written in assembly except for some Bliss on Polar
Star.  All three setups used writeable control stores for the main
machines that had to be downloaded at boot time.  

I used to hear from people who worked on those projects across the
Easynet gateway, but suspect that they are all gone now.  

-- 
===================================================================
Hank van Cleef  	     The Union Institute  History of Science
	E-mail vancleef@netcom.com or vancleef@tmn.com  
===================================================================

