PRO-is-not-PDP (was: Re: VTSERVER booting)

[Fred N. van Kempen]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Patrick Finnegan wrote:

> Tony Duell declared on Monday 20 June 2005 06:49 pm:
> > I suppose you could include the Pro 325 and 350 (no I/D, F11 chip) and
> > the Pro 380 (split I/D, J11 chip). But those will not run normal PDP11
> > software, the I/O is totally different I believe.
>
> I've booted RT-11 on my Pro380, so it can't be that far off.  It doesn't
> have a QBUS/UNIBUS though, so there's not a whole lot of peripherals
> that you can use with it.
A PRO is a machine based on a PDP-11 chipset (either F11 or J11),
and all that comes with it (instruction set, I/O system, intrs)
but that's about it.  The actual mainboard design is busless, the
implementation of onboard I/O, interrupt system etc are different,
and the I/O bus (CTIbus) is different.  The CTI-bus peripherals
are different.  The system has RX50 and RDxx drives, for examples,
but their controllers are completely different from the ones used
in PDP-11's.

I ported Ultrix-11 to it (still finishing up so I can package it
up for release, so don't ask..) and that wasn't 'simple'.

--f