This is probably a dumb question, but if I got access
to an old PDP 11/04 minicomputer, circa 1984 vintage, with two 256K t en inch floppy drives and 32K of memory with 16-bit words - yes, KB, not MB or GB - is there any Open Software OS which could install on this old mini? I used one of these in a realtime lab environment back in the late 80s. It ran DEC RT-11. This is just a lark of a query - expect no really positive answers but am amused at references to sparse hardware with only 32 MB of memory, etc. As 16-bit architectures were obsolete before GNU came into existence ...

Hi.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...er-4175427001/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedda..._Kernel_Subset

Linux runs on more than anything... except perhaps sheep'$ computers.

http://www.unixmen.com/15-weirdsurpr...-run-on-linux/
http://www.tecmint.com/big-companies...g-on-gnulinux/

Best wishes and have fun.

Here is "proof" LOL:-- https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=39149

and less laughable:-- http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...tems-from-unix

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you might get "plan 9 from bell labs" to install ??? maybe
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/

do you even have any 8in. floppies

i just last week tossed in the trash 2 boxes of 5.25 -- i do not even have a drive that size

Plan 9 rings a bell but in this case think I'm confusing it with the term userland from my old a#! iPwn?

I still have (from rummaging) a combination drive, five and a quarter plus three and a half above it all fitting in to one CD drive sized spot; just on the off chance that I will be able to read\write anything (as if) although I do not have eight inch, a punched card reader or laserdisc &c...

My compact cassette player just came in handy for saving BASIC I\O for an Apple eII (rummage again.)

Wikipedia has an article on this computer family, which includes a list of operating systems. You might track down a copy of the port of BSD, but the other OS were all commercial.

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http://ak6dn.dyndns.org/PDP-11/2.11BSD/ ../ak6dn.dyndns.org/PDP-11/
http://minnie.tuhs.org/PUPS/Setup/2.11bsd_setup.html
http://www.retrocmp.com/how-tos/inst...ix-on-pdp-1144

Hi,

PDP-11, talk about a power hog. Long ago I worked for a newspaper and we had racks of DEC equipment. Be sure to have a well ventilated area to use that beast in.

Hard drives for that class were Winchester with removable platters. If you do not have the media then good luck finding some these days.
Have fun & enjoy!

We used to have PDP's. Eventually we bought an emulator on a Windows NT running on Alpha.

I'd agree that the cost to run it would far exceed the emotional value.

It may be possible to get VAX still to run.

It may be that there are some old BSD's around that will still run.

Hi,

OP could always use the heat in a basement. Those guys are power hungry. You would be better off getting a PC from recyclers. Cheaper to run and do not have to worry about the environment. One other thing with that system being that old, you may need to re-work the power supply unit.

My IBM-T20 gets hot on my lap but during winter I mindless.

There -- or, at least, were -- SCSI controllers for PDP-11s and VAXen. We used Dilog controllers in an 11/70 and in uVAXes to run SCSI drives. (Well, the uVAXes used Dilogs; I'm pretty sure but not positive we used the same vendor for the 'ol 11/70.) Used those to hang some whopping big (in their day, at least) drives off those systems -- 5.25" full height 200MB Fujitsus. Good luck trying to find either of those nowadays. Same goes for the floppy drive controllers and media. There is still a used marketplace for PDP equipment but it's a tiny fraction of its former self.

Pity you got a UNIBUS PDP. The power requirements are nothing to sneeze at. I knew a guy many years ago who was running a fully-decked out 11/45 in his basement. Don't know how he was able to afford the electric bill.

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Linux from kernel.org only supports 32bit and 64bit processors only!

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Thanks for the replies to a lark of a question. I was having an experiential nostalgia moment. I remember when we finally got an upgrade from the dual floppy drive to a Winchester top loading hard drive - all of a sudden graduated from 256 KB times to to 200 MB or so. What a luxury on a system which had been previously upgraded from 16 KB of memory to 32 KB. I think there was some sort of BSD that worked on PDP-11s back in the day, but BSD really wasn't ready for big time until 32-bit Vaxen came into being. The 32-bit PC began the process of drowning DEC. Lousy marketing of the Alpha RISC 64-bit architecture sealed the fate of the company. Great engineers and R&D, lousy marketing. I worked with both a Unibus (11/04) and an LSI Q-bus machine. Loved those guys.

Cheers and more beers

Where did you get this PDP from anyway? Some warehouse find?

Austin Electric company reported a power issue on the north side of town, what that you?

I don't think the lousy marketing was at fault for the Alpha. It was a lack of native OS for it. Some company made a product to convert but it was pretty high. A neighbor originally sold Alpha chips. Think he quoted them at $15,000 or some outrageous number in quantity.

We still run hundreds of Alpha's.

We might have had a version of ATT unix on the PDP's.

I guess Qbus was OK. Think we used a lot of SCSI boards for some reason.