On 2021-03-21 06:24, Dave McGuire wrote:
On March 20, 2021 5:09:00 PM Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost> wrote:Given the retrocomputing geeks who want to run systems as original as feasible, even to the point of doing things like trying to find original parts for power supplies and the like, I suspect some would want to use the floating-CSR rules simply bceause they were The Way It Was Done Back Then.That's precisely the mindset at the museum, with DEC and other systems.
Which is kindof weird, because pretty much noone, nowhere, that I know of, did it that way back then.
As observed/mentioned, with at least RSX, you would have been forced to do a full SYSGEN if you changed anything, if you ran -11M. That took hours. While just adding a device was done in a fraction of that time, if you just grabbed any free CSR address range.
Noone was willing to just waste that time for no real gain.I don't know if RSTS/E was different. But also with VMS, you usually had the config comitted. And the SYSGEN was much lighter than in RSX, but it still wasn't something you'd do if you didn't have to. Reconfiguring possibly a lot of cards, and getting into SYSGEN and changing the values on things. Again, for no good reason except to follow that convention... Nope. Better to just assign some free address to that added hardware, add it in SYSGEN, and off you go. Don't touch the existing stuff.
Really. If "retrocomputing geeks" are doing this, it's very different from how it used to be done back when it wasn't "retro".
Johnny
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