> On Mar 5, 2021, at 9:02 PM, Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
>
> On 2021-03-06 02:33, Paul Koning wrote:
>>> ...
>
>> I would have liked better comms. The USART has such a tiny FIFO that you
>> can't run it at higher than 9600 bps even with the J-11 CPU. At least not
>> with RSTS; perhaps a lighter weight OS can do better. The printer port is
>> worse, that one can't run DDCMP reliably at more than 4800 bps. I normally
>> run DDCMP on the PC3XC, which is a 4-line serial card that uses two dual
>> UART chips (2681?) with reasonable FIFO.
>
> Hmm. I'm pretty sure I was running my -380 with the printer port for DDCMP on
> HECnet for a while, and at 9600 bps.
DDCMP runs fairly well on RSTS with the printer port at 9600, but I get some
overruns. My guess is that the terminal driver (which is front ending the
DDCMP machinery) isn't as lightweight as the equivalent on RSX. Or do you
bypass the terminal driver and get a separate comms-specific driver for this
case?
> But with P/OS, you are not using the console port as such. That's all on the
> graphics side.
> But unless I'm confused, that's the same port. The printer port just can also
> be the console port, if you short pins 8-9, right? Except it won't fully work
> the same as the DL11, since interrupts work differently. But polled I/O will
> work the same.
> But I would expect the speed characteristics to be the same for the console
> as for the printer port.
Correct, printer and console are actually the same thing. If you use the
console cable (pin 8 connected to 9) then that materializes a DL11-like CSR set
at 177560. Yes, with polled I/O such as the ODT microcode uses that works just
like a real DL11, but for interrupts it's different. In RSTS, either way that
port becomes a terminal port.
RSTS does have support for the graphics module, in "glass TTY" mode within the
initialization code and full VT220 emulation in RSTS proper. Well, except for
blink mode, and no bold in 132 column mode.
paul
