Old question: I'm looking through some old reports from 1977 about a
failed DEC project with the DMX11 multiplexer system and there is
reference to the following key items:
1) The DMX was designed to handle block mode devices. Fine.
2) Character mode devices like the VT52's were supposed to use a "TCD"
product from DEC.
The reason the project imploded was because apparently DEC stopped
supporting the TCD in RSX11/D in late 1976, so someone in CSS had the
great idea of agreeing to extend the microcode in the DMX11 to handle
both block AND character mode devices. This did.... not work well and it
sank the project.
What I'm wondering is what was the TCD for PDP11's back then? I don't
see anything in my communications handbooks on this, and even the DMX11
doesn't really appear, instead there is the COMM/IO/P type boards which
worked with a pile of DZ11's. From what I can glean from this
documentation it looks like the DMX11 worked in a similar fashion as the
requirement was the DMX11 system was a nine board solution (possibly 8
DZ11's and one controller board).
More odd it looks like the TCD *was* still supported in RSX11/M and
ultimately the decision was made to build the thing in M so it's weird
they continued to whack away at the DMX solution instead of going with
TCD's for async and proven DMX microcode for block devices.
Any thoughts, or does this jog any memories?
C
