Subject: Just what exactly is PS/8?

From: [email-masked] (Charles Lasner)
Date: 22 Mar 1994 05:10:18 GMT

Here are a few more related moldy old posts from pdp8-lovers:

>Date: 22-Jun-89 19:14:39 +0200
>From: Johnny Billquist <[email-masked]>
>To: [email-masked]
>?Subject: PS/8

>What is PS/8. Is it a predecessor of OS/8, or what?
>I've seen references to it, and some OS/8 software mumbles about
>it, but I've never seen any paper concerning it specifically.

>Anybody who knows?

>	Johnny

As JB likely knows by now, PS/8 is just the original name of what we
commonly refer to as OS/8.  Names notwithstanding, this is just the same
system, only an earlier version.  Newer versions sometimes get newer
features.  Sometimes unwarranted incompatibilities creep in.  Some
management decisions sometimes make these incompatibilities into major
issues.  The user community *can* overcome all of this - OS/8 Version 5
will implement it!

In any case, PS/8 had a V1 and a V2, and OS/8 had various V numbers, some
not so clear.  Also, when it was configured for a PDP-12 LINCtape, some
people want to call it PS/12 and later OS/12.  All of this makes no sense,
since all that's changed is the particular system device handler. At the
time of the popularity of the PDP-12, all of the other available PDP-8
disk peripherals could be attached to a PDP-12.  So, is it OS/12 if the
RF08 its on is hooked to a PDP-12 but the *same* exact software is OS/8 if
the RF08 is hooked to an -8/i? 

>Date: Thu, 22 Jun 89 13:51:12 EDT
>From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <[email-masked]>
>Subject:  [Johnny Billquist:  What is PS/8. Is it a predecessor of OS/8, or what? ]
>To: [email-masked]
>In-reply-to: Msg of 22-Jun-89 19:14:39 +0200 from Johnny Billquist <BQT at kicki.stacken.kth.se>

>Yep.  PS/8 was an OS/8 predecessor that would run with only 4Kwords
>of memory.  As I recall reading, it was pretty stripped, and (maybe)
>would only run with a DF-32 (32Kword fixed head disk) or on TU-55
>DECtape.  My descriptions come from a book called "Introduction to
>Programming" (digital press, 1971).  Anyone out there actually
>used PS/8?

>Moreover, does anyone out there have the tapes required to
>generate an RK-05 based TSS/8 system?  I have a partial TSS/8
>distribution on paper tape, and sources printed out (it is
>about a 3" high stack of paper), and I'd really like to get it
>up and running.

Others are interested in TSS/8 stuff as well.  Anyone have any parts of it
available?

>            ---Rob

It would appear that our fearless pdp8-lovers leader had latched onto some
bad info!

The only 4K systems for -8's are:

1) The DECtape Library System.  Not likely the source of the info because
it runs on TC01/08 only.

2) R-L Monitor System AKA MS/8.  Not likely as it was never sold as a DEC
product.

3) P?S/8.  Definitely never made available to DEC to be sold, although it
can run on the described hardware.

4) The Disk Monitor System.  This system can only be run on the few
devices supporting 129 word/block devices, such as TC01/08, DF32 and RF08.
This is the most likely candidate for the base info used to mangle Rob's
post, etc.  However, there is no similarity whatsoever between the DMS and
PS/8.  (And of course PS/8 has always required 8K!)

As an interesting historical factoid, PS/8 was distributed to people added
to a list by various -8 hardware and software managers, and also by
Richard Lary personally.  Anyone who got (as I did) an original copy of
the mailing has a release note addressed to "The Small Computer Buffer."
It would appear that virtually everyone who wanted PS/8 Version 1 could
get it for free, etc.

Here's some more info about the alleged history of OS/8.

>Date: Thu, 22 Jun 89 14:09:02 EDT
>From: Clyde Roby <[email-masked]>
>To: [email-masked]
>Subject: Re:  PS/8
>Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]

>Johnny,

>	PS/8 was the precessor to OS/8.  PS/8 stood for Programming
>System for the PDP-8.  It was initially not a DEC product and when it
>was productized by DEC, the marketing people made the name change.

Wrong.  Simply not true.  It was sold as both PS/8 and OS/8.  The biggest
difference between PS/8 V2 and OS/8 V1 was that BUILD was written to make
it easier to reconfigure.  With little change, BUILD could be used on
PS/8.

BUILD made it a whole lot easier to reconfigure!  To make even small
changes to the system required lots of assembly, including some stuff that
didn't eventually need to change, etc.  Before BUILD, people would put up
with the system being not quite what they wanted.  Also, BUILD made it
possible to define a user-written handler without hacking into the
(provided) source code.

But other than BUILD, the first generation named OS/8 by the marketroids
was hardly a different (running) system, etc.

>	There was a lot of work done by PS/8 predecessors at Georgia
>Tech (Doug Wrege now at CDC Atlanta) and others.  I worked on some
>stuff at West Virginia University with Darryl Duffy and Tom McIntyre
>(I think they both work at DEC nowadays).

To the best of my knowledge, this isn't literally true either.  However, I
can explain the confusion of the past:

The first system was PS/8, V1 and then V2.  Then there was OS/8 V1 and
quickly a V2.  I'm not sure just how many people actually used V2, as it
was quite transient, etc.

When the first OS/8 V3 was announced as imminent, it became known that
there indeed was a version worked on at WVU and Georgia Tech, and that it
was called DS/8.  However, it was not an original work, but rather work
tacked on top of PS/8.  Some of the features were:

A central communications area on each device to hold info about the
device.  Originally (in DS/8) this was achieved by shortening the
directory so it was dedicatedly in record 6.  DEC people didn't like this
at all.  (Note: years later, an alternate was offered - a dedicated file
had to be placed at record 7 by being the first file in the directory;
deleting/moving it would cause great problems!)

A SQUASH program that basically performed a "safe" form of SQUISH without
using PIP.  The idea was that it was performed more inefficiently, but
much safer.  Files were first copied to an alternate device before being
written back to the device being squashed, etc.  The worst thing that
could happen would be the files wind up in unexpected places, but even if
the hardware crashes, the contents aren't lost. PIP/SQUISH can easily
crash the device if interrupted at the wrong moment!  (Note: that's why
PIP traps ^C aborts during a SQUISH!)

An 8K form of BATCH that used the communications area for swapping, etc.
Note that the official OS/8 BATCH forces a 12K requirement, even if the
system device can run in 8K!  I believe this program was usually known as
HASP.

The communications area contained attributes to guide the other programs,
such as indicating whether or not it was safe to SQUASH this device, or to
allow it to participate in the SQUASHing of another device, etc.

This is the part of the story where what I heard gets muddy.  Either the
DS/8 code was offered to DEC or it was attempted to be sold to them.  In
any case, DEC management rejected it because it didn't fit in with their
plans for OS/8 V3.  They clearly didn't like the idea of shortening the
directory; users with larger disks aren't happy with the current directory
limitations.  It would appear that the DS/8 philosophy stemmed from
improving a tape-based system, where more likely the storage runs out
befor the directory space does!

Eventually, DS/8 become disused, because the user community wanted to go
with DEC's flow.  Much later, the DS/8 utilities were modified to work in
the OS/8 V3 environment, i.e., requiring the unmovable dedicated file
approach, but otherwise not violating anything DEC had specified, etc.

It would appear that today, these utilities can be used; I doubt if they
are anything but generic to any form of OS/8, unless unwittingly so. The
requirement of the unmovable file can be accomodated, but admittedly isn't
well protected, etc.  Due to the way that the keyboard monitor works, it's
likely that small changes have to be made to HASP to work within any
particular version of OS/8, etc.

>	I can get more information when I get home (I think I've saved
>some old PDP-8 stuff).

>	By the way, anybody remember the LINC and DEC's LINC-8???

Well, we have discussed those since 1989!

>Clyde

>=================================================================
>Clyde G. Roby, Jr.                 Institute for Defense Analyses
>[email-masked]                       1801 N. Beauregard Street
>(703) 824-5536                     Alexandria, VA 22311-1772
>=================================================================

It would be nice for Clyde to respond to this, as he has resurfaced, only
recently!

And here's yet another one on vaguely the same subject:

>Date: Thu, 22 Jun 89 14:17:23 EDT
>From: Jonathan Dreyer - Sun ECD PC Distributed Systems <[email-masked]>
>To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
>Subject: Re:  PS/8

>> What is PS/8. Is it a predecessor of OS/8, or what?
>> I've seen references to it, and some OS/8 software mumbles about
>> it, but I've never seen any paper concerning it specifically.
 
>> Anybody who knows?
 
>> 	Johnny

>It is a predecessor of OS/8.  When I was in college ('72 - '76) it was
>considered highly cool to be able to bring down the 32K timesharing
>PDP-8/I running TSS/8 and bring up PS/8 and have all that raw power to
>yourself.  OS/8 was just coming out then, if I remember, and it was
>considered PS/8's successor.

>Unfortunately I didn't use it enough to remember much about it now, but
>I remember we were impressed that it had "device-independent i/o";
>TSS/8 programs had to read and write to specific devices; e.g. to
>compile a program on a dectape you had to first run COPY to get it onto
>the disk.  (To get it from a paper tape, you had to run a different
>utility, PIP!)  With PS/8, this historical curiosity went away.

Unfortunately, device-independent I/O has become eroded over the years.
There are parts of OS/8 where you have to know that the LPT: is device 66,
or is the DECmate 32/33 LPT: with ^S/^Q support required, but no handler
(or you make a CP memory panel request to have it performed, as long as
your code need not care about handling interrupts and/or doesn't mind not
running for relatively long periods of time while CP memory routines run
the CPU instead, etc.).  Also, certain peripherals can only be identified
by specific hacks, such as whether a device is RX01 or RX02 double-density
media at the moment, etc.  (Admittedly, as long as you stick to just the
basics of file I/O, it all does work!  But you can't quite assume anything
about the LPT:, etc.)

>Jon

Anyone have any of the TSS/8 sources available?  I myself would also like
to get ahold of the TSS/8 BASIC, which I understand was a later
development, etc.  (Even the binary of BASIC would be acceptable;
disassembly is always possible!)

cjl

---

From: [email-masked] (Jim Cook)
Date: 28 Mar 94 18:00:32 GMT

> >In-reply-to: Msg of 22-Jun-89 19:14:39 +0200 from Johnny Billquist <BQT at kicki.stacken.kth.se>
...
> disassembly is always possible!)

A long story:

When I was in High School in Westwood, MA , we had a PDP-8.  For the
71/72 school year it was an 8/I with a DF-32.  Somewhere around 72/73,
we upgraded to an 8/E with an RK05 (I think the RK8E was the controller).

What to run for software?  TSS/8 ran on RF08's and maybe a DF32 (I
knew of one site: Needham High School, MA), but not RK05's.  To make a
long story short, the non-profit organization running the computers
for the area towns - Project Local -  had a listing of version 8.21c
TSS/8.  Another plan to use the RK05 that had been passed on to me was
not working, but hey, TSS/8 seemed to have a device driver!

So I typed in all 24K of source on an ASR-33 to get a source (I later
won the Typing-I award in my senior year).  I then wrote a driver for
the RK05 that made it appear to be a four-platter RF08 system.  And it
worked!

DEC eventually traded us a source of it for a source of version 8.24b
which I similarly modified.  And it ran three 8/E's used by five or
six towns!  

All this while I was in High School (thumping chest).

I graduated in '75, but I have no idea what became of the 8's.
Probably eventually replaced by PCs.

As for the sources, I have some DECtapes in Mom's basement that are
either in PDP-8 (OS/8) or PDP-10 format.  I also have a magtape at
home in PDP-10 format.  There's a good chance there's some sort of
source on them.  No idea on how to read them (or where).  This would
only get you monitor sources which were traditionally built under
OS/8.  I doubt I have copies of TSS/8 Basic or any utilities. 

By the way, in case someone was interested, the author of TSS/8 Basic
was not DEC.  I had sources.  It was some place in Dedham, MA, whose
name escapes me now.

Jim