• Re: RSTS/E or RSX for a single user machine.

    From Dave McGuire@21:1/5 to Ronald Hudson on Wed Aug 30 15:09:14 2023
    On 8/30/23 14:59, Ronald Hudson wrote:
    I would love to provide RSTS/E accounts to people who might be interested. But I don't know if I can even get the host machine out past AT&T's NAT routing. At one time I could SSH into my internal server via a port forward on 22 to the specific machine
    inside my home network, but at some point about two years ago, I could no longer reach that machine via the dynamic DNS or even the 'network facing' IP address. I suspect AT&T switched to carrier grade NAT so I am basically double natted.

    I do detest that sort of pseudo "network connection". You're a far
    more patient man than I! ;)

    So It might be impossible for me to host an RSTS/E for 'public' use.

    :-(

    That being the case - Do I want to run RSTS or RSX - It seems many of you have moved on to RSX for your machines, possibly because they are single user.

    So, what is the group's wisdom?

    Well, I don't know that it's fair to say "moved on to RSX". It's not
    like one was a successor to the other. They're both fine OSs. Just
    like when they were current tech, the decision of which to run depends
    first upon your requirements, then your knowledge and your comfort level.

    For me, I love them both, so I run both. I also support both at the
    museum. They have their strengths and weaknesses. I think RSX is a
    more technically advanced OS, but later RSTS implementation of DCL is
    much better (IMO) than RSX's, meaning it's much more akin to VMS.

    Which I've always thought was weird, given the relationship between
    RSX and VMS, but hey, that's what they did.

    So I think you said you're running this in emulation, not real
    hardware. That being the case, why not just run both, in two instances
    of simh?

    -Dave

    --
    Dave McGuire, President/Curator
    Large Scale Systems Museum
    New Kensington, PA

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  • From Ronald Hudson@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 30 11:59:06 2023
    I would love to provide RSTS/E accounts to people who might be interested. But I don't know if I can even get the host machine out past AT&T's NAT routing. At one time I could SSH into my internal server via a port forward on 22 to the specific machine
    inside my home network, but at some point about two years ago, I could no longer reach that machine via the dynamic DNS or even the 'network facing' IP address. I suspect AT&T switched to carrier grade NAT so I am basically double natted.

    So It might be impossible for me to host an RSTS/E for 'public' use.

    That being the case - Do I want to run RSTS or RSX - It seems many of you have moved on to RSX for your machines, possibly because they are single user.

    So, what is the group's wisdom?

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  • From Ronald Hudson@21:1/5 to Dave McGuire on Wed Aug 30 12:53:27 2023
    On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 12:09:18 PM UTC-7, Dave McGuire wrote:
    ...
    That being the case, why not just run both, in two instances
    of simh?

    -Dave

    --
    Dave McGuire, President/Curator
    Large Scale Systems Museum
    New Kensington, PA

    I kinda want to keep to one OS until I run dry on it before starting another. There is a lot to grock with RSTS/E and the exposure I had back when to VMS V3.1 is helping some.

    Is RSX a single user system?

    RT11 is right? I am guessing RT stands for REAL TIME and RT11 was probably used for SCADA / Process Control.

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  • From Johnny Billquist@21:1/5 to Dave McGuire on Thu Aug 31 01:42:15 2023
    On 2023-08-30 21:09, Dave McGuire wrote:
    On 8/30/23 14:59, Ronald Hudson wrote:
    That being the case - Do I want to run RSTS or RSX - It seems many of
    you have moved on to RSX for your machines, possibly because they are
    single user.

    So, what is the group's wisdom?

      Well, I don't know that it's fair to say "moved on to RSX".  It's not like one was a successor to the other.  They're both fine OSs.  Just
    like when they were current tech, the decision of which to run depends
    first upon your requirements, then your knowledge and your comfort level.

    True. RSTS/E was a pure time sharing system. Lots of schools used it
    (hello WAR GAMES). Also various business, when it was generic data
    processing and interactive users.

    RSX has its root in real time processing, and much more as a
    customizable system for embedded and indutry requirements. But it was
    also used in a lot of other situations and environments. Oracle started
    out on RSX, for example (not sure if it was the absolute first, but RSX
    was one of the early platforms - don't think they ever ran on RSTS/E
    though).

    But yeah, whatever people feel comfortable with is always a good start.

      For me, I love them both, so I run both.  I also support both at the museum.  They have their strengths and weaknesses.  I think RSX is a
    more technically advanced OS, but later RSTS implementation of DCL is
    much better (IMO) than RSX's, meaning it's much more akin to VMS.

      Which I've always thought was weird, given the relationship between
    RSX and VMS, but hey, that's what they did.

    VMS relationship with the PDP-11 OSes is complicated. Internally, VMS is
    very similar to RSX. But on the user interface level, as well as
    application programming, it is closer to RSTS/E. To the point that the
    SYS calls in BASIC+ on RSTS/E sortof also work in some cases when moving
    over to VMS. None of that ever worked under RSX.
    So they focused a lot on making migration from RSTS/E to VMS as easy as possible. Migration from RSX to VMS was sometimes a bit less easy.

    Which also shows in that RSX stayed around with a wider spread among
    customers long after RSTS/E faded away. In fact, I still know of places
    running RSX commercially.

    Johnny

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  • From Johnny Billquist@21:1/5 to Ronald Hudson on Thu Aug 31 01:35:59 2023
    On 2023-08-30 20:59, Ronald Hudson wrote:
    I would love to provide RSTS/E accounts to people who might be interested. But I don't know if I can even get the host machine out past AT&T's NAT routing. At one time I could SSH into my internal server via a port forward on 22 to the specific machine
    inside my home network, but at some point about two years ago, I could no longer reach that machine via the dynamic DNS or even the 'network facing' IP address. I suspect AT&T switched to carrier grade NAT so I am basically double natted.

    So It might be impossible for me to host an RSTS/E for 'public' use.

    There are maybe not a lot of RSTS/E machines out there, but I know of a
    few on HECnet.

    That being the case - Do I want to run RSTS or RSX - It seems many of you have moved on to RSX for your machines, possibly because they are single user.

    So, what is the group's wisdom?

    RSX is not a single user system. You are thinking of RT-11.
    RSX is multi user, but with a different feeling than RSTS/E. RSTS/E more
    the "proper" timesharing system. RSX is in most ways more capable, but a
    bit less user friendly.

    RSX also have better networking than RSTS/E. First of all it has more
    capable DECnet. But these days, there is also TCP/IP for RSX, but not
    for RSTS/E.

    Johnny

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  • From Johnny Billquist@21:1/5 to Ronald Hudson on Thu Aug 31 01:44:22 2023
    On 2023-08-30 21:53, Ronald Hudson wrote:
    On Wednesday, August 30, 2023 at 12:09:18 PM UTC-7, Dave McGuire wrote:
    ...
    That being the case, why not just run both, in two instances
    of simh?

    -Dave

    --
    Dave McGuire, President/Curator
    Large Scale Systems Museum
    New Kensington, PA

    I kinda want to keep to one OS until I run dry on it before starting another. There is a lot to grock with RSTS/E and the exposure I had back when to VMS V3.1 is helping some.

    I would expect that. With the last versions of RSTS/E they tried to make
    it and VMS even more similar in lots of ways.

    Is RSX a single user system?

    RT11 is right? I am guessing RT stands for REAL TIME and RT11 was probably used for SCADA / Process Control.

    Both RSX and RT11 is realtime. RT11 was for small systems, and RSX was
    what you went for if you wanted something a little larger and/or more complicated.

    RSX sortof does timesharing as well, but at heart it shows its realtime
    roots.

    Johnny

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  • From Dave McGuire@21:1/5 to Ronald Hudson on Thu Aug 31 11:04:52 2023
    On 8/30/23 15:53, Ronald Hudson wrote:
    That being the case, why not just run both, in two instances
    of simh?

    I kinda want to keep to one OS until I run dry on it before starting another. There is a lot to grock with RSTS/E and the exposure I had back when to VMS V3.1 is helping some.

    That sounds reasonable.

    Is RSX a single user system?

    No, RSX is a multiuser system.

    RT11 is right? I am guessing RT stands for REAL TIME and RT11 was probably used for SCADA / Process Control.

    RT11 is "sorta" a single-user system. It can be set up with
    multi-terminal support.

    It was (and is!) used for SCADA and process control, but it's a general-purpose OS and was used for just about everything you can think of.

    -Dave

    --
    Dave McGuire, President/Curator
    Large Scale Systems Museum
    New Kensington, PA

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  • From Andy Valencia@21:1/5 to Ronald Hudson on Thu Aug 31 17:35:04 2023
    Ronald Hudson <waspentalive@gmail.com> writes:
    I would love to provide RSTS/E accounts to people who might be
    interested. But I don't know if I can even get the host machine out
    past AT&T's NAT routing.

    Get a $5/month VPS from linode.com and you should be able to use ssh port forwarding from the VPS (with its public IP address) back to your local
    server. For AT&T to break this config, they'd have to break _everything_.

    Andy Valencia
    Home page: https://www.vsta.org/andy/
    To contact me: https://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

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  • From Ronald Hudson@21:1/5 to Andy Valencia on Thu Aug 31 19:07:38 2023
    On Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 5:40:41 PM UTC-7, Andy Valencia wrote:
    Ronald Hudson writes:
    I would love to provide RSTS/E accounts to people who might be
    interested. But I don't know if I can even get the host machine out
    past AT&T's NAT routing.
    Get a $5/month VPS from linode.com and you should be able to use ssh port forwarding from the VPS (with its public IP address) back to your local server. For AT&T to break this config, they'd have to break _everything_.

    Andy Valencia
    Home page: https://www.vsta.org/andy/
    To contact me: https://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

    I would love to, In fact, I could get a month with $100.00 for free by using promo codes from several podcasts I listen to. But after that - well being retired and we currently are trying to pay down our debts - no extra.

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