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The DEC PDP-10 Emulation Webpage

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Last Updated: 27SEP02

Warning if you're trying to access data listed as local copy and can't, try again later. This page is hosted at my ISP, while most of the stuff is on my own server, and Verizon's reliability stinks at times!

Latest News!

Unfortunatly I've not had time to update this page yet to reflect the restructuring of Tim Shoppa site, as such some of my links might to his material might be dead. I apologize for any inconvenience.
 
(27SEP2002) Fixed links to the TOPS-20 Monitor Calls Reference Manual. Also, unfortunatly it has come to my attention that the PDF and HTML conversions of the TOPS-20 manuals that I did are less than perfect, as such the text versions are the recommended ones to use.
(21JUL2002) Joined the PDP-10 Webring.
(14JUL2002) SIMH V2.9-11 Released
(14JUL2002) Added links to copies of DECWAR, haunt, and tingle for TOPS-10.
(08JUN2002) SIMH V2.9-10 Released
(05JUN2002) In the past few weeks Al Kosso has gotten the full version of the 1973 Assembly Language Handbook, as well as the decsystem10 Users Handbook, Second Edition, decsystem10/20 ALGOL Programmers Guide - April 1977, and TM10A Engineering Drawings - June 1968 online.
(15MAY2002) "XS" has some pages up with logs of installing TOPS-10, running a MONGEN, and installing BASIC & Fortran.
(04MAY2002) SIMH V2.9-9 Released
(19MAR2002) The TECO Pocket Guide is now available online in HTML format, thanks to the efforst of Brian Inglis.
(04MAR2002) SIMH V2.9-2 Released
(05FEB2002) decsystem10 INTRODUCTION TO TECO (TEXT EDITOR AND CORRECTOR) manual
(04FEB2002) Added links to the MPE and DECnet-10 tapes, on Johnny Eriksson's site, that are for TOPS-10 7.03.
(04FEB2002) More material courtesy of Ronald Tatum, this time he's provided the Mike Green's source for META2 (I've also included the note he sent me with info about this transcription), and the story behind all of this META and ALGOL-W material.
(21JAN2002) Ronald Tatum has been at it again, this time transcribing a document on ALGOL-W.
(18JAN2002) Again thanks to Ronald Tatum, a manual for META-S has been added. While the manual looks to be for a IBM 360/44, META-S was used to implement ALGOL-W on the PDP-10.
(18JAN2002) Updated (Chapter 1) for the PDP-10 ALGOL Programmer's Reference Manual with the pages in the correct order.
(17JAN2002) The PDP-10 ALGOL Programmer's Reference Manual from the late 60's or early 70's is now available on my FTP site thanks to the efforts of Ronald Tatum. (Chapter 1) (Chapters 2-5) (Chapters 6-9) (Chapters 10-11) (Chapters 12-13) (Chapters 14-19) (ALGOL Index) (Erratum from the scan) Chapter1 has the pages out of order.
(11JAN2002) VAX Emulation Page now available.
(11JAN2002) Minor update to make the overall site easier to navigate. As might be guessed I've been to busy with other things to do much on the website.
(02DEC2001) Tim Shoppa has an experimental site up indexing the PDP-10 archives. It can be accessed at http://new-pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/
(21NOV2001) TOPS-10 7.04 for KL10 disk image now available
(19NOV2001) KLH10 2.0a is now available
(17NOV2001) Web page updates. I now have a page detailing the TOPS-20 Software Notebook Set, and showing what few manuals of it are available online. If anyone has scanned in PDP-10 documenation, and needs a server to host it, I've plenty of disk space. I'm also in the process of doing up a comparison of the different emulators
 

Introduction

The purpose of this web page is to aid people in finding all the bits and pieces that they'll need in order to set up the PDP-10 OS of their choice (if possible) running under an emulator. I started this webpage as a way that I could keep track of where everything is, and I'm trying to keep it as up to date as possible. I've broken the webpage down into the four main steps of obtaining an emulator, getting the installation documentation for the OS of your choice, getting the software, and then getting further documentation.

Please note that most of the links below are to data located at other peoples sites. I've tried to ensure that in all cases it's obvious who's site the data is located at.

If you're new to the PDP-10 and it's Operating Systems, I'd recommend starting with either TOPS-10 V7.03 or TOPS-20 V7.0.

Table of Contents

  1. Obtain an emulator
  2. Obtain Installation Documentation
  3. Obtain Software
  4. Obtain Further Documentation
  5. Adding Additional Software
  6. Mailing Lists
  7. Other
  8. Related PDP-10 Links

 

Contacting Me

If you have any comments about this page I can be reached at healyzh AT aracnet DOT com. If you know of any software or documentation that isn't listed below I'd appreciate knowing about it so that I can provide links. Also, if anyone has scanned in PDP-10 documenation, and needs a server to host it, I've plenty of disk space.

System Requirements In Progress

Tips and Tricks A work in progress

Step 1. Obtain an emulator:

At this point the best choice for OS's other than Linux is simh, I'm not sure which is the best for Linux. In order to get an idea of the capabilities of the various emulators I've created a page comparing the various emulators.

Step 2. Obtain Installation Documentation:

One of the temptations that has existed for people installing TOPS-10 is to use the documentation I wrote in March of 2001, when no documentation was available. Don't do this, use the correct Monitor Installation Guide (MIG) listed below.

There has been some concern expressed by people trying to figure out how to install TOPS-20 4.1 since there isn't a Monitor Installation Guide available for it. While it can be tricky, it is possible to install it using the procedure written up by Bob Supnik, and you will find useful information in the 7.0 Installation Guide. I'd never touched a TOPS-20 system in my life, and this is how I installed TOPS-20.

Step 3. Obtain Software:

Of the OS's that existed on the PDP-10 currently two versions of TOPS-10, two versions of TOPS-20, and ITS are available. With TOPS-10, V7.04 is the last version that was available, however V7.03 is the preferred on at least TS10 and SIMH (it looks like it should work just fine on KLH10). For TOPS-20 you can run V4.1 on the KS10 emulators, or V7.0 on the KL10B version of KLH10. As for ITS, I'm not really sure what version is available, it says it's ITS1633 and DDT 1546 when it boots. There are older versions of TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 available at Tim Shoppa's PDP-10 Software Archive, but at this time I don't think anyone has tried to get them to boot.

  1. TOPS-10 7.03 Distribution Tim Shoppa's site
    1. The distribution Tape
    2. MPE - (CPNSER) - an unbundled product Johnny Eriksson's site
    3. DECnet-10 - an unbundled product Johnny Eriksson's site
    4. Bootable Media (KL10) (KS10) You'll need the KS10 tape
    5. DEC-Supported CUSP Distribution (tape 1) (tape 2)
    6. Customer Supported Tape
    7. Tools Tape
  2. TOPS-10 7.03 Prebuilt system Paul Allen's site
    1. For SIMH
    2. A prebuilt 7.03 system with DSKB and DSKC structures and a monitor that supports printing and serial logins.
    3. At least the following tapes look to have already been added.
      TOPS-10 Integration Tools, V4, 10-Jan-1986 [1,2,EDT]
      BASIC-10 V17F [1,2,BASIC]
      Kermit [76,5,kermit]
      TOPS-10 Customer Supported CUSPs [1,2,140B]
  3. TOPS-10 7.04 Distribution (I've heard that someone has now gotten this at least partially running) Primarily Tim Shoppa's site
    1. The distribution Tape
    2. MPE - (CPNSER) - an unbundled product Probably not usable
    3. DECnet-10 - an unbundled product (all that exists is a DECnet-10 Supplemental Tape which is unusable)
    4. DEC-Supported CUSP Distribution (tape 1) (tape 2)
    5. Customer Supported Tape
    6. Customer Supported Tools Tape
    7. RSX20F - DECtapes (KL10-D sites)
    8. RSX20F - Floppy diskettes (KL10-E/R sites) John Wilson's site
  4. TOPS-10 7.04 Prebuilt system Ken Harrenstein's site
    1. For KLH10 / KL10B
    2. A prebuild 7.04 system with DSKA and DSKB structures with the following prebuilt montiors
      1. 704NON.EXE - TOPS-10 V7.04 no network, won't try to load KLNI
      2. 704LAT.EXE - TOPS-10 V7.04 with just LAT
      3. 704DCN.EXE - TOPS-10 V7.04 with DECnet and LAT
      4. SYSTEM.EXE - TOPS-10 V7.04 for the KS
    3. Install done by Larry Sendlosky
    4. This is a very basic install. It doesn't contain things such as the HLP files, or Source to rebuild the monitor. As a result you'll still need to load a lot of stuff off of tape. However MX works on this system!
  5. TOPS-20 4.1 Distribution Tim Shoppa's site
    1. TOPS-20 V4.1 2020 Installation tape
    2. TOPS-20 V4.1 2020 Distribution (tape 1) of (tape 2)
    3. TOPS-20 V4.1 Tools tape
    4. TOPS-20 V4.1 TP#12 "Exec Src Mod"
    5. TOPS-20 V4.1 TP#12 "Monitor Sources"
  6. TOPS-20 7.0 Distribution Tim Shoppa's site
    1. TOPS-20 V7.0 Installation BB-H137F-BM
    2. TCP/IP-20 V4.0 Distribution BB-EV83B-BM
    3. TOPS-20 V7.0 Distribution Tape 1 of 2 BB-H138F-BM
    4. TOPS-20 V7.0 Distribution Tape 2 of 2 BB-LW55A-BM
    5. TOPS-20 V7.0 Monitor Source BB-M780D-SM
    6. TOPS-20 V7.0 EXEC Source BB-GS97B-SM
    7. TOPS-20 V7.0 #04 MON SRC MOD BB-M080Z-SM
    8. TOPS-20 V7.0 #04 EXEC SRC MOD BB-M081Z-SM
    9. TOPS-20 V7.0 TSU04 Tape 1 OF 2 BB-PENEA-BM
    10. TOPS-20 V7.0 TSU04 Tape 2 OF 2 BB-KL11M-BM
    11. TOPS-20 V7.0 Tools BB-M836D-BM
  7. MIT ITS - The Incompatible Timesharing System (Requires simh 2.6b or 2.7beta4, it and the RP06 emulation don't seem to agree, I was able to install it on a RM03 disk). Mirian Crzig Lennox's site
    1. Alan Bawden has made sanitized (ie doesn't contain peoples personal projects and email) copies of AI and MC final backups available. Information about this can be found here.
  8. MIT ITS Prebuilt System
    1. For KLH10 / KS10
    2. Can be found at this site
  9. BBN TENEX Nothing Available
  10. Stanford WAITS - Westcoast Alternative to ITS Nothing Available
  11. Tymshare TYCOM-X Nothing Available

Step 4. Obtain Further Documentation

As anyone that knows me is aware, I view documentation as the single most important thing, with the software coming in a close second. This is the case, both with systems I own such as my PDP-11's, and with systems I'm emulating.

The AI ITS documentation is just about the only local resource. The original files were made available by Alan Bawden, and I've built web indexes to the files to allow for easy access. I've also created links from this page to some of the more interesting documents.

  • TOPS-10 Documentation
  • Tim Shoppa's TOPS-10 V7.04 Doc Archive
  • TOPS-20 V7.0 Doc Archive local copies of the files found in TOAD:<DOCUMENTATION> to see what's missing check the TOPS-20 Software Notebook Set page. Warning: Unfortunatly it has come to my attention that the PDF and HTML conversions are less than perfect, as such the text versions are the ones to use.
  • TOPS-20 Documentation Directory (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 User's Guide (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 User Utilities Guide (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 Commands Reference Manual (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 DDT Manual (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 Monitor Calls User's Guide (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 Monitor Calls Reference Manual (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • JSYS help page (TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 System Manager's Guide (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 KL Model B Installation Guide (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 Operator's Guide (PDF)(HTML)(HTML)
  • TOPS-20 Operator's Command Language Ref Manual (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 Monitor Table Description (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-10/TOPS-20 Software Update User's Guide (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • Extended Addressing (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • New Galaxy Features (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 ARPANET User Utilities Guide, Preliminary Draft, October, 1983 (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 ARPANET User Utilities Guide, October, 1983 (PDF)(HTML)(TEXT)
  • TOPS-20 Documentation
  • ITS Documentation
  • BBN TENEX Al Kossow's site
  • Stanford WAITS - Westcoast Alternative to ITS Nothing Available
  • Tymshare TYCOM-X Nothing Available
  • Applications Documentation
  • Other Documentation

    • Step 5. Adding Additional Software

    Once you've got your system up and running you'll most likely want to add some additional software. Obviously your first stop will be Tim Shoppa's PDP-10 Software Archive. What follows are some of the highlights of that archive and software that is available elsewhere.

     

    Mailing Lists

    Mirian Crzig Lennox has created a mailing list for people interested in ITS with an emphasis on using it on the emulators. It is also for supporting people using her ITS Starter Kit. In order to subscribe send an empty email with "subscribe" in the subject line to its-hackers-request@cosmic.com. The list is currently not archived on the web and if at a later date it is, peoples email addresses will be munged to prevent the harvesting of them. To prevent spam, you must be subscribed in order to post to the list.

    Other

    I'm not really sure where to put this information, so am sticking it here temporarily.

    Thu, 11 Oct 2001 13:52:41 
Johnny Eriksson <bygg at stacken,kth,se>
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10
Tops10/Ethernet/IP, status is:
* A couple of updates to the DEUNA support in SIMH.
  see ftp://ftp.stacken.kth.se/pub/pdp10/simh-deuna/
* An IP stack with UDP support, but not yet TCP.  Written under 7.04, but
  the changes to the DEC modules are fairly small and should be easily
  ported to other versions.  *.dif/*.mac files provided.
  see ftp://ftp.stacken.kth.se/pub/pdp10/t10-ip/
* A sligthly working tftp daemon.
  see ftp://ftp.stacken.kth.se/pub/pdp10/t10-tftp/

As usual, regard this as beta quality, at best.
--Johnny

    Related PDP-10 Links

    Outdated Information

    Prior to the discovery of the TOPS-10 7.03 MIG I'd written a Installation of TOPS-10 v7.03 document and Michael Thompson has done an updated version of this document.

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