Welcome to the oldest version of Oracle RDBMS (v2.3.2) on the Internet running on a PDP-11/70 with RSX-11M+.
A brief history.
Wondering why this old piece of software has become available on-line?
My first job was with Oracle Europe which I joined in December 1983,
which was, at that time, based in Aalborg, Denmark.
In one of the rooms of the 5 room office, a PDP-11/24 was tucked away in a corner.
It's sole purpose was to support the customers of that time who did use
that version, but I personally did not see it being powered up for any
support related issue, most likely because of nearly every customer
had moved to version 3.1.
At the end of 1984 / early 1985, the office did move to Naarden, the Netherlands,
where the new office (a sort of stately house) was to be put in use.
The PDP did also move and ended up in the basement, to becomming more or less forgotten.
A year or so later, more and more space was needed for various kinds of
materials and as the machine was still there (covered with a thin layer of
dust), a decision was made to get rid of it.
As I did express interest in the machine, it was given to me, with the
stipulation that it could not be sold to a commercial buyer.
With the machine a few RL02 disk packs came alongside, and one of the disks was the distribution kit of V2.3.
Now, over the years, my collection of PDP-11's had grown and shrunk, but that's for another time to write a story of.
The PDP-11/24 (sans the system & distribution disks) ended up in the
collection of of a good friend of mine, his collection can be seen
[here].
For the next story, click on the [PDP-11/70] button.
The PDP-11/70.
Early 2001, I got a message from a contact in Italy who informed me that their
'PDP setup' was going to be decommisioned and scrapped if no one wanted it.
As the initial message was not very descriptive in terms of what their
'PDP setup' was and where it was located, I asked him if he could give me
some additional details as well as some pictures if that was possible.
A few days later, a few pictures came in, showing a 10 rack failover system,
with each machine being placed in 5 racks, and the location of all this was in Turin.
Needless to say I was very interested, as the 11/70 model was the king of the
PDP's,
AND it had a blinkinglight console.
Arrangements were made, a box van was hired and off we went on route to Turin
in order to collect the equipment.
Each system was configured as follows :
Rack 1 - TU16 9-track tapedrive
Rack 2 - 11/70 processor
Rack 3 - 11/70 memory box
Rack 4 - comms interface
Rack 5 - comms equipment
3x RM03 as storage sub-system
A DecWriter III (LA-120) as the console
6 racks were taken back, (2x cpu, 2x mem & 2x TU16), as well as 4 RM03 drives
and several boxes of miscellaneous bits'n pieces like packs, panels, etc.
As I still had the v2.3 distribution disk, and I also had a copy of Y2K
compliant distribution of RSX-11MPlus (v4.6), I made a runtime disk which
also contained the V2.3 software.
Now, having a PDP-11/70 being powered up 24/7/365 is quite costly, the
electricity bill would be rather staggering!
Enter 'SIMH', a freeware, well maintained piece of software able to simulate
several old types of machines.
Click
[here] for the latest release and related documentation.
The emulated PDP-11/70 can be reached via telnet, for more information, see the
'[How to connect]' button.
The original machine can be seen if you are in the neighbourhood, drop me an
email in that case, see also the 'Contact' button.
To access RSX-11MPlus, you only need the 'telnet' tool,
which is usually available on a Linux ('telnet') or windows ('telnet', or 'putty').
for example : telnet www.oracle-v2.nl 6060
where '6060' is the portnumber where SIMH serves telnet based connections.
At the '>' prompt, type 'HELLO ORAUSR<x>/ORAUSR<x>', where <x> is '1', '2', or '3'
This is a private, non commercial initiative and intended for entertainment only.
Oracle Corporation is not involved in any way whatsoever. Logo and grid image (c)1983 Oracle Corp.
