The PDP15 is not dead, according to DEC. More money has been allocated for development and maintenance on these machines. PDP15s have now been merged with PDP10s into the Large Systems Group. Tony James is in charge of this group in Europe so he is back with PDP15s again. Attempts are being made to fill the gap between the top of the 15 range and the bottom of the 10 range. The implication, nothing stronger, was that this would be achieved by making larger 15s.
The new Field Support Manager announced that field service and training could improve dramatically in the near future, (just as soon as they could recruit and train some engineers). They have at least acknowledged that the current service is poor. Many times during the presentations the DEC personnel (there were about 50 altogether) requested feedback from the users. There was plenty of it, usually not very complimentary to DEC.
An update kit for the VT15 is now available; More accurate pictures are obtained by using closer tolerance components in the DACs and amplifiers. There are also fewer pots to adjust because fewer things can get out of range due to the use of more reliable components. New, more reliable, pushbuttons are installed. We may already have these since we have had several new sets. The whole kit is rumoured to cost £600 and may take anything up to a week to install. If the modifications are made by replacing the VT15 backplane, the time is considerably less. However, this method is dependent upon a spare backplane being available, which could take several months. Edinburgh Regional Computer Centre seems to be getting this update gratis but is still waiting for it to happen.
The Unichannel 15 was being heavily pushed as a panacea for almost every conceivable problem. A new display, the VT50, will be available soon with a hardcopy option. A new 3 pen graph plotter, XY311, is also available.
A new version of DOS Version 3A is now available. This is the DOS which runs RSX. It has a new FORTRAN compiler which allows better subroutine parameter passing for arrays and adjustable dimensions. The I/O routines have also been speeded up.
Our RSX Plus III release version should have arrived midway through August. However, we were not the only ones who had not received it yet. After some delays and with great reluctance, a questions and answer session was finally organised.
It appears that the problem of installing new tasks whilst others are running has been overcome in the release version. There is no provision for two users to do task development but they might be pressured into considering the addition of this feature if enough people wanted it. Several other users or potential users expressed interest in this. The release version still has only one LUN table so the problem of error messages etc going to the wrong terminal still exists. There is no EDITVT, ie editing on the VT15; it had not even been considered. Again, pressure could be applied. It seems they have only a few people working on RSX now and will use them to develop whatever facilities the majority of users want.
