Software Subsystems

Directory Contents

The files in this directory are used during the PiDP-8/I software build process along with the DEC original tape images in our parent directory to build the v3d.rk05 disk image used by boot options IF=0 and IF=7.

These files are here rather than one level up because they are not part of OS/8 per se, but one way or another, they do currently require OS/8. Some of the data on these tapes could potentially be used with other PDP-8 operating systems, but at minimum, it would require translating the data from OS/8 tape format.

DECtape Image File Name	Content Description
music.tu56	RFI-based music playback programs

Controlling the Build Process

Most of these files are merged into the OS/8 binary disk image by default, but can be excluded by giving a --disable-os8-NAME flag to the configure script, where NAME is the file name above without the .tu56 extension. (e.g. --disable-os8-k12 excludes Kermit-12.)

Only one of the files above is currently excluded by default, that being music.tu56, because we have not yet received any report of reliable playback. We believe this is because the PiDP-8/I realization does not lend itself to creation of suitable AM frequency RFI. These programs were written for real PDP-8 hardware which had much longer wires backed by much stronger drivers than a PiDP-8/I, and which ran at lower frequencies than a Raspberry Pi. These problems are not insurmountable, so someone interested in the project may force inclusion of these files on the OS/8 RK05 boot disk with

 $ ./configure --enable-os8-music

Solving this problem may require hardware modifications. If so, we'll still exclude these programs by default since not all PiDP-8/I machines will have these modifications.

See the top-level README.md file for further information about the --enable-os8-* and --disable-os8-* configuration options.