Skip to content

PDP-10/its

Repository files navigation

Incompatible Timesharing System

CI Build Status

About ITS

ITS, the Incompatible Timesharing System, is an operating system for the PDP-10 computer family. It was created by hackers at MIT in the 1960s. The MIT site was shut down in 1990, but enthusiasts continue to operate ITS systems to this day.

Some notable ITS features:

  • Hosted the first versions of Emacs, Zork, Macsyma, Maclisp, Scheme, and multi-player Maze War
  • Virtual memory
  • User-space device drivers
  • Networking: TCP/IP, ARPAnet, Chaosnet
  • Transparent network file system
  • Terminal-independent text output
  • Graphical workstations

There is a mailing list for discussion about ITS. Go to http://its.victor.se/mailman/listinfo/its-hackers_its.victor.se for more information.

About this project

This repository contains source code, tools, and scripts to build an ITS system from scratch.

The goals are:

  • To provide an automated build from start to end. No user intervention is necessary.

  • To check which programs have source code, and which programs are missing source code.

  • To ensure that we know how to build all programs.

  • To update programs with the latest bug fixes and enhancements.

  • To be able to set configurable options across the whole system, such as host name, IP address, hardware devices.

The build currently runs on the SIMH and KLH10 emulators. Of course, we'd be delighted to test this on a real KS10.

Building

To build ITS with this repository, you need some tools installed; see the table below. Ensure all submodules are checked out, and then type make EMULATOR=simh, make EMULATOR=pdp10-ka, make EMULATOR=pdp10-kl, make EMULATOR=pdp10-ks, or make EMULATOR=klh10. This will leave built files in the out directory, some of which are disk images with ITS installed.

Emulator D