TSS/8 is a timesharing system for the DEC PDP-8 originally designed by Adrian van de Goor, a grad student at CMU and later enhanced and sold as a complete system by DEC in 1968. It originally required a PDP-8, 8I or 8E with an RF08 or DF32 attached to at least one RS08 or a DS32 drive for swapping and filesystem. At LCM+L TSS/8 has been modified by Josh Dersch to run on a PDP-8/e using an RK05 for swap/filesystem.

Each user gets a virtual PDP-8 with 4KW of memory, and a directory on disk for file storage.

Logging in: After connecting, you will be at the login “.” prompt. Type

LOGIN <PPN> <PASSWORD>

Substituting your PPN and password. None of the above input will echo – if it does it means you've connected to a session that was not properly logged out – type “LOGOUT” to log out and then try logging in again.

Logging out: The LOGOUT command will log you out of the system. K can be used as a shorthand for this. It is important to log out before disconnecting as the system will not automatically log you out.

Running programs Running a program from the system library or from your directory can be accomplished via the R command:

R CAT

will run the CATALOG program, displaying the contents of your directory. The currently available programs in the system library are:

DISK FILES FOR USER  0, 2 ON 19-DEC-79


NAME      SIZE  PROT    DATE
PALD  .SAV  16   12  31-MAR-76      - PAL Assembler
LOADER.SAV   4   12  31-MAR-76      - Binary loader
FORT  .SAV   6   12  31-MAR-76      - FORTRAN II
FOSL  .SAV   6   12  31-MAR-76      - FORTRAN system
PIP   .SAV  10   12  31-MAR-76      - Peripheral Interchange Program
SYSTAT.SAV   5   12  31-MAR-76      - Displays system status
EDIT  .SAV   8   12  31-MAR-76      - Line-oriented text editor
FOCAL .SAV  16   12  31-MAR-76      - FOCAL language interpreter
BASIC .SAV  38   12  31-MAR-76      - BASIC language interpreter
CAT   .SAV   6   12  31-MAR-76      - Disk catalog
PUTR  .SAV  21   12   3-FEB-84      - File transfer utility
ODTHI .SAV   2   12  29-FEB-84      - ODT debugger
FLAP  .SAV   1   12   7-APR-84      - Absolute assembler
PTLOAD.SAV   1   12  29-APR-84      - Paper tape loader
CHESS .SAV  17   12  11-NOV-74      - CHEKMO II chess program
ALGOL .SAV  32   12  21-NOV-79      - TSS/8 ALGOL (DECUS 8-330)
ACTUNG.SAV   5   12  21-NOV-79      - Prints a cute message
LISP  .SAV  17   12  25-NOV-79      - LISP 1.5 interpreter (DECUS-8-102a)

Stopping a running program CTRL-B indicates to the system that you want send a command to the Monitor. Once you hit Ctrl-B, the following input will be sent to the monitor and executed. To stop any program while it is running, Type CTRL-B followed by S and Carriage return. S is the monitor's STOP command, sending it will cause the currently executing program to stop. The program can be restarted from the monitor with the START command.

Talking to other users The TALK program can be used to send messages to other terminals. Use SYSTAT to see what other users are logged onto the system, e.g.:

.SYSTAT

STATUS OF TSS/8.24 DEC PDP-8 #1 AT 12:47:30 ON 19 DEC 79

UPTIME 19:06:31

JOB      WHO     WHERE      WHAT       STATUS     RUNTIME

 1     10, 0      K00      BASIC      KEY   ^Q    00:00:04
 2     10, 0      K01      SYSTAT     ^BS   ^Q    00:00:00
 4     10, 0      K04      HI         ^BS   ^Q    00:00:00
 5      0, 2      K06      CAT        ^BS   ^Q    00:00:00
 6      0, 1      K07      SYSTAT     RUN   ^Q    00:00:00

AVAILABLE CORE  4K   FREE CORE=252

BUSY DEVICES    NONE

3269 FREE DISK SEGMENTS

The “WHERE” column shows the console (K00 through K07) the user is logged into. To send a message to a specific console, type:

TYPE <CONSOLE #> <YOUR MESSAGE HERE>

So for example,

TYPE 2 HEY, CHECK OUT THIS COOL PROGRAM I WROTE

Sends a friendly message to console K02.

Documentation

The Edusystem-50 manual provides fairly accurate documentation for the version of TSS/8.24 running at LCM+L, and is available at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp8/tss8/DEC-08-E50UA-A-D_UG_Aug75.pdf. It covers user-related activities on the system and covers using the PAL-D assembler, BASIC, FOCAL and numerous utilities.

Detailed documentation for BASIC is available at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp8/tss8/DEC-T8-KJZA-D-TSS-8_BASIC_8_Programming_Manual_Mar1969.pdf.

ALGOL documentation can be found at http://svn.so-much-stuff.com/svn/trunk/pdp8/src/decus/8-213/decus-8-213.pdf with http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/decus/pdp8/8-330_tss8_ALGOL.pdf covering the TSS/8-specific changes.

LISP is documented at http://svn.so-much-stuff.com/svn/trunk/pdp8/src/decus/8-102a/decus-8-102A.pdf