MINITS

MINITS was a PDP-11 multi-tasking operating system created at MIT, primarily for use in data network hosts. It was mostly used in the MIT network for 'bridges' (routers, to use the contemporary nomenclature) and terminal concentrators. It was also used to drive graphics terminals, and provide Chaosnet front ends to KL10 processors.

Its design is vaguely reminiscent of ITS. It provided:

• creation and termination of processes
• a fairly sophisticated main memory allocation system (freed adjoining blocks were automatically combined)

Networking

The MINITS source calls lots of things 'NCPs', but these have nothing to do with the 'real' NCP. In fact, MINITS doesn't support any IMP interfaces. The use of 'NCP' was just a terminological affliction among the CHAOS people, to whom 'NCP' apparently meant 'protocol implementation' or 'network code'.

Networking protocols supported:

• Address Resolution Protocol‎
• Chaos - the only full protocol family supported; the rest are all just partial scraps
  • SUPDUP
  • TELNET
  • Finger
• IP
• PUP

Hardware

Devices supported:

• DH11
• DL11
• DZ11
• DMC11
• DR11
• DUP11
• DTE20, KL10 front end interface
• CH11, Chaosnet interface
• 3com Ethernet interface
• Interlan NI1010A Ethernet interface
• 3 Mbit Ethernet interface
• Pertek frame buffer
• CAMAC interface

See also

• Fuzzball
• ELF operating system
• MOS operating system

External links

• MINITS source code
• Alternative repository
  • Process management
  • Free Storage Manager
• How to Build a Terminal Concentrator - combination of ware, software and boot PROMs