Rubin 10-11 interface
The Rubin 10-11 interface was a shared main memory interface used to connect to up to eight PDP-11s (technically, 8 machines with a UNIBUS; several of the attached machines were not -11's) to a PDP-10 Memory Bus. It gave the KA10's CPU read/write access (interrupts were not supported) to everything on the connected UNIBI. As far as is known, the other machine(s) did not have access to the KA10's memory (unlike with the DL10 and DTE20, similar devices).
Technical details
The address space provided by the Rubin interface on the PDP-10 memory bus was one PDP-10 moby; that was divided into 255 pages of 1K words each (the standard ITS page size). (The 256th page contained the mapping registers, below; unusually for a PDP-10 device, access to its registers was via the PDP-10 memory bus.) Each Rubin interface page could be independently directed to a window in the selected UNIBUS' address space, controlled by the page's mapping register:
| Field | Width | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Valid | 1 | |
| Write enable | 1 | |
| Unused | 5 | |
| Machine | 3 | Selected machine/UNIBUS |
| Relocation | 16 | Base address on UNIBUS |
| Protection | 10 | Size of this window |
(The documentation, such as it is, does not explicitly say that any particular alignment of the window on the UNIBUS side was necessary; the data path for the address must have contained an adder.)
A read cycle read two PDP-11 words; write cycles could write one or two words (selectable).
Machines
The following machines were attached to the MIT-AI ITS KA10 via the Rubin interface. (This table was compiled from various sources: source code for STUFF, IOELEV, etc.)
| Unibus | Name | Machine | Description |
| 0 | TV | PDP-11/10 | Knight TV |
| 1 | XGP | PDP-11/20 | Xerox Graphics Printer |
| 2 | LISP | CONS, GT40 | LISP machine |
| 3 | CHESS | CHEOPS | Hardware chess accelerator |
| 4 | LOGO | PDP-11/45 | Logo, SITS |
| 5 | ROBOT | PDP-11/45 | Micro Automation |
| 6 | VISION | PDP-11/40 | Computer vision |
| 7 | CHAOS | PDP-11/10 | Chaosnet front end |
External links
- 10-11 INFO - brief programming description for it
- TEN11; - probably the SUDS drawings for it
- TEN11N; - "the new Ten-11 drawings"
