Note that the scanned manuals I have seen on bitsavers also don't Was also sometimes reddish text or background for 11M specific things,Īnd greyish background for M+ specific things, not to mention the blueĪnd yes, the reference cards are also photocopies. Not only the red for user input, but there

It's really annoying that all the colors disappeared, as they implied :-( I don't remember whether or not the copy was printed The card we all know and love, all colours collapsed to black, eachįace trimmed to size, and the stack stapled in the upper left handĬorner. The PDP-11 Programming Card that came with the set was photocopy of The two colour printing used in the original They have CompaqĬovers and came with white binders, but inside they are photocopies of I have a set that were purchases with M+ V4.6.

but these were rare and the manual inside was still DEC. Post by believe that some DEC manuals were sold and had supplementary CompaqĬovers. The big question to HP was 'What's in it for us?' who in HP, cost to HP and the colleague involved. The last contact I had with my old Mentec colleagues a few years ago suggested they were still trying to get this resolved, but that the issues didn't change. Nobody was willing to put their name to it. Mentec were in negotiation with Digital, Compaq and HP regarding hobbyist licenses. DEC didn't want to release what they considered a cash cow, then they negotiated an agreement with Bob Supnik for older versions at the time Mentec bought the ongoing limited rights. It has been a constant nightmare that people have been going through since the time Digital decided to retire PDP-11s. With waiting is people who came from Compaq that are familiar with the situation have either left, or are retiring.īecause Mentec (and its successors) have limited rights, this would have to be done through them. If things begin settling out inside the company, I will try again. Time and because they are products that were from aquistions. I made inquiries last year about this, and was told it would be difficult to get this started, given what was going on inside HP at the My experience with HP and other companies, it is pretty unlikely that a any sort of agreement for anything other than non-commerical This is probably the best approach for getting the DEC/Compaq product lines which they consider of no commercial value released. Use for two product lines they produced (HP1000 and 68K-based HP9000) and one that they did not (Apollo). On the other hand, the Computer History Museum HAS executed agreements with HP for the redistribution of the software for non-commercial Post by probably still remains no-one at HP willing to take on the managerial decision and cost to change the license agreement with Mentec The unique thing about the PDP-11 software is that it won't say die even amongst hobbyists. The rights owners sometimes decide to bring product names out of abandonment so they rarely actually waive their rights. One can expect 10s of thousands of dollars of corporate legal bills!īecause the cost to do the 'right thing' and release the rights is too high to be worth doing, most archaic software ends up as abandoned. Nothing like this is done with a simple signature. I believe I know who the company might be that now owns Mentec's rights to the software, but on the other hand there probably still remains no-one at HP willing to take on the managerial decision and cost to change the license agreement with Mentec (and its successors) and the people who now acquired Mentec's rights probably can't afford the legal costs of the change either. Nobody in HP seemed willing to make the decisions, after it had gone to lawyers while under Compaq. Now, with the eventual passing of rights to DEC's successors, the mechanism for paying the royalties remained, but management responsibility to get the royalty waived for hobbyist licenses was not passed in the chain of command. Mentec still had to pay for every copy of the software distributed, even if they gave it away for free. This is where the problems arise for the hobbyist.

Mentec acquired a) the right to sell and distribute the software either in its original form or in modified form, b) the right to modify and upgrade the software and c) royalties to DEC were payable for every copy distributed by Mentec and d) to maintain the copyright for the products.Īs I understood it also, the royalty was a fixed amount per copy, not a percentage. ĭEC maintained the original and primary IP rights to the software in every version produced. Mentec, when it acquired the rights to the PDP-11 software (there were some that it didn't get) acquired what might be best described as 'limited rights'.Īs I understand it, and remember that where the following says DEC, for example, DEC's rights are passed by succession to Compaq and then to HP, the rights went like this. Ahh the old question of ownership of the PDP-11 OS's strikes again!

Os9 68k emulator -mac -macos