Very cool. But, crap, I wish I'd known you were noodling so hard to figure that out.
That's OK good learning experience.
I've had that workflow set up for years; I could have saved you a lot of research time and effort. I generate bootable images under simh, then FTP them over to a MicroVAX-II running VMS set up as a media transfer station for RL packs.
<snip> That's a good thought, to use a VAX as a tweener system bridge given there are rl controllers available for them, a lot faster than bot banging through PDPGUI via serial port, a full rl02 takes three hours almost.
As for RSX11 vs. RT11...that depends on who you ask, and, of course,
what your application is. RT11 is fairly boring; it doesn't really do much. RSX11 is very much a "kitchen sink" OS, extremely powerful. But that power doesn't come for free; there's some overhead, while RT11 is very slim.
I have many paper docs for RSX11/M and its programming languages that I can use. For RT11 I have only the pocket guide. So for me the advantage of one over the other is easier access to documentation. I like the physical manuals over PDFs. Another consideration is... what OS would have been in use originally on an Industrial/11 from 74-76 period with a lot of MASBUS controllers? I'd like to explore what would have been done with this machine, maybe start a paper mill or something. B