Pre-1983 Unix-alikes?
Jorn Barger
compiling a timeline of Linux pre-history... but the
evidence on early microprocessor ports and pseudo-ports
is extremely messy and obscure. (Most especially, the
origins of Xenix are very poorly documented on the Web.)
The story starts in 1974, with Heinz Lycklama at DEC
writing LSI-Unix for the LSI-11 (PDP-11 without memory
management), while Gary Kildall was simultaneously
offering the first version of CP/M in Monterey,
California.
Kildall had a compsci PhD, but I don't think he would
have known anything about Unix yet, since the R&T paper
in the CACM didn't come out until that summer.
DEC started selling LSI-11s in 1975, but apparently
chose not to fight with Western Electric (AT&T) for Unix
licensing. (If they had, the LSI series might have been a
huge hit in educational settings, because the R&T paper
had stirred up a lot of interest.)
Later in 1975, AT&T _did_ cautiously start licensing Unix
source to universities, and Toronto and Waterloo got two
early copies and started training the next generation of
Unix-hackers.
The Berkeley campus spun off the first commercial distro
in 1977, IS/1 from Interactive for the PDP-11 only. I'm
unclear why rewriting Unix for the PDP-11 was the
standard first-stage for port-ers, but a group from
Waterloo may also have followed this path, moving to
Chicago where they'd choose the 8088 as target for their
first commercial release of (unlicensed) 'Coherent'.
Toronto's Ron Baecker had founded Human Computing
Resources (HCR) in 1976, and moved into Unix in 1977.
AT&T charged them about $20k for a source licence, and it
seems likely that Microsoft first bought PDP-11 Xenix
from them in 1979.
In 1978, Heathkit offered a $1300 LSI-11 box that flopped.
(Buyers were required to sign a DEC licensing agreement!)
Its operating system was based on DEC's realtime os,
RT-11. But somehow the Boston Children's Museum (!?!?)
briefly sold the first micro Unix-alike in 1978, for the
LSI-11, called 'Tynix'. This is mentioned in a Jan 1981
Byte (p200), and I wonder if it wasn't Lycklama's port
sneaking out the side door?
The same item in Byte mentions a 1979 Unix-alike for CP/M
boxes released by Yourdon, Inc but immediately withdrawn
as buggy. PJ Plauger had left Yourdon in 1978 and started
Whitesmiths, making his PDP-11 port 'Idris' incompatible
enough to escape licensing fees.
Intel released the 8086 in 1978, and Motorola and Zilog
their 68000 and Z8000 in 1979. Also in 1979 AT&T started
raising the price of academic licences for Version 7, and
IBM secretly started prototyping the PC.
It was supposedly in 1979 that Paul Allen pushed Microsoft
into buying an AT&T license, but they seem also (?) to
have ordered Xenix from HCR at this point. (So did they
own a PDP-11? They later had a PDP-10 they referred to as
the 'Microsoft Heating Plant'.)
Byte mentions a Z80 single-user Unix-alike in 1980 called
OS-1 from ElectroLabs, and another, announced by Morrow,
that by 1982 would be called M/OS and claim to be
multi-user (the claims are in an ad in the April 82 Byte,
but by October these claims-- and the os-- have vanished).
Byte doesn't mention the Onyx C8002 which supposedly
shipped in 1980, with a Z8000 port of Unix called Onix.
This was probably the first shipping multi-user port to
a micro.
Microsoft pre-announced Xenix for 8086, Z8000, 68000, and
PDP-11 in August 1980, just after IBM first started
hinting about their software needs. Seattle Computer
released their 16-bit CP/M-clone QDOS 1.0 in August, as
well. (Microsoft and IBM got serious only late in 1980.)
Berkeley's Jeff Schreibman founded UniSoft in 1981, and
ported v7 to the 68000 as UniPlus. 68000 boards based on
the Sun standard were starting to appear, and UniSoft
supplied the Unix for most of them. By 1982 these
included Codata, Cyb, Pacific, Callan, and Forward.
A separate 68000 port from Charles River in 1981 was
called UNOS.
I have a mention of an HCR port called 'Unity' (PDP-11?)
in 1981, of a Xenix port for Z8001 (TriData SST), and a
sighting of Xenix-11 in the wild. (Microsoft's Robert
Greenberg wrote about Xenix in the June 1981 Byte, but
apparently he didn't get specific about dates. Microsoft
didn't buy the 'MS-DOS' rights from Seattle until July
1981; IBM announced the PC in August.)
Cromemco started touting 'Cromix' for the 68000, but it
apparently didn't ship until late 1982. An Idris port for
68000 was promised, and another called Wicat. Less
compatibility was claimed for Xavax's XVX for the 68000,
and Apollo had a dual-68000 multi-user os.
Supposedly multi-user oses for 6809 machines included
OS-9, UniFlex, and Introl's INOS. For CP/M machines in
1981, there were MP/M, Oasis, MUSE, BOS, Cosmos, and MARC.
In 1982, AT&T lowered their licensing price. Mentions of
Unix in Byte were rising, but Byte acknowledged that
porting it to microprocessors was really tricky, and
most promised ports were facing seriously delays. About
the only hint I find that Microsoft even sold an x86
Xenix before 1983 is a claim that Altos offered a Xenix
2.3 that wasn't really usable.
Coherent for 8088 is mentioned on netnews in 1982 but I
don't believe it was a serious release yet, either. (But
Byte's April 1982 issue claims Bell Labs had done an
inhouse port to the Z80!)
Xenix 2.2 for 68000 was a real product by 1982, chosen
by Radio Shack for their Model 16. SCO apparently had a
PDP-11 port by 1982, and one rumor claims Microsoft first
approached them around this time to port Multiplan to
Xenix, which led by 1983 to their claiming Xenix-86 and
Xenix-286 ports. (Copyrights in manuals seem to support
the 1983 startdate for SCO's involvement.)
My webpage will have links to sources, but it's still a
giant mess: http://www.robotwisdom.com/linux/nonnix.html
Jorn Barger
> Microsoft pre-announced Xenix for 8086, Z8000, 68000, and
> PDP-11 in August 1980, just after IBM first started
> hinting about their software needs.
The pattern suddenly jumps into focus-- Gates wanted the IBM
deal so bad he guessed a Unix port might impress them, and
the announcement was just 'bait'. IBM needed something
real, and opted for CP/M... so Gates bought Seattle's, and
let the Xenix promise lapse until SCO appeared, to do the
heavy lifting.
I also wrote:
> somehow the Boston Children's Museum (!?!?)
> briefly sold the first micro Unix-alike in 1978, for the
> LSI-11, called 'Tynix'. This is mentioned in a Jan 1981
> Byte (p200), and I wonder if it wasn't Lycklama's port
> sneaking out the side door?
PJ Plauger has just clarified that this was a small project
of Bill Mayhew's, not LSX.
> The same item in Byte mentions a 1979 Unix-alike for CP/M
> boxes released by Yourdon, Inc but immediately withdrawn
> as buggy. PJ Plauger had left Yourdon in 1978
He says he never heard of this one, which Byte called 'OMNIX'.
Eugene Miya
Not perfect, but not too bad.
Also Deimos, but that's more on the supercomputer side.
Charles Richmond
>
> I just wrote, in news:<16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>:
>
> > Microsoft pre-announced Xenix for 8086, Z8000, 68000, and
> > PDP-11 in August 1980, just after IBM first started
> > hinting about their software needs.
>
> The pattern suddenly jumps into focus-- Gates wanted the IBM
> deal so bad he guessed a Unix port might impress them, and
> the announcement was just 'bait'. IBM needed something
> real, and opted for CP/M... so Gates bought Seattle's, and
> let the Xenix promise lapse until SCO appeared, to do the
> heavy lifting.
>
for them... SCO once had a contractual obligation to include
some Mi$uck code in their XENIX and UNIX products. And Mi$uck
used to own 20 or 30 percent of SCO...
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Jorn Barger
> Get Peter Salus' book on Unix history.
Good netiquette demands that if you're going to recommend
an 'expensive' task (eg track down and read hardcopy book)
you need to demonstrate good faith by summarizing how you
imagine it will help me-- which of my questions do you
think it addresses?
Al Kossow
> eug...@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) wrote in message news:<3dc96c15$1...@news.ucsc.edu>...
>> Get Peter Salus' book on Unix history.
>
> Good netiquette demands that if you're going to recommend
> an 'expensive' task (eg track down and read hardcopy book)
I see.. You want your research done for free.
I've spotted several things in what you have posted
that are wrong, as documented in "Unix History". If
you want to find out what they are, buy the book.
<plonk>
Rupert Pigott
Near the front of the "Design & Implementation of the 4.4 BSD
Operating System" there are some UNIX family trees. Quite
mind-boggling !
Cheers,
Rupert
Eugene Miya
For the decades that I have been on mailing lists and news groups,
I have never heard of such bogus netiquette.
The way mailing list queries netiquette went: a person asks a question,
and they offer to 'summarize' the email received responses. This is quite
visible on google in the early fa.* group mailing lists posts. That
'summarization' was merely concatenation of received mailing was a different
problem of quality.
If you think that is expensive, then I can't imagine what you think
setting up a news server is. You are just displaying laziness.
Hmmm, where is your self-serving signature line which came in the
email you sent me?
Jonathan Lundell
> shipped in 1980, with a Z8000 port of Unix called Onix.
> This was probably the first shipping multi-user port to
> a micro.
That's my impression. The info here
<http://www.dmsd.com/Onyx.history.html> seems accurate. The group that
left Onyx to form Plexus Computer, around 1982, built another
Z8000-based system, P35 and P40. As a consultant, I designed a
68000-based version of their system (SRAM-based MMU), the P60, that
ran v7 Unix, and later System III, both from AT&T.
And let's not forget the notorious Fortune Systems 32:16, ca 1983.
Here's a chronology that omits Onyx & Plexus:
<http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/workstat/>
Dennis Ritchie
"Jorn Barger" <jo...@enteract.com> wrote ...
> I've been reading up on Unix-internals and -history, and
> compiling a timeline of Linux pre-history... but the
> evidence on early microprocessor ports and pseudo-ports
> is extremely messy and obscure. (Most especially, the
> origins of Xenix are very poorly documented on the Web.)
Much of the rest of Jorn's post may be right (and some
I sort of know of but can't recall details) but this
seems to be wrong in some respects (most of
the account is snipped; if memory strikes I'll revisit):
...
> The story starts in 1974, with Heinz Lycklama at DEC
> writing LSI-Unix for the LSI-11 (PDP-11 without memory
> management), while Gary Kildall was simultaneously
> offering the first version of CP/M in Monterey,
> California.
Lycklama's paper (BSTJ v57 #6 part 2) on LSX
was published in the Jul-Aug issue for 1978, received
Dec 1977. I don't think the LSI-ll was as early as 1974; his reference
for the LSI-11 manual is to a 1976 publication. Also, I believe
Lycklama was at Bell Labs by 1974.
....
> DEC started selling LSI-11s in 1975, but apparently
> chose not to fight with Western Electric (AT&T) for Unix
> licensing. (If they had, the LSI series might have been a
> huge hit in educational settings, because the R&T paper
> had stirred up a lot of interest.)
>
> Later in 1975, AT&T _did_ cautiously start licensing Unix
> source to universities, and Toronto and Waterloo got two
> early copies and started training the next generation of
> Unix-hackers.
This had actually started by 1973-74. E.g. I have
a copy of a letter to Richard Peebles at Waterloo saying
... UNIX may now be licensed for use by educational institutions.
The detailed manual can only be
released as part of the system as a whole,
but I am enclosing a preprint version of a
general paper on the system.
It was presented to this year's SIGOPS
conference and will appear, in slightly different
form, in the Communications of the ACM.
This pins things down to between Oct 1973 (the SOSP
presentation) and July 1974 (CACM publication).
Some commercial and government licenses were not
too much later.
Dennis
Joe Pfeiffer
> ...
> > The story starts in 1974, with Heinz Lycklama at DEC
> > writing LSI-Unix for the LSI-11 (PDP-11 without memory
> > management), while Gary Kildall was simultaneously
> > offering the first version of CP/M in Monterey,
> > California.
>
> Lycklama's paper (BSTJ v57 #6 part 2) on LSX
> was published in the Jul-Aug issue for 1978, received
> Dec 1977. I don't think the LSI-ll was as early as 1974; his reference
> for the LSI-11 manual is to a 1976 publication. Also, I believe
> Lycklama was at Bell Labs by 1974.
Also, the LSI wasn't a PDP without memory management, it was the Large
Scale Integrated PDP -- PDP on a few chips. There were non-MMU PDPs,
and there were LSIs with MMU.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
Southwestern NM Regional Science and Engr Fair: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair
Brian Boutel
>>Byte doesn't mention the Onyx C8002 which supposedly
>>shipped in 1980, with a Z8000 port of Unix called Onix.
>>This was probably the first shipping multi-user port to
>>a micro.
>
>
> That's my impression. The info here
> <http://www.dmsd.com/Onyx.history.html> seems accurate. The group that
> left Onyx to form Plexus Computer, around 1982, built another
> Z8000-based system, P35 and P40. As a consultant, I designed a
> 68000-based version of their system (SRAM-based MMU), the P60, that
> ran v7 Unix, and later System III, both from AT&T.
>
>
I had an Onyx Z8000 box in '82, and visited the plant in San Jose. I
think the box is still in a display cabinet at my final POE. 512kB,
which would not fit into one box, and a natty tape cartridge that held
all of 12MB.
I think Onyx were bought by someone about that time (Corvus?) and the
next software version after the V7-like Onix (from Interactive Systems?)
was a System III based thing.
--brian
--
Brian Boutel
Wellington New Zealand
Note the NOSPAM
Bernd Felsche
>Cromemco started touting 'Cromix' for the 68000, but it
>apparently didn't ship until late 1982. An Idris port for
>68000 was promised, and another called Wicat. Less
>compatibility was claimed for Xavax's XVX for the 68000,
>and Apollo had a dual-68000 multi-user os.
Cromix on Z80 pre-dates the 68k edition.
Various reference manuals are dated 1982
e.g. http://njcc.com/~hjohnson/d_crom.html
--
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | I'm a .signature virus!
X against HTML mail | Copy me into your ~/.signature
/ \ and postings | to help me spread!
Dennis Ritchie
"Joe Pfeiffer" <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> quotes me and then writes:
> > Lycklama's paper (BSTJ v57 #6 part 2) on LSX
> > was published in the Jul-Aug issue for 1978, received
> > Dec 1977. I don't think the LSI-ll was as early as 1974; his reference
> > for the LSI-11 manual is to a 1976 publication. Also, I believe
> > Lycklama was at Bell Labs by 1974.
>
> Also, the LSI wasn't a PDP without memory management, it was the Large
> Scale Integrated PDP -- PDP on a few chips. There were non-MMU PDPs,
> and there were LSIs with MMU.
The LSI-11 system that Lycklama used and described had
no MMU. Later LSI implementations of the PDP-11 did,
of course.
Incidentally, the LSX OS itself is described by Lycklama as "Unix-like",
and Heinz etc. probably used code from the contemporary
Unix kernel, but also rewrote a lot (including squeezing it into
8K words (16 KB)--Unix had by then bloated to 40KB)).
This included, for example, omitting
pipes from the OS and implementing them as temporary files,
supporting the shell | operator by gadgetry in the shell itself.
However, the typical Unix applications of the era were ported,
more or less directly.
Dennis
Jorn Barger
> > Byte doesn't mention the Onyx C8002 which supposedly
> > shipped in 1980, with a Z8000 port of Unix called Onix.
> > This was probably the first shipping multi-user port to
> > a micro.
>
> That's my impression. The info here
> <http://www.dmsd.com/Onyx.history.html> seems accurate.
Excellent. (Their date for MP/M is way too early though.)
They way they use the expression 'port' makes sense to me--
they were moving to completely different hardware. I still don't
understand why teams using identical PDP-11s started by 'porting'
AT&T's PDP-11 code.
> And let's not forget the notorious Fortune Systems 32:16, ca 1983.
>
> Here's a chronology that omits Onyx & Plexus:
> <http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/workstat/>
That's also useful. I haven't dug into the early days of Sun yet,
but I want to.
Jorn Barger
> >Good netiquette demands that if you're going to recommend
> >an 'expensive' task (eg track down and read hardcopy book)
> >you need to demonstrate good faith by summarizing how you
> >imagine it will help me-- which of my questions do you
> >think it addresses?
>
> For the decades that I have been on mailing lists and news groups,
> I have never heard of such bogus netiquette.
I didn't say it was _well-known_. ;^/
> The way mailing list queries netiquette went: a person asks a question,
> and they offer to 'summarize' the email received responses. This is quite
> visible on google in the early fa.* group mailing lists posts. That
> 'summarization' was merely concatenation of received mailing was a different
> problem of quality.
I'd be surprised if you can find a single example of someone offering
to summarize _books_, especially if a recommendation is short and not
obviously relevant.
> If you think that is expensive, then I can't imagine what you think
> setting up a news server is. You are just displaying laziness.
If my local libraries had the book, I would already have read it.
(I'm wrestling with Bach-1986 currently.) Before I special order it,
I need to be convinced it's competitive with the thousands of
web-accessible pages I've already read, as documented on my timeline
pages:
Unix/Linux: http://www.robotwisdom.com/linux/timeline.html
386: http://www.robotwisdom.com/linux/386.html
micro-Unixes: http://www.robotwisdom.com/linux/nonnix.html
> Hmmm, where is your self-serving signature line which came in the
> email you sent me?
Google doesn't serve it automatically:
> --
> "There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
> --The Register
> Robot Wisdom Weblog: http://www.robotwisdom.com/
Quote-source: http://www.theregus.com/content/archive/25780.html
I've had lots of other self-serving sigs since 1989 that you're
welcome to peruse: http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/sigs.txt
Jorn Barger
> > The pattern suddenly jumps into focus-- Gates wanted the IBM
> > deal so bad he guessed a Unix port might impress them, and
> > the announcement was just 'bait'. IBM needed something
> > real, and opted for CP/M... so Gates bought Seattle's, and
> > let the Xenix promise lapse until SCO appeared, to do the
> > heavy lifting.
> >
> I thought that Mi$uck *founded* SCO to produce the XENIX os
> for them.
Definitely not. SCO started in 1979, and the earliest known contact
with Microsoft was a 2nd-sourcing agreement in Dec 1980. (I'm
trying to determine who was 2nd-sourcing what to whom. It may
well be that SCO was just getting HCR-code that MS had tweaked
and/or relabelled.)
> SCO once had a contractual obligation to include
> some Mi$uck code in their XENIX and UNIX products.
This involved AT&T's post-1989 System V, which had a bit of MS/SCO
code for Xenix-compatibility.
> And Mi$uck used to own 20 or 30 percent of SCO...
They bought in to c1989 help SCO thru a rough period, supposedly.
Jorn Barger
> Cromix on Z80 pre-dates the 68k edition.
Sure enough:
http://www.iiug.org/~waiug/archive/iugnew2000Fall/interview-roger.htm
"Eventually Roy Harrington wrote a smaller UNIX clone,
Cromix, which ran on the Z80 eight bit processor."
And: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=358%40pyramid.UUCP&rnum=1
===quoted text
The entire kernel was written first in C, then hand compiled into Z80
assembler. It's the only assembler program of that magnitude (40K of code)
that I've ever worked with that was easy and pleasant to maintain. (Roy's C
coding was very clean as well, which helped.)
The penalty was that many of the C constructs needed for a Unix-like OS did
not map well into the Z80's instruction set, or required use of the highly
inefficient IX and IY instructions. Hence the OS was both bigger and slower
than it could have been.
===end quote
And the year was 1979:
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/3-5-CROMEMCO.html
Jorn Barger
> > The story starts in 1974, with Heinz Lycklama at DEC
> > writing LSI-Unix for the LSI-11 (PDP-11 without memory
> > management), while Gary Kildall was simultaneously
> > offering the first version of CP/M in Monterey,
> > California.
>
> Lycklama's paper (BSTJ v57 #6 part 2) on LSX
> was published in the Jul-Aug issue for 1978, received
> Dec 1977. I don't think the LSI-ll was as early as 1974; his reference
> for the LSI-11 manual is to a 1976 publication. Also, I believe
> Lycklama was at Bell Labs by 1974.
You're right it was Bell not DEC, but the 1974 date is confirmable:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html
http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1975-1.htm
I also just got an email reply from Lycklama himself with lots
more details.
> > Later in 1975, AT&T _did_ cautiously start licensing Unix
> > source to universities, [...]
> This had actually started by 1973-74.
I'd like to find all these licensing-changes collated somewhere--
the impression I get is that AT&T repeatedly shot themselves in
the foot, and that the strange course of micro-evolution was
largely a result of this...?
Lychlama says AT&T started allowing binary licenses as early as
1977, for IS/1 (ie INTERactive), but wouldn't cut Microsoft the
same kind of (binaries) deal.
He thinks MS used Xenix as their main development platform-- but
if so, pre-83, it must have been the PDP-11 version. (I think
I'll try researching MS's development-platform history...
Google search "own dogfood" ;^)
Corné Beerse
>
> I've been reading up on Unix-internals and -history, and
> compiling a timeline of Linux pre-history... but the
> evidence on early microprocessor ports and pseudo-ports
> is extremely messy and obscure. (Most especially, the
> origins of Xenix are very poorly documented on the Web.)
Like http://www.levenez.com/unix/ ?
>
> The story starts in 1974, with Heinz Lycklama at DEC
> writing LSI-Unix for the LSI-11 (PDP-11 without memory
> management), while Gary Kildall was simultaneously
> offering the first version of CP/M in Monterey,
> California.
Their story starts in 1969.
> >>>>> Story stripped <<<<<<<
Pete Turnbull
> You're right it was Bell not DEC, but the 1974 date is confirmable:
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html
> http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1975-1.htm
Much as I dislike arguing with the man who wrote it, I don't see how the
1974 date for LSX can be correct. DEC didn't release the LSI-11 until
1975. Of course, the system could have run on a non-MMU Unibus system,
and obviously some of Heinz Lycklama's systems did just that.
BTW, although DEC made several successors to the LSI-11 which were based
on the same chipset and its successors (F-11 and J-11 chips), only the
first was actually called an LSI-11.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Bernd Felsche
>Sure enough:
> http://www.iiug.org/~waiug/archive/iugnew2000Fall/interview-roger.htm
>And: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=358%40pyramid.UUCP&rnum=1
In 1988, I received correspondence from Bill Jaenicke (editor and
publisher of IO/News) indicating that somebody by the name of
Charles Thurber had ported Cromix to the Amiga. Unfortunately, the
IACU died a quiet death not too long after; even before the first of
the four columns I'd written for it was published.
Matt Fuerst
Thanks for the hard work.
Matt
Joe Pfeiffer
> "Joe Pfeiffer" <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> quotes me and then writes:
> >
> > Also, the LSI wasn't a PDP without memory management, it was the Large
> > Scale Integrated PDP -- PDP on a few chips. There were non-MMU PDPs,
> > and there were LSIs with MMU.
>
> The LSI-11 system that Lycklama used and described had
> no MMU. Later LSI implementations of the PDP-11 did,
> of course.
OK, now I understand how the LSI got described as a PDP without memory
management.
I'm really surprised to learn how early the LSI was -- I don't think I
heard of it before the early 80s, and had the impression that that was
when it was first developed. Having the LSI as early as 1975 makes it
even sadder that DEC never really got a handle on micros and cheap
desktop systems.
Kelli Halliburton
> From article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>, by
> jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger):
>> eug...@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) wrote in message
>> news:<3dc96c15$1...@news.ucsc.edu>...
>>> Get Peter Salus' book on Unix history.
>>
>> Good netiquette demands that if you're going to recommend
>> an 'expensive' task (eg track down and read hardcopy book)
>
> I see.. You want your research done for free.
Didn't seem that way to me. I thought Jorn just wanted some hints as to
*why* he would find the book useful.
> I've spotted several things in what you have posted
> that are wrong, as documented in "Unix History". If
> you want to find out what they are, buy the book.
See, there you go. That's all you had to say, though one small example of
what you found wrong (NOT the correct information, just the part you found
to be incorrect -- finding the correct information is always left as an
exercise for the reader) would also have been nice.
> <plonk>
IMHO, uncalled for.
Kelli Halliburton
> Al Kossow wrote:
>> From article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>, by
>> jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger):
>>> eug...@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) wrote in message
>>> news:<3dc96c15$1...@news.ucsc.edu>...
>>>> Get Peter Salus' book on Unix history.
>>>
>>> Good netiquette demands that if you're going to recommend
>>> an 'expensive' task (eg track down and read hardcopy book)
>>
>> I see.. You want your research done for free.
>
> Didn't seem that way to me. I thought Jorn just wanted some hints as
> to *why* he would find the book useful.
By the way (sorry, I'm responding to myself, but I just thought of
something), I do agree with others in this thread who have said that there
is no such rule of netiquette. It's rather impolite of him to suggest that
there is a rule that enforces what he could simply have asked for as a
matter of courtesy.
Charles Richmond
>
> "Dennis Ritchie" <d...@bell-labs.com> writes:
>
> > "Joe Pfeiffer" <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> quotes me and then writes:
> > >
> > > Also, the LSI wasn't a PDP without memory management, it was the Large
> > > Scale Integrated PDP -- PDP on a few chips. There were non-MMU PDPs,
> > > and there were LSIs with MMU.
> >
> > The LSI-11 system that Lycklama used and described had
> > no MMU. Later LSI implementations of the PDP-11 did,
> > of course.
>
> OK, now I understand how the LSI got described as a PDP without memory
> management.
>
> I'm really surprised to learn how early the LSI was -- I don't think I
> heard of it before the early 80s, and had the impression that that was
> when it was first developed. Having the LSI as early as 1975 makes it
> even sadder that DEC never really got a handle on micros and cheap
> desktop systems.
>
personally that it was available then. The one I used was built
by Charles Rivers Data Systems. A friend used to say it was
"Charles Rivers Data Systmes and Aluminum Screen Door Company".
IIRC, the CPU card was purchased OEM from Western Digital...
Rumor is that WD implemented the LSI-11 with 256 words of
microstore...because the instruction set of the -11 was so
symmetrical.
David Powell
>"Dennis Ritchie" <d...@bell-labs.com> writes:
>
>> "Joe Pfeiffer" <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> quotes me and then writes:
>> >
>> > Also, the LSI wasn't a PDP without memory management, it was the Large
>> > Scale Integrated PDP -- PDP on a few chips. There were non-MMU PDPs,
>> > and there were LSIs with MMU.
>>
>> The LSI-11 system that Lycklama used and described had
>> no MMU. Later LSI implementations of the PDP-11 did,
>> of course.
>
>OK, now I understand how the LSI got described as a PDP without memory
>management.
>
>I'm really surprised to learn how early the LSI was -- I don't think I
>heard of it before the early 80s, and had the impression that that was
>when it was first developed. Having the LSI as early as 1975 makes it
>even sadder that DEC never really got a handle on micros and cheap
>desktop systems.
The 1975 model was very limited. 8kb on the board, and almost as fast
as a PDP8-L DEC loaned us one to play with, but we couldn't find a
use for it.
By 1977, you could buy a PDP11v03, 32kb and a RX01 for about 7000
stirling, in a 30" high rack cab.
In 1980, with the 11/23, we were, at last, able to migrate our PDP8E
apps to Qbus.
Regards,
David P.
Joe Pfeiffer
>
> In 1980, with the 11/23, we were, at last, able to migrate our PDP8E
> apps to Qbus.
The 11/23 was the first one I heard about.
Jorn Barger
> > I've spotted several things in what you have posted
> > that are wrong, as documented in "Unix History". If
> > you want to find out what they are, buy the book.
>
> See, there you go. That's all you had to say,
No, that reply reeks of infantile 'neener, neener, I know and you don't!'
> though one small example of
> what you found wrong (NOT the correct information, just the part you found
> to be incorrect -- finding the correct information is always left as an
> exercise for the reader) would also have been nice.
If you don't use the newsgroup to share information, you're
wasting the newsgroup. Anyone who assumes I'm doing 'homework'
has made an ass of themselves, not of me.
Jorn Barger
> > You're right it was Bell not DEC, but the 1974 date is confirmable:
> > http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html
> > http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1975-1.htm
>
> Much as I dislike arguing with the man who wrote it, I don't see how the
> 1974 date for LSX can be correct. DEC didn't release the LSI-11 until
> 1975.
I've written to HL to doublecheck, but I see now I was assuming it
was done inhouse at DEC before release-- if it was done at Bell
after release, summer 1975 makes more sense. (HL's first email to
me actually says '74-75'.)
I found a description of Microsoft's development system in July 1982:
http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
"a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
running Xenix"
I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
Dennis Ritchie
"Pete Turnbull" <pn...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> In alt.folklore.computers Jorn Barger <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>
> > You're right it was Bell not DEC, but the 1974 date is confirmable:
> > http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html
> > http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1975-1.htm
>
> Much as I dislike arguing with the man who wrote it, I don't see how the
> 1974 date for LSX can be correct. DEC didn't release the LSI-11 until
> 1975. Of course, the system could have run on a non-MMU Unibus system,
> and obviously some of Heinz Lycklama's systems did just that.
Heinz's letter to PUPS says he started in the summer of '74. Could
be a misestimation by a few months, could be that he was planning.
DEC was willing to share information about upcoming machines.
In different posting in the same thread, Barger wonders
> > Later in 1975, AT&T _did_ cautiously start licensing Unix
> > source to universities, [...]
> This had actually started by 1973-74.
> I'd like to find all these licensing-changes collated somewhere--
> the impression I get is that AT&T repeatedly shot themselves in
> the foot, and that the strange course of micro-evolution was
> largely a result of this...?
The PUPS/TUHS groups have also been trying to turn up
the actual contents of the early licenses, without much success.
The earliest were free of cost (later with a copying fee) and
only to educational institutions. Also only with full source.
Almost all were to universities; a couple to high schools, none
to individuals.
By the later 70s commercial-use licenses were available to
companies (including Interactive, RAND, and the like,
also the US and perhaps some non-US governments. These
were definitely charged for. (Incidentally, each US department
had a separate license, e.g. one for DOD, one for DOE etc.)
These likewise came with full source, but relicensing of binaries
was allowed.
All of the activity during this period was constrained by the
fact that AT&T could not be a computer company (both under
the terms of the then-existing consent decree, and FCC
"Computer Inquiry" rules. It was OK to sell fruits of
research, but not to really be in the business (thus, no official support
to outside customers).
After 1984's divestiture, AT&T was allowed, and did, deal
with this a real product, albeit with not enormous success.
Under the somewhat strange circumstances, the whole history
worked out reasonably well. The educational restrictions were not
anything like what one would think of as "open source" in
today's terms, but were still fairly liberal in practice and for
the time. In particular, the earlier source through 7th edition
and 32v were still available for plausible fees.
Thus most of the BSD distibutions.
In time, of course, problems did develop, and thus the
Berkeley efforts to produce "unencumbered" versions.
Two kinds of difficulties happened: UCB folks began to
get tired of having to check Western Electric (later USL)
licenses for the original code. Second, any attempt to
smooth over a System III/V split with the stuff that UCB
were developing became difficult; e.g. the Berkeley CSG group
did not even want to peek at AT&T manuals for fear of
contamination.
> Lychlama says AT&T started allowing binary licenses as early as
> 1977, for IS/1 (ie INTERactive), but wouldn't cut Microsoft the
> same kind of (binaries) deal.
Right (though I don't remember the date: Heinz would).
Dennis
arargh...@enteract.com
<d...@bell-labs.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> I'd like to find all these licensing-changes collated somewhere--
>> the impression I get is that AT&T repeatedly shot themselves in
> > the foot, and that the strange course of micro-evolution was
>> largely a result of this...?
>
>The PUPS/TUHS groups have also been trying to turn up
>the actual contents of the early licenses, without much success.
>The earliest were free of cost (later with a copying fee) and
>only to educational institutions. Also only with full source.
>Almost all were to universities; a couple to high schools, none
>to individuals.
>
>By the later 70s commercial-use licenses were available to
>companies (including Interactive, RAND, and the like,
>also the US and perhaps some non-US governments. These
>were definitely charged for. (Incidentally, each US department
>had a separate license, e.g. one for DOD, one for DOE etc.)
>These likewise came with full source, but relicensing of binaries
>was allowed.
I have specimen copies of the AT&T licenses for UNIX SYstem III.
I think that they are from the late 70's or possibly early 80's. They
are the commerical versions I believe. I also have a bunch of
glossies for various AT&T products, that I got at the same time.
Dennis, if these sound like something that those groups are looking
for, please contact me via email.
<snip>
--
Arargh (at arargh dot com) http://www.arargh.com
To reply by email, change the domain name, and remove the garbage.
(Enteract can keep the spam, they are gone anyway)
Eugene Miya
In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
Jorn Barger <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>I didn't say it was _well-known_. ;^/
...
>I'd be surprised if you can find a single example of someone offering
>to summarize _books_, especially if a recommendation is short and not
>obviously relevant.
Whole subhierarchies exist. Try rec.arts.books, rec.arts.books.reviews.
>If my local libraries had the book, I would already have read it.
Consider interlibrary loan.
>(I'm wrestling with Bach-1986 currently.) Before I special order it,
Not a bad book.
>I need to be convinced it's competitive with the thousands of
>web-accessible pages I've already read, as documented on my timeline
Only web eh?
>> "There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
>> --The Register
>I've had lots of other self-serving sigs since 1989 that you're
>welcome to peruse: http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/sigs.txt
Arthur has competition.
Goran Larsson
> "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
> running Xenix"
>
> I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
Whose VAX 11/250 did they use? :-)
--
Göran Larsson http://www.mitt-eget.com
Andrew Gabriel
"Dennis Ritchie" <d...@bell-labs.com> writes:
>
> The PUPS/TUHS groups have also been trying to turn up
> the actual contents of the early licenses, without much success.
> The earliest were free of cost (later with a copying fee) and
> only to educational institutions. Also only with full source.
> Almost all were to universities; a couple to high schools, none
> to individuals.
>
> By the later 70s commercial-use licenses were available to
> companies (including Interactive, RAND, and the like,
> also the US and perhaps some non-US governments. These
> were definitely charged for. (Incidentally, each US department
> had a separate license, e.g. one for DOD, one for DOE etc.)
> These likewise came with full source, but relicensing of binaries
> was allowed.
Yes, I was working for GEC Computers Ltd in the UK in the early
1980's (which was part of GEC Marconi company, nothing to do with
the US GE Company). We purchased source licence for SVR3.1 and
SVR3.2 including relicensing of binaries, for porting Unix to
the GEC Series 63 minicomputer (the Unix was called UX/63).
IIRC, the license cost was around £100,000 at the time (around
$150,000 at today's conversion rates). I never saw the paperwork,
but it included some terms along the lines that allowed AT&T to
turn up anytime and search our premises. They never did that I'm
aware of.
We were also a Sun customer and reseller, and in those days, Sun
would give you their source code for free if you were an AT&T
source licensee. (I think BSD did too, although there wasn't
a lot of difference between SunOS and BSD in the early '80's).
--
Andrew Gabriel
Consultant Software Engineer
Arthur T. Murray
>
>>> netiquette.
>
> In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
> Jorn Barger <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>>> "There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
>>> --The Register
>> I've had lots of other self-serving sigs since 1989 that you're
>> welcome to peruse: http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/sigs.txt
>
> Arthur has competition.
Eugene! Jorn Barger and I first "rumbled" on the 'Net back in 1996.
Eventually a friendly Jorn taught me how to use HTML "PRE" tags for
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/jsaimind.html my AI user interface, etc.
Jorn! Don't mess with Eugene Miya; he will win. You don't know
whom you're dealing with in the living legend of Eugene, who,
for one thing, is credited with first on-line use (ca. 1982?)
of the "frequently asked questions" acronym of "FAQ."
If Eugene even thinks about you with displeasure, you are doomed.
Eugene, be careful or Jorn will do one of his "Web Dossiers" on you.
Jorn and I have rumbled with the fabled eminence grise embodied in
http://www.google.com/search?q=Roger+Schank+AI (yields 2,230 hits).
Eugene, will you please cause "AI4U" to be a museum gift shop item? TIA.
A.T. Murray
--
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/aisource.html is the cluster of Mind
programs described in the AI textbook "AI4U" based on AI Mind-1.1
by Arthur T. Murray which may be pre-ordered from bookstores with
hardcover ISBN 0-595-65437-1 and ODP softcover ISBN 0-595-25922-7.
Joel Gallun
> I got to do some work on an LSI-11 in 1978 or 1979...so I know
> personally that it was available then. The one I used was built
> by Charles Rivers Data Systems.
My first hands-on computer experience was with the LSI-11 in '79. The
one I used had a box & backplane made by Plessy. The CPU board was
from DEC though. I thought it was the greatest computer in the world
:)
Joel
Jorn Barger
> >I'd be surprised if you can find a single example of someone offering
> >to summarize _books_, especially if a recommendation is short and not
> >obviously relevant.
>
> Whole subhierarchies exist. Try rec.arts.books, rec.arts.books.reviews.
Eugene, I'm noticing a pattern that you give curt 'responses' that
don't even convince me you've understood the question.
First, I posed some detailed questions about Unix-like OSes on early
microprocessors, and you (curtly) suggested a very general oral history
of Unix-proper and a book on supercomputers (!?).
Now I try to explain why recommending _books_ on netnews is a different
class of contribution than recommending webpages or offering actual
information, and you seem to think I don't understand that there's
a newsgroup devoted to book reviews. (How is that remotely relevant
to the issue of netiquette?)
> >If my local libraries had the book, I would already have read it.
>
> Consider interlibrary loan.
Eugene, in your fantasies do you see yourself as an omnipotent
dictator who sends men to their deaths by raising his little
finger?
If not, why do you imagine that your not-obviously-well-informed
one-line commands will send me scurrying on this multi-hour task?
> >I need to be convinced it's competitive with the thousands of
> >web-accessible pages I've already read, as documented on my timeline
>
> Only web eh?
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but for computer history, the Web beats
most if not all library collections. And it has the added benefit
that someone building a webpage (to _share_ their research) can link
every source, allowing readers to pursue specialised topics in more
detail.
> >> "There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
> >> --The Register
> >I've had lots of other self-serving sigs since 1989 that you're
> >welcome to peruse: http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/sigs.txt
>
> Arthur has competition.
Eugene, do you really feel that ad-hominems make this newsgroup a
better place?
Do you feel that you've contributed _anything_ to the Unixes-thread,
that made it useful?
Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
Rupert Pigott
news:16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com...
[SNIP]
> Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
Just a tip for you here Jorn based on exchanging USENET posts for
over a decade on and off with Eugene...
Eugene's Ego is totally bullet-proof.
I'm horribly envious, it is a useful thing to have in the big bad world. :)
If I ever write SF I'm going to put the "E2-Shield" into it.
Take Jorn & Eugene,
Rupert
Alistair Gale
<d...@bell-labs.com> wrote:
>By the later 70s commercial-use licenses were available to
>companies (including Interactive, RAND, and the like,
>also the US and perhaps some non-US governments. These
>were definitely charged for. (Incidentally, each US department
>had a separate license, e.g. one for DOD, one for DOE etc.)
>These likewise came with full source, but relicensing of binaries
>was allowed.
>
>All of the activity during this period was constrained by the
>fact that AT&T could not be a computer company (both under
>the terms of the then-existing consent decree, and FCC
>"Computer Inquiry" rules. It was OK to sell fruits of
>research, but not to really be in the business (thus, no official support
>to outside customers).
>
>After 1984's divestiture, AT&T was allowed, and did, deal
>with this a real product, albeit with not enormous success.
When did the "children's building blocks" UNIX advert appear? I'm
pretty sure I saw it while browsing through back issues of SciAm mag.
when I was in Boston in 1977. According to the chart at
http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/versions.html this would have
been before the commercial availability of the OS (V7 and later).
Is there someplace I can download a scan of the ad? The UNIX history
pages at the bell-labs site just show the blocks, not the whole ad.
http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/
--
thanks, alistair
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
Kelli Halliburton <kell...@crosswinds.not> wrote:
>By the way (sorry, I'm responding to myself, but I just thought of
>something), I do agree with others in this thread who have said that there
>is no such rule of netiquette. It's rather impolite of him to suggest that
>there is a rule that enforces what he could simply have asked for as a
>matter of courtesy.
Gee, I just got told in rec.games. roguelike.nethack that I breached
netiquette by telling someone who labeled his post with [n00b] that
would be taken more seriously if he lost the dorktype.
What's usenet coming to when people think that flaming clueless
newcomers is wrong . . .
hawk, who's been doing it since before the word newbie was first used on
usenet
--
Richard E. Hawkins, Asst. Prof. of Economics /"\ ASCII ribbon campaign
doc...@psu.edu Smeal 178 (814) 375-4700 \ / against HTML mail
These opinions will not be those of X and postings.
Penn State until it pays my retainer. / \
Pete Fenelon
> My first hands-on computer experience was with the LSI-11 in '79. The
> one I used had a box & backplane made by Plessy. The CPU board was
> from DEC though. I thought it was the greatest computer in the world
> :)
>
I last saw a Plessey LSI-11 in about 1989 - it was a "portable
computer", meaning two blokes could lift that and a PT-100E (the best
VT100 clone ever) and put them in the back of a car so you could take
them to do various nasty things with sonar buoys.... ;P
pete
--
pe...@fenelon.com "there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas" HMHB
Elliott Roper
In article <usojs82...@corp.supernews.com>, Pete Fenelon
<pe...@fenelon.com> wrote:
> I last saw a Plessey LSI-11 in about 1989 - it was a "portable
> computer", meaning two blokes could lift that and a PT-100E (the best
> VT100 clone ever)
Nah! C.Itoh ....was it CIT101? *THAT* was the best ever. Beautiful
looking, robust, sharpest ever screen, and a delightful keyboard.
And it had an escape key where god meant it to be.
Elliott
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Carl Lowenstein
Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>
>I'm really surprised to learn how early the LSI was -- I don't think I
>heard of it before the early 80s, and had the impression that that was
>when it was first developed. Having the LSI as early as 1975 makes it
>even sadder that DEC never really got a handle on micros and cheap
>desktop systems.
For what it's worth, I have here in my hand an 8.5 x 11 set of
9 pages of hardware drawings for "LSI-11 CPU MODULE M7264-0-1 Rev D".
The cover sheet has various sign-off dates from 6-9-75 to 7-11-75.
carl
--
carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
clowe...@ucsd.edu
Dennis Ritchie
"Alistair Gale" <alis...@caribsurf.com> wondered
> >After 1984's divestiture, AT&T was allowed, and did, deal
> >with this a real product, albeit with not enormous success.
>
> When did the "children's building blocks" UNIX advert appear? I'm
> pretty sure I saw it while browsing through back issues of SciAm mag.
> when I was in Boston in 1977. According to the chart at
> http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/versions.html this would have
> been before the commercial availability of the OS (V7 and later).
>
> Is there someplace I can download a scan of the ad? The UNIX history
> pages at the bell-labs site just show the blocks, not the whole ad.
> http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/
I found a giant version of the photo, and installed a cut-down
rendition at http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/unixad.html along
with the earlier advert that was there before. This is
dated to 1980, but doesn't include the actual copy; its
description appears to quote from it, however. I'm not
sure I fully trust the date.
On the other hand, you can make out the troff source in it.
Dennis
Jorn Barger
> > somehow the Boston Children's Museum (!?!?)
> > briefly sold the first micro Unix-alike in 1978, for the
> > LSI-11, called 'Tynix'. This is mentioned in a Jan 1981
> > Byte (p200), and I wonder if it wasn't Lycklama's port
> > sneaking out the side door?
>
> PJ Plauger has just clarified that this was a small project
> of Bill Mayhew's, not LSX.
Mayhew has posted confirming details to pups:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2002-November/000610.html
J. Clarke
jo...@enteract.com says...
> eug...@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) wrote in message news:<3dcb7192$1...@news.ucsc.edu>...
> > >I'd be surprised if you can find a single example of someone offering
> > >to summarize _books_, especially if a recommendation is short and not
> > >obviously relevant.
> >
> > Whole subhierarchies exist. Try rec.arts.books, rec.arts.books.reviews.
>
> Eugene, I'm noticing a pattern that you give curt 'responses' that
> don't even convince me you've understood the question.
>
> First, I posed some detailed questions about Unix-like OSes on early
> microprocessors, and you (curtly) suggested a very general oral history
> of Unix-proper and a book on supercomputers (!?).
>
> Now I try to explain why recommending _books_ on netnews is a different
> class of contribution than recommending webpages or offering actual
> information, and you seem to think I don't understand that there's
> a newsgroup devoted to book reviews. (How is that remotely relevant
> to the issue of netiquette?)
Whether a book represents a difficulty for you depends on the
seriousness with which you are pursuing your research. If this is idle
curiosity then I can see where you would not want to pay for or wait for
a book to arrive. OTOH, if you are at all serious about this, either as
a professional researcher (I am including professional authors in this
category, although some are quite careless about such matters) or as a
serious amateur, then obtaining a book (assuming the effort to track
down a copy is not so great as to interfere in a major way with your
chasing after other sources of information) should not be a hardship for
you.
Now, you are also dealing with people who have been in the computer
industry longer than many of us have been alive, and who have been on
the Internet since before it was an Internet and on USENET before it was
associated with the Internet, so lecturing them on netiquette isn't
likely to accomplish much other than annoying them.
By the way, just as an exercise, see if you can find out who is credited
with creating the acronym "FAQ". And when. And what he was working on
at the time.
> > >If my local libraries had the book, I would already have read it.
> >
> > Consider interlibrary loan.
>
> Eugene, in your fantasies do you see yourself as an omnipotent
> dictator who sends men to their deaths by raising his little
> finger?
No, he is giving you the kind of advice that one gives to a serious but
not very experienced researcher. In that regard his doing you an
honor--considering his background a rather significant one.
> If not, why do you imagine that your not-obviously-well-informed
> one-line commands will send me scurrying on this multi-hour task?
??? Considering an interlibrary loan is only a multi-hour task if you
are the sort who spends multiple hours ruminating before deciding
whether to act.
> > >I need to be convinced it's competitive with the thousands of
> > >web-accessible pages I've already read, as documented on my timeline
> >
> > Only web eh?
>
> Perhaps you haven't noticed, but for computer history, the Web beats
> most if not all library collections. And it has the added benefit
> that someone building a webpage (to _share_ their research) can link
> every source, allowing readers to pursue specialised topics in more
> detail.
The Web contains a good deal of information about events that occurred
subsequent to the creation and deployment of HTML. Some of the HTML
pages are linked to ftp sites that contain significant amounts of
information about events that occurred subsequent to the creation and
deployment of ftp.
Most of the major conceptual development of computers and operating
systems occurred long before either of these events took place.
This is one of the major difficulties with the Internet as a research
tool. It has great breadth but little chronological depth.
Again, you are dealing with people who were working with computers
before there _was_ a Web.
> > >> "There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
> > >> --The Register
> > >I've had lots of other self-serving sigs since 1989 that you're
> > >welcome to peruse: http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/sigs.txt
> >
> > Arthur has competition.
>
> Eugene, do you really feel that ad-hominems make this newsgroup a
> better place?
Since you do not appear to have even presented an argument, attempting
to discredit your argument by attacking your character is not possible.
An "insult" is not an "ad hominem" unless used in that context.
> Do you feel that you've contributed _anything_ to the Unixes-thread,
> that made it useful?
>
> Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
ROF,L. In _this_ newsgroup? Bear in mind that some of the people
participating in this discussion know the original developers of Unix
personally and have worked with them extensively. At least one of them
has coauthored a book with one of them. While it was a long time ago
and memory is fallible, still, they're not going to be taken in on
_that_ topic by _anybody_.
--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(used to be jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
Jorn Barger
news:<aqik4...@enews4.newsguy.com>:
[...]
> Whether a book represents a difficulty for you depends on the
> seriousness with which you are pursuing your research.
No, you're confusing cost (difficulty) with expected-benefit-
minus-cost.
> If this is idle curiosity then I can see where you would not
> want to pay for or wait for a book to arrive.
If you peeked at the urls I've mentioned, you'd see that 'idle'
isn't in it. (I've collated ~1000 weblinks already, researching
related topics.)
If you look further, you might suspect that by Monday I'll have
lost interest and moved on to something completely different,
which by pre-21st-century standards seems a character flaw, but
which makes little difference today, since the webpages I've
already left are each best-of-their-kind, and are explicitly
offered as 'open content' for future improvement by others.
eg: http://www.robotwisdom.com/linux/timeline.html
> OTOH, if you are at all serious about this, either as
> a professional researcher (I am including professional authors
> in this category, although some are quite careless about such
> matters) or as a serious amateur, then obtaining a book
> (assuming the effort to track down a copy is not so great as to
> interfere in a major way with your chasing after other sources
> of information) should not be a hardship for you.
The question, though, is whether it will contain a single answer
to my specialised questions, given that it's a general reference.
No one has credibly addressed this yet.
> Now, you are also dealing with people who have been in the
> computer industry longer than many of us have been alive, and
> who have been on the Internet since before it was an Internet
> and on USENET before it was associated with the Internet, so
> lecturing them on netiquette isn't likely to accomplish much
> other than annoying them.
The correlation between experience and wisdom is approximate.
The topic of netiquette is still wide open, and _many_ newsgroup
readers still have open minds for new insights, I'm sure.
> By the way, just as an exercise, see if you can find out who
> is credited with creating the acronym "FAQ". And when. And
> what he was working on at the time.
He first came to my attention c1993, when I saw his 'prototype'
FAQ on FAQs with the emailed responses kludged onto the end...
which, dismayingly, is still being autoposted in the same
1992-kludgy-prototype form. (Not much of a testimony to his
wisdom and/or netiquette.)
> > > Consider interlibrary loan.
> > Eugene, in your fantasies do you see yourself as an omnipotent
> > dictator who sends men to their deaths by raising his little
> > finger?
>
> No, he is giving you the kind of advice that one gives to a
> serious but not very experienced researcher.
Before he can give appropriate advice, he has to have understood
my project. His reference to supercomputers makes it pretty
clear he didn't bother.
And (my main point about netiquette, which will _eventually_
be commonly accepted, I'm sure) before he should expect me to
take his suggestion seriously, since it would involve a fairly
high level of effort on my part-- tracking down and reading a
book-- I think netiquette demands that he prove his bonafides
by spelling out which topics of mine it answers.
The reason this is important to me is that many times in the
past I've made the effort, and found that I was the victim of
utterly worthless advice, from someone who wanted to appear
helpful but in fact didn't remotely understand my question.
(Most recently this involved an AI paper on text-summarisation
that I tracked down and struggled thru, only to find that it
had zero bearing on my question. This one _is_ archived on
Google.)
> In that regard his doing you an honor--considering his
> background a rather significant one.
Happily, netnews is immune to this sort of specious,
ad-hominen deference.
> > If not, why do you imagine that your not-obviously-well-informed
> > one-line commands will send me scurrying on this multi-hour task?
>
> ??? Considering an interlibrary loan is only a multi-hour task if you
> are the sort who spends multiple hours ruminating before deciding
> whether to act.
I was including the time to order the book, collect the book,
and skim or read the book.
> > Perhaps you haven't noticed, but for computer history, the Web beats
> > most if not all library collections. And it has the added benefit that
> > someone building a webpage (to _share_ their research) can link every
> > source, allowing readers to pursue specialised topics in more detail.
>
> The Web contains a good deal of information about events that occurred
> subsequent to the creation and deployment of HTML.
No, you're clearly guessing here based on a fallacious
hypothesis. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia.
> This is one of the major difficulties with the Internet as a research
> tool. It has great breadth but little chronological depth.
It's adding a million pages a day, and historical topics are
growing as quickly as everything else. (Computer history is
growing much faster than average.)
> Again, you are dealing with people who were working with computers
> before there _was_ a Web.
Before you make assumptions yourself, you might read, eg:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/jbai.html
> > > Arthur has competition.
> > Eugene, do you really feel that ad-hominems make this newsgroup a
> > better place?
>
> Since you do not appear to have even presented an argument, attempting
> to discredit your argument by attacking your character is not possible.
> An "insult" is not an "ad hominem" unless used in that context.
He was obviously trying to discredit me, since I'd _argued_ that
his contribution lacked good netiquette.
> > Do you feel that you've contributed _anything_ to the Unixes-thread,
> > that made it useful?
> > Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
>
> ROF,L. In _this_ newsgroup? Bear in mind that some of the people
> participating in this discussion know the original developers of Unix
> personally and have worked with them extensively. At least one of them
> has coauthored a book with one of them. While it was a long time ago
> and memory is fallible, still, they're not going to be taken in on
> _that_ topic by _anybody_.
I have to wonder if you misread 'thread' for 'newsgroup'.
And my 'gullible' was directed at their willingness to overlook
bad logic (and bad netiquette) in favor of a pose of superior
wisdom (your own reply being a perfect example of this sort of
gullibility).
--
"There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
--The Register
Robot Wisdom Weblog: http://www.robotwisdom.com/
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
Elliott Roper <ell...@yrl.co.uk> wrote:
>> I last saw a Plessey LSI-11 in about 1989 - it was a "portable
>> computer", meaning two blokes could lift that and a PT-100E (the best
>> VT100 clone ever)
>Nah! C.Itoh ....was it CIT101? *THAT* was the best ever. Beautiful
>looking, robust, sharpest ever screen, and a delightful keyboard.
>And it had an escape key where god meant it to be.
But that gets tricky. I also expect that key to be a ~ when shifted.
To make matters worse, that's also where the backtick seems to belong. .
. . eventually I guess I'll get around to mapping it so that it's
escape, but shifted it's ~, and alt makes it `.
hawk, whining that it's awkward to use ~ when it's not on the escape
key.
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
>ROF,L. In _this_ newsgroup?
Sure. I'm sure *someone* in here actually tried installing Windows XP,
or 2000, or NT4, having fallen for the "Really--it works *this* time
line"
:)
>Bear in mind that some of the people
>participating in this discussion know the original developers of Unix
>personally and have worked with them extensively.
Uhmm, didn't Dennis post somewehre in the discussion at some pont, too?
hawk
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
>And (my main point about netiquette, which will _eventually_
>be commonly accepted, I'm sure)
Uh, yeah, at about the same time we trust Bill Clinton around our
daughters . . .
>before he should expect me to
>take his suggestion seriously, since it would involve a fairly
>high level of effort on my part-- tracking down and reading a
>book-- I think netiquette demands that he prove his bonafides
>by spelling out which topics of mine it answers.
I think you've confused "netiquette" with the concepts of "employee" and
"paid consultant"
>The reason this is important to me is that many times in the
>past I've made the effort, and found that I was the victim of
>utterly worthless advice, from someone who wanted to appear
>helpful but in fact didn't remotely understand my question.
Gee, you got what you paid for.
You're complaining that people you asked for free advice didn't spend a
lot of time researching your problem . . .
Jorn Barger
news:<aqja7p$q...@r02n01.cac.psu.edu>:
> >before he should expect me to
> >take his suggestion seriously, since it would involve a fairly
> >high level of effort on my part-- tracking down and reading a
> >book-- I think netiquette demands that he prove his bonafides
> >by spelling out which topics of mine it answers.
>
> I think you've confused "netiquette" with the concepts of
> "employee" and "paid consultant"
The purpose of the group is the free exchange of information,
and most participants seem to understand this, and give freely
when they know an answer.
Suggesting a book can _theoretically_ be a useful contribution,
if the suggestion is non-obvious, and if the suggestor makes
it clear what they think the book offers.
Unfortunately, suggesting a book without adding any justification
usually comes across as a dismissive attempt to squelch discussion.
> >The reason this is important to me is that many times in the
> >past I've made the effort, and found that I was the victim of
> >utterly worthless advice, from someone who wanted to appear
> >helpful but in fact didn't remotely understand my question.
>
> Gee, you got what you paid for.
>
> You're complaining that people you asked for free advice didn't
> spend a lot of time researching your problem . . .
No, your analysis is flawed. If they have good reason to think
their suggestion will be useful, they must remember enough of
the content to summarise it without new research.
--
"There's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger"
--The Register
Alistair Gale
<d...@bell-labs.com> wrote:
>"Alistair Gale" <alis...@caribsurf.com> wondered
[snip]
>> When did the "children's building blocks" UNIX advert appear? I'm
>> pretty sure I saw it while browsing through back issues of SciAm mag.
>> when I was in Boston in 1977. According to the chart at
>> http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/versions.html this would have
>> been before the commercial availability of the OS (V7 and later).
[snip]
>I found a giant version of the photo, and installed a cut-down
>rendition at http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/unixad.html along
>with the earlier advert that was there before. This is
>dated to 1980, but doesn't include the actual copy; its
>description appears to quote from it, however. I'm not
>sure I fully trust the date.
>
>On the other hand, you can make out the troff source in it.
>
> Dennis
Thanks! That was later than I thought. But the date looks a little
weird: 09/00/1980.
--
alistair
J. Clarke
says...
> In article <aqik4...@enews4.newsguy.com>,
> J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
> >> Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
>
> >ROF,L. In _this_ newsgroup?
>
> Sure. I'm sure *someone* in here actually tried installing Windows XP,
> or 2000, or NT4, having fallen for the "Really--it works *this* time
> line"
FWIW, a friend of mine finds the "Getting ready to run Windows for the
first time" message that comes up during Windows 95 installation to be
one of the funniest things he has ever seen. Still, 2K does work a lot
better than any of the 9X variants, as long as you're careful about the
hardware you try to run it on. I looked at XP once, nearly barfed, gave
it to the teenager next door, he looked at it for a bit and gave it
back.
> :)
> >Bear in mind that some of the people
> >participating in this discussion know the original developers of Unix
> >personally and have worked with them extensively.
>
> Uhmm, didn't Dennis post somewehre in the discussion at some pont, too?
I didn't remember for sure, and was too lazy to call up the thread.
Brian Inglis
Richard E. Hawkins) wrote:
>In article <aqik4...@enews4.newsguy.com>,
>J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
>
>>ROF,L. In _this_ newsgroup?
>
>Sure. I'm sure *someone* in here actually tried installing Windows XP,
>or 2000, or NT4, having fallen for the "Really--it works *this* time
>line"
Only the newbies -- I expect none of the regular posters would
either use or believe that line from anyone.
Brian "Running Windows 95 since 1998" Inglis
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
--
Brian....@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
fake address use address above to reply
ab...@aol.com tos...@aol.com ab...@att.com ab...@earthlink.com
ab...@hotmail.com ab...@mci.com ab...@msn.com ab...@sprint.com
ab...@yahoo.com ab...@cadvision.com ab...@shaw.ca ab...@telus.com
ab...@ibsystems.com u...@ftc.gov spam traps
jmfb...@aol.com
J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>In article <aqj9ue$q...@r02n01.cac.psu.edu>, ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu
>says...
>> In article <aqik4...@enews4.newsguy.com>,
>> J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> >> Or are you just showing off your ego to your gullible pals?
>>
>> >ROF,L. In _this_ newsgroup?
>>
>> Sure. I'm sure *someone* in here actually tried installing Windows XP,
>> or 2000, or NT4, having fallen for the "Really--it works *this* time
>> line"
>
>FWIW, a friend of mine finds the "Getting ready to run Windows for the
>first time" message that comes up during Windows 95 installation to be
>one of the funniest things he has ever seen.
I have to get "ready" to run Windows? That sounds like I'm going
on a first date.
> .. Still, 2K does work a lot
>better than any of the 9X variants, as long as you're careful about the
>hardware you try to run it on. I looked at XP once, nearly barfed, gave
>it to the teenager next door, he looked at it for a bit and gave it
>back.
OH, thank the bit gods. There exists a youngster in this world
who, not only has sense, but acts on it?
<snip>
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
jmfb...@aol.com
jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote in
>news:<aqik4...@enews4.newsguy.com>:
>[...]
>> Whether a book represents a difficulty for you depends on the
>> seriousness with which you are pursuing your research.
>
>No, you're confusing cost (difficulty) with expected-benefit-
>minus-cost.
>> OTOH, if you are at all serious about this, either as
>> a professional researcher (I am including professional authors
>> in this category, although some are quite careless about such
>> matters) or as a serious amateur, then obtaining a book
>> (assuming the effort to track down a copy is not so great as to
>> interfere in a major way with your chasing after other sources
>> of information) should not be a hardship for you.
>
>The question, though, is whether it will contain a single answer
>to my specialised questions, given that it's a general reference.
>No one has credibly addressed this yet.
I've been gone for a couple of days and can't recall what your
question was. I do recall that you didn't ask about anything
that I knew about.
<snip>
>> > > Consider interlibrary loan.
>> > Eugene, in your fantasies do you see yourself as an omnipotent
>> > dictator who sends men to their deaths by raising his little
>> > finger?
>>
>> No, he is giving you the kind of advice that one gives to a
>> serious but not very experienced researcher.
>
>Before he can give appropriate advice, he has to have understood
>my project. His reference to supercomputers makes it pretty
>clear he didn't bother.
>
>And (my main point about netiquette, which will _eventually_
>be commonly accepted, I'm sure) before he should expect me to
>take his suggestion seriously, since it would involve a fairly
>high level of effort on my part-- tracking down and reading a
>book-- I think netiquette demands that he prove his bonafides
>by spelling out which topics of mine it answers.
Then why didn't you ask about his bonafides? People in this
newsgroup would have told you something.
Eugene and I have an extreme personality conflict. However,
I'm not about to try to teach him netiquette (he's older than
I am in that biz).
>
>The reason this is important to me is that many times in the
>past I've made the effort, and found that I was the victim of
>utterly worthless advice, from someone who wanted to appear
>helpful but in fact didn't remotely understand my question.
Then you've got some work to do. A huge part of participating
in newsgroups is doing exactly that kind of sifting. Note
that some people give worthless advice in good faith (I'm
completely dismissing the cranks who are malicious). This means
that the person trying to help you thinks that s/he understands
the question. If you find that people are misunderstanding the
question, you might consider the fact that perhaps your writing
need work.
>
>(Most recently this involved an AI paper on text-summarisation
>that I tracked down and struggled thru, only to find that it
>had zero bearing on my question. This one _is_ archived on
>Google.)
So you did get help from him.
jmfb...@aol.com
news:<aqcqpt$8uprq$1...@ID-156882.news.dfncis.de>...
>> > The story starts in 1974, with Heinz Lycklama at DEC
>> > writing LSI-Unix for the LSI-11 (PDP-11 without memory
>> > management), while Gary Kildall was simultaneously
>> > offering the first version of CP/M in Monterey,
>> > California.
>>
>> Lycklama's paper (BSTJ v57 #6 part 2) on LSX
>> was published in the Jul-Aug issue for 1978, received
>> Dec 1977. I don't think the LSI-ll was as early as 1974; his reference
>> for the LSI-11 manual is to a 1976 publication. Also, I believe
>> Lycklama was at Bell Labs by 1974.
>
>You're right it was Bell not DEC, but the 1974 date is confirmable:
>http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html
>http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1975-1.htm
Which Bell are you talking about???!!!!Gordon Bell or the company
known as Ma Bell?
>
>I also just got an email reply from Lycklama himself with lots
>more details.
>
>> > Later in 1975, AT&T _did_ cautiously start licensing Unix
>> > source to universities, [...]
>> This had actually started by 1973-74.
>
>I'd like to find all these licensing-changes collated somewhere--
>the impression I get is that AT&T repeatedly shot themselves in
>the foot, and that the strange course of micro-evolution was
>largely a result of this...?
I wouldn't consider this a case of "shot themselves in the foot".
Denis may disagree with this..however, ATT was NOT in the OS
business. So decisions that had to be made for their core
business could undercut the OS business.
When you look at any kind of development (this isn't unique
to the computer biz), you have to consider the context when
those decisions were made. Every decision involves weighting
factors. Every choice has a price.
jmfb...@aol.com
Pete Turnbull <pn...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>In alt.folklore.computers Jorn Barger <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>
>> You're right it was Bell not DEC, but the 1974 date is confirmable:
>> http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html
>> http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1975-1.htm
>
>1974 date for LSX can be correct. DEC didn't release the LSI-11 until
>1975. Of course, the system could have run on a non-MMU Unibus system,
>and obviously some of Heinz Lycklama's systems did just that.
>
>BTW, although DEC made several successors to the LSI-11 which were based
>on the same chipset and its successors (F-11 and J-11 chips), only the
>first was actually called an LSI-11.
>
It certainly sounded like the dates are screwed up. I think
he's also confusing Gordon's last name with the company.
I haven't read the OP's cites, but Gordon does have a selective
memory.
jmfb...@aol.com
news:<aqdsnf$gcc$1...@pump1.york.ac.uk>...
>> > You're right it was Bell not DEC, but the 1974 date is confirmable:
>> > http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2001-March/000273.html
>> > http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/timeline/1975-1.htm
>>
>> Much as I dislike arguing with the man who wrote it, I don't see how the
>> 1974 date for LSX can be correct. DEC didn't release the LSI-11 until
>> 1975.
>
>was done inhouse at DEC before release-- if it was done at Bell
>after release, summer 1975 makes more sense. (HL's first email to
>me actually says '74-75'.)
>
>
>I found a description of Microsoft's development system in July 1982:
> http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
>
> "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
> running Xenix"
>
>I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
I don't remember any SPR's coming in from Misoft. Did
they really buy a 2060?
jmfb...@aol.com
h...@invalid.invalid (Goran Larsson) wrote:
>In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
>Jorn Barger <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>
>> running Xenix"
>>
>> I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
>
>
Right. And the 11/70s in 1983 has smell to it.
jmfb...@aol.com
>Elliott Roper <ell...@yrl.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>> I last saw a Plessey LSI-11 in about 1989 - it was a "portable
>>> computer", meaning two blokes could lift that and a PT-100E (the best
>>> VT100 clone ever)
>>Nah! C.Itoh ....was it CIT101? *THAT* was the best ever. Beautiful
>>looking, robust, sharpest ever screen, and a delightful keyboard.
>>And it had an escape key where god meant it to be.
>
>But that gets tricky. I also expect that key to be a ~ when shifted.
>To make matters worse, that's also where the backtick seems to belong. .
>escape, but shifted it's ~, and alt makes it `.
>
>hawk, whining that it's awkward to use ~ when it's not on the escape
>key.
I could swear that the tilde used to be the key that I used
to terminate TECO commands. And I always called it altmode.
JMF tried to break me of that habit (calling it altmode) but
never succeeded. I think I got the habit by using a terminal
that called that key an ALT.
jmfb...@aol.com
c...@deeptow.ucsd.edu (Carl Lowenstein) wrote:
>In article <1b65v9b...@cs.nmsu.edu>,
>Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>I'm really surprised to learn how early the LSI was -- I don't think I
>>heard of it before the early 80s, and had the impression that that was
>>when it was first developed. Having the LSI as early as 1975 makes it
>>even sadder that DEC never really got a handle on micros and cheap
>>desktop systems.
>
>For what it's worth, I have here in my hand an 8.5 x 11 set of
>9 pages of hardware drawings for "LSI-11 CPU MODULE M7264-0-1 Rev D".
>The cover sheet has various sign-off dates from 6-9-75 to 7-11-75.
That doesn't imply ship date. I was never really involved with
the hardware development procedures. My best guess is that
those sign-off dates were approvals for an ECU. It would taken
much longer to get into production (another word for shipped to
the field). To get an accurate date about _when_ something
was available in the field, you'ld have to get the piece of
paper we (DEC) called the SPD (software product description).
It might be possible that the hardware gear was sent to somebody
before that. I don't think there were that many people buying
pure hardware without any software.
Thomas Dickey
> hawk, who's been doing it since before the word newbie was first used on
> usenet
The term "newbie" was apparently coined by people who would be so regarded.
--
Thomas E. Dickey <dic...@radix.net> <dic...@herndon4.his.com>
http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com
Floyd Davidson
>In comp.unix.misc Dr. Richard E. Hawkins <ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu> wrote:
>
>> hawk, who's been doing it since before the word newbie was first used on
>> usenet
>
>The term "newbie" was apparently coined by people who would be so regarded.
Or maybe not. The earliest "newbie" in a Usenet article that
google turned up is dated May 1988, and was posted by Barbara
Dyker, with the following email addresses
CSNET: dy...@boulder.Colorado.EDU
UUNET: ...rutgers!ncar!dinl!tosgcla!dyker
The usage is particularly apropos to this thread!
"I did my stuggling as a newbie - let's get some
info out for those that are new to the net so
that it works for all of us.
Or shall we ignore newbies like someone suggested
we ignore non-programmers??"
--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.ptialaska.net/~floyd>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl...@barrow.com
Don Chiasson
<jmfb...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:aqlrkd$b6k$6...@bob.news.rcn.net...[snip...]
> >
> >I found a description of Microsoft's development system in July 1982:
> > http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
> >
> > "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
> > running Xenix"
> >
> >I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
>
> I don't remember any SPR's coming in from Misoft. Did
> they really buy a 2060?
>
I think M$ bought a 2020 for software development because
Gates and Paul Allen used their own cross compiler on Harvard's
DEC10.The year 1982 was early in M$'s PC evolution. A 2060
was a big machine, and probably would have been too
expensive for a small company.
Re SPR's, I thought they only came from technically
sophisticated customers. :-) A more likely explanation
might be that as an economy measure, M$ didn't buy software
support therefore no SPR's.
Question: how reliable is the detailed information on The
History of Computing Project (http://www.thocp.net/)?
The page referring to the 2060 contains no references.
(I'm not criticizing THOCP: interesting site with a lot
of information.)
---Don
e-mail: it's not not, it's hot.
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
>In article <aqke2...@enews3.newsguy.com>,
> J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>FWIW, a friend of mine finds the "Getting ready to run Windows for the
>>first time" message that comes up during Windows 95 installation to be
>>one of the funniest things he has ever seen.
>I have to get "ready" to run Windows? That sounds like I'm going
>on a first date.
Well, given the manner in which oversexed young men hope for the date to
end, the analogy is appropriate--kind of like when the IRS was running
the Mustang Ranch ("they've been doing it to us all along; they may as
well charge for it")
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>Thomas Dickey <dic...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
>>In comp.unix.misc Dr. Richard E. Hawkins <ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu> wrote:
>>> hawk, who's been doing it since before the word newbie was first used on
>>The term "newbie" was apparently coined by people who would be so regarded.
>Or maybe not. The earliest "newbie" in a Usenet article that
>google turned up is dated May 1988, and was posted by Barbara
>Dyker, with the following email addresses
yes, that one. However, the "n00b" notion clearly is self-referential
. ..
Jorn Barger
> [...]
> >And (my main point about netiquette, which will _eventually_
> >be commonly accepted, I'm sure) before he should expect me to
> >take his suggestion seriously, since it would involve a fairly
> >high level of effort on my part-- tracking down and reading a
> >book-- I think netiquette demands that he prove his bonafides
> >by spelling out which topics of mine it answers.
>
> Then why didn't you ask about his bonafides? People in this
> newsgroup would have told you something.
His cv is irrelevant if he didn't even understand my question,
and I think the netiquette-principle is important to spell out
whenever the occasion arises.
> >The reason this is important to me is that many times in the
> >past I've made the effort, and found that I was the victim of
> >utterly worthless advice, from someone who wanted to appear
> >helpful but in fact didn't remotely understand my question.
>
> Then you've got some work to do. A huge part of participating
> in newsgroups is doing exactly that kind of sifting. Note
> that some people give worthless advice in good faith (I'm
> completely dismissing the cranks who are malicious). This means
> that the person trying to help you thinks that s/he understands
> the question.
The principle I'm proposing is that they demonstrate good faith
by spelling out briefly what answer they think the book/article
will supply. (Why is this even controversial?)
> If you find that people are misunderstanding the
> question, you might consider the fact that perhaps your writing
> need work.
If you go back and read the original post, I think you'll agree
that wasn't the problem:
http://groups.google.com/groups?th=8cc906191908eb9c
> >(Most recently this involved an AI paper on text-summarisation
> >that I tracked down and struggled thru, only to find that it
> >had zero bearing on my question. This one _is_ archived on
> >Google.)
>
> So you did get help from him.
???
No, I got pretentious jive (and it wasn't Miya that time).
Floyd Davidson
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>Thomas Dickey <dic...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
>>>In comp.unix.misc Dr. Richard E. Hawkins <ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu> wrote:
>
>>>> hawk, who's been doing it since before the word newbie was first used on
>
>
>>>The term "newbie" was apparently coined by people who would be so regarded.
>
>>Or maybe not. The earliest "newbie" in a Usenet article that
>>google turned up is dated May 1988, and was posted by Barbara
>>Dyker, with the following email addresses
>
>yes, that one. However, the "n00b" notion clearly is self-referential
>. ..
Well, lets face it, "n00b" represents a culture gap that is
close to the Grand Canyon in size; and few readers in this
newsgroup are likely to bridge that one.
Still, I don't condone your statement that it's OK to flame them
for fun. My mind goes _blank_ the instant I see "n00b", so I
just move on to something worthwhile to read.
After all, can you actually flame a "n00b" in any useful way???
Brian Inglis
Rev D implies that at least revs B and C probably made it into
the field before that rev was created.
There wasn't any shortage of 11 software by the time the LSI made
an appearance.
RT-11 and RSX-11S may have been supported on it.
Some people with small 11s didn't use much more than Macro-11 on
RT-11, or on an RSX-11D development system such as an 11/40.
They probably used scopes and probes, but not much in the way of
development, application, or OS software on the target systems.
Many LSIs were probably attached directly to one or a very few
sensors or servos, talking over a telemetry link to a process
control system.
Brian Inglis
A PPOE had rooms full of 11/70s in 1983 -- VAXes couldn't handle
as much of an interrupt load as 11/70s, so 11/70s were used for
I/O intensive workloads with low task memory requirements, and
VAXes were used for compute intensive workloads or large memory
tasks.
Joe Pfeiffer
>
> Which Bell are you talking about???!!!!Gordon Bell or the company
> known as Ma Bell?
The division of Ma Bell known as Bell Labs.
> >
> >I'd like to find all these licensing-changes collated somewhere--
> >the impression I get is that AT&T repeatedly shot themselves in
> >the foot, and that the strange course of micro-evolution was
> >largely a result of this...?
>
> I wouldn't consider this a case of "shot themselves in the foot".
> Denis may disagree with this..however, ATT was NOT in the OS
> business. So decisions that had to be made for their core
> business could undercut the OS business.
My hazy recollections of the time are that AT&T kept changing course
so frequently and abruptly, sometimes offering licenses on near-GPL
terms, sometimes retreating to a very closed model, sometimes offering
hardware, sometimes not, that it was impossible to see any sign of a
strategic direction.
Yes, they could have had to make decisions to protect their core
business at the expense of their OS business. But it sure didn't look
like that was what was happening.
> When you look at any kind of development (this isn't unique
> to the computer biz), you have to consider the context when
> those decisions were made. Every decision involves weighting
> factors. Every choice has a price.
In AT&T's case, it looked (again, from outside) as if the decisions
were a random full-ahead, full-astern on a moment's notice.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
Southwestern NM Regional Science and Engr Fair: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair
Michael Black
> In article <871y5tt...@barrow.com>,
> Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>Thomas Dickey <dic...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
>>>In comp.unix.misc Dr. Richard E. Hawkins <ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu> wrote:
>
>>>> hawk, who's been doing it since before the word newbie was first used on
>
>
>>>The term "newbie" was apparently coined by people who would be so regarded.
>
>>Or maybe not. The earliest "newbie" in a Usenet article that
>>google turned up is dated May 1988, and was posted by Barbara
>>Dyker, with the following email addresses
>
> yes, that one. However, the "n00b" notion clearly is self-referential
> . ..
>
> hawk
>
for someone so new that they aren't familiar with the proper spelling.
Michael
Charlie Gibbs
writes:
>In article <aqke2...@enews3.newsguy.com>,
>J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>>FWIW, a friend of mine finds the "Getting ready to run Windows for the
>>first time" message that comes up during Windows 95 installation to be
>>one of the funniest things he has ever seen.
>
>I have to get "ready" to run Windows? That sounds like I'm going
>on a first date.
Be careful. Ever heard of date rape?
>> .. Still, 2K does work a lot
>>better than any of the 9X variants, as long as you're careful about
>>the hardware you try to run it on. I looked at XP once, nearly
>>barfed, gave it to the teenager next door, he looked at it for
>>a bit and gave it back.
>
>OH, thank the bit gods. There exists a youngster in this world
>who, not only has sense, but acts on it?
Yeah, but his indoctrination isn't complete yet.
--
/~\ cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at moc.subyks if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Charles Richmond
>
> In article <aqlqci$b6k$2...@bob.news.rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
> >In article <aqke2...@enews3.newsguy.com>,
> > J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
> >>FWIW, a friend of mine finds the "Getting ready to run Windows for the
> >>first time" message that comes up during Windows 95 installation to be
> >>one of the funniest things he has ever seen.
>
> >I have to get "ready" to run Windows? That sounds like I'm going
> >on a first date.
>
> Well, given the manner in which oversexed young men hope for the date to
> end, the analogy is appropriate--kind of like when the IRS was running
> the Mustang Ranch ("they've been doing it to us all along; they may as
> well charge for it")
>
That would qualify as "date rape"...
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Charles Richmond
>
> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
>
> Brian "Running Windows 95 since 1998" Inglis
>
of re-boots and re-installs of Win'95 you have done since
1998. After all, I think *no* one will believe that
Windows 95 has run *continuously* on your PC since 1998
without any shutdowns.
Charles Richmond
>
> <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:aqlrkd$b6k$6...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> > In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
> > jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
> [snip...]
> > >
> > >I found a description of Microsoft's development system in July 1982:
> > > http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
> > >
> > > "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
> > > running Xenix"
> > >
> > >I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
> >
> > I don't remember any SPR's coming in from Misoft. Did
> > they really buy a 2060?
> >
>
> I think M$ bought a 2020 for software development because
> Gates and Paul Allen used their own cross compiler on Harvard's
> DEC10.The year 1982 was early in M$'s PC evolution. A 2060
> was a big machine, and probably would have been too
> expensive for a small company.
>
on a PDP-10 at some Seattle company (TRW???) and would
supposedly find problems with the software on that system.
Brian Inglis
<rich...@ev1.net> wrote:
>Brian Inglis wrote:
>>
>> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
>>
>> Brian "Running Windows 95 since 1998" Inglis
>>
>I think it's only fair...that you should post the number
>of re-boots and re-installs of Win'95 you have done since
>1998. After all, I think *no* one will believe that
>Windows 95 has run *continuously* on your PC since 1998
>without any shutdowns.
Never claimed to have run continuously or without any shutdowns!
Upgraded from Win 3.1 to Win 95 B/OSR2.5 just after Win 98 was
released, as I figured the OS should be reasonably stable.
Had to reinstall after the power supply failed and fried the disk
drive; got virally infected once and reinstalled a bunch of
system files after disinfection and questionable restoration.
Power down before the cleaners arrive every couple of weeks;
powered down to fix various sticky dial and cable modem problems;
powered down to replace the PSU a couple of times, change the CD
to a CD/RW, bump the memory to 256MB, and upgrade the disk drive
a few times.
Cold reboots a bunch of times due to hangs running Word,
Navigator, or during a shutdown for some other reason.
Warm reboots whenever the system stops responding to the mouse,
or other strange behaviour appears.
Mostly runs Dimension4 (time sync), Navigator, Agent,
voicemail/fax, DJGPP toolchain and GNUtilities, Word every week
or so, Works sometimes (the product, rather than a comment ;^>).
Tends to remain usable between power downs, despite abuse by the
OS.
jmfb...@aol.com
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>In article <aqlqci$b6k$2...@bob.news.rcn.net> jmfb...@aol.com (jmfbahciv)
>writes:
>
>>In article <aqke2...@enews3.newsguy.com>,
>>J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>FWIW, a friend of mine finds the "Getting ready to run Windows for the
>>>first time" message that comes up during Windows 95 installation to be
>>>one of the funniest things he has ever seen.
>>
>>I have to get "ready" to run Windows? That sounds like I'm going
>>on a first date.
>
>Be careful. Ever heard of date rape?
Yea. But in the case of Windows, I believe I'm screwed before
I get my system turned on.
>
>>> .. Still, 2K does work a lot
>>>better than any of the 9X variants, as long as you're careful about
>>>the hardware you try to run it on. I looked at XP once, nearly
>>>barfed, gave it to the teenager next door, he looked at it for
>>>a bit and gave it back.
>>
>>OH, thank the bit gods. There exists a youngster in this world
>>who, not only has sense, but acts on it?
>
>Yeah, but his indoctrination isn't complete yet.
Do you think kids would like to install a -10?
jmfb...@aol.com
>>In article <aqke2...@enews3.newsguy.com>,
>> J. Clarke <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>>>FWIW, a friend of mine finds the "Getting ready to run Windows for the
>>>first time" message that comes up during Windows 95 installation to be
>>>one of the funniest things he has ever seen.
>
>>I have to get "ready" to run Windows? That sounds like I'm going
>>on a first date.
>
>Well, given the manner in which oversexed young men hope for the date to
>end, the analogy is appropriate--
Nah. In this case, the screwing happens before the benefits.
> ...kind of like when the IRS was running
>the Mustang Ranch ("they've been doing it to us all along; they may as
>well charge for it")
All my dealings with the IRS have been helpful (once I
discovered the trick of getting past the first layer of
their phone support). Most of the people get real
friendly after I find out how the Congress critters fucked
me over.
jmfb...@aol.com
jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote in message news:<aqlqv0$b6k$3...@bob.news.rcn.net>...
>> [...]
>> >And (my main point about netiquette, which will _eventually_
>> >be commonly accepted, I'm sure) before he should expect me to
>> >take his suggestion seriously, since it would involve a fairly
>> >high level of effort on my part-- tracking down and reading a
>> >book-- I think netiquette demands that he prove his bonafides
>> >by spelling out which topics of mine it answers.
>>
>> Then why didn't you ask about his bonafides? People in this
>> newsgroup would have told you something.
>
>His cv
And I'm not talking about his fucking cv. I'm talking about
his contributions here. You could have asked with politeness,
"I don't know you. Are you a Good Guy?" I have done this
fairly often. Now only does it cause laughter, but I get
a very honest straight-forward answer. Hint: The "good guys"
usually say, "I don't know, but I try to be one."
> ...is irrelevant if he didn't even understand my question,
>and I think the netiquette-principle is important to spell out
>whenever the occasion arises.
Not _whenever_ the occasion arises. You are either here to
get help or here to stuff us with Miss Manners. You might
have had a legitimate reason to be pissed off at Miya (he
always pisses me off). But resting on netiquette laurels is
not a way to get to the information you want.
>
>> >The reason this is important to me is that many times in the
>> >past I've made the effort, and found that I was the victim of
>> >utterly worthless advice, from someone who wanted to appear
>> >helpful but in fact didn't remotely understand my question.
>>
>> Then you've got some work to do. A huge part of participating
>> in newsgroups is doing exactly that kind of sifting. Note
>> that some people give worthless advice in good faith (I'm
>> completely dismissing the cranks who are malicious). This means
>> that the person trying to help you thinks that s/he understands
>> the question.
>
>The principle I'm proposing is that they demonstrate good faith
>by spelling out briefly what answer they think the book/article
>will supply. (Why is this even controversial?)
It is controverial because you are asking other people to do your
work. None of us have the time to do that. Consider that YOU
might be the kook. Why should any of us go away and do some
work, only to come back and find out that you're an idiot.
>
>> If you find that people are misunderstanding the
>> question, you might consider the fact that perhaps your writing
>> need work.
>
>If you go back and read the original post, I think you'll agree
>that wasn't the problem:
> http://groups.google.com/groups?th=8cc906191908eb9c
Sigh! I can't webbit. I have been reading some of your other
posts; it still isn't clear exactly what you're trying to do.
Based on the little information that you've given, I've been
toying with the idea that you're trying to justify Misoft's
existence by proving that they aren't nasty. This is the
wrong newsgroup to do that in.
>
>> >(Most recently this involved an AI paper on text-summarisation
>> >that I tracked down and struggled thru, only to find that it
>> >had zero bearing on my question. This one _is_ archived on
>> >Google.)
>>
>> So you did get help from him.
>
>???
>
>No, I got pretentious jive (and it wasn't Miya that time).
You sure don't seem to have much computing experience. Most
the work involved deals with elimination of the things that
don't work.
jmfb...@aol.com
Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com writes:
>>
>> Which Bell are you talking about???!!!!Gordon Bell or the company
>> known as Ma Bell?
>
>The division of Ma Bell known as Bell Labs.
I know that. But does the OP know that these are two different
entities?
>> >
>> >I'd like to find all these licensing-changes collated somewhere--
>> >the impression I get is that AT&T repeatedly shot themselves in
>> >the foot, and that the strange course of micro-evolution was
>> >largely a result of this...?
>>
>> I wouldn't consider this a case of "shot themselves in the foot".
>> Denis may disagree with this..however, ATT was NOT in the OS
>> business. So decisions that had to be made for their core
>> business could undercut the OS business.
>
>My hazy recollections of the time are that AT&T kept changing course
>so frequently and abruptly, sometimes offering licenses on near-GPL
>terms, sometimes retreating to a very closed model, sometimes offering
>hardware, sometimes not, that it was impossible to see any sign of a
>strategic direction.
Exactly. When you're in the OS biz, you've got to have long-range
plans....despite the PC-itis we're seeing these days.
>
>Yes, they could have had to make decisions to protect their core
>business at the expense of their OS business. But it sure didn't look
>like that was what was happening.
It looked like that to me :-). Note that I had no information. It
looked like there was a cycle to the attention paid to their OS
biz. Every once in a while, the higher-ups would think about
that corner of their business and do some work. Then something
would happen that pushed the work down on their PDL list.
I would make a guess...the cycle was about 18 months.
>
>> When you look at any kind of development (this isn't unique
>> to the computer biz), you have to consider the context when
>> those decisions were made. Every decision involves weighting
>> factors. Every choice has a price.
>
>In AT&T's case, it looked (again, from outside) as if the decisions
>were a random full-ahead, full-astern on a moment's notice.
That sounds to me like a new guy got put in charge at the corporate
level, then life happened and he got side-tracked.
jmfb...@aol.com
I don't think that is necessarily true. It just means that all
revisions associated with "Rev D" have made it into the wirewrap
program ( or whatever the hell was used to automate the board
manufacturing). A Rev-X could also mean an approved, and new,
revision shipped to the field. I never could figure out
hardware's standards of naming conventions; I'm not sure they
had any other than what got attributed by the product people
when naming stuff on their BOMs (bill of materials).
>There wasn't any shortage of 11 software by the time the LSI made
>an appearance.
Of course there wasn't any shortage of 11 software by that time.
I'm just not sure about what was "allowed" to be ordered along
with the hardware that was designated LSI-11.
>RT-11 and RSX-11S may have been supported on it.
>Some people with small 11s didn't use much more than Macro-11 on
>RT-11, or on an RSX-11D development system such as an 11/40.
Right. But the hardware purchaser still had to have some
flavor of software to get the system up from a cold start.
Customers who had access to home-grown software wouldn't
need that. I don't know how we did our -11 business. I
don't recall hardware _not_ getting tied up with a software
package of some flavor. I do know that customers would
do the order, then drop the maintenance (there wasn't any
need because they had the infrastructure to do their own).
>They probably used scopes and probes, but not much in the way of
>development, application, or OS software on the target systems.
>Many LSIs were probably attached directly to one or a very few
>sensors or servos, talking over a telemetry link to a process
>control system.
Would these systems be on a maintenance contract?
jmfb...@aol.com
Brian Inglis <Brian....@SystematicSw.ab.ca> wrote:
>On Sun, 10 Nov 02 14:26:19 GMT, jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>>In article <H596s...@approve.se>,
>> h...@invalid.invalid (Goran Larsson) wrote:
>>>In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
>>>Jorn Barger <jo...@enteract.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
>>>> running Xenix"
>>>>
>>>> I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
>>>
>>>Whose VAX 11/250 did they use? :-)
>>>
>>Right. And the 11/70s in 1983 has smell to it.
>
>A PPOE had rooms full of 11/70s in 1983 -- VAXes couldn't handle
>as much of an interrupt load as 11/70s, so 11/70s were used for
>I/O intensive workloads with low task memory requirements, and
>VAXes were used for compute intensive workloads or large memory
>tasks.
11/70s in 1983? Those were so old. I'd believe 11/780s. We
had troubles getting our 11/70 serviced in 1983. If in-house FS
had a distaste for maintaining 11/70s, I would think out-house would,
too. How were those 11/70s maintained?
Dr. Richard E. Hawkins
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) wrote:
>>>Or maybe not. The earliest "newbie" in a Usenet article that
>>>google turned up is dated May 1988, and was posted by Barbara
>>>Dyker, with the following email addresses
>>yes, that one. However, the "n00b" notion clearly is self-referential
>>. ..
>Well, lets face it, "n00b" represents a culture gap that is
>close to the Grand Canyon in size; and few readers in this
>newsgroup are likely to bridge that one.
Well, yeah. Must of us have turned 16, and most 16 or more years ago :)
>Still, I don't condone your statement that it's OK to flame them
>for fun. My mind goes _blank_ the instant I see "n00b", so I
>just move on to something worthwhile to read.
Now wait a minute. I didn't say it was OK to flame them just for fun.
You're trying to correct their behavior. Often it works. More than
often; it worked quite well before Perpetual September . . .
>After all, can you actually flame a "n00b" in any useful way???
medium rare with horshradish?
:)
jmfb...@aol.com
"Don Chiasson" <don_ch...@notmail.com> wrote:
>
><jmfb...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:aqlrkd$b6k$6...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>> In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
>> jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>[snip...]
>> >
>> >I found a description of Microsoft's development system in July 1982:
>> > http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
>> >
>> > "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
>> > running Xenix"
>> >
>> >I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
>>
>> I don't remember any SPR's coming in from Misoft. Did
>> they really buy a 2060?
>>
>
>I think M$ bought a 2020 for software development because
>Gates and Paul Allen used their own cross compiler on Harvard's
>was a big machine, and probably would have been too
>expensive for a small company.
Exactly. So would be a 2020. If they had a -10 of any flavor
to do their development on (I'm not talking about the crap they
did on the Harvard machine), then they were even worse than I
thought. They had to notice that such a thing as memory management
existed if they had a 2020.
They sure didn't have any TOPS-10 software...officially.
1982 and 1983 was the beginning of the idiocy when DEC morphed
into Digital with their fucking migration plans. That meant
that anybody who had a -10 got onto that "to be converted" list.
>
>Re SPR's, I thought they only came from technically
>sophisticated customers. :-)
If we had, the -10 may not have been cancelled.
> ..A more likely explanation
>might be that as an economy measure, M$ didn't buy software
>support therefore no SPR's.
You couldn't not do that without a lot of screwing around.
I don't think Misoft was that big then to be able to swish
their weight around.....unless....nah, he couldn't have done
that.
Hardware purchase of a system came with support for 3(?) months
or something.
>
>Question: how reliable is the detailed information on The
>History of Computing Project (http://www.thocp.net/)?
>The page referring to the 2060 contains no references.
>(I'm not criticizing THOCP: interesting site with a lot
>of information.)
I keep getting the feeling that there's a lot of selective
memory retrievals to avoid getting credit for stupidity.
Jorn Barger
> >> Then why didn't you ask about his bonafides? People in this
> >> newsgroup would have told you something.
> >His cv
>
> his contributions here. You could have asked with politeness,
> "I don't know you. Are you a Good Guy?"
His good-guy-ness and afc-contributions are also irrelevant if
he didn't understand the question. Technically, those arguments
are also ad-hominem.
> > ...is irrelevant if he didn't even understand my question,
> >and I think the netiquette-principle is important to spell out
> >whenever the occasion arises.
>
> Not _whenever_ the occasion arises. You are either here to
> get help or here to stuff us with Miss Manners.
Oh, your brain^Wnewsreader only supports a single thread?
> [...] resting on netiquette laurels is
> not a way to get to the information you want.
Laurels ain't in it, nor resting, if you notice.
> [...]
> >The principle I'm proposing is that they demonstrate good faith
> >by spelling out briefly what answer they think the book/article
> >will supply. (Why is this even controversial?)
>
> It is controversial because you are asking other people to do your
> work. None of us have the time to do that. Consider that YOU
> might be the kook. Why should any of us go away and do some
> work, only to come back and find out that you're an idiot.
1) The whole point of my etiquette proposal, as I've explained,
is that no extra research is required-- just ***considerately***
explaining the basis for the recommendation.
2) My original post should have demonstrated my own bonafides
more than adequately, because I condensed hundreds of research-
items (about early micro Unix-alikes) into a few dense paragraphs.
3) I've also posted various urls, any of which would lead you to
hundreds and hundreds of pages explaining where I'm coming from.
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?th=8cc906191908eb9c
>
> Sigh! I can't webbit. I have been reading some of your other
> posts; it still isn't clear exactly what you're trying to do.
Does your newsreader even suppress the parenthetical part of my
subjectline, then?
> Based on the little information that you've given, I've been
> toying with the idea that you're trying to justify Misoft's
> existence by proving that they aren't nasty. This is the
> wrong newsgroup to do that in.
Ah, you're too clever. In fact, I am Bill Gates, and this was
a test. If anyone had treated me with minimal decency, I was
going to give them a billion spare dollars, but alas you blew
it: http://www.robotwisdom.com/linux/microsoft.html
> You sure don't seem to have much computing experience. Most
> the work involved deals with elimination of the things that
> don't work.
I'll start with all the jumpers-to-conclusions in this thread,
then, maybe.
jmfb...@aol.com
Charles Richmond <rich...@ev1.net> wrote:
>Don Chiasson wrote:
>>
>> <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:aqlrkd$b6k$6...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>> > In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
>> > jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>> [snip...]
>> > >
>> > >I found a description of Microsoft's development system in July 1982:
>> > > http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
>> > >
>> > > "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
>> > > running Xenix"
>> > >
>> > >I still haven't figured out whose 68k's they were using...?
>> >
>> > I don't remember any SPR's coming in from Misoft. Did
>> > they really buy a 2060?
>> >
>>
>> I think M$ bought a 2020 for software development because
>> Gates and Paul Allen used their own cross compiler on Harvard's
>> DEC10.The year 1982 was early in M$'s PC evolution. A 2060
>> was a big machine, and probably would have been too
>> expensive for a small company.
>>
>Also when Gates and Allen were in high school, they worked
>on a PDP-10 at some Seattle company (TRW???) and would
>supposedly find problems with the software on that system.
I'm not questioning their status as newbie users of TOPS-10.
I am questioning their status as owners. It is obvious by
their implementations that they had no exposure to real
file structure organizations and memory management. These
people obviously did not know the latter even existed. I recently
had to demote Gates from COBOL programmer to RPG programmer.
Joel Gallun
> 11/70s in 1983? Those were so old. I'd believe 11/780s. We
> had troubles getting our 11/70 serviced in 1983. If in-house FS
> had a distaste for maintaining 11/70s, I would think out-house would,
> too. How were those 11/70s maintained?
In '82 we were running PBS on a pair on 11/70s. Like Brian said they
were great for IO & interrupt intensive jobs like comms and process
control. We also did self-maintenance, and yes, they were hard to keep
running. 4MB of 3rd party RAM, 64 DH11 comm ports, 3rd party (emulex?)
disks... talk about a maintenance nightmare.
Joel
Joe Pfeiffer
>
> 11/70s in 1983? Those were so old. I'd believe 11/780s. We
> had troubles getting our 11/70 serviced in 1983. If in-house FS
> had a distaste for maintaining 11/70s, I would think out-house would,
> too. How were those 11/70s maintained?
The TDRSS site at White Sands still had lots of them in service in the
late 80s. I have no idea how they kept them running.
Joe Pfeiffer
> >The division of Ma Bell known as Bell Labs.
>
> I know that. But does the OP know that these are two different
> entities?
I didn't think there was any apparent confusion...
> >Yes, they could have had to make decisions to protect their core
> >business at the expense of their OS business. But it sure didn't look
> >like that was what was happening.
>
> It looked like that to me :-). Note that I had no information. It
> looked like there was a cycle to the attention paid to their OS
> biz. Every once in a while, the higher-ups would think about
> that corner of their business and do some work. Then something
> would happen that pushed the work down on their PDL list.
> I would make a guess...the cycle was about 18 months.
It sounds like we agree after all -- to me, what you describe in your
paragraph sounds a lot more random changes in Unix licensing than
making decisions for the core business that end up hurting the OS
business.
> >In AT&T's case, it looked (again, from outside) as if the decisions
> >were a random full-ahead, full-astern on a moment's notice.
>
> That sounds to me like a new guy got put in charge at the corporate
> level, then life happened and he got side-tracked.
Over... and over... and over...
Bill/Carolyn Pechter
>
>11/70s in 1983? Those were so old. I'd believe 11/780s. We
>had troubles getting our 11/70 serviced in 1983. If in-house FS
>had a distaste for maintaining 11/70s, I would think out-house would,
>too. How were those 11/70s maintained?
>
>/BAH
I was fixing 11/70's in the field in volume through '86 or so.
The telco's were full of them. In-house FS wasn't as interested in the old stuff
as the new stuff and perhaps us Field guys were just better 8-).
Bill
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Bill and/or Carolyn Pechter | pec...@shell.monmouth.com |
| Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in |
| a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Rupert Pigott
news:87k7jlr...@barrow.com...
> ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) wrote:
> >In article <871y5tt...@barrow.com>,
> >Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
> >>Thomas Dickey <dic...@saltmine.radix.net> wrote:
> >>>In comp.unix.misc Dr. Richard E. Hawkins <ha...@slytherin.ds.psu.edu>
wrote:
> >
> >>>> hawk, who's been doing it since before the word newbie was first used
on
> >
> >
> >>>The term "newbie" was apparently coined by people who would be so
regarded.
> >
> >>Or maybe not. The earliest "newbie" in a Usenet article that
> >>google turned up is dated May 1988, and was posted by Barbara
> >>Dyker, with the following email addresses
> >
> >yes, that one. However, the "n00b" notion clearly is self-referential
> >. ..
>
> Well, lets face it, "n00b" represents a culture gap that is
> close to the Grand Canyon in size; and few readers in this
> newsgroup are likely to bridge that one.
I managed to leap that gap... But going from "n00b" to "nub"
is a trickier one.
Cheers,
Rupert :)
keep-it-clean
> It is obvious by
> their implementations that they had no exposure to real
> file structure organizations and memory management. These
> people obviously did not know the latter even existed. I recently
> had to demote Gates from COBOL programmer to RPG programmer.
>
What a stupid statement ! Your Social Security check (or paycheck, or
whatever pays your bills) most likely is generated by COBOL or RPG code.
Marco S Hyman
> > people obviously did not know the latter even existed. I recently
> > had to demote Gates from COBOL programmer to RPG programmer.
> >
>
> What a stupid statement ! Your Social Security check (or paycheck, or
> whatever pays your bills) most likely is generated by COBOL or RPG code.
But it's been fashionable to dump on cobol programmers for at least 30
years!
Barb, both cobol and rpg require a certain amount of structure. To
successfully program in RPG II, for example, you MUST understand the
program cycle and make it work for you. I haven't used the language
in over 25 years, but I still remember that lesson.
If you want to rant about unstructured spaghetti may I suggest you pick
on those that code in BASIC... oh, wait... what was it that Mr. Gates
wrote?
You can write spaghetti in any language. Some languages just make
it easier than others.
// marc
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
> In article <16e613ec.02110...@posting.google.com>,
> jo...@enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote:
> >I found a description of Microsoft's development system in July 1982:
> > http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm
> >
> > "a DEC 2060, two PDP-11/70s, a VAX 11/250 and many MC68000 machines
> > running Xenix"
>
> I don't remember any SPR's coming in from Misoft. Did
> they really buy a 2060?
Why on earth would you expect M$ to submit SPRs? They wouldn't recognize
a bug if it came up and bit them.
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} b...@dsl.co.uk
"We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of
distributed ignorance. And we know and understand less while being incr-
easingly capable." Prof. Peter Cochrane, formerly of BT Labs
Howard S Shubs
Marco S Hyman <ma...@snafu.org> wrote:
> But it's been fashionable to dump on cobol programmers for at least 30
> years!
At least 40, actually. I mind me of a little tombstone in the old
Computer Museum with "COBOL" inscribed on it. Date: 1961.
--
Today, on Paper-view: The World Origami Championship
Brian Inglis
ECOs are normally hw equiv of SPRs -- revs are normally hw equiv
of ship releases -- problems in the field normally generate need
for ECO and subsequent rev -- if they didn't catch the problem at
the design prototype, production prototype, or production test
stages in the labs, they're unlikely to uncover it until it hits
the field.
>>There wasn't any shortage of 11 software by the time the LSI made
>>an appearance.
>
>Of course there wasn't any shortage of 11 software by that time.
>I'm just not sure about what was "allowed" to be ordered along
>with the hardware that was designated LSI-11.
You could order just about anything in the 11 range (or most
other ranges) you wanted -- it was your problem if things
couldn't fit in the cabinets, the PSUs couldn't handle the AC or
DC loads required by the boards, the boards didn't fit in the
backplane, or your config wouldn't run the software you ordered.
>>RT-11 and RSX-11S may have been supported on it.
>>Some people with small 11s didn't use much more than Macro-11 on
>>RT-11, or on an RSX-11D development system such as an 11/40.
>
>Right. But the hardware purchaser still had to have some
>flavor of software to get the system up from a cold start.
Replace boot PROM with custom PROM and power up; attach ASR3?
with PT software in reader, toggle in bootstrap loader, press
start.
>Customers who had access to home-grown software wouldn't
>need that. I don't know how we did our -11 business. I
>don't recall hardware _not_ getting tied up with a software
>package of some flavor. I do know that customers would
>do the order, then drop the maintenance (there wasn't any
>need because they had the infrastructure to do their own).
There were a number of OS flavours for the 11 and a number were
not from DEC e.g. Unix, UCSD P-system, Forth.
>>They probably used scopes and probes, but not much in the way of
>>development, application, or OS software on the target systems.
>>Many LSIs were probably attached directly to one or a very few
>>sensors or servos, talking over a telemetry link to a process
>>control system.
>
>Would these systems be on a maintenance contract?
Don't know if DEC would maintain plant hardware in hazardous
locations directly -- the hardware may have been bought on OEM
terms -- more likely the local shop maintenance tech would swap
the failing part and ship off the board for repair or just store
for scavenging parts.