TOPS-20 Boot Camp for VMS Users 05-Mar-2022

[Stephen M. Jones]

On Saturday March 5th, 2022 SDF will kick off its TOPS-20 Boot Camp series
on https://twitch.tv/sdfpubnix at 1PM Pacific Time (9PM GMT). Registration
is open at https://twenex.org/?bootcamp which includes access to SDF's
XKL Toad-2 and is offered at no cost.

If you cannot attend an archive of the live stream (approximately
1 hour long) will be posted to the fediverse via SDF's Peertube instance,
https://toobnix.org

Looking forward to doing a "TOPS-20 Boot Camp for VMS Users", though any User
of any operating system background is certainly welcome, kid.

[Scott Lurndal]

Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the PDP-10
vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a nostalgia or DEC politics
standpoint? My migration at the time was from a PDP-8 to PDP-11 to VAX-11.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a

PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

[Scott Lurndal]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT
>sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
>> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
>> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a
>
> PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
> VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.
>

What were the advantages, if any, of one family over the other family?

I'm quite aware of the hardware specifications.

How does TOPS DCL compare with VMS DCL?

[Rich Alderson]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:

> On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT
> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

>> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
>> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a

> PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
> VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.

There is not such thing as "TOPS". There were 2 operating systems available
from DEC for the PDP-10 architecture, named "Tops-10" and "TOPS-20". (There
were others, such as MIT AI Lab's ITS, the Stanford AI Lab's WAITS, and BBN's
TENEX.)

Tops-10 was the older system, a direct development of the monitor developed for
the PDP-6. It featured a wide array of device types, including realtime
capabilities, and a very low level I/O model in which the programmer had to
know details of the device(s) for which she was writing (buffer sizes, how many
buffers to specify for best operation, etc.). System calls were created using
hardware instruction traps ("Unimplemented User Opcodes" or UUOs).

TOPS-20 was created for the third generation PDP-10, based on the research OS
TENEX from BBN (which was created to explore demand-paged virtual memory on the
first generation PDP-10). The only direct I/O access was to disks and tapes;
everything else was mediated through the PDP-11/40 front end processor (or
other PDP-11/34 processors for things like DECnet). There was only a single
system call instruction, JSYS "Jump to SYStem", with massive internal dispatch
tables to handle every contingency; I/O was handled by means of particular JSYS
calls, and internally handled by the page mapping hardware.

ITS started as an experiment on the PDP-6, and used the same model for I/O as
the DEC monitor, although the details and implementations were sui generis.

WAITS grew out of DEC's PDP-6 monitor, with updates to the PDP-10 version until
1972, at which time the two went their separate ways. WAITS used the same I/O
model as the DEC monitor, although hardware I/O instructions were available to
user mode programs without privilege escalation (for use with specialized
hardware like robot arms).

--
Rich Alderson ne...@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

[Rich Alderson]

sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>> On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT
>> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

>>> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
>>> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a

>> PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
>> VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.

> What were the advantages, if any, of one family over the other family?

VMS ran on supported hardware after 1983.

The PDP-10 operating systems were mainframe oriented ab origine, unlike VMS.

> I'm quite aware of the hardware specifications.

> How does TOPS DCL compare with VMS DCL?

Again, there ain't no "TOPS".

Tops-10 offered a facility called "MIC" which allowed for programmed execution
of programs, but programs had to be written to handle whatever command line
arguments they might expect.

TOPS-20 offered an unrelated facility also called "MIC", which was less capable
than the Tops-10 facility of the same name. In addition, later versions of
TOPS-20 offered "PCL" ("Programmable Command Language"), with a very different
syntax than MIC, which originated at CMU but provided as an unsupported feature
by DEC.

The facilities offered by both OSes are unrelated to "DCL" as understood by VMS
and other PDP-11 oeprating systems.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On 03 Mar 2022 15:24:16 -0500

Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:

> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>
> > On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT
> > sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
> >> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
> >> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a
>
> > PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
> > VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.
>
> There is not such thing as "TOPS". There were 2 operating systems
> available from DEC for the PDP-10 architecture, named "Tops-10" and
> "TOPS-20". (There were others, such as MIT AI Lab's ITS, the Stanford AI
> Lab's WAITS, and BBN's TENEX.)

Yes I was using TOPS as a shorthand for "TOPS-10 or TOPS-20".

[Scott Lurndal]

Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>> On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT
>>> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
>>>> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
>>>> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a
>
>>> PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
>>> VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.
>
>> What were the advantages, if any, of one family over the other family?
>
>VMS ran on supported hardware after 1983.

I was using VMS 1979-1983.

>
>The PDP-10 operating systems were mainframe oriented ab origine, unlike VMS.

VMS wasn't designed as a batch system, so far as I'm aware, although
it could certainly serve as such.

>
>> I'm quite aware of the hardware specifications.
>
>> How does TOPS DCL compare with VMS DCL?
>
>Again, there ain't no "TOPS".

Correction noted. Let's abstract from the jargon and talk more
generically about the user interface. Pros and Cons of MIC/PCL
vs. DCL.

Note that I spent most of the 80's writing mainframe operating
systems for Burroughs, so I've both batch and TS experience.
You've used one of the Burroughs boxen at the LCM, yourself.

>
>The facilities offered by both OSes are unrelated to "DCL" as understood by VMS
>and other PDP-11 oeprating systems.

Generically, then. How does the interactive user experience differ
between the Decsystem-10/20 and the VAX-11/780. I've read quite a few
PDP-10 advocates claiming superiority, but I've never seen any
data to back it up other than "I prefer this to that" or "I'm pissed
because DEC management killed Jupiter".

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 15:33:04 -0500, Rich Alderson wrote:

> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>> On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>>> wrote:
>
>>>> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
>>>> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a
>
>>> PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
>>> VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.
>
>> What were the advantages, if any, of one family over the other family?
>
> VMS ran on supported hardware after 1983.

It is also true to say that it ran on supported hardware in 1977.


--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

[Stephen M. Jones]

I would like to apologize for confusing VMS users with my joke/reference.
Though Rich has provided some excellent background into the development of
TOPS-20. He was there and still is.

The "TOPS-20 Boot Camp for VMS Users" was in reference to the parody
in "Alice's PDP-10" which has a passage that goes a little like this:

...
And I put down my keyboard, and I switched buffers, and there ...
in the other buffer... centered in the other buffer... away from
everything else in the buffer... in parentheses, capital letters,
in reverse video, read the following words:

"Kid, have you taken the ``VMS for TOPS-20 managers'' course yet?"

I walked over to the man and I said "Mister, you got a lot of damned
gall asking me if I've taken the ``VMS for TOPS-20 managers'' course
yet. I mean... I mean... I mean, I'm sitting here on the bench, I'm
sitting here on the LCG SIG bench, 'cause you want to know if I'm
braindamaged enough trade my PDP-10 for partial credit on a system
that doesn't even handle filename completion after being a litterbug."

He looked at me and said "Kid, the front office don't like your kind,
so we're going to put you on our VAX/VMS mailing list." And friends,
somewhere down in the NE43 receiving room is a large trash barrel with
a big sign on it that says "VAX/VMS documents".
...

Hence the title of the SDF event: "TOPS-20 Boot Camp for VMS Users". And
it's really not just for VMS Users, but anyone interested in TOPS-20. There
will likely be more comparisons with Linux (a wildly popular operating system)
rather than with VMS (a mildly popular operating system).

You can hack anything that you want, with TECO and DDT.

References: https://www.hactrn.net/sra/alice/alices.pdp10

[Peter Flass]

It would have to be hard to tell, since the VAX hardware was a lot faster
than the PDP-10. I enjoyed working with both systems.

--
Pete

[Peter Flass]

I’ve used both, although my -10 knowledge is 50 years old and not as
in-depth as I’d like. I’d say that the PDP-10 was more RISCy, and a
programmer’s dream to program in MACRO.

--
Pete

[Dennis Boone]

> You can hack anything that you want, with TECO and DDT.

Excepting, of course, Alice.

De

[Paul Rubin]

Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:
> It would have to be hard to tell, since the VAX hardware was a lot faster
> than the PDP-10. I enjoyed working with both systems.

For the first N years, VAXes were much slower than the faster 10's.
Faster VAXes appeared later, and eventually overtook the 10 mostly due
to improved chip technology. The main VAX for a long time was the
original 11/780 (introduced 1977) which was the canonical 1 MIP machine.
A KL-10 (introduced 1975) was maybe 3x that, about equivalent(?) to the
VAX 8600 that that came out in 1984.

I don't know about today, but legend has it that a few 11/780's were
kept operational for decades after that model's obsolescence, to serve
as benchmark hosts for MIPs rating of newer cpus.

[Scott Lurndal]

d...@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) writes:
> > You can hack anything that you want, with TECO and DDT.
>
>Excepting, of course, Alice.

Thanks Arlo.

[Bob Eager]

I have the album and the movie.

[Rich Alderson]

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> writes:

> On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 15:33:04 -0500, Rich Alderson wrote:

>> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

>>> What were the advantages, if any, of one family over the other family?

>> VMS ran on supported hardware after 1983.

> It is also true to say that it ran on supported hardware in 1977.

The 4th generation of the PDP-10 line was canceled in May, 1983, although the
customer base was large enough (financially speaking) to force Digital to
provide hardware support until 1988 and software support until 1993, but there
were no more sales by Digital of PDP-10 hardware to new customers after May
1983.

So an advantage of the VAX and VMS over the PDP-10 systems was support after
1983. Got it?

[Rich Alderson]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:

> On 03 Mar 2022 15:24:16 -0500
> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:

>> There is not such thing as "TOPS". There were 2 operating systems
>> available from DEC for the PDP-10 architecture, named "Tops-10" and
>> "TOPS-20". (There were others, such as MIT AI Lab's ITS, the Stanford AI
>> Lab's WAITS, and BBN's TENEX.)

> Yes I was using TOPS as a shorthand for "TOPS-10 or TOPS-20".

A bad habit, since the two operating systems shared exactly zero features and
exactly zero code.

[David Lesher]

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> writes:

>On Fri, 04 Mar 2022 22:14:54 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:

>> d...@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) writes:
>>> > You can hack anything that you want, with TECO and DDT.
>>>
>>>Excepting, of course, Alice.
>>
>> Thanks Arlo.

>I have the album and the movie.

What about the 8x10 glossy photographs with circles and arrows...?

--
A host is a host from coast to coast...............wb8foz@panix.com
& no one will talk to a host that's close..........................
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On 4 Mar 2022 22:17:58 GMT

Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:

> I have the album and the movie.

How about the anniversary recordings ? I have the thirtieth which
has some fun Nixon references.

[Johnny Billquist]

I am of course, late to the game. And the bootcamp have already
happened. So people might already know the answers and comments I'm
about to give, but anyway...

On 2022-03-03 21:33, Rich Alderson wrote:
> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>> On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT
>>> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>
>>>> Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the
>>>> PDP-10 vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a
>
>>> PDP-10 was a 36 bit mainframe that (usually) ran TOPS.
>>> VAX-11/780 was a 32 bit mini that (usually) ran VMS.
>
>> What were the advantages, if any, of one family over the other family?
>
> VMS ran on supported hardware after 1983.

True. Or perhaps you should have said "developed after 1983". Not sure
if I'd classify that as an advantage when trying to do some kind of
comparison between the systems, though.

> The PDP-10 operating systems were mainframe oriented ab origine, unlike VMS.

Not entirely sure what you mean by that, Rich.
As you noted, Tops-10 originated in the monitor for the PDP-6. Is that
enough to call it mainframe? And is that a good thing? Tops-10 wasn't
very fancy or capable in some ways, even though it had some nifty things.
TOPS-20 is a completely different thing (as you also observed), with a
much more capable and nice design, if you ask me. If definitely have
some features and capabilities that VMS lacked. But was it more
mainframe-oriented? What does that even mean? TOPS-20 was probably worse
from an execution point of view than VMS, requiring more resources to
get the job done. But VMS isn't really any kind of batch oriented
environment either...

>> I'm quite aware of the hardware specifications.
>
>> How does TOPS DCL compare with VMS DCL?
>
> Again, there ain't no "TOPS".

[...MIC and and PCL text deleted...]
I think the question wasn't about scripting, but interactive use here.
Tops-10 or TOPS-20 did not have DCL. I can't remember what the
interactive command line interpreter was called in Tops-10, but in
TOPS-10 it's EXEC.
EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
just so much nicer than DCL.

Scripting wise, it's much more muddled.

Apart from user interaction, some things are better, and some are worse
in VMS. It's hard to answer a generic question like "how were they
different", or what advantages one had over the other, unless we want to
just talk specific technical details. Because the rest is pretty subjective.

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-03-04 22:23, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> It would have to be hard to tell, since the VAX hardware was a lot faster
>> than the PDP-10. I enjoyed working with both systems.
>
> For the first N years, VAXes were much slower than the faster 10's.

Not really. The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780
was 1 MIPS.

Speed parity was basically achieved with the VAX-11/785. After that, the
VAXen just were becoming faster.

The PDP-10 was never a speed daemon. It was helped a lot by being
offloaded for terminal I/O by the front end processor. But with the
spreading of ethernet, all of that work started moving back to the
PDP-10 itself, at which point you really felt the pain. 40 users on a
-2060 was usually not all that much fun, I can tell you. Heck, even 20
was painful.

> Faster VAXes appeared later, and eventually overtook the 10 mostly due
> to improved chip technology. The main VAX for a long time was the
> original 11/780 (introduced 1977) which was the canonical 1 MIP machine.
> A KL-10 (introduced 1975) was maybe 3x that, about equivalent(?) to the
> VAX 8600 that that came out in 1984.

KL-10 was about 1.5x. The 8600, introduced in 1984 was 4x the 11/780,
and was noticeably faster than the KL-10.

> I don't know about today, but legend has it that a few 11/780's were
> kept operational for decades after that model's obsolescence, to serve
> as benchmark hosts for MIPs rating of newer cpus.

I think I heard such stories, but I never put any value to them. Another
story/problem is that the original MIPS definition was also based on a
specific version of OS and compiler. And as these evolved, the
VAX-11/780 actually became significantly faster than 1 MIPS. Which
exposed a problem with the whole MIPS definition. And also meant keeping
any VAXen around for reference was pretty pointless.

And that's a big reason DEC themselves never used MIPS. They instead
talked about VUPs. Where a VAX-11/780 was by definition 1 VUP. And it
was more properly based on the actual processing speed, and not
depending on various software.

Johnny

[Peter Flass]

It’s been a lot of years, but doesn’t VMS DCL have command-line completion?
(sorry for all the included text, I can’t seem to get this darn thing to
select text to delete)

--
Pete

[Peter Flass]

IBM never used MIPS either, but rated processors relative to each other. I
always thought they did this to avoid comparisons to other vendors’
machines, but it was probably as much because it was meaningless, as you
say.

--
Pete

[Paul Rubin]

Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
> The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780 was 1 MIPS.

Ah ok, for some reason I had thought the KL10 was faster than that.
EIther way: "36 bits -- a full DEC" ;-)

[Scott Lurndal]

Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:

>Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:

>>
>> And that's a big reason DEC themselves never used MIPS. They instead
>> talked about VUPs. Where a VAX-11/780 was by definition 1 VUP. And it
>> was more properly based on the actual processing speed, and not
>> depending on various software.
>>
>> Johnny
>>
>
>IBM never used MIPS either, but rated processors relative to each other. I
>always thought they did this to avoid comparisons to other vendors’
>machines, but it was probably as much because it was meaningless, as you
>say.

Likewise, Burroughs used RPM (Relative Performance Metric) to rate their
machines. RPM was measured using the throughput of a selected set of
customer applications in banking, finance and back-office fields.

The application set was once ported to run on the dominant competitors machines
and run on one of the 3030 series (iirc) to get a baseline for comparison.

[Rich Alderson]

Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:

> I am of course, late to the game. And the bootcamp have already
> happened. So people might already know the answers and comments I'm
> about to give, but anyway...

> On 2022-03-03 21:33, Rich Alderson wrote:

>> The PDP-10 operating systems were mainframe oriented ab origine, unlike VMS.

> Not entirely sure what you mean by that, Rich.

> As you noted, Tops-10 originated in the monitor for the PDP-6. Is that
> enough to call it mainframe? And is that a good thing? Tops-10 wasn't
> very fancy or capable in some ways, even though it had some nifty things.

I have in personal collection an advertisement from a UK magazine of the
Scientific American sort for the PDP-6 which touts it as a large system
available both for batch and for timesharing operations for a large number
of users. It was clearly positioned to compete with IBM and the rest of the
Seven Dwarves. (I do not believe that they had contracted into the BUNCH by
the 2nd quarter of 1964.)

On those grounds I will claim that it was considered to be a mainframe. KO
clearly considered it to be such when he declared (following its failure in the
marketplace) that DEC would not compete with IBM.

> TOPS-20 is a completely different thing (as you also observed), with a much
> more capable and nice design, if you ask me. If definitely have some features
> and capabilities that VMS lacked. But was it more mainframe-oriented? What
> does that even mean? TOPS-20 was probably worse from an execution point of
> view than VMS, requiring more resources to get the job done. But VMS isn't
> really any kind of batch oriented environment either...

DEC positioned the DEC-20 and TOPS-20 as *replacements* for Tops-10 on the
earlier generations of the PDP-10. If we can agree that DEC marketed those as
mainframe systems, then we have to accept that the -20 was also intended as a
mainframe.

> [...MIC and and PCL text deleted...]
> I think the question wasn't about scripting, but interactive use here.
> Tops-10 or TOPS-20 did not have DCL. I can't remember what the
> interactive command line interpreter was called in Tops-10, but in
> TOPS-10 it's EXEC.

Most of the discussion of DCL which I see on comp.os.vms has to do with the
scripting features rather than interactive use, so that's what I tend to think
of when asked to compare the PDP-10 offerings to it.

On Tops-10, the command processor is part of the running monitor; TOPS-20 has
only a very very limited built-in command processor, called the Mini-EXEC, with
single character commands to G(et a monitor), S(tart the loaded monitor), and
possibly E(nter DDT on the monitor) but that might be a pipe dream.

I do not know VMS (or RSTS/E or RSX) internals. Is DCL a separate program,
like the TOPS-20 EXEC? Or an interaction with the monitor/kernel?

> EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
> completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
> just so much nicer than DCL.

You get no argument from me!

> Scripting wise, it's much more muddled.

> Apart from user interaction, some things are better, and some are worse
> in VMS. It's hard to answer a generic question like "how were they
> different", or what advantages one had over the other, unless we want to
> just talk specific technical details. Because the rest is pretty subjective.

Amen.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2022-03-06, Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:

> I think I heard such stories, but I never put any value to them. Another
> story/problem is that the original MIPS definition was also based on a
> specific version of OS and compiler. And as these evolved, the
> VAX-11/780 actually became significantly faster than 1 MIPS. Which
> exposed a problem with the whole MIPS definition. And also meant keeping
> any VAXen around for reference was pretty pointless.

Hence that definition of MIPS:

Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Rich Alderson wrote:

> Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> Rich Alderson wrote:
>>> The PDP-10 operating systems were mainframe oriented ab origine,
>>> unlike VMS.
>>

>> As you noted, Tops-10 originated in the monitor for the PDP-6. Is
>> that enough to call it mainframe?
>

> It was clearly positioned to compete with IBM and the rest of the
> Seven Dwarves. (I do not believe that they had contracted into the
> BUNCH by the 2nd quarter of 1964.) On those grounds I will claim that
> it was considered to be a mainframe.

Some people will call any PDP-10 model a minicomputer with a perfectly
straight face. When asked why they don't consider it a mainframe, the
answer will kind of boil do to "it's not an IBM" (some hyperbole added
here). On the other end of the scale you can now hear the PDP-11
classified as a mainframe. Obviosly incorrectly, right? But I think
there's no stemming the tide on this.

People apparently have widely different and conflicting ideas what a
mainframe is. It seems a moot point to try to define it precisely.
Let's just say it's "the biggest computer around, capable of serving
many users". For DEC, that's the PDP-10 family.

[Paul Rubin]

Lars Brinkhoff <lars...@nocrew.org> writes:
> Some people will call any PDP-10 model a minicomputer with a perfectly

> straight face. When asked why they don't consider it a mainframe...

I remember hearing that DEC invented the term PDP (programmed data
processor) because they were afraid that if they called their product a
"computer", people would avoid it since real computers came only from
IBM. Calling it a PDP made it a different type of product, easier to
get past management because it didn't immediately evoke an IBM
comparison.

Once the PDP's became big enough to be considered real computers
(i.e. the PDP-10), they changed the name PDP-10 to DECsystem-10.

[Scott Lurndal]

Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>

>
>I do not know VMS (or RSTS/E or RSX) internals. Is DCL a separate program,
>like the TOPS-20 EXEC? Or an interaction with the monitor/kernel?

VMS is an odd beast in that respect. The VAX had a four privilege
rings (aside: interestingly enough, the relatively recent ARMv8
architecture also has four privilege rings (with a fifth coming soon)).

The kernel ran in the most privileged ring, Kernel Mode. RMS (mainly
derived from RSX-11, IIRC, and authored by Andy Goldstein (IIRC again))
ran in the next most privileged ring (Executive Mode). The Command
Interpreter (DCL) ran in the next ring (Supervisor Mode), and user
applications ran in the least privileged ring (User Mode).

As with most[*] ring-based privilege architectures, ring switches were
expensive and I believe once they went to Alpha, that architecture was
pretty much dead.

>
>> EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
>> completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
>> just so much nicer than DCL.

I didn't miss any of those features during the four years (1979-1983) that
I was doing systems programming on a four-vax cluster (with MA-780!), but
then I had been using TSS8.24 prior to that :-).

[*] most non-risc-based architectures, anyway. ARMv8 ring switches
while not free, can be quite efficient - far different from Intel
ring switches, for which three generations of ring-switch instructions
were created over the decades to make them more efficient.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-03-06 19:34, Peter Flass wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
>> I am of course, late to the game. And the bootcamp have already
>> happened. So people might already know the answers and comments I'm
>> about to give, but anyway...

>>>> How does TOPS DCL compare with VMS DCL?
>>>
>>> Again, there ain't no "TOPS".
>>
>> [...MIC and and PCL text deleted...]
>> I think the question wasn't about scripting, but interactive use here.
>> Tops-10 or TOPS-20 did not have DCL. I can't remember what the
>> interactive command line interpreter was called in Tops-10, but in
>> TOPS-10 it's EXEC.
>> EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
>> completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
>> just so much nicer than DCL.
>>
>> Scripting wise, it's much more muddled.
>>
>> Apart from user interaction, some things are better, and some are worse
>> in VMS. It's hard to answer a generic question like "how were they
>> different", or what advantages one had over the other, unless we want to
>> just talk specific technical details. Because the rest is pretty subjective.
>>
>> Johnny
>>
>
> It’s been a lot of years, but doesn’t VMS DCL have command-line completion?
> (sorry for all the included text, I can’t seem to get this darn thing to
> select text to delete)

No, it don't. On VAX, there was a hack (from DECUS?) called DCLCOMPLETE
which sortof added this. But I don't think it was ever made to work on
any other hardware platform, it was sortof not working perfectly, and it
was definitely not something DEC ever included.

Johnny

[D.J.]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:30:52 GMT, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)

wrote:

>"Stephen M. Jones" <s...@ma.sdf.org> writes:
>>On Saturday March 5th, 2022 SDF will kick off its TOPS-20 Boot Camp series
>>on https://twitch.tv/sdfpubnix at 1PM Pacific Time (9PM GMT). Registration
>>is open at https://twenex.org/?bootcamp which includes access to SDF's
>>XKL Toad-2 and is offered at no cost.
>>
>>If you cannot attend an archive of the live stream (approximately
>>1 hour long) will be posted to the fediverse via SDF's Peertube instance,
>>https://toobnix.org
>>
>>Looking forward to doing a "TOPS-20 Boot Camp for VMS Users", though any User
>>of any operating system background is certainly welcome, kid.
>>
>

>Can you refresh my memory on the advantages and disadvantages of the PDP-10

>vs. the VAX-11/780? From a technical standpoint, not from a nostalgia or DEC politics
>standpoint? My migration at the time was from a PDP-8 to PDP-11 to VAX-11.

I didn't have access to the 11/780. The campus I was on had the
11/730. What differences for it ?

--
Jim

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-03-07 16:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>
>
>>
>> I do not know VMS (or RSTS/E or RSX) internals. Is DCL a separate program,
>> like the TOPS-20 EXEC? Or an interaction with the monitor/kernel?
>
> VMS is an odd beast in that respect. The VAX had a four privilege
> rings (aside: interestingly enough, the relatively recent ARMv8
> architecture also has four privilege rings (with a fifth coming soon)).
>
> The kernel ran in the most privileged ring, Kernel Mode. RMS (mainly
> derived from RSX-11, IIRC, and authored by Andy Goldstein (IIRC again))
> ran in the next most privileged ring (Executive Mode). The Command
> Interpreter (DCL) ran in the next ring (Supervisor Mode), and user
> applications ran in the least privileged ring (User Mode).
>
> As with most[*] ring-based privilege architectures, ring switches were
> expensive and I believe once they went to Alpha, that architecture was
> pretty much dead.

People are always making the multiple processor modes a thing way bigger
than it is.

To comment more towards what Rich was thinking/asking, DCL is not a
normal user program. It is possible to have other "shells" than DCL,
which would live at the same level as DCL, but that almost was
non-existant in real life. People instead have shells as programs
running while DCL is still lurking in the background.

So it's less flexible than in Unix or TOPS-20, where it's just a program
like any other.

RSX is in a way maybe the most weird of them all. In the goal to
minimize memory and process resources, there is usually no program
associated with your terminal when you are at the DCL prompt. Instead,
it's all the responsibility of the terminal driver. Only when you've
completed a line and hit enter will DCL (or MCR) be started for you, to
process the line you typed.

In VMS, DCL is there the whole time.

>>> EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
>>> completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
>>> just so much nicer than DCL.
>
> I didn't miss any of those features during the four years (1979-1983) that
> I was doing systems programming on a four-vax cluster (with MA-780!), but
> then I had been using TSS8.24 prior to that :-).

It's one of those things where if you never used it, you don't
understand how much it means, and how much you'll miss it if it goes away.

It's very similar to how you'll feel today if someone throws /bin/sh at
you, and you are used to tcsh or bash. No filename completion, no line
editing, no interactive information, no nothing. It's like going back to
the dark ages.

And TOPS-20 EXEC is *better* than tcsh or bash...

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

You are not alone. Lots of people seem to think the KL10 was way faster
than it was.

Anyway, I still appreciate the 36-bit quote. But deep down inside, I'm a
PDP-11 person. :-D

Johnny

[Scott Lurndal]

From the perspective of the average user, there was no difference
between the 11/730, 11/750 or 11/780 other than absolute performance.

[Scott Lurndal]

For what it's worth, I've been using ksh since 1989 and while it supports
filename completion, I've never used it (since I use vi-style command
line editing, it takes more than just the tab key to invoke completion).

[Peter Flass]

I’m always amazed when I try to use some piece of software I used to use
years ago how primitive it seems now. Back then non-ISPF TSO or DOS EDLIN
seemed like usable, if not much fun, pieces of software. Playing with old
systems like TSS or Multics it seems like my biggest problem is lack of a
decent editor.

--
Pete

[Johnny Billquist]

Never used ksh, but it still certainly sounds like miles from sh.

I don't expect people will really get involved in TOPS-20 EXEC now, but
if you were to use it for a while, I think you'd start see my point. :-)

If you ever use Cisco gear, you might have gotten some taste of it as
well...

Johnny

[Scott Lurndal]

Yeah. I occasionally fire up tss8.24 on simh just to recall the old days;
using PIP to copy files seems so 1974. I also fire up the HP-3000 MPE
on simh as I used that after the PDP-8, but before the VAX. Interactively,
it was better than tss8.24, but compared to DCL, the command language was
limited (no scripting capability, for example) - however, the concept of
PASS files was an interesting feature - during a compile-link-run job
the output of a step could be written to $NEWPASS and the next step would
read from $OLDPASS; a transient unnamed temporary disk file.

$ BASICCOMP FILE.BAS
$ PREP $OLDPASS, $NEWPASS
$ RUN $OLDPASS

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-03-07 02:43, Rich Alderson wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>
>> I am of course, late to the game. And the bootcamp have already
>> happened. So people might already know the answers and comments I'm
>> about to give, but anyway...
>
>> On 2022-03-03 21:33, Rich Alderson wrote:
>
>>> The PDP-10 operating systems were mainframe oriented ab origine, unlike VMS.
>
>> Not entirely sure what you mean by that, Rich.
>
>> As you noted, Tops-10 originated in the monitor for the PDP-6. Is that
>> enough to call it mainframe? And is that a good thing? Tops-10 wasn't
>> very fancy or capable in some ways, even though it had some nifty things.
>
> I have in personal collection an advertisement from a UK magazine of the
> Scientific American sort for the PDP-6 which touts it as a large system
> available both for batch and for timesharing operations for a large number
> of users. It was clearly positioned to compete with IBM and the rest of the
> Seven Dwarves. (I do not believe that they had contracted into the BUNCH by
> the 2nd quarter of 1964.)
>
> On those grounds I will claim that it was considered to be a mainframe. KO
> clearly considered it to be such when he declared (following its failure in the
> marketplace) that DEC would not compete with IBM.

Fair enough. I would still consider both Tops-10 and TOPS-20 to be very
interactive centered. Not really mainframe, except for size and approach
to solve some problems using smaller processors attach and offload stuff
to them.

>> TOPS-20 is a completely different thing (as you also observed), with a much
>> more capable and nice design, if you ask me. If definitely have some features
>> and capabilities that VMS lacked. But was it more mainframe-oriented? What
>> does that even mean? TOPS-20 was probably worse from an execution point of
>> view than VMS, requiring more resources to get the job done. But VMS isn't
>> really any kind of batch oriented environment either...
>
> DEC positioned the DEC-20 and TOPS-20 as *replacements* for Tops-10 on the
> earlier generations of the PDP-10. If we can agree that DEC marketed those as
> mainframe systems, then we have to accept that the -20 was also intended as a
> mainframe.

I think part of the problem that this all becomes just labels for
marketing. Does it mean anything, and if so - what?

I don't think the differences between VMS and the PDP-10 OSes are that
radical. They are basically useful and used in the same type of
environments.

>> [...MIC and and PCL text deleted...]
>> I think the question wasn't about scripting, but interactive use here.
>> Tops-10 or TOPS-20 did not have DCL. I can't remember what the
>> interactive command line interpreter was called in Tops-10, but in
>> TOPS-10 it's EXEC.
>
> Most of the discussion of DCL which I see on comp.os.vms has to do with the
> scripting features rather than interactive use, so that's what I tend to think
> of when asked to compare the PDP-10 offerings to it.

Fair enough. I just got the impression that the OP in this case was
trying to understand the differences perceived by an interactive user.

>> EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
>> completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
>> just so much nicer than DCL.
>
> You get no argument from me!

:-)

Johnny

[Scott Lurndal]

Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>On 2022-03-07 18:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>> On 2022-03-07 16:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>>>>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>>>>
>>
>>>
>>> It's very similar to how you'll feel today if someone throws /bin/sh at
>>> you, and you are used to tcsh or bash. No filename completion, no line
>>> editing, no interactive information, no nothing. It's like going back to
>>> the dark ages.
>>
>> For what it's worth, I've been using ksh since 1989 and while it supports
>> filename completion, I've never used it (since I use vi-style command
>> line editing, it takes more than just the tab key to invoke completion).
>
>Never used ksh, but it still certainly sounds like miles from sh.

Indeed, ksh is quite powerful - you can even access arbitrary shared
library functions linked in at runtime; has associative arrays and
a host of other useful scripting features (ksh93).

>
>I don't expect people will really get involved in TOPS-20 EXEC now, but
>if you were to use it for a while, I think you'd start see my point. :-)

I find most of those old command interpreters limited and unusable after
using the korn shell for so many years. I could give TOPS-20 EXEC
a try on simh someday to see, but I don't expect to like it much;
I suppose I could try to port the COBOL startrek game to COBOL on
the PDP-10 someday when I have absolutely nothing else to do :-)

>
>If you ever use Cisco gear, you might have gotten some taste of it as
>well...

I got an offer to join the IOS team (and an offer from NetApp at the
same time), but turned them down and went to SGI instead - both Cisco
and Netapp would have been financially more lucrative in the long run, sadly.

[Dan Espen]

sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>On 2022-03-07 18:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>>> On 2022-03-07 16:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>>> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>>>>>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> It's very similar to how you'll feel today if someone throws /bin/sh at
>>>> you, and you are used to tcsh or bash. No filename completion, no line
>>>> editing, no interactive information, no nothing. It's like going back to
>>>> the dark ages.
>>>
>>> For what it's worth, I've been using ksh since 1989 and while it supports
>>> filename completion, I've never used it (since I use vi-style command
>>> line editing, it takes more than just the tab key to invoke completion).
>>
>>Never used ksh, but it still certainly sounds like miles from sh.
>
> Indeed, ksh is quite powerful - you can even access arbitrary shared
> library functions linked in at runtime; has associative arrays and
> a host of other useful scripting features (ksh93).

ksh has lots of good stuff, but miles from sh doesn't seem right.
It's very much like sh to a casual user.

--
Dan Espen

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2022 20:18:28 +0100
Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:

> On 2022-03-07 18:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> > Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
> >> On 2022-03-07 16:07, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> >>> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
> >>>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
> >>>>
> >
> >>
> >> It's very similar to how you'll feel today if someone throws /bin/sh at
> >> you, and you are used to tcsh or bash. No filename completion, no line
> >> editing, no interactive information, no nothing. It's like going back
> >> to the dark ages.
> >
> > For what it's worth, I've been using ksh since 1989 and while it
> > supports filename completion, I've never used it (since I use vi-style
> > command line editing, it takes more than just the tab key to invoke
> > completion).
>
> Never used ksh, but it still certainly sounds like miles from sh.

It's surprisingly close - basically sh with history and filename
completion added, much of bash history manipulation comes from ksh the rest
from csh.

[Scott Lurndal]

by design.

[Vir Campestris]

TOPS-10 was where I first met assembler.

I thought the KL10 was _slower_ than that.

And how come I can still remember the instruction word format
(9-4-1-4-18) 40 years later?

Andy

[Rich Alderson]

Paul Rubin <no.e...@nospam.invalid> writes:

> Lars Brinkhoff <lars...@nocrew.org> writes:
>> Some people will call any PDP-10 model a minicomputer with a perfectly
>> straight face. When asked why they don't consider it a mainframe...

> I remember hearing that DEC invented the term PDP (programmed data
> processor) because they were afraid that if they called their product a
> "computer", people would avoid it since real computers came only from
> IBM. Calling it a PDP made it a different type of product, easier to
> get past management because it didn't immediately evoke an IBM
> comparison.

It was not "IBM", but "GAO acquisition rules", which caused DEC to coin the
term "Programmed Data Processor" for their products, so that they could be sold
into individual departments rather than entire organizations in government
operated labs.

> Once the PDP's became big enough to be considered real computers
> (i.e. the PDP-10), they changed the name PDP-10 to DECsystem-10.

Mostly a Marketing Department decision...

[Rich Alderson]

sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:

>> I do not know VMS (or RSTS/E or RSX) internals. Is DCL a separate program,
>> like the TOPS-20 EXEC? Or an interaction with the monitor/kernel?

> VMS is an odd beast in that respect. The VAX had a four privilege
> rings (aside: interestingly enough, the relatively recent ARMv8
> architecture also has four privilege rings (with a fifth coming soon)).

> The kernel ran in the most privileged ring, Kernel Mode. RMS (mainly
> derived from RSX-11, IIRC, and authored by Andy Goldstein (IIRC again))
> ran in the next most privileged ring (Executive Mode). The Command
> Interpreter (DCL) ran in the next ring (Supervisor Mode), and user
> applications ran in the least privileged ring (User Mode).

Interestingly, the *2nd generation* PDP-10, the KI-10 processor, implemented a
4-level privilege model: Kernel, Executive, Public, and User. Tops-10 ran
mostly in Executive mode, with only some of the most sensitive routines done in
Kernel mode. Public mode was a user-level mode (i.e., no privileged
instructions such as I/O operations) which allowed for system services similar
to dynamic libraries in modern Unix-style operating systems, but serving a
different purpose. User mode was the bog standard mode for any program not
requiring elevated privileges.

(Public mode was used by the system services such as spoolers so that user
programs did not need to use system calls to interact with unit record
equipment.)

> As with most[*] ring-based privilege architectures, ring switches were
> expensive and I believe once they went to Alpha, that architecture was
> pretty much dead.

The KI model was not ring-based in the way that I understand rings (based on
early Multics writings, mostly); it was simply a matter of a couple of bits in
the process status.

[Scott Lurndal]

It's changing between rings that is the primary issue as that often
includes a change in the memory context (e.g. x86 segment, active page
table) resulting in a performance hit. E.g. UUO's/system calls.

[Scott Lurndal]

What really killed it on the VAX was multiple ring changes for many
operations (file operations executed in executive mode, and they
called kernel mode facilities like $QIO/$QIOW). On the other hand,
user mode could make requests to DCL with a change mode to supervisor
call.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-03-07 23:58, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>> It's changing between rings that is the primary issue as that often
>> includes a change in the memory context (e.g. x86 segment, active page
>> table) resulting in a performance hit. E.g. UUO's/system calls.
>
> What really killed it on the VAX was multiple ring changes for many
> operations (file operations executed in executive mode, and they
> called kernel mode facilities like $QIO/$QIOW). On the other hand,
> user mode could make requests to DCL with a change mode to supervisor
> call.

What do you mean "killed it on the VAX"? Changing mode means trapping to
the OS. Doing a system call means trapping to the OS. Is a change mode
any more costly than any system call? No.

Are you claiming there is some extra performance penalty here?

You could argue that the changing of modes carried a performance
benefit, since it meant you did not need to switch context to another
process, and you did not need to flush TLBs and so on, since the memory
mapping is unchanged. Changing modes effectively just changed what parts
of memory was accessible, apart from kernel mode which allowed some
instructions not allowed otherwise.
And that is also why implementing the whole thing on a processor with
fewer modes isn't really a big deal. It's just a question of what your
page table looks like. And that can obviously be changed whenever you
trap into the OS anyway.

Johnny

[D.J.]

On Mon, 07 Mar 2022 17:03:45 GMT, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)

I know the 730 I used was slower than the 780 on main campus. I think
it used fewer vt102 terminals as well.

One of the professors tried to run ADA on the 730. Incredibly slow.
--
Jim

[Fred Smith]

The only advantage with the 730 I used was it had the REAL*16 (128 bit IEEE floating point) built in, the 750 & 780 machines required upgrades. So the 730 was actually faster for operations using real*16 operations.

It was also faster because nobody wanted to use it.

[Andreas Eder]

On Mo 07 Mär 2022 at 11:47, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Scott Lurndal <sc...@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> I’m always amazed when I try to use some piece of software I used to use
> years ago how primitive it seems now. Back then non-ISPF TSO or DOS EDLIN
> seemed like usable, if not much fun, pieces of software. Playing with old
> systems like TSS or Multics it seems like my biggest problem is lack of a
> decent editor.

Well, on Multics you have Emacs!
That should be enough for everyone :-)

'Andreas

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

Right that's the user environment sorted out - now we just need a
decent editor.

[Peter Flass]

Some systems (Sigma) had different register sets for different processor
modes. Memory is cheap these days, why not different caches?

--
Pete

[Peter Flass]

I’ve managed to get fifty years in without having to learn emacs. I don’t
want to have to start now.

--
Pete

[Scott Lurndal]

Indeed, it's difficult to compare systems designed 40 to 50 years ago
with modern processors.

But even today, nobody uses more than two of the four rings on Intel
processors. (well, technically, one can consider VM-X/SVM a ring,
and SMM mode can also be considered a ring, and in both cases,
crossing the ring boundary isn't cheap - see VMEXIT).

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-03-08 05:13, Fred Smith wrote:
> On 2022-03-08, D.J <chuckt...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 07 Mar 2022 17:03:45 GMT, sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>> wrote:
>>> D.J. <chuckt...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> I didn't have access to the 11/780. The campus I was on had the
>>>> 11/730. What differences for it ?
>>>
>> >From the perspective of the average user, there was no difference
>>> between the 11/730, 11/750 or 11/780 other than absolute performance.
>>
>> I know the 730 I used was slower than the 780 on main campus. I think
>> it used fewer vt102 terminals as well.

Like Chuck said. Performance.

>> One of the professors tried to run ADA on the 730. Incredibly slow.
>> --
>> Jim
>
> The only advantage with the 730 I used was it had the REAL*16 (128 bit IEEE floating point) built in, the 750 & 780 machines required upgrades. So the 730 was actually faster for operations using real*16 operations.

VAX don't do IEEE floating point. But yes, H_FLOAT in hardware was an
addon on those machines. Otherwise it had to be done in software, which
was indeed slower.

> It was also faster because nobody wanted to use it.

Only if the larger machines were in use, of course. :-)
But yeah. Being along on a machine usually helped.

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

Really? EMACS start off on PDP-10s, written in TECO. Not saying that
there couldn't have been a version for Multics, but that was mostly a
crowd that eventually gave us things like ed and vi.

> That should be enough for everyone :-)

Of course. And others will disagree. :-)

Johnny

[Peter Flass]

OS/2 uses three (and no, it’s not completely dead yet)

--
Pete

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Peter Flass wrote:
> I’ve managed to get fifty years in without having to learn emacs. I don’t
> want to have to start now.

I'd be very impressed if you had 50 years of Emacs experience!
I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a requirement in a job listing
though.

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Not saying that there couldn't have been a[n Emacs] version for
> Multics

You seem vague. I'm here to tell you Multics Emacs was started on March
3rd 1978 around 10pm.

[Charlie Gibbs]

I took a look at emacs a couple of years ago.
I found its mindset to be too foreign for me,
e.g. in things like tab handling.

My fingers speak vi. That's usually enough.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

[Johnny Billquist]

Of course I am vague. I've never used Multics... But I've used the
original Emacs more than enough...

And by 1978 I thought Multics was pretty dead. (Ok, Honeywell did
continue until 1985 on the thing...)

Johnny

[Vir Campestris]

On 08/03/2022 14:49, Peter Flass wrote:
> Some systems (Sigma) had different register sets for different processor
> modes. Memory is cheap these days, why not different caches?

Because you'll get more bang for your buck by having one big cache
instead of two small ones.

Cache still isn't cheap.

Andy

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Johnny Billquist wrote:
> And by 1978 I thought Multics was pretty dead.

Why would you think that? I hope you're not influenced by Unix
mythology that would have Multics "failing" in 1969.

Data for new Mulitics installations per year from
https://multicians.org/sites.html

1967: 3
1970: 1
1971: 1
1972: 2
1973: 1
1974: 3
1975: 1
1976: 2
1977: 4
1978: 3
1979: 7
1980: 11
1981: 8
1982: 10
1983: 13
1984: 4
1985: 3
1986: 1
1987: 2

Maybe not 100% accurate but should give a rough idea.

[Scott Lurndal]

Indeed. However, many high-end server processors[*] implement some form of
programmable cache partitioning where portions of the cache (at any or
all levels of hierarchy) can be reserved for certain applications (or rings), and
then there are PCI Express steering tags, which allow inbound DMA to
be directed to one or more of the cache levels without going through
memory first.

[*] e.g. ARMv8 processors like the Neoverse N2 with MPAM.

[Rich Alderson]

I have 45 years of EMACS experience...

[Bob Eager]

On Tue, 08 Mar 2022 19:47:05 +0000, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> I took a look at emacs a couple of years ago.
> I found its mindset to be too foreign for me,
> e.g. in things like tab handling.
>
> My fingers speak vi. That's usually enough.

I have exactly the opposite. I started UNIX in 1975, although vi took a
while to appear. I continued to use 'ed' because my terminal was a bit
basic.

Then I got a PC with a simplified emacs that was marketed as part of a
'word processor'. My fingers know that (but I also use 'ed' in extremis,
usually in single user mode on a basic console).



--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...

Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

[Alan Bawden]

Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:

Lars Brinkhoff <lars...@nocrew.org> writes:

> I'd be very impressed if you had 50 years of Emacs experience!
> I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a requirement in a job listing
> though.

I have 45 years of EMACS experience...

I have 46.

And I'd be suprised if anybody here can beat that, since I started using
it during the week after its first "official" release.

--
Alan Bawden

[gah4]

On Friday, March 4, 2022 at 11:06:38 AM UTC-8, Peter Flass wrote:

(snip)

> It would have to be hard to tell, since the VAX hardware was a lot faster
> than the PDP-10. I enjoyed working with both systems.

At the place I was in 1982, or maybe 1983, a TOPS-20 system was replaced
with four VAX. Three 11/750 and one 11/730. That was done very fast, as
they sold the TOPS-20 system, and had to deliver it very soon.

It seems that they didn't think the VAX hardware was so much faster.

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Alan Bawden wrote:

> Rich Alderson wrote:
>> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...
>
> I have 46. And I'd be suprised if anybody here can beat that, since I
> started using it during the week after its first "official" release.

Only those developing "?MACS" could top that, but it will still be 46
years.

Do you have a (rough) date for this "official" release? Backup records
have some early timestamps but there is no way to tell what would be
considered released or still in develoment.

The change of name from ?/?MACS to E/EMACS can be narrowed down to
November 10-11th 1976, but that is not to say it was "released" at that
point.

[gah4]

On Monday, March 7, 2022 at 8:48:43 AM UTC-8, D.J. wrote:

(snip)

> I didn't have access to the 11/780. The campus I was on had the
> 11/730. What differences for it ?

When I knew this, about when the 11/750 came out, the 750 was
about 60% of the speed, and 40% of the price, compared to the 780.

As well as I remember, it was the same ratios for 730 vs. 750.

For those who don't multiply fast, and who believe in simple rules
for processor pricing and performance, that means 36% of the speed
and 16% of the price.

One thing, though. The 11/730 has H-float standard, where it is optional
on the others (and software emulated if needed).

[Johnny Billquist]

Depends on what hardware people are talking of.

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

I'm at a lowly 39. :-)

Johnny

[Johnny Billquist]

You know, with those numbers, to me, that means dead. :-)

Johnny

[Andreas Eder]

Oh my! I'm at a lowly 35.

'Andreas

[Rich Alderson]

I was lucky. One of the senior programmers at the UChicago Comp Center went to
Marlboro for TOPS-20 training, and came back with a tape with a bunch of stuff
on it, including both EMACS and ZORK (including the TOPS-20 runtime for MDL).

I got intrigued, and started reading the TECO sources for EMACS. The rest, as
is said, is history.

(Hi, Alan!)

[Dan Cross]

In article <t07t1s$lie$2...@news.misty.com>,

Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
>On 2022-03-08 10:08, Andreas Eder wrote:
>> On Mo 07 Mär 2022 at 11:47, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Scott Lurndal <sc...@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>>> I’m always amazed when I try to use some piece of software I used to use
>>> years ago how primitive it seems now. Back then non-ISPF TSO or DOS EDLIN
>>> seemed like usable, if not much fun, pieces of software. Playing with old
>>> systems like TSS or Multics it seems like my biggest problem is lack of a
>>> decent editor.
>>
>> Well, on Multics you have Emacs!
>
>Really? EMACS start off on PDP-10s, written in TECO. Not saying that
>there couldn't have been a version for Multics, but that was mostly a
>crowd that eventually gave us things like ed and vi.

Yes really. Not only was there emacs on Multics, it is written
in Lisp.

https://multicians.org/mepap.html

See also AIM-519A, which mentions Multics emacs and Lisp:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-519A.pdf

Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
of course came from Berkeley.

- Dan C.

[Sid Maxwell]

On Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 5:34:20 PM UTC-5, Rich Alderson wrote:
> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...

41. I learned it because my mentor when I first joined DEC used it, and between us, we would eat the performance of a VAX/780. It's still the editor I use, though I'm starting to use e.g. VSCode occasionally. With Emacs keybindings, 'course.

-+- Sid

[Eric Swenson]

On Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 9:46:29 PM UTC-8, Alan Bawden wrote:
> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>

> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...
> I have 46.
>
> And I'd be suprised if anybody here can beat that, since I started using
> it during the week after its first "official" release.
>
> --
> Alan Bawden

I'm also a 46er. In fact, my first real editor was EMACS from when I worked at LCS.
And I've used it ever since. I still use ITS Emacs and Multics Emacs (on simulators,
or course) every day. And naturally, it is my editor of choice on macOS and Linux.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-03-11 14:56, Dan Cross wrote:
> Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
> of course came from Berkeley.

vi is just visual ed. :-)
(And I can't understand the recent craze about it...)

Johnny

[Phil Budne]

On Friday, March 11, 2022 at 8:56:11 AM UTC-5, Dan Cross wrote:
> Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
> of course came from Berkeley.

QED started on the Berkeley Timesharing System (SDS 940) c.1967.
Ken Thompson brought it east, implementing it first on CTSS, and then Multics and GECOS, and as ed on PDP-7 UNIX:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor)
https://dbpedia.org/page/QED_(text_editor)

Phil
(EMACS user for 41y, starting as a tourist on ITS, FINE on TOPS-10, then TOPS-20 EMACS, then CCA EMACS on Unix, followed by GNU. My oldest .emacs file is from 1988).

[Phil Budne]

On Saturday, March 12, 2022 at 2:40:08 PM UTC-5, Phil Budne wrote:
> Ken Thompson brought it east, implementing it first on CTSS, and then Multics and GECOS, and as ed on PDP-7 UNIX

P.S. I regard vi as useful only as a read-mostly version of "more", or for emergency use in cramped places like Docker containers or embedded systems (tho I've been known to compile micro EMACS or ELLE).

[Dan Cross]

In article <aa1a331f-9ba7-43fc...@googlegroups.com>,

Phil Budne <phil....@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Friday, March 11, 2022 at 8:56:11 AM UTC-5, Dan Cross wrote:
>> Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
>> of course came from Berkeley.
>
>QED started on the Berkeley Timesharing System (SDS 940) c.1967.
>Ken Thompson brought it east, implementing it first on CTSS, and then Multics and GECOS, and as ed on PDP-7 UNIX:
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor)
>https://dbpedia.org/page/QED_(text_editor)

Thank you, these are great points and I stand corrected. Dennis
Ritchie's brief history of QED is also illuminating:
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/qed.html

- Dan C.

[Stephen M. Jones]

Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
> I'm at a lowly 39. :-)
>
> Johnny

Are you counting AMIS years tho? ;-)

I've got 27 years of ZMACS experience, YOW.

[Johnny Billquist]

My first exposure was indeed with AMIS (on a PDP-11), but I hit PDP-10
machines not long after. I can't even recall when I first saw TECO EMACS
the first time. I played with ITS for the first time about 39 years ago
as well.

Johnny

[P.Lj]

On Monday, March 7, 2022 at 5:42:46 PM UTC+1, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> On 2022-03-06 19:34, Peter Flass wrote:
> > Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:

> >> I am of course, late to the game. And the bootcamp have already
> >> happened. So people might already know the answers and comments I'm
> >> about to give, but anyway...
> >>>> How does TOPS DCL compare with VMS DCL?
> >>>
> >>> Again, there ain't no "TOPS".
> >>
> >> [...MIC and and PCL text deleted...]
> >> I think the question wasn't about scripting, but interactive use here.
> >> Tops-10 or TOPS-20 did not have DCL. I can't remember what the
> >> interactive command line interpreter was called in Tops-10, but in
> >> TOPS-10 it's EXEC.
> >> EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
> >> completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
> >> just so much nicer than DCL.
> >>
> >> Scripting wise, it's much more muddled.
> >>
> >> Apart from user interaction, some things are better, and some are worse
> >> in VMS. It's hard to answer a generic question like "how were they
> >> different", or what advantages one had over the other, unless we want to
> >> just talk specific technical details. Because the rest is pretty subjective.
> >>
> >> Johnny
> >>
> >
> > It’s been a lot of years, but doesn’t VMS DCL have command-line completion?
> > (sorry for all the included text, I can’t seem to get this darn thing to
> > select text to delete)
> No, it don't. On VAX, there was a hack (from DECUS?) called DCLCOMPLETE
> which sortof added this. But I don't think it was ever made to work on
> any other hardware platform, it was sortof not working perfectly, and it
> was definitely not something DEC ever included.
>
> Johnny

Someone asked me a long time ago if I could port DCLCOMPLETE to Alpha as it is VAX MACRO, I started but never completed it.

^P

[P.Lj]

I have 30 years, even on the AmigaDOS, but probably doesn't even count
^P

[Charles Richmond]

On 3/6/2022 12:34 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:

>> On 2022-03-04 22:23, Paul Rubin wrote:

>>> Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> It would have to be hard to tell, since the VAX hardware was a lot faster
>>>> than the PDP-10. I enjoyed working with both systems.
>>>

>>> For the first N years, VAXes were much slower than the faster 10's.
>>
>> Not really. The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780
>> was 1 MIPS.
>>
>> Speed parity was basically achieved with the VAX-11/785. After that, the
>> VAXen just were becoming faster.
>>
>> The PDP-10 was never a speed daemon. It was helped a lot by being
>> offloaded for terminal I/O by the front end processor. But with the
>> spreading of ethernet, all of that work started moving back to the
>> PDP-10 itself, at which point you really felt the pain. 40 users on a
>> -2060 was usually not all that much fun, I can tell you. Heck, even 20
>> was painful.
>>
>>> Faster VAXes appeared later, and eventually overtook the 10 mostly due
>>> to improved chip technology. The main VAX for a long time was the
>>> original 11/780 (introduced 1977) which was the canonical 1 MIP machine.
>>> A KL-10 (introduced 1975) was maybe 3x that, about equivalent(?) to the
>>> VAX 8600 that that came out in 1984.
>>
>> KL-10 was about 1.5x. The 8600, introduced in 1984 was 4x the 11/780,
>> and was noticeably faster than the KL-10.
>>
>>> I don't know about today, but legend has it that a few 11/780's were
>>> kept operational for decades after that model's obsolescence, to serve
>>> as benchmark hosts for MIPs rating of newer cpus.
>>
>> I think I heard such stories, but I never put any value to them. Another
>> story/problem is that the original MIPS definition was also based on a
>> specific version of OS and compiler. And as these evolved, the
>> VAX-11/780 actually became significantly faster than 1 MIPS. Which
>> exposed a problem with the whole MIPS definition. And also meant keeping
>> any VAXen around for reference was pretty pointless.
>>
>> And that's a big reason DEC themselves never used MIPS. They instead
>> talked about VUPs. Where a VAX-11/780 was by definition 1 VUP. And it
>> was more properly based on the actual processing speed, and not
>> depending on various software.
>>
>> Johnny
>>
>
> IBM never used MIPS either, but rated processors relative to each other. I
> always thought they did this to avoid comparisons to other vendors’
> machines, but it was probably as much because it was meaningless, as you
> say.
>
MIPS in Outer Space

The processor used in the original Sony PlayStation is currently guiding
a space probe the size of a grand piano towards Pluto? Yep, the same
MIPS R3000 CPU that once ran Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid was
repurposed by NASA in 2006 to fire thrusters, monitor sensors, and
transmit data from the New Horizons space probe.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/15/7551365/playstation-cpu-powers-new-horizons-pluto-probe

--

Charles Richmond


--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

[Charles Richmond]

On 3/7/2022 4:02 PM, Vir Campestris wrote:
> On 07/03/2022 16:53, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2022-03-06 20:17, Paul Rubin wrote:

>>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>>> The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780 was 1 MIPS.
>>>

>>> Ah ok, for some reason I had thought the KL10 was faster than that.
>>> EIther way: "36 bits -- a full DEC"  ;-)
>>
>> You are not alone. Lots of people seem to think the KL10 was way
>> faster than it was.
>>
>> Anyway, I still appreciate the 36-bit quote. But deep down inside, I'm
>> a PDP-11 person. :-D
>>
>
> TOPS-10 was where I first met assembler.
>
> I thought the KL10 was _slower_ than that.
>
> And how come I can still remember the instruction word format
> (9-4-1-4-18) 40 years later?
>
> Andy
>

"The Dinner Cafe's food stays hot!!! You can feel the food burning in
your stomach hours later..." ;-)

And how many advertising jingles can you sing... from television
commercials that were shown 40 years ago??? I can sing quite a few...
Perhaps I can make money with this... people might pay me *not* to
sing!!! ;-)

"A gentleman is a man who can play the bagpipes... and doesn't."

[Charles Richmond]

I always thought EMACS was discovered at Sutter's Mill back in '49... ;-)

[Charles Richmond]

On 3/8/2022 12:59 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> Johnny Billquist wrote:

>> Not saying that there couldn't have been a[n Emacs] version for
>> Multics
>
> You seem vague. I'm here to tell you Multics Emacs was started on March
> 3rd 1978 around 10pm.

Was this after the bartender refused to serve you another drink...
because you already had too much??? ;-) Any screen editor would be
preferable to what you have to do to edit a text field in Windows...

[Peter Flass]

Charles Richmond <code...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/2022 4:02 PM, Vir Campestris wrote:
>> On 07/03/2022 16:53, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2022-03-06 20:17, Paul Rubin wrote:
>>>> Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> writes:
>>>>> The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780 was 1 MIPS.
>>>>
>>>> Ah ok, for some reason I had thought the KL10 was faster than that.
>>>> EIther way: "36 bits -- a full DEC"  ;-)
>>>
>>> You are not alone. Lots of people seem to think the KL10 was way
>>> faster than it was.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I still appreciate the 36-bit quote. But deep down inside, I'm
>>> a PDP-11 person. :-D
>>>
>>
>> TOPS-10 was where I first met assembler.
>>
>> I thought the KL10 was _slower_ than that.
>>
>> And how come I can still remember the instruction word format
>> (9-4-1-4-18) 40 years later?
>>
>> Andy
>>
>
> "The Dinner Cafe's food stays hot!!! You can feel the food burning in
> your stomach hours later..." ;-)
>
> And how many advertising jingles can you sing... from television
> commercials that were shown 40 years ago??? I can sing quite a few...
> Perhaps I can make money with this... people might pay me *not* to
> sing!!! ;-)
>

Do you have a GoFundMe page?

> "A gentleman is a man who can play the bagpipes... and doesn't."
>
>



--

Pete

[gah4]

On Friday, December 23, 2022 at 9:49:39 AM UTC-8, Charles Richmond wrote:

(snip)

> MIPS in Outer Space
>
> The processor used in the original Sony PlayStation is currently guiding
> a space probe the size of a grand piano towards Pluto? Yep, the same
> MIPS R3000 CPU that once ran Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid was
> repurposed by NASA in 2006 to fire thrusters, monitor sensors, and
> transmit data from the New Horizons space probe.

Some years ago, I knew that Galileo uses the RCA CDP1802, which is
an (early) CMOS 8 bit processor with, as you would expect, no
multiply instruction.

A new compression algorithm was invented after it was launched,
to efficiently use the 1802.

https://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-119/119M.pdf

That is, to do compression minimizing the 'one' bits on the
factors, so that it can be done fast with shift and add.

Slows down decoding, done on earth, with faster processors.