This recent activity on the simh mailing list WRT to DG Nova and
Ecpilse got me wondering. At Locus in the 80s and 90s, we did a lot of
work with DG and DG-UX with their later MP-based ports using commercially
available microprocessors (which I have reported was a very nicely done
system, easy to work on, the locks tended to scale well, e*tc*.).
But I am trying to remember if C or UNIX was on a Nova or an Eclipse. This
could be my failed memory, given that so many people ported V7 in the late
1970s (the infamous 'NUIX' bug from the Series/1 port probably being my
favorite tale). So to the hive mind, did anyone (DG themselves or a
University) ever build 16 or 32-bit tools for the DG architectures and do a
UNIX port, and if so, does anyone know what became of those efforts? Is
this something that needs to be in the TUHS archives also?
Clem
ᐧ
I’ve only recently stumbled across this paper.
It gives the answer to one question I’ve had:
Why did Linux become more popular than everything that came before it?
There were surprises.
The “Dot Boom” then “Dot Bust” along with Y2K.
Microsoft developed an architecture, Active Directory, designed to support Enterprise scale deployments.
Everything Good in A.D. is Old (LDAP, Kerberos, DNS)
everything badly done is New (replicated DB’s & ???).
Other surprises is the rise of “Internet Scale” datacentres, Social Media and Smartphones & Tablets.
All of which are dominated by Linux or Unix derived solutions.
And Virtual Machines on Intel.
IA-64 was in the far future :(
And ARM CPU’s made a big comeback.
==========
The Sourceware Operating System Proposal
9 November 1993
Revision: 1.8
<https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/unix/srcos.html>
==========
--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
I remember being told back in the 1980s that vi would set the terminal
to "cooked mode" when vi was in "insert mode", so as to reduce expensive
context switching for each character typed. Only vi's "command mode"
would set the terminal to "raw mode" so as to provide immediate feedback
on each (command) character typed. This would be a clever system
performance optimization, and would also explain designing vi around
distinct insert and command modes.
However, I can't find such evidence even as far back as BSD 1. It seems
that in insert mode ESC was processed like any other character.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1-Snapshot-Develop…
Cooked mode was only entered when scrolling in order to receive interrupts.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1-Snapshot-Develop…
Also, for this scheme to work ESC would need to be mapped to an
interrupt key, so as to allow exiting the cooked mode through the
corresponding signal handler. Again, grepping for ESC, did not show me
any such code.
I also remember being told that this optimization was what allowed
twenty students to concurrently perform interactive editing on a VAX
11/780 (running 4.2BSD and then 4.3BSD), and that Emacs was not provided
to students because it was always operating in raw mode.
Was I misled? Was there perhaps a hacked version of vi that worked in
this way?
-Diomidis
> From: Diomidis Spinellis
> I remember being told back in the 1980s that vi would set the terminal
> to "cooked mode" when vi was in "insert mode", so as to reduce expensive
> context switching for each character typed.
> ...
> However, I can't find such evidence even as far back as BSD 1.
Maybe you're thinking of Multics Emacs, which had such a capability:
https://multicians.org/mepap.html
Noel
Hi all, I'll be attending the Usenix SREcon22 Asia/Pacific Conference
which is being held in Sydney, Australia on the 7-9 December. Is anybody
else attending? If so, it'd be nice to catch up with some other TUHSers :-)
https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon22apac/program
Cheers, Warren
> Touch typists can spot an illtyperate programmer from a mile away.
> They don't even have to be in the same room.
I once thought of touch typing as employment of all fingers. Then I met
Fred Grampp. Using only four fingers, he typed as fast as most good
programmers. He knew where to hit, with a kinesthetic sense that had
progressed beyond dependence on "home keys". It was an athletic
performance, astonishing to watch.
Doug
