> From: Clem Cole
> Yes, that was one of the RTS compilers for the NU machine. John Romkey
> may have done it, as he was the primary person behind PCIP
I decided to poke around in the 'MIT-CSR' dump, since that was the machine
the PC/IP project started on, to see what I could find. Hoo boy! What an
adventure!
In the PC/IP area, I found a 'c86' directory - but it was almost empty. It
did have a shell file, 'grab', which contained:
tftp -g $1 xx "PS:<Wayne>$1"
and a 'graball' file which called 'grab' for the list of compiler source
files. ('xx' was MIT-XX, the TOPS-20 main time-sharing machint of LCS.)
So I did a Web search for Wayne Gramlich (with whom I hadn't communicated in
many decades), and he popped right up. (Amazing thing, this Internet thingy.
Who'd have ever thought, back in the day, that it would turn into what it
did? Well, probably John Brunner, whom I (sadly) never met, who was there
before any of us.)
I took a chance, and called his number, and he was there, and we had a long
chat. He absolutely didn't do it, although he wrote the loader the project
used ('l68', the source for which I did find.) He's virtually certain Romkey
didn't (which would have been my guess too; Romkey was like a sophmore when
the project started). His best (_very_ faded) memory was that they started off
with a commercial compiler. (But see below.)
That leaves several mysteries. 1) Why would a commercial compiler not come
with a linker? 2) Why did people who wanted to work with the PC/IP source
need a Bell license?
I did some more poking, and the list of files for the 86 compiler, from
'graball':
trees.c optim.c pftn.c code.c local.c scan.c xdefs.c
table.c reader.c local2.c order.c match.c allo.c comm1.c
manifest mfile1 common macdefs mfile2 mac2defs
matched the file names from 'pcc', as given in "A Tour Through the Portable C
Compiler":
https://maibriz.de/unix/ultrix/_root/porttour.pdf
(in section "The Source Files"). So whether the 86 compiler was done at MIT
(by someone in RTS), or at a company, it was definitely a 'pcc' descendant.
(Possibly adding to the confusion, we had some other C compilers for various
ISA's in that project [building networking software for various
micro-computers], including an 8080 C compiler from Whitesmiths, Ltd, which I
have also found. It's possible that Wayne's vague memory of a commercial
compiler is of that one?)
I really should reach out to Romkey and Bridgham, to see what they remember.
Later today.
Whether the main motivation for keeping the compiler source on XX was i)
because disk space was short on CSR (we had only a hand-me-down pair of
CalComp Model 215 drives - capacity 58 Mbytes per drive!); ii) to prevent
version skew; or iii) because it was a commercial compiler, and we had to
protect the source (e.g. we didn't have the source to the 8080 compiler, only
the object modules), I have no idea.
> Anyway the MIT RTS folks made hardware and PCC back ends for the 68K,
> Z8000 and 8086. I believe that each had separate assemblers, tjt who
> sometimes reads this list might know more, as he wrote the 68K assembler.
There is an 'a86' directory on CSR, but it too is empty, except for a 'grab'
command file. That contains only:
tftp -g $1 xx "PS:<novick>$1"
I have no memory of who 'novick' might have been. A Web search for 'novick
mit lcs' didn' turn anything up. (I wonder if it might have been Carol
Novitsky; she was in our group at LCS, and I have a vague memory of her being
associated with the networking software for micro-computers project.)
Anyway, it probably doesn't matter; the c86 'grab' referred to Wayne, but he
didn't write c86; 'novick' might not have written a86.
Something else to ask Romkey and Bridgham about.
Noel
