> That makes sense if it's '73. That would be the Ritchie front end and
> v5/v6 syntax as I remember=20
Here:
http://publications.csail.mit.edu/lcs/specpub.php?id=717
is the TR describing it (well, this report covers one by him for the Honeywell
6000 series, but IIRC it's the same compiler). I didn't read the whole thing
slowly, but glancing quickly at it, it sounds like it's possible a 'from
scratch' thing?
Noel
> From: Alec Muffett
> "threaded code" in the old sense could be smaller than the equivalent
> CISC binary on the same machine
One can think of 'threaded code' as code for a new virtual machine, one
specialized to the task at hand.
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code
For those who really want to delve in some depth, see the chapter "Turning
Cousins into Sisters" (Chapter 15, pg. 365) in "Computer Engineering: A DEC
View of Hardware Systems Design", by Bell, Mudge and McNamara.
Interesting factoid: The PDP-11 initially used a threaded FORTRAN
implementation. In line with the observation above (about a new virtual
machine), DEC actually looked into writing microcode for the -11/60 (which had
a writeable control store) to implement the FORTRAN virtual machine.
Noel
On 2017-09-17 18:33, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
> Was there ever a UNIX or even the thought of porting one to a PDP-10?
Definitely a thought. An attempt was started on NetBSD for the PDP-10,
and it sortof got halfway of getting into single-user, but I'm not sure
if the person who worked on it just got distracted, or if he hit
problems that were really hard to solve. I certainly know the person,
and can find out more if people really are interested.
> 36-bit machine, 18-bit addresses (more on KL10 and KS10), and:
>
> *0 would return register 0 instead of a SIGSEGV ;)
Yes. Not the first machine that would be true for. You don't have
address 0 unmapped on a PDP-11 either.
> 8-bit bytes would have been a wasteful exercise, but you never know.
> (losing 4 bits of every 36-bit word)
Uh... Why 8 bit bytes? That way lies madness. There exists a really good
C compiler for TOPS-20 - KCC. It uses 9 bits per byte. Works like a
charm, except when some people write portable code that is not so
portable. ;-)
KCC was written by KLH, unless I remember wrong. Same guy who also wrote
the KLH-10 emulator.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
What a pain, almost like Unix, and not quite. l It was a clone of Unix for the 68k. The APIs were ever so slightly different because the authors were concerned about copyright infringement. libc calls had different argument orders or types and in general it was just off enough that you wanted to claw at the screen every time something went wrong.
To top it off, the system we were hosting it on was so slow that a full rebuild of our meager (10k lines) software took overnight.
I eventually ported all the software to a SparcStation-2 cross compiling to the 68k target we were embedded on.
> To kick a more relevant thread off, what was the "weirdest" Unix system you used & why? Could be an emulation like Eunice, could be the hardware e.g NULL was not zero, NUXI byte ordering etc.
>
> Cheers, Warren
On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 4:09 PM, Jon Steinhart <jon(a)fourwinds.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I'd suggest that a lot of this has to do with people who have vision
> and people who don't. When you look at UNIX, you see something created by
> a bunch of very talented people who had a reasonably shared vision of what
> they were trying to achieve.
>
​Jon - I mostly agree, but would twist it a little differently (hey, we've
been arguing since the 1970s, so why stop now).
I think you are actually touching on an idea that has been around humanity
for a long time that is independent of the computer field. We call it
"good taste." Part of acquiring good taste is learning what is in bad
taste, a heavy dose of experience and frankly the ability to evaluate your
own flaws. What I always love about Dennis, Ken, Doug, Steve and the rest
if the team is their willingness to accept the shortcomings and compromises
that were made as the developed UNIX as a system. I never saw them trying
to claim perfection or completeness, much less and end state had been
reached. Always looking for something better, more interesting. And
always, standing on the shoulders of others...
What I really dislike about much of the crowd that has been discussed is
that they often seem more contented to kick people in the shins that
standing on their shoulders.
I used to say, when we were hiring people for some of my start-ups, what we
wanted was experienced folks that had demonstrated good taste. Those are
people you can trust; and will get you pretty close to where you want to be.
In fact, to pick on one of my previous employers, I have always said, what
DEC got wrong, was it was always striving to be perfect. And lots of
things never shipped, or when they did (like Alpha) it was wonderful, but
it did not matter. The opportunity window had passed.
Part of "good taste" is getting the job done and on time. Being "good
enough" and moving on to the next thing. Sun (certainly at the beginning)
was pretty good at this idea. The UNIX team clearly got a lot of it right.
It is easy to throw stones at others. It is hard to repeatedly get so much
right for so long and UNIX has and did.
Clem
​
On Sep 15, 2017, at 1:32 AM, tuhs-request(a)minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
>
> From: "Steve Johnson" <scj(a)yaccman.com>
> To: "Dan Cross" <crossd(a)gmail.com>, "Bakul Shah" <bakul(a)bitblocks.com>
> Cc: "TUHS main list" <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] really Pottering vs UNIX
> Message-ID:
> <d92047c5a36c6e72bd694322acb4ff33e3835f9f(a)webmail.yaccman.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>
>
> More to do with a sense for quality. Often developed through
> experience
> (but not just that). I think what we need is a guild system for
> programmers/engineers. Being an apprentice of a master craftsman is
> essential for learning this "good taste" as you call it.
>
> Back when I was writing FORTRAN, I was
> working for a guy with very high standards who read my code and got me
> to comment or, more usually, rewrite all the obscure things I did.
> He made the point that a good program never dies, and many people
> will read it and modify it and try to understand it, and it's almost a
> professional duty to make sure that you make this as easy as possible
> for them.
>
When I taught at UCSD I always made it a point to inform the students
that the person who will be maintaining their programs in the future will
all be reformed axe murderers. These nice folks learned C (at the time)
on MS-DOS 3.1 and weren’t as homicidal as they used to be. They would
however be given your home address and phone number in case they
had questions about your code.
It was always good for a laugh and I went on to explain how code outlives
the author and so you should take care to make it easy for someone else
to work on your code.
The other thing I did was to have students give their programs half
way through the project to a randomly chosen (by me) other student.
They were not allowed to assist the recipient and grades were based
on how well the final program met the requirements given at the beginning
of the project. Code quality went way up on the second project compared
to the first.
David
I had almost wiped any memory of DG/UX from my memory. Now I’m
quite sure I must resume therapy for it.
I wrote device drivers for that . . . thing to drive graphics cards for
Megatek and its custom version of X11 that buried about 1/2 of the
server in the hardware.
David
> On Sep 17, 2017, at 12:01 PM, tuhs-request(a)minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
>
> From: Chet Ramey <chet.ramey(a)case.edu>
> To: arnold(a)skeeve.com, wkt(a)tuhs.org, tuhs(a)tuhs.org
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] And now ... Weirdnix?
> Message-ID: <58b4bb3e-1b94-0e3d-312d-9151e8a057a6(a)case.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> On 9/17/17 3:28 AM, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
>
>> Whatever Data General called their Unix layer on top of their native
>> OS for the Eclipse or whatever it was (32 bit system).
>
> I think they called it DG/UX -- just like they called their wretched
> System V port.
arnold(a)skeeve.com:
> This not true of ALL the GNU project maintainers. Don't tar everyone
> with RMS's brush.
John Steinhart:
What are we supposed to to then? cpio?
===
I guess we're supposed to tp his house.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:
>
>
> Why not just write a Unix-native one? They aren't that much work - I
> created a
> ​ ​
> uassembler overnight (literally!) for the QSIC project Dave Bridgham and I
> ​ ​
> have been working on.
​Agreed Terry Hayes, tjt and I hacked an assembler and loader for Masscomp
together years ago pretty fast. We actually, made all those tools look a
lot like the DEC ones because a lot of same HW people were writing the
uCode for the Masscomp FP/APs as had written the much of the 11 and Vax
code​.
[Fun story, that a few other tools that had been written for UNIX that
patriots older RSX/VMS support tools were quietly traded to DEC WRL for
some HW libraries. We both were using the same brand CAD system and our
HW guys wanted some design rule stuff WRL had done for Jupiter, and they
wanted UNIX based tools to run on Ultrix].
As for Tektronix earlier, we did not know much about the WSC unit and
basically the CSAV/CRET stuff was supposed to be a one shot thing. We
just wanted to use the tool that came with it; cause we did not think we
were going to do much with it. In hind sight and knowing what I would
learn 3-5 years later, writing our own would have made more sense; but I'm
not sure it was very well documented.
Clem
> From: Dave Horsfall
> Did anyone actually use the WCS?
Well, the uassembler was a product for a while, so they must have..
> I had visions of implementing CSAV and CRET on our -60, but never did
> get around to it.
I recently had the idea of programming them into an M792 ROM card (100nsec
access time); user programs couldn't have used it without burning a segment
(to map in the appropriate part of the I/O space), but it might have sped up
the kernel some (and it would have been trivial to add, once the card was
programmed - with a soldering iron - BTDT, BITD :-).
Haven't gotten to it yet - still looking for an M792 (I don't want to trash
any of my pre-programmed M792-xx's :-).
> From: Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com>
> A big issue, again IIRC, was the microcode compiler/tools for the WSC
> ran on RSX so it meant UNIX was not running, which was not popular.
Why not just write a Unix-native one? They aren't that much work - I created a
uassembler overnight (literally!) for the QSIC project Dave Bridgham and I
have been working on.
It's been improved a lot since the first version (e.g. the entire uengine
description is now read in from a config file, instead of being compiled in),
but that first version did work fine...
Or was the output format not documented?
Noel
