TUHS

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6420 discussions

Re: [TUHS] Names of famous, historical UNIX machines?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > my printers have often been named after chainsaws Yeah, MIT (or was it Proteon, I forget - a long time ago :-) had that theme going for a while for printers... > @ DEC we were pretty free to use what we wanted and some were themed, > most were boring. Hah! I do have a cosmically great computer naming story from DEC, though. So DECNet host names were limited to N characters (where N=8, or some such). So one day they get this complaint from some DEC user in the UK: "Grumble, grumble, grumble, N-character limit in DECNet host names, we want to name our host 'Slartibartfast'." So, this being before a certain radio play had hit the US from the UK, the people at DEC were like: "What's a 'Slartibartfast'???" Instantly, the reply shot back (and perhaps some of you saw this coming): "Boy, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your pants down fall down!" :-) :-) Noel

7 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] shared memory on Unix

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: "Steve Johnson" > The meetings went on for over a year, but _I NEVER MET WITH THE SAME > PERSON TWICE!_ It seemed that the only thing the marketing group knew > how to do was reorganize the marketing group... Shades of SI:Electric-Marketing (I _think_ that was its name) on the Symbolics LISP Machine... (For those who never had the joy of seeing this, it randomly drew a bunch of boxes with people in them on the screen in a hierarchy, connected them, and then started randomly moving the boxes around... I wonder if the source still exists - or, better yet, a video of it running? Probably not, alas.) Noel

7 years, 11 months

v6 lecture notes

by helbig＠mailbox.org

Hi, my site at the ba-stuttgart was removed. It hosted course ware for my unix v6 lecture. This includes: Unix Programmer's Manual (aka man pages) Documents for use with the Unix Time-Sharing System prepared as postscript files. I provided the man pages as HTML-pages with the references replaced by links. The lecture notes contain tips for installing v6 on the simh emulator, a description of the pdp11 instruction set and hardware as well as a description of unix v6, including booting, kernel and user land software. So if anyone is interested let me know. Greetings Wolfgang Helbig Stauferstr. 22 71334 Waiblingen Germany

7 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] PDP-10 in the news today

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Nigel Williams > Is it a reasonable claim that the PDP-10 made time-sharing "common" > ... I'm presuming that "common" should be read as ubiquitous and > accessible > I'm wondering if it was really the combination of the PDP-11 Good question; I think a case can be made both ways. > (lower-cost more models) One observation I will make: the two don't have identical time-lines; the earliest PDP-10 models predate the PDP-11 by a good chunk, and the PDP-11 out-lasted the PDP-10. So that has a big influence, I think, on the question above. The first PDP-10 (the KA - we'll leave aside the even earlier PDP-6) was made out of small cards with individual transistors (B-series Flip Chips), whereas the earliest PDP-11 model (the -11/20) used SSI TTL on much larger cards. Ditto on the other end: the last PDP-10 sold used 29xx bit-slice technology, whereas the PDP-11 lasted through three generations of microprocessor (the LSI-11, Fonz, and Jaws). Noel

7 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] PDP-10 in the news today

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

Nigel Williams <nw(a)retrocomputingtasmania.com> asks on the TUHS list today: >> ... >> Is it a reasonable claim that the PDP-10 made time-sharing "common" >> (note it says "the machine")? I'm presuming that "common" should be >> read as ubiquitous and accessible (as in lower-cost than >> competing/alternative options from other manufacturers or even DEC). >> >> I'm wondering if it was really the combination of the PDP-11 >> (lower-cost more models) and Unix ("free" license to universities) >> that propelled time-sharing, at least at universities. >> ... I worked on the IBM ATS (Administrative Terminal System) for text processing in the early 1970s, and for several years, on the CDC 6400 under both SCOPE and KRONOS operating systems. Those were mainframe environments, but users scattered around campus accessed them via glass terminals, so that was certainly time sharing. Later, for 12 years (1978--1990), I also worked on TOPS-20 on the PDP-10, and that too was time sharing, with most users having a terminal on their desks. We also had PDP-11 and LSI-11 systems, but they ran DEC proprietary operating systems, and were generally dedicated to particular research hardware. It was only in the early 1980s that my institution also began to run Unix systems, initially Wollongong BSD on VAX 750s, and then in 1987, with our first Sun workstations running SunOS. Thus, for me at least, Unix time sharing came a dozen years late (though it was still welcome, and remains so today). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7 years, 11 months

PDP-10 in the news today

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

This story appears today in The Register: PDP-10 enthusiasts resurrect ancient MIT operating system Incompatible Timesharing System now compatible with modern machines https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/30/pdp10_enthusiasts_resurrect_ancien… Near the end of the story is a mention of SIMH and of KLH10, both of which emulate the PDP-10. There is also mention of a PDP-11 emulator running inside ITS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] PDP-10 in the news today

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Lars Brinkhoff > several debuggers called RUG and CARPET SYSENG;CARPET > and SYSENG;KLRUG > (and also SYSEN2;URUG >). CARPET runs in the PDP-10, and talks to the 11's via the Rubin 10-11 interface on MIT-AI (which let the PDP-10 see into the PDP-11s' memory); it installed a small toehold in the 11 (e.g. for trap handling). There was also a version (conditionalized in the source) called "Hali" ("Hali is Carpet over a [serial] line") - 'hali' is Turkish for 'carpet' (I wonder how someone knew that). RUG runs in the front-end 11 on the KL (MIT-MC). URUG is a really simple version of RUG that runs in a GT40, and use the GT40 display for output. There's also 11DDT (KLDCP;11DDT >) - not sure why both this and KLRUG exist - unless RUG was for the front-end 11, and 11DDT was for the I/O-11? Noel

7 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] PDP-10 in the news today

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> There is also mention of a PDP-11 emulator running inside ITS. SYSENG;11SIM > Noel

7 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] Early Internet work (Was: History of select(2))

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal >> the headers say they date from 1974-75. > Wow, that's great! That means that you have the initial version. The file write dates are May 1979, so that's the latest it can be. There is one folder called 'DTI' which contains an email message from someone at DTI to someone at SRI which is dated "10 Apr 1979" so that seems to indicate that that's indeed when they are from. (The message says that the folder contains the source for DTI's IMP-11A driver, which is different from UIll's, although they both descend from the same original version.) > Possibly it is V5 not V6 Nope, definitely V6 here. > All my leads for the 1975 version of this code base came up dry and I > feared it lost. I could have sworn that I'd seen _listings_ of the code in a UIllinois document about NCP Unix that I had found (and downloaded) on the Internet, but I can't find them here now. I did look again and found: "A Network Unix System for the Arpanet", by Karl C. Kelley, Richard Balocca, and Jody Kravitz but it doesn't contain any sources. > it may contain the first version of 'mbufs' It might - the code is conditionalized for "UCBUFMOD" all over the place. > Yes, a 'history' file seems to have been common practice at BBN. The > kernel would have had many modifications: > - the 'ports' extension from Rand Yes. > - the 'await' extension by Jack Haverty Yup. > - an 1822-driver Yes (also by Haverty) - although IMP11-A drivers are all over the place, there are two different ones in the NCP Unix alone. > - possibly, an Autodin II network driver Didn't see one. > - possibly, shared memory extensions Yes, there are two module in 'ken', map_page.c and set_lcba.c (I was unable to work out what 'LCBA' stood for) which seem to do something with mapping. > It might even have some NCP code in it Yes, there's an 'ncpkernel' directory. > There seem to have been two versions of the BBN modified kernel. One was > done for systems without separate I/D with stuff heavily trimmed Yes, there's a 'SMALL' preprocessor flag which conditionally removes some stuff. > The other may have extended the V6 kernel to run in separate I and D > spaces That capability was present in stock V6. Noel

7 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] Early Internet work (Was: History of select(2))

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > Steve Ward's guys writing Trix hacked together a compiler, assembler and > the like. All of which I have the source for - just looked through it. > If memory serves me, tjt wrote the assembler I have the NROFF source for the "A68 Assembler Reference", and it's by James L. Gula and Thomas J. Teixeira. It says that "A68 is an edit of the MICAL assembler also written by Mike [Patrick].". > Jack Test did much of the compiler and again IIRC that was based on PCC. I dunno, I'm not familiar with PCC, so I can't say. It definitely looks very different from the Ritchie C compiler. Noel

7 years, 11 months

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