Re: [TUHS] History of top

Lars Brinkhoff &lt;lars(a)nocrew.org&gt; reports on Mon, 28 May 2018 10:31:56 +0000: That link contains the statement However, on TOPS-20, which was developed several years before VMS, but still from the same corporation, we had the sysdpy utility which produced a similar display as top does. ending comments: ;462 - DON'T DO A RLJFN AFTER A CLOSF IN NEWDPY ;<4.UTILITIES>SYSDPY.MAC.58, 2-Jun-79 14:15:54, EDIT BY DBELL ;461 - START USING STANDARD TOPS-20 EDIT HISTORY CONVENTIONS, AND ; REMOVE OLD EDIT HISTORY. ... ;COPYRIGHT (C) 1976,1977,1978,1979 BY DIGITAL EQUIPMENT \ CORPORATION, MAYNARD, MASS. I therefore expect that there was 460-entry list of log messages that predated 2-Jun-1979, and likely went back a few years. Two other versions of sysdpy.mac in my archives have also dropped log messages before 461. Even before TOPS-20, on the CDC 6400 SCOPE operating system, there was a similar tool (whose name I no longer recall) that gave a continuously updated display of system-wide process activity. That was available in at least late 1973. I suspect that top-like displays were added to most other interactive operating systems, as soon as screen terminals made updates convenient without wasting console paper. One of the first questions likely to be asked by interactive users is "what is my job doing?". In a TOPS-20 terminal window, you could type Ctl-T to get a one-line status report for the job that was currently running from your terminal. For many users, that was preferable to sysdpy, and it was heavily used. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 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/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------