18 Sep
2017
18 Sep
'17
3:50 p.m.
On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 11:22 AM, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
I have a C compiler for TOPS-10 that I got off the
Internet back in 1988.
Still haven't messed around with it enough to get it to run, but ...
There was a PDP-10 C compiler in the late 1970s, that was kicking around
CMU, MIT
and Stanford which we used to write backup10 and and an
implementation of tar. IIRC, it was based on the the Ritchie front end
and was V6 in syntax (i.e. pre-V7 or typesetter C - aka 'White Book).
I've forgotten the rules of chars, but I remember you had to be careful.
I think it was 4 9-bit chars to transfer things (4*9=36 bits), but I think
I remember there were cases on output that it wanted to wash it through a
7-bit PDP-10 char (5*7+1 =36bits) which was the 'norm' for most languages
like SAIL, BLISS et al.
I did not mess with much, but that time, I was transitioning from the 10's
to UNIX by that time. I added support for the -20's dumper tapes to
backup10 which were almost but not quite the same. But that was the last I
messed with it. Mike Accetta and Fil Aliva (of CMU Mach fame) I remember
had their had in that subsystem, at one point. And of course Danny Klein
is always a good one from those days to ask too. I'll see if I can dig them
up and ask.