30 Dec
2017
30 Dec
'17
8:30 a.m.
On 12/29/17, Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
The Alpha was hot
stuff for about nine months. Ran OSF/1 formerly DigitalUnix formerly
OSF/1.
Digital UNIX for the VAX was indeed derived from OSF/1. The port to
Alpha was called Tru64 UNIX.
Tru64 UNIX was initially a pure 64-bit system, with no provision for
building or running 32-bit program images. This turned out to be a
mistake . DEC found out that a lot of ISVs had code that implicitly
"knew" that sizeof() a pointer was the same as sizeof(int) was the
same as 4 bytes. Tru64 was forced to implement a 32-bit compatibility
mode.
There was also a problem with the C compiler initially developed at
DECwest in Seattle. It supported ONLY ANSI standard C and issued
fatal errors for violations/extensions of the standard. We (DEC
mainstream compiler group) called it the Rush Limbaugh
compiler--extremely conservative, and you can't argue with it.
-Paul W.