On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 2:14 AM segaloco via TUHS <
tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
Does anyone know if there are any surviving examples of SVR2 for the PDP-11? Various SVR2 manuals still make mention of the assembler, linker, etc. and the pdp11 variable is present in machid(1)*. And on the note of the later years of the PDP-11, was there any hope for SVR3 on the PDP? I presume the introduction of demand paging was the end of things but I would be curious for anyone's recollections on the final years of System V on the PDP-11.
- Matt G.
BTW Sometime around this time, Summit starts to stop full support for the 11. I want to say that by then, getting anything for the 11 out of the Bell system was difficult. I do remember that by SVR3 time, the only thing you could get officially from Summit was the 3B/WE32000-based tape as the 3B5 was the official reference for UNIX.
IIRC SVR1 and SVR2 the Vax was the reference implementation, and with R1, you could still order a PDP-11 tape; but frankly, I've forgotten exactly when they stopped but I seem to remember not for SVR2. I personally had lost interest in the PDP-11 from AT&T by then. And if I could have obtained a SVR3 tape for VAX, most of the workstation folks like me would have ordered it, because we almost all had an 11/750 [usually running a flavor of BSD] around. The running joke was that you knew you own UNIX port was solid wen you could run UUCP and sendmail for you companies external gateway. IIRC as a for instance, Eric Fair was running a Vax at Apple since Apple's own UNIX product could not do it.
BTW: With SVR4 the Intel 386 family was the reference. AT&T had bought NCR by then, and NCR had flipped to it's 'Seven Layer Stragety' which was Intel ISA across each level and had kill off all their Motorola-based products. After the purchase with the NCR folks running AT&T's computer division, the 3B series began its demise even for AT&T and the RBOC. I was an external consultant for them at that point, and I may even have a memo from the Chief Architect (Lee Hovel - my boss/client in those days) that killed it [I actually the analysis for him that killed off the 88000 machines - which made my name mud in Columbia, SC where there had developed it - but I was not part of the 3B stuff].
P.S. *interesting little 3B5 side note, found as I was checking references that machid(1) in the "System V" branded manual from the initial System V commercial release mentions the pdp11, vax, and u3b machines, the latter being the 3B20S. However, the "Release 5.0" branded manuals also make mention of the u3b5 machine, the 3B5.
The 20S was a bit larger than a Vax 11/780 - just half of the 20D [duplex], which was developed to control the ESS#5 and was logic -- I don't remember what family, but likely 74S series. So it was traditional 19" racks and 48v telco-style power. While the 3B5 used a WE32000 chip as a 'desktop' system and plugged into a standard NEMA 110v jack.