18 Sep
2017
18 Sep
'17
4:34 a.m.
On 2017-09-17 18:33, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
Was there ever a UNIX or even the thought of porting
one to a PDP-10?
Definitely a thought. An attempt was started on NetBSD for the PDP-10,
and it sortof got halfway of getting into single-user, but I'm not sure
if the person who worked on it just got distracted, or if he hit
problems that were really hard to solve. I certainly know the person,
and can find out more if people really are interested.
36-bit machine, 18-bit addresses (more on KL10 and
KS10), and:
*0 would return register 0 instead of a SIGSEGV ;)
Yes. Not the first machine that would be true for. You don't have
address 0 unmapped on a PDP-11 either.
8-bit bytes would have been a wasteful exercise, but
you never know.
(losing 4 bits of every 36-bit word)
Uh... Why 8 bit bytes? That way lies madness. There exists a really good
C compiler for TOPS-20 - KCC. It uses 9 bits per byte. Works like a
charm, except when some people write portable code that is not so
portable. ;-)
KCC was written by KLH, unless I remember wrong. Same guy who also wrote
the KLH-10 emulator.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol