27 Jan
2016
27 Jan
'16
1:36 a.m.
First, I was wondering when Bell Labs got that first
PDP-11/20 what
software (if any) came with it?
I have this bit set that they didn't get
anything, they wrote a
cross-assembler on another machine. I know that when it came,
it didn't have a
disk (wasn't ready yet), so it ran a chess problem (memory only) for quite a
while until the disk came.
That is exactly right. Unix was up and running as a time-sharing
system with remote access before a primitive DOS emerged from DEC.
The chess problem was enumeration of closed knight tours.
Doug
27 Jan
27 Jan
1:59 a.m.
New subject: PDP-11 questions
On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 02:36:28PM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
That is exactly right. Unix was up and running as a
time-sharing
system with remote access before a primitive DOS emerged from DEC.
The chess problem was enumeration of closed knight tours.
"The processor arrived at the end of the summer [1970], but the PDP-11
was so new a product that no disk was available until December. In the
meantime, a rudimentary, core-only version of Unix was written using
a cross-assembler on the PDP-7. Most of the time, the machine sat in
a corner, enumerating all the closed Knight's tours on a 6×8 chess
board—a three-month job."
-- https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html
Cheers, Warren
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