17 Sep
2017
17 Sep
'17
8:28 p.m.
Was there ever a UNIX or even the thought of porting one to a PDP-10?
36-bit machine, 18-bit addresses (more on KL10 and KS10), and:
*0 would return register 0 instead of a SIGSEGV ;)
8-bit bytes would have been a wasteful exercise, but you never know.
(losing 4 bits of every 36-bit word)
thanks!
art k.
17 Sep
17 Sep
8:31 p.m.
On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 8:28 AM, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote:
Was there ever a UNIX or even the thought of porting
one to a PDP-10?
36-bit machine, 18-bit addresses (more on KL10 and KS10), and:
*0 would return register 0 instead of a SIGSEGV ;)
8-bit bytes would have been a wasteful exercise, but you never know.
(losing 4 bits of every 36-bit word)
IIRC, there was a NetBSD/pdp10. Don't know how far it got.
The instructor of my first C course in college wrote a very good C compiler
for TOPS-10/TOPS-20.
Warner
9:01 p.m.
Warner Losh writes:
Arthur Krewat wrote:
Not far enough. I was a little bit involved when there was talk of
using GCC.
Was there ever a UNIX or even the thought of
porting one
to a PDP-10?
IIRC, there was a NetBSD/pdp10. Don't know how far it got.
The instructor of my first C course in college wrote a
very
good C compiler for TOPS-10/TOPS-20.
Which one?
I have found remnants of a compiler called C10 by Alan Snyder. I have
tried to reach him without result.
9:22 p.m.
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 ...
The only string in it that means anything is this:
File: %s, compiled by Sargasso C v. %c
And a discussion I started a long time ago:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sys.pdp10/gc2avXfEJMg
On 9/17/2017 11:01 AM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
Warner Losh writes:
Arthur Krewat wrote:
Not far enough. I was a little bit involved when there was talk of
using GCC.
Was there ever a UNIX or even the thought of
porting one
to a PDP-10?
IIRC, there was a NetBSD/pdp10. Don't know how far it got.
The instructor of my first C course in college
wrote a very
good C compiler for TOPS-10/TOPS-20.
Which one?
I have found remnants of a compiler called C10 by Alan Snyder. I have
tried to reach him without result.
18 Sep
18 Sep
7:50 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.
10:42 p.m.
The MACRO-10 assembler used a keyword ASCIIZ to store that
7-bit/1-bit-wasted ASCII format.
MOVEI 0,[ASCIIZ /Hello there
/]
for example. It was the defacto standard for null-terminated ASCII strings.
When I later moved to C on 8/16-bit computers, I remember thinking
"what's with this signed 8-bit char thing?" ;)
There was also SIXBIT - almost everything ASCII had, but only upper
case. The filesystem used that for filenames and extensions, and it was
used in a few other areas. So any library calls like open() would have
had to convert the ASCII filename to SIXBIT before doing any monitor calls.
On 9/18/2017 9:50 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 11:22 AM, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net
<mailto:krewat@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.
2:10 a.m.
I thought there was a copy on ITS at one point. You tell me. I know it
was at CMU as I used it there. Many/Most of the compilers we had we also
at Stanford and MIT modulo differences in the OS environments.
Clem
On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
Clem Cole wrote:
There was a PDP-10 C compiler in the late 1970s,
that was kicking
around CMU, MIT and Stanford
When you say MIT, do you know if that was at the AI lab (i.e. ITS), or
elsewhere?
2:22 a.m.
Clem Cole wrote:
I thought there was a copy on ITS at one point. You tell me. I know
it
was at CMU as I used it there. Many/Most of the compilers we had we
also at Stanford and MIT modulo differences in the OS environments.
In the ITS files from 1990, I have found two C compilers:
- C10 by Alan Snyder,
- and an incomplete port of KCC.
The KCC files seem to be from the late 80s. Alan Snyders thesis is from
1973 and mentions the PDP-10. So I wonder C10 if went from MIT to CMU
and Stanford, or if there's some other compiler which came to MIT?
There was a PDP-10 C compiler in the late 1970s, that
was kicking
around CMU, MIT and Stanford
When you say MIT, do you know if that was at the AI
lab (i.e. ITS),
or elsewhere?
2:43 a.m.
I would bet it was the Snyder compiler.
That makes sense if it's '73. That would be the Ritchie front end and v5/v6
syntax as I remember
Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite.
On Sep 18, 2017, at 4:22 PM, Lars Brinkhoff
<lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
Clem Cole wrote:
I thought there was a copy on ITS at one point. You tell me. I know
it
was at CMU as I used it there. Many/Most of the compilers we had we
also at Stanford and MIT modulo differences in the OS environments.
In the ITS files from 1990, I have found two C compilers:
- C10 by Alan Snyder,
- and an incomplete port of KCC.
The KCC files seem to be from the late 80s. Alan Snyders thesis is from
1973 and mentions the PDP-10. So I wonder C10 if went from MIT to CMU
and Stanford, or if there's some other compiler which came to MIT?
There was a PDP-10 C compiler in the late 1970s, that
was kicking
around CMU, MIT and Stanford
When you say MIT, do you know if that was at the AI
lab (i.e. ITS),
or elsewhere? 
3:06 p.m.
there is a video on youtube about its & c-language demonstrating
teco-'emacs' and the c-compiler.From: Lars Brinkhoff
&lt;lars(a)nocrew.org&gt;Sent: Tue, 19 Sep 2017 01:29:13To: Clem Cole
&lt;clemc(a)ccc.com&gt;Cc: TUHS main list
&lt;tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org&gt;Subject: Re: [TUHS] PDP-10 UNIX?Clem Cole
wrote:> There was a PDP-10 C compiler in the late 1970s, that was kicking>
around CMU, MIT and StanfordWhen you say MIT, do you know if that was at the AI lab (i.e.
ITS), orelsewhere?
3:56 p.m.
Mutiny writes:
Clem Cole wrote:
Yes. I have talked to the person who made it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF-vy8b4r-Y
He also made two more about other parts of ITS, but I guess that's too
far outside the scope of this mailing list. (So why did I write this?
Can't help myself!)
There was a PDP-10 C compiler in the late 1970s,
that was kicking
around CMU, MIT and Stanford
there is a video on youtube about its & c-language demonstrating
teco-'emacs'
and the c-compiler.
17 Sep
17 Sep
10:33 p.m.
On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 9:01 AM, Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
Warner Losh writes:
His name was Greg Titus. It was installed on the TOPS-20 boxes we had at
school as cc20. Don't know more than that. I've lost touch with Greg over
the years and some professional wrestler has popped in his name... I'll
see if I can find him...
Warner
Arthur Krewat wrote:
Not far enough. I was a little bit involved when there was talk of
using GCC.
Was there ever a UNIX or even the thought of
porting one
to a PDP-10?
IIRC, there was a NetBSD/pdp10. Don't know how far it got.
The instructor of my first C course in college
wrote a very
good C compiler for TOPS-10/TOPS-20.
Which one?
I have found remnants of a compiler called C10 by Alan Snyder. I have
tried to reach him without result.
2651
days inactive
2653
days old
12 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Arthur Krewat -
Clem Cole -
Clem cole
-
Lars Brinkhoff -
Mutiny -
Warner Losh