28 Aug
2019
28 Aug
'19
7:57 p.m.
How long was research running on a PDP-11 and when did
they move to a VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual memory, in 1978. By the
time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the workhorse machines in Research.
Doug
28 Aug
28 Aug
8:05 p.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
Interesting. In my head, v7 is kind of the pinnacle of what you should run
on a PDP-11 (yes, I know 2.11BSD is still maintained), but that once you
add a networking stack, the 16-bit address limitations really start to
hurt, no matter how clever you are with your overlays. But when I think of
v7, in my mind it's running on an 11/70.
I also find the multilayer switching described in the streams networking
implementation a lot like "inetd, all the way down." That's kinda nifty.
Adam
On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 10:57 AM Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
How long was research running on a PDP-11 and
when did they move to a
VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual memory,
in 1978. By the time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the workhorse
machines in Research.
Doug
8:08 p.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
So, what's the story on why the London/Reiser port didn't get adapted
back by Research, and they ended up starting from 4.1 BSD?
Thanks,
Arnold
How long was research running on a PDP-11 and
when did they move to a VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual memory, in 1978. By
the time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the workhorse machines in Research.
Doug 
8:27 p.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 11:57 AM Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Is there a paper on this work?
Warner
How long was research running on a PDP-11 and
when did they move to a
VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual memory,
in 1978. By the time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the workhorse
machines in Research.
8:34 p.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 12:27 PM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 11:57 AM Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Is there a paper on this work?
Found the 32V paper, but this was still a swapping implementation if I'm
reading correctly. I thought that the virtual memory was added by BSD /
Bill Joy. That would explain why V8 was BSD 4.1 based, since it was the
first usable Vax port with VM.
Warner
How long was research running on a PDP-11 and
when did they move to a
VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual
memory, in 1978. By the time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the
workhorse machines in Research.
11:54 p.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
I think it was slightly later. I joined mid-1980 and VAXes to replace the
11/70 were being discussed but had not arrived. We needed to convert a lab
into a VAX machine room and decide between BSD and Reiser, all of which
happened in the second half of 1980.
Reiser Unix got demand paging a little later, and it was spectacularly
fast. I remember being gobsmacked when I saw a demo in early 1981.
Dead ends everywhere.
-rob
On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 3:57 AM Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
How long was research running on a PDP-11 and
when did they move to a
VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual memory,
in 1978. By the time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the workhorse
machines in Research.
Doug
29 Aug
29 Aug
8:43 a.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Reiser Unix got demand paging a little later, and it
was spectacularly
fast. I remember being gobsmacked when I saw a demo in early 1981.
So, once again, *W*H*Y* did Research choose BSD instead of Reiser's
version on the vax?
Dead ends everywhere.
Explain please?
Thanks,
Arnold
9:39 a.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
It had paging already and there was affection by some towards Berkeley.
-rob
On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 4:45 PM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Reiser Unix got demand paging a little later, and
it was spectacularly
fast. I remember being gobsmacked when I saw a demo in early 1981.
So, once again, *W*H*Y* did Research choose BSD instead of Reiser's
version on the vax?
Dead ends everywhere.
Explain please?
Thanks,
Arnold
6:26 p.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
Ah, OK. Expedience + other considerations.
I don't suppose the Reiser 32V+paging survived anywhere?
Much thanks,
Arnold
Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It had paging already and there was affection by some
towards Berkeley.
-rob
On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 4:45 PM <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
> Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Reiser Unix got demand paging a little later, and it was spectacularly
> > fast. I remember being gobsmacked when I saw a demo in early 1981.
>
> So, once again, *W*H*Y* did Research choose BSD instead of Reiser's
> version on the vax?
>
> > Dead ends everywhere.
>
> Explain please?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Arnold
>
5:29 a.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
On 2019, Aug 28, at 1:57 PM, Doug McIlroy
<doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
I’ve always been a little curious about how Reiser (John Reiser, not Hans!) came to port
Unix. I had heard of him from his PhD Dissertation which was something like 35 pages long
for Knuth (!) on random number generators. He finished at Stanford in 1977 and in 1978 he
was porting Unix? How did that happen?
-L
How long was research running on a PDP-11 and
when did they move to a VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual memory, in 1978. By
the time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the workhorse machines in Research.
Doug 
6:10 a.m.
New subject: dmr streams & networking [was: Re: If not Linux, then what?]
On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 11:29:02PM -0400, Lawrence Stewart wrote:
I'm with Lawrence, I'd love to hear this. This thread is the first I've
heard about John Reiser and London. I don't remember anything about them
in the Bell Labs journals.
I can say it is not a stretch to go from school to porting, I did that.
School is amazing at making you feel like you can do anything. I took
the grad compiler class, you could take one of them or two of them at
a time, my buddy Rob Netzer and I took two together and we wrote a
big subset of the ADA language in a semester.
You slow down when you have to make a product that works in the face
of people doing silly (aka stupid) things. Error checking is a thing,
compiler error messages that point to the exact problem are a much,
much bigger thing. Gcc is very good at that, I've got a lot of respect
for gcc, I know how hard that is.
On 2019, Aug
28, at 1:57 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
I???ve always been a little curious about how Reiser (John Reiser, not Hans!) came to
port Unix. I had heard of him from his PhD Dissertation which was something like 35 pages
long for Knuth (!) on random number generators. He finished at Stanford in 1977 and in
1978 he was porting Unix? How did that happen? How long was research running on a PDP-11 and
when did they move to a VAX?
London and Reiser had ported Unix to the VAX, replete with virtual memory, in 1978. By
the time v7 was released (1979), Vaxen had become the workhorse machines in Research.
Doug
1909
days inactive
1910
days old
10 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
Adam Thornton -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Doug McIlroy -
Larry McVoy -
Lawrence Stewart -
Rob Pike -
Warner Losh