From: berdpee@ami.com.au Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 00:34:22 GMT Message-ID: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 NNTP-Posting-Host: c0s14.ami.com.au X-Trace: 19 Apr 2002 08:34:17 +0800, c0s14.ami.com.au Lines: 16 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news1.optus.net.au!optus!news.uwa.edu.au!nntp.waia.asn.au!usenet.per.paradox.net.au!c0s14.ami.com.au Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11175 Hello Gurus, I had to drag out my PDP-6 monitor listings and copy the logic for a multi-buffer system (ring buffer) for a 68HC11 based system. It used all the clever instructions of the HC11. The necessity was to buffer the serial input and feed it out as parallel data upon request from the next stage processor. Sounds easy, but I really had to be quite careful with the various flags to ensure everything worked as DEC proposed. I keep my sources and listings and I believe one day when the PC builders run up against the ultimate speed barrier we may come back to building SMART processors with word structures rather than byte structures, like the PDP-6 and 10 series of machines, and clever instructions like those machines. aeolus ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 19 Apr 2002 23:58:38 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 51 Message-ID: <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 1019253518 500 10.0.3.2 (19 Apr 2002 21:58:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Apr 2002 21:58:38 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11189 berdpee@ami.com.au writes: > I had to drag out my PDP-6 monitor listings > I keep my sources and listings A question: sort of off on an tangent: What is the oldest version of Monitor/TOPS-10 that still available in readable binary form? In particular: is there still one around that will run on an 32kWord KA-10. It looks at the moment that the first version of my FPGA clone will be using an pre-fabbed RAM board with 2 182k*8bit SRAMs storing each word as 4*9bit. > the PC builders run up against the ultimate speed barrier we may come > back to building SMART processors with word structures rather than > byte structures, Unlikely. Just think how slow all them: char *a, *b; while (*a) *b++=*a++; string copy looks will run. Such an machine will have no chances in benchmarks. > like the PDP-6 and 10 series of machines, and clever > instructions like those machines. The only cleverness that counts today is clever marketing. At least in the consumer mass market. Sorry. I am just presently pissed off with the state of the pocket computer marketplace. Entirely dominated by 320x240 (or worse 190x160) pixel scribble-on-the-top Palm/WinCE toys. No 640x240 (or 480) machine with an keyboard and Linux ability in sight. 10 years ago we had the Atari Portfolio, the HP 100LX. All with full CGA (640x200) graphics and 8088 and MS-DOS. Today an VGA and 486/586 at 200MHz with 32-256M RAM and 1G flash should be possible. But the "keyboards and real OSes are too dificult" marketing slogans have killed all this. :-( -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng HTL/BSc, Sysadmin, Archer, Roleplayer - Make your code truely free: put it into the public domain ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:13:58 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva1.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1019254440 8748 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!feedme.news.mediaways.net!itgate.net!nntp1.phx1.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.gblx.net!nntp.abs.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva1.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11195 On 19 Apr 2002, Neil Franklin wrote: > Unlikely. Just think how slow all them: > > char *a, *b; while (*a) *b++=*a++; > > string copy looks will run. Such an machine will have no chances in > benchmarks. Not necessarily. It depends upon the compiler. An intelligent compiler would not generate byte-at-a-time machine code even on byte-oriented machines. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: Ben Franchuk Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 22:30:49 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3CC0EEF9.BB2AE07C@jetnet.ab.ca> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en,ja MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 11 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!out.nntp.be!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-in-sanjose!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.freenet.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news5-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11191 Mark Crispin wrote: > > char *a, *b; while (*a) *b++=*a++; > Not necessarily. It depends upon the compiler. An intelligent compiler > would not generate byte-at-a-time machine code even on byte-oriented > machines. Nope it has to do byte at a time moves for that kind of move. Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu * www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 20 Apr 2002 04:50:42 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <3CC0EEF9.BB2AE07C@jetnet.ab.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1019278242 60065 10.0.0.43 (20 Apr 2002 04:50:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Apr 2002 04:50:42 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!tethys.csu.net!canoe.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11198 In article <3CC0EEF9.BB2AE07C@jetnet.ab.ca>, Ben Franchuk wrote: >Mark Crispin wrote: >> > char *a, *b; while (*a) *b++=*a++; >> Not necessarily. It depends upon the compiler. An intelligent compiler >> would not generate byte-at-a-time machine code even on byte-oriented >> machines. >Nope it has to do byte at a time moves for that kind of move. The generated code would check to see how big a chunk could be copied at a time. For example, if both pointers are the same offset from a word boundary, you can do word copies. Similarly for half-word alignment... if you have to byte copy, you byte copy, otherwise: byte-copy up to the first chunk boundary loop: grab the source chunk, look for a zero byte. if you find one, exit the loop otherwise, write the chunk to destination and loop byte-copy the remainder -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 22:02:13 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 23 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <3CC0EEF9.BB2AE07C@jetnet.ab.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva1.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1019278936 11056 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: <3CC0EEF9.BB2AE07C@jetnet.ab.ca> Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!feedme.news.mediaways.net!easynews!peer1-sjc1.usenetserver.com!usenetserver.com!hub1.nntpserver.com!xmission!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva1.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11196 On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Ben Franchuk wrote: > Mark Crispin wrote: > > > char *a, *b; while (*a) *b++=*a++; > > Not necessarily. It depends upon the compiler. An intelligent compiler > > would not generate byte-at-a-time machine code even on byte-oriented > > machines. > Nope it has to do byte at a time moves for that kind of move. Nonsense. It is possible to do such transfers with much larger quanta than a byte. Yes, even if the pointers are not aligned. The technique is called "byte blt". It's easier if you have a byte count than if you have a null-terminated string, but still doable with the latter. Some processors (including the PDP-10!) have machine instructions to do it. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### Sender: eric@ruckus.brouhaha.com From: Eric Smith Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <3CC0EEF9.BB2AE07C@jetnet.ab.ca> Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy. Date: 20 Apr 2002 02:57:33 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 23 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: ruckus.brouhaha.com X-Trace: 20 Apr 2002 03:07:27 -0700, ruckus.brouhaha.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!HSNX.atgi.net!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!enews.sgi.com!news.spies.com!ruckus.brouhaha.com Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11199 Someone wrote: > char *a, *b; while (*a) *b++=*a++; Mark Crispin wrote: > Not necessarily. It depends upon the compiler. An intelligent compiler > would not generate byte-at-a-time machine code even on byte-oriented > machines. Ben Franchuk wrote: > Nope it has to do byte at a time moves for that kind of move. peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > The generated code would check to see how big a chunk could be copied at > a time. For example, if both pointers are the same offset from a word > boundary, you can do word copies. Similarly for half-word alignment... > if you have to byte copy, you byte copy, otherwise: In fact, sometimes it may be faster to do word operations even if the source and destination don't have similar alignment, using shifts and logical operations in the general registers. But there are pathological cases involving source/destination overlap in which such an optimization would not yield the correct results as per the semantics of the source code. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 21 Apr 2002 14:51:15 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 43 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1019400675 73260 10.0.0.43 (21 Apr 2002 14:51:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 21 Apr 2002 14:51:15 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!feed.newsfeeds.com!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11212 In article <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>, Neil Franklin wrote: >Sorry. I am just presently pissed off with the state of the pocket >computer marketplace. It looks to me like you haven't really looked at it. It's not all "scribble on the top toys". >Entirely dominated by 320x240 (or worse 190x160) 160x160 >No 640x240 (or 480) machine >with an keyboard The latest "Palm scribble on the top toy" has 320x480 and a keyboard. >and Linux ability in sight. Lots of them, actually. IBM Thinkpad z50 is the usual port target. HP Jornada 720. They seem to be losing out in the market though, because those tiny keyboards are too small to touch-type on. >10 years ago we had the Atari Portfolio, the HP 100LX. All with full >CGA (640x200) graphics and 8088 and MS-DOS. Today an VGA and 486/586 >at 200MHz with 32-256M RAM and 1G flash should be possible. Jornada 720, 206 MHz ARM, 32M RAM, two expansion slots and you can install a 1G flash card in one, only half-VGA display, though. Also, have a look at the smallest laptops. My Libretto is about the size of a trade paperback, with an 800x480 display and 166 MHz Pentium. The problem is, small keyboards suck. I have a better keyboard for my Palm, in the Stowaway Portable Keyboard, than I have on my fullsized laptop. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 22 Apr 2002 21:26:32 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 61 Message-ID: <6ubscbv8k7.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 1019503592 684 10.0.3.2 (22 Apr 2002 19:26:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Apr 2002 19:26:32 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11216 peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > In article <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>, > Neil Franklin wrote: > > >and Linux ability in sight. > > Lots of them, actually. IBM Thinkpad z50 is the usual port target. That one I have not heard of. www.ibm,com and www.pc.ibm.com had nothing on it. Google found an page with its description: 8"x10" (= far too large), NEC VR processor (no Linux) and "discontinued". > HP Jornada 720. Nice hardware. Right power and size and features. But little used Hitachi processor with no Linux. > They seem to be losing out in the market though, because those tiny > keyboards are too small to touch-type on. No worse that the HP 100LX keayboard, and that was good enough for standing "hold with both hands and 2 thumbs typing" use. No need for touch typing for notes on the go. > >10 years ago we had the Atari Portfolio, the HP 100LX. All with full > >CGA (640x200) graphics and 8088 and MS-DOS. Today an VGA and 486/586 > >at 200MHz with 32-256M RAM and 1G flash should be possible. > > Jornada 720, 206 MHz ARM, 32M RAM, two expansion slots and you can install > a 1G flash card in one, only half-VGA display, though. Nice hardware. Now try getting Linux (or any other Unix, *BSD or Minix) onto it. > Also, have a look at the smallest laptops. My Libretto is about the size of > a trade paperback, with an 800x480 display and 166 MHz Pentium. Too large. Is the size of an video cassette. Dito the Sony counterpart. > The problem is, small keyboards suck. Far less that having an computer try to second guess pan movements. > I have a better keyboard for my Palm, in the Stowaway Portable Keyboard, than > I have on my fullsized laptop. And next to no display pixels. -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng HTL/BSc, Sysadmin, Archer, Roleplayer - Make your code truely free: put it into the public domain ###### Sender: eric@ruckus.brouhaha.com From: Eric Smith Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy. Date: 22 Apr 2002 12:29:46 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 8 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: ruckus.brouhaha.com X-Trace: 22 Apr 2002 12:40:06 -0700, ruckus.brouhaha.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.spies.com!ruckus.brouhaha.com Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11225 peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > Lots of them, actually. IBM Thinkpad z50 is the usual port target. HP Jornada > 720. They seem to be losing out in the market though, because those tiny > keyboards are too small to touch-type on. Strange. The Blackberry keyboard is even smaller, but people seem to like it. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 22 Apr 2002 20:29:28 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 45 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <6ubscbv8k7.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1019507368 69797 10.0.0.43 (22 Apr 2002 20:29:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Apr 2002 20:29:28 GMT X-No-Archive: yes X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!news.he.net!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-out.nuthinbutnews.com!propagator-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11219 In article <6ubscbv8k7.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>, Neil Franklin wrote: >8"x10" (= far too large), NEC VR processor (no Linux) and "discontinued". http://www.orcawerks.com/sgi/misc/ibmz50/ >> HP Jornada 720. >Nice hardware. Right power and size and features. But little used Hitachi >processor with no Linux. http://www.handhelds.org/~gberenfield/Jornada/index.html >> They seem to be losing out in the market though, because those tiny >> keyboards are too small to touch-type on. >No worse that the HP 100LX keayboard, and that was good enough for >standing "hold with both hands and 2 thumbs typing" use. No need for >touch typing for notes on the go. If thumbtyping is enough, then there's the Zaurus, as well as any of the clipon keyboards for Pocket PCs and Palms. I tried thumbtyping, and I'll take a stylus any day. >> The problem is, small keyboards suck. >Far less that having an computer try to second guess pan movements. You seem to be thinking of Rosetta/Calligrapher/Transcriber. Graffiti and its workalikes don't involve any guessing. >> I have a better keyboard for my Palm, in the Stowaway Portable Keyboard, than >> I have on my fullsized laptop. >And next to no display pixels. If you want something that'll fit in a shirt or trouser pocket, rather than a jacket pocket, you have to give up something somewhere. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 22 Apr 2002 20:31:21 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 20 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1019507481 69900 10.0.0.43 (22 Apr 2002 20:31:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Apr 2002 20:31:21 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!feed.newsfeeds.com!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11223 In article , Eric Smith wrote: >peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >> Lots of them, actually. IBM Thinkpad z50 is the usual port target. HP Jornada >> 720. They seem to be losing out in the market though, because those tiny >> keyboards are too small to touch-type on. >Strange. The Blackberry keyboard is even smaller, but people seem to >like it. If you're thumbtyping, you don't need anything near as big as the Jornada. You can even get a thumbtypable Palm keyboard, bult into the Treo or clip on the other units. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 22 Apr 2002 23:06:21 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 45 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ubscbv8k7.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <6uy9fftm9h.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1019516781 78359 10.0.0.43 (22 Apr 2002 23:06:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Apr 2002 23:06:21 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-out.nuthinbutnews.com!propagator-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11235 In article <6uy9fftm9h.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>, Neil Franklin wrote: >3 Months ago I did 3 surf sessions through various seach engines to >find such an site, with no success. You shoulda asked me. >Thanks for the pointer! Very large massive thanks. Yer welcome. Let us know how you get on. >> If thumbtyping is enough, then there's the Zaurus, as well as any of the >> clipon keyboards for Pocket PCs and Palms. >I prefer at least somewhat decent keys for it. All the keyboards designed for thumbtyping have a similar structure, with the keys small and spaced half to a full keywidth apart. There may be a reason for this. >> I tried thumbtyping, and I'll take a stylus any day. > >Me never. I once tried one (Apple Newton) and disliked it immediately. There's a *big* difference between handwriting recognition (ala Rosetta or Transcriber) and character recognition (ala Graffiti or Jot). Big enough that I use Graffiti on the Newton because my handwriting sucks. >> If you want something that'll fit in a shirt or trouser pocket, rather than >> a jacket pocket, you have to give up something somewhere. >But the HP 100LX already told me that I do not need to give up. It's an inch longer, half an inch wider, and half again as thick as my Jornada 548, and my 548 is really larger than I'd like. The Jornada 720 is bigger still. Seriously, a shirt pocketable device really does impose significant size and weight constraints. One of my regular correspondants in the Palm group considers the Palm V barely small enough. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: sword7@speakeasy.org Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 12:19:56 -0000 Message-ID: Sender: Timothy Stark References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> User-Agent: tin/1.4.4-20000803 ("Vet for the Insane") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.20 (i686)) X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 17 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!isdnet!sn-xit-02!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11238 Peter da Silva wrote: >>Strange. The Blackberry keyboard is even smaller, but people seem to >>like it. > If you're thumbtyping, you don't need anything near as big as the Jornada. Yeah. I have a blackberry pager and used to thumbtyping to send messages. :-) -- Tim Stark -- Timothy Stark <>< Inet: sword7@speakeasy.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Amen." -- John 3:16 (King James Version Bible) ###### From: berdpee@ami.com.au Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 00:53:27 GMT Message-ID: <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 NNTP-Posting-Host: c0s02.ami.com.au X-Trace: 24 Apr 2002 08:53:23 +0800, c0s02.ami.com.au Lines: 17 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news1.optus.net.au!optus!news.uwa.edu.au!nntp.waia.asn.au!usenet.per.paradox.net.au!c0s02.ami.com.au Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11232 Hello John Sauter, Permission for what? The code is written in an entirely different language for an 8 bit microcontroller and contains so many modifications it is barely recognisable. The philosophy is also written up in some books on the development of operating systems. Also I believe much of the philosophy was written up by IBM before DEC adopted it. On Fri, 19 Apr 2002 01:32:12 -0400, John Sauter wrote: >I hope you got permission. All of the PDP-6 monitor is >copyrighted, and the copyright has not yet expired. > John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net) aeolus ###### From: never+mail@panix.com.invalid (Michael Roach) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 16:54:31 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A small notepad underneath my in box Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com X-Trace: reader1.panix.com 1019667271 20521 166.84.1.2 (24 Apr 2002 16:54:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 16:54:31 +0000 (UTC) X-Clueful-responder: echo "never-reply+panix=com" | tr "-+=" "+@." X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test74 (May 26, 2000) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!panix!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11231 In article , Eric Smith wrote: >peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >> Lots of them, actually. IBM Thinkpad z50 is the usual port target. HP Jornada >> 720. They seem to be losing out in the market though, because those tiny >> keyboards are too small to touch-type on. > >Strange. The Blackberry keyboard is even smaller, but people seem to >like it. Which people? The Gameboy generation? Recently, I heard (on NPR perhaps?) that for many people, the thumb is now more dexterous than the index finger. Though I don't seem to have a problem entering names, -- "A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives." ###### From: Ben Franchuk Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 11:05:05 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3CC6E5C1.16A36A85@jetnet.ab.ca> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en,ja MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <6ug01ruz8x.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 8 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!telocity-west!TELOCITY!hub1.meganetnews.com!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11229 Michael Roach wrote: > "A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives." Groans at the tag line. -- Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu * www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html ###### From: "Who, me?" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 25 Apr 2002 00:09:12 GMT Organization: Who, me? Lines: 8 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> NNTP-Posting-Host: dsl.cherkus.mv.com X-Trace: pyrite.mv.net 1019693352 3150 207.22.21.47 (25 Apr 2002 00:09:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@mv.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Apr 2002 00:09:12 GMT User-Agent: Xnews/4.06.22 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed1.cidera.com!Cidera!news.mv.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11246 John Sauter wrote in news:3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net: > Actually, I was teasing. I'm glad. The last thing Usenet needs is another "intellectual property" thread. Dave ###### From: berdpee@ami.com.au Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 00:45:18 GMT Message-ID: <3cc750e7.3969406@news.ami.com.au> References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 NNTP-Posting-Host: c0s24.ami.com.au X-Trace: 25 Apr 2002 08:45:15 +0800, c0s24.ami.com.au Lines: 47 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!snewsf0.syd.ops.aspac.uu.net!news1.optus.net.au!optus!news.uwa.edu.au!nntp.waia.asn.au!usenet.per.paradox.net.au!c0s24.ami.com.au Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11245 Hello John Sauter, A pensioner having money? A contradiction in terms. There are others more financial than I who have used the same strategy for various ring buffered systems and nobody seems interested in pursuing them. Regards. On Wed, 24 Apr 2002 06:37:17 -0400, John Sauter wrote: >berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > >Hello John Sauter, > >Permission for what? The code is written in an >entirely different language for an 8 bit microcontroller >and contains so many modifications it is barely >recognisable. The philosophy is also written up in some >books on the development of operating systems. Also >I believe much of the philosophy was written up by IBM >before DEC adopted it. > >John Sauter responded: > >Actually, I was teasing. I doubt that anyone today >cares about the intellectual property that is the >PDP-6. However, technically, the copyright on the >monitor sources has not expired, and a translation >into a different language is regarded as a "derived >work" and so still subject to Digital's copyright. > >You can create a new work based on the philosophy, >but translating someone else's work is a derivation. >Even if you subsequently modified it, the modifications >are derived from the original, so they are likewise >subject to Digital's copyright. > >But that's just a technicality. I doubt anyone from >Compaq would be interested in suing you unless it >was a slow day in lawyer-land and you had a lot of >money. As I said, I was just teasing. > John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net) aeolus ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Mon, 29 Apr 02 08:20:03 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVbVbsNh8N3cLkLUYAs1Gnb8t2PZjX2DNo9CWDkCEEi4wvlwYD9THN1O X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Apr 2002 11:46:29 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-97-34 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11256 In article , Mark Crispin wrote: >On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: >> Are you advocating RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL every day? > >You seem to be a rather hysterical individual. > >No, I don't advocate re-inventing the wheel; yet that is what GNU seems to >be all about. A nearly 20-year-old windowing system (X) on a 30-year-old >operating system (UNIX) design -- this is supposed to be the way of the >future? > >I advocate the inventing of new things, that nobody else has ever done >before. That may not be a Good Thing, Mark. I'd much rather have useful things done. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Thu, 02 May 02 07:24:12 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVYSoWR7aeI+I1n6UmDoCOkVclrnfrGfcawJbBd0zro3or+dtboT7sMh X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 May 2002 10:51:07 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!208-59-181-52 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11288 In article , nospam88@parse.com (Robert Krten) wrote: >Peter da Silva wrote: >> In article , >> Morten Reistad wrote: >>>The whole mini/microcomputer OS scene was very messy by todays standards. >>>I remember going though hoops to have the same applications work on >>>VMS; unix, Primos and QNX. A disproportionate amount of this code >>>divergence was workarounds for bugs, misfeatures and misdesigned weirdness. > >I had to make stuff work on iRMX86, iRMX286, Xenix, QNX 2, and VAX/VMS. >The joy! :-) > I bet you gained a lot of new hairs on your chest. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Reply-To: "Henry W. Miller" From: "Henry W. Miller" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Lines: 48 Organization: What? You mean someone organized this? X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 16:33:59 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.81.86.124 X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldnet.att.net X-Trace: bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net 1019838839 12.81.86.124 (Fri, 26 Apr 2002 16:33:59 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 16:33:59 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!xmission!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!nf3.bellglobal.com!wn1feed!worldnet.att.net!135.173.83.54!bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11250 "John Sauter" wrote in message news:3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net... > berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > > Hello John Sauter, > > Permission for what? The code is written in an > entirely different language for an 8 bit microcontroller > and contains so many modifications it is barely > recognisable. The philosophy is also written up in some > books on the development of operating systems. Also > I believe much of the philosophy was written up by IBM > before DEC adopted it. > > John Sauter responded: > > Actually, I was teasing. I doubt that anyone today > cares about the intellectual property that is the > PDP-6. However, technically, the copyright on the > monitor sources has not expired, and a translation > into a different language is regarded as a "derived > work" and so still subject to Digital's copyright. > John, You see, you have to add the elipse at the end of the sentence (...) to let the reader know that the tail is wagging the dog... > You can create a new work based on the philosophy, > but translating someone else's work is a derivation. > Even if you subsequently modified it, the modifications > are derived from the original, so they are likewise > subject to Digital's copyright. > > But that's just a technicality. I doubt anyone from > Compaq would be interested in suing you unless it > was a slow day in lawyer-land and you had a lot of > money. As I said, I was just teasing. > John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net) Thank God it's no longer the 1980's... -HWM ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 29 Apr 2002 12:26:31 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020083191 93415 10.0.0.43 (29 Apr 2002 12:26:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Apr 2002 12:26:31 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!sfo2-feed1.news.algx.net!jfk3-feed1.news.algx.net!allegiance!news.stealth.net!news.stealth.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!news-proxy.baileynm.com!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11269 In article , Mark Crispin wrote: >No, I don't advocate re-inventing the wheel; yet that is what GNU seems to >be all about. A nearly 20-year-old windowing system (X) on a 30-year-old >operating system (UNIX) design -- this is supposed to be the way of the >future? Well, the FSF tried inventing their own operating system design, and actually got it up to the UNIX emulation stage. Then they seem to have decided it was too much work and switched to flaming Finnish programmers for not having a name that started with "g". There are a lot of interesting operating systems that aren't UNIX that you can actually get source code to, by the way. It might be worthwhile taking one of them and seeing if you can start a movement around it instead. Finally, I know it's popular to complain about people reinventing the wheel, but if it wasn't for people reinventing the wheel we wouldn't have had an industrial revolution and you wouldn't be able to sit there in Washington posting articles about Finnish operating systems to people in Australia and South Africa and ... well, pretty much every continent including Antarctica. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### Reply-To: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" From: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 11:13:31 -0400 Lines: 22 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Message-ID: <3ccd631c$1_1@news.iglou.com> X-Trace: news.iglou.com 1020093212 204.250.0.238 (29 Apr 2002 11:13:32 -0400) X-Authenticated-User: dougq X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!news-xfer.newsread.com!netaxs.com!newsread.com!nntp.abs.net!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!news.iglou.com Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11253 "Mark Crispin" wrote in message = news:Pine.LNX.4.50.0204271015250.18003-100000@shiva1.cac.washington.edu..= . >=20 > Instead of whining about the copyright on someone else's software, why = not > invent something new. And I'm not talking about making a new clone of > someone else's work. I'm talking about doing something that nobody = has > done before. These are precisely the words I want to say to every one-trick-pony who whines about someone copping his trick- Go do another one. Seriously, any of us who can code at all should value more highly the skill with which we create, not any particluar creation. -dq ###### Reply-To: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" From: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4b66.1386940@news.ami.com.au> Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 11:16:14 -0400 Lines: 12 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Message-ID: <3ccd63bf$1_1@news.iglou.com> X-Trace: news.iglou.com 1020093375 204.250.0.238 (29 Apr 2002 11:16:15 -0400) X-Authenticated-User: dougq X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!out.nntp.be!propagator2-SanJose!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!uunet!ash.uu.net!news.iglou.com Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11254 wrote in message = news:3ccb4b66.1386940@news.ami.com.au... > The long term effect of the various forms of restriction of the free > flow of knowledge by these laws has only one final outcome.=20 > ALL KNOWLEDGE WILL BE LOST. =20 Yup- (coming) Copyright law (changes) will be the next burning of = Alexandria... -dq ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 11:05:40 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 46 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva1.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1020103543 21242 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!out.nntp.be!propagator2-SanJose!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva1.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11260 On 29 Apr 2002, Peter da Silva wrote: > Well, the FSF tried inventing their own operating system design, and actually > got it up to the UNIX emulation stage. Then they seem to have decided it > was too much work and switched to flaming Finnish programmers for not having > a name that started with "g". This shouldn't have surprised anyone. Many people try to write an operating system, but only a few have the necessary talent to do so. Even fewer have the talent needed to write a viable operating system. FSF didn't have any of these people. The act of having hacked a system call or two into an operating system does not by itself render someone into a talented operating system writer. Nor does taking CS operating system classes. The Finnish programmer seemingly came out of nowhere, but is undeniably talented. But the lesson to be learned is that "his talent is unique", nor "anyone can write an OS if he hammers at a keybody long enough." Speaking for myself, as someone with decades of experience with operating system development: I do not know if I have the talent to write an operating system. I doubt that I will ever find out, because I have no interest in doing so. > There are a lot of interesting operating systems that aren't UNIX that you > can actually get source code to, by the way. It might be worthwhile taking > one of them and seeing if you can start a movement around it instead. I don't see much point to doing it. It's what FSF did with Linux: glom onto someone else's work and claim it as your own. It's much more interesting to do something completely new, as I did with IMAP. > Finally, I know it's popular to complain about people reinventing the wheel, > but if it wasn't for people reinventing the wheel we wouldn't have had an > industrial revolution I would claim that the industrial revolution happened when people stopped reinventing and instead started creating new technologies. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 29 Apr 2002 21:06:21 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 80 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020114381 22119 10.0.0.43 (29 Apr 2002 21:06:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Apr 2002 21:06:21 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11271 In article , Mark Crispin wrote: >The Finnish programmer seemingly came out of nowhere, but is undeniably >talented. But the lesson to be learned is that "his talent is unique", >nor "anyone can write an OS if he hammers at a keybody long enough." In fairness, he wasn't trying to do anything as ambitious as HURD. I would also note that other people *have* written operating systems that are quite sophisticated... at least of the quality of the first Linux releases... here's a rather extensive list of Open Source operating systems, many designed and implemented by one or a few people: http://www.mkiwi.com/cgi-bin/ave.cgi/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Open_Source/ So I'd say his talent is *rare*, but I think *unique* is possibly overdoing it. >Speaking for myself, as someone with decades of experience with operating >system development: I do not know if I have the talent to write an >operating system. I doubt that I will ever find out, because I have no >interest in doing so. Speaking as someone who has a couple of decades of experience in real-time control systems, writing an operating system is not any more difficult than any other significant project... *if* your goals are sufficiently restricted: the one I worked on had a simple priority structure, no file systems, fixed-size messages for IPC, "devices", everything. The trick is coming up with a design that is easy enough to implement that it fits into what a single person can be expected to do, and is general purpose enough that you can use it as the basis for further development to the point that it's self-hosting. It's like languages. It's not that hard to design and implement a programming language. Designing one that you can bring to the point where it's self-hosting... which is what many people consider something any reasonably general language should be... is somewhat harder. Not at the same level as operating systems (particularly if you pick a language that's designed to be easy to implement: a Forth or Lisp that isn't self-hosting is almost a surprise), but but then writing a toy language is almost trivial these days if you don't worry overmuch about quality. This is why UNIX-style operating systems are so common. UNIX is in that sweet spot: complex enough to be self-hosting, simple enough that a small team (or a single exceptional individual) can understand and implement it. On top of that, pretty much any OS you're going to want to make self-hosting is going to have to emulate UNIX anyway, to start with, because that's what the tools expect... >> There are a lot of interesting operating systems that aren't UNIX that you >> can actually get source code to, by the way. It might be worthwhile taking >> one of them and seeing if you can start a movement around it instead. >I don't see much point to doing it. It's what FSF did with Linux: glom >onto someone else's work and claim it as your own. I think rather it's what the Linux community did with Linux. >It's much more interesting to do something completely new, as I did with >IMAP. Sometimes it's easier to build a better wheel if you don't need to reinvent the axle and tire as well. >> Finally, I know it's popular to complain about people reinventing the wheel, >> but if it wasn't for people reinventing the wheel we wouldn't have had an >> industrial revolution >I would claim that the industrial revolution happened when people stopped >reinventing and instead started creating new technologies. It seems to me, half those new technologies were better wheels. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 17:09:51 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 84 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva0.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1020125393 17598 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva0.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11258 On 29 Apr 2002, Peter da Silva wrote: > I would also note that other people *have* written operating systems that > are quite sophisticated... at least of the quality of the first Linux > releases... And how many of them are in general use today? > Speaking as someone who has a couple of decades of experience in > real-time control systems, writing an operating system is not any > more difficult than any other significant project... *if* your > goals are sufficiently restricted That's my crux of my point. It is not difficult to write a program that fills the technical criteria of an operating system; although if you care about such things as performance and code quality you need to put a bit of thought into underlying design. However, if you are like me and consider it pointless to write an operating system unless you intend it to be something that a large number (a "large number" being at least six digits) of people will use in a production setting, then the task becomes fiendishly difficult. In other words, if I purposed to build a desktop operating system, my goal would be nothing less to build something to compete with -- and defeat -- UNIX and NT. This means that its advantages would have to be so overwhelming that it would overcome the incredible power accumulated by the twin titans of 30 years of UNIX software development and Microsoft's monopoly power. Not a modest goal. But, to me, anything less is a waste of time. > It's like languages. It's not that hard to design and implement a > programming language. Thus leading to the stereotype that every moderately bright computer science student does so at one time or another as a form of mental masturbation. > This is why UNIX-style operating systems are so common. UNIX is in > that sweet spot: complex enough to be self-hosting, simple enough > that a small team (or a single exceptional individual) can understand > and implement it. Yes. This doesn't mean that UNIX isn't flawed; its flaws are numerous and at times painfully obvious. On the other hand, it is so well positioned that it is extremely difficult to beat. > On top of that, pretty much any OS you're going > to want to make self-hosting is going to have to emulate UNIX > anyway, to start with, because that's what the tools expect... Unless the new OS is so overwhelmingly better that people will want to rewrite the tools to use it...a goal that many have sought and few have succeeded... Emulation presents its own set of hardships to the OS developer. If you emulate an existing OS, your new OS gets judged primarily by the quality of the emulation, and ultimately your new OS is considered to be little more than a variant of the existing OS. Even today, you hear echoes of people who consider TOPS-20 to be a TOPS-10 variant. TOPS-20 never fully escaped that shadow. On the other hand, without emulation, you cut yourself off from a huge chunk of the market. This was one of the factors that defeated MacOS; it aggressively did not emulate anything else (and they were damn proud of that fact). Apple eventually threw in the towel: Mac OS X today is just another UNIX variant. > >It's much more interesting to do something completely new, as I did with > >IMAP. > Sometimes it's easier to build a better wheel if you don't need to reinvent > the axle and tire as well. Indeed. It's a two-edged sword. I never would have invented IMAP if I knew of the existance of POP2 (POP3 did not yet exist). -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 30 Apr 2002 03:41:03 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 108 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020138063 43500 10.0.0.43 (30 Apr 2002 03:41:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Apr 2002 03:41:03 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!xmission!news-out.nuthinbutnews.com!propagator-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11273 In article , Mark Crispin wrote: >On 29 Apr 2002, Peter da Silva wrote: >> I would also note that other people *have* written operating systems that >> are quite sophisticated... at least of the quality of the first Linux >> releases... >And how many of them are in general use today? Well, now, that brings us right to the meat of my message, doesn't it? The only free operating systems I know of that are in wide use today are basically UNIX systems. And it's not because people haven't tried to invent something other than a new wheel. And it's not because of any inherent quality to the current "free OS" market leader, either. Linux has come an awful long way, and the first releases were just plain awful. >That's my crux of my point. It is not difficult to write a program that >fills the technical criteria of an operating system; although if you care >about such things as performance and code quality you need to put a bit of >thought into underlying design. It's surprising the relationship performance and code quality are to the amount of resources expended on developing an OS. I believe a gentleman by the name of Brooks wrote a good book on the subject. >However, if you are like me and consider it pointless to write an >operating system unless you intend it to be something that a large number >(a "large number" being at least six digits) of people will use in a >production setting, then the task becomes fiendishly difficult. Well, I must say that the operating systems I worked on have directly benefitted a good deal more than six digits worth of people, and while they haven't been sitting in front of those systems, the vehicle they were sitting in remained intact as a result of them. >In other words, if I purposed to build a desktop operating system, my goal >would be nothing less to build something to compete with -- and defeat -- >UNIX and NT. This means that its advantages would have to be so >overwhelming that it would overcome the incredible power accumulated by >the twin titans of 30 years of UNIX software development and Microsoft's >monopoly power. > >Not a modest goal. But, to me, anything less is a waste of time. The problem is, you can't achieve that goal without violating it, at least for a time. You can't create a better system that will drag UNIX users away from UNIX unless it's also as good a UNIX as what they're currently using. Microsoft seems to have finally learned that. They're releasing Windows Services for UNIX 3.0 with Interix as the key new component. They're shipping a product that turns the POSIX subsystem into a real UNIX subsystem, even if it means shiping the hated GCC and other FSF software in the package. >> This is why UNIX-style operating systems are so common. UNIX is in >> that sweet spot: complex enough to be self-hosting, simple enough >> that a small team (or a single exceptional individual) can understand >> and implement it. >Yes. This doesn't mean that UNIX isn't flawed; its flaws are numerous and >at times painfully obvious. Yep, I'm perfectly well aware of the phrase "Worse is Better". The thing is, Worse is only Better to a certain extent. At some point the system is Bad Enough, and making things worse than that just makes it Worse. >> On top of that, pretty much any OS you're going >> to want to make self-hosting is going to have to emulate UNIX >> anyway, to start with, because that's what the tools expect... >Unless the new OS is so overwhelmingly better that people will want to >rewrite the tools to use it... There we go. People don't run operating systems for the sake of running operating systems. They run operating systems for the sake of running software ON that operating system. People won't rewrite the tools for the new OS until they have some overwhelmingly important application that the new OS allows them to run. That's how Apple drew users away from Microsoft (What kind of computer does work like this), and Microsoft drew them back again by producing a better Macintosh (and, yes, they did. In many ways classical MacOS is terribly user-hostile. What the hell *does* "Error -151" mean?) >Emulation presents its own set of hardships to the OS developer. If you >emulate an existing OS, your new OS gets judged primarily by the quality >of the emulation, and ultimately your new OS is considered to be little >more than a variant of the existing OS. Yep. You *also* need something new that's also so freakingly obviously better than what you had before that people will use it instead, and THAT gives you the hook to introduce the new method of operation, the new metaphor, the new paradigm, the new buzz... but first you have to get them using it, and to do that it has to let them keep doing everything else they need to do. >I never would have invented IMAP if I knew of the existance of POP2 (POP3 >did not yet exist). Ironic. http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1992Dec20.115036.7197%40klaava.Helsinki.FI -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### Message-ID: <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 06:35:19 -0400 From: Tim Shoppa Organization: Trailing Edge Technology X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.2 AlphaServer 1200 5/533 4MB) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 40 NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.73.218.130 X-Trace: 1020162921 reader2.ash.ops.us.uu.net 4484 63.73.218.130 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!feed.newsfeeds.com!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!199.106.71.17!pln-w!extra.newsguy.com!lotsanews.com!uunet!ash.uu.net!spool0900.news.uu.net!reader0902.news.uu.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11262 Peter da Silva wrote: > And it's not because of any inherent quality to the current "free OS" > market leader, either. Linux has come an awful long way, and the first > releases were just plain awful. Many of the commercial Unices of the late 80's and early 90's were just plain awful, too. (Although in different ways.) Mark had written: > >That's my crux of my point. It is not difficult to write a program that > >fills the technical criteria of an operating system; although if you care > >about such things as performance and code quality you need to put a bit of > >thought into underlying design. To me, the mark of success for an OS (or a language) is when it is widely used in problem domains completely outside what the original architects were considering. This indicates that the design has not only stood the test of time, it indicates a framework that is vastly more general than was originally needed. It's hard for me to see a generic OS or language coming out of *any* traditional analysis and design process. Application-specific OS's and languages, yes. But something that truly identifies the generic and universal traits we want in an OS or language, coming out of traditional analysis and design process? I can't imagine it. > It's surprising the relationship performance and code quality are to the > amount of resources expended on developing an OS. I believe a gentleman > by the name of Brooks wrote a good book on the subject. Brooks actually makes some good arguments showing that he and others were concerned about performance and code quality at the time. But the "generic usefulness" - that is, applicability of the OS or language to problem domains that weren't considered at design time - is something that is probably very hard to quantify even today. But that doesn't matter, because the bean-counters don't want any "generic usefulness" :-). Tim. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 30 Apr 2002 11:18:52 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 44 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020165532 68812 10.0.0.43 (30 Apr 2002 11:18:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Apr 2002 11:18:52 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-out.nuthinbutnews.com!propagator-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11272 In article <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa wrote: >Peter da Silva wrote: >> And it's not because of any inherent quality to the current "free OS" >> market leader, either. Linux has come an awful long way, and the first >> releases were just plain awful. >Many of the commercial Unices of the late 80's and early 90's were >just plain awful, too. (Although in different ways.) Um. Yes, there were some real horrors coming from Santa Cruz, for example, and in fact there still are. But the first versions of Linux were really pretty shaky even by that standard. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it wasn't an amazing achievement, and it was a big step forward from Minix, but it had some problems that had to be backed out of later and it didn't really come out of nowhere. The kernel design was completely conventional and it used Minix as a bootstrap system... though it was *not*, as some people were ready to dismiss it as, just a 386 version of Minix: the design was completely different from Tannenbaum's. OK, to put it in perspective. I looked at Linux, but decided to work on 386BSD instead, and it was pretty unstable at the time too. I did patch kit 24 for 386BSD, and that was basically me going through the source tree and fixing bugs that were keeping the whole thing from compiling in one pass. No new features, not even any user-visible bug fixes, just making the whole thing compile. >It's hard for me to see a generic OS or language coming out of >*any* traditional analysis and design process. Application-specific >OS's and languages, yes. But something that truly identifies the >generic and universal traits we want in an OS or language, coming >out of traditional analysis and design process? I can't imagine it. I guess that depends on what you mean by a traditional analysis and design process. ADA has been a pretty successful language. Its failure isn't that it doesn't have desirable traits, but that it's too complex for the "sweet spot". I don't care much for it, but I can't argue that it's not well-suited to a wide variety of applications. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 1 May 2002 05:14:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020255281 6626 127.0.0.1 (1 May 2002 12:14:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 May 2002 12:14:41 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!proxad.net!isdnet!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11278 Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... > On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > > Are you advocating RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL every day? > > You seem to be a rather hysterical individual. > > No, I don't advocate re-inventing the wheel; yet that is what GNU seems to > be all about. A nearly 20-year-old windowing system (X) on a 30-year-old > operating system (UNIX) design -- this is supposed to be the way of the > future? How ignorant you are Mark. You must not have ever seen The Hurd yet you feel free to comment on its design. It is not very *nix like at all. *nix doesn't have anything like translators. Admittedly you can run X on it but you can run X on VMS too. Does that make it *nix? All new OSes re-invent the wheel to some extent. > I advocate the inventing of new things, that nobody else has ever done > before. > > -- Mark -- > > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) From: mrr@acer.reistad.priv.no (Morten Reistad) Originator: mrr@acer.reistad.priv.no (Morten Reistad) Message-ID: Lines: 45 Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 15:13:01 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 193.71.26.5 X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@KPNQwest.no X-Trace: nreader2.kpnqwest.net 1020265981 193.71.26.5 (Wed, 01 May 2002 17:13:01 MET DST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 17:13:01 MET DST Organization: KPNQwest customer news service Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!skynet.be!skynet.be!ossa.telenet-ops.be!nmaster.kpnqwest.net!nreader2.kpnqwest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11276 In article , Peter da Silva wrote: >In article <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com>, >Tim Shoppa wrote: >>Peter da Silva wrote: >>> And it's not because of any inherent quality to the current "free OS" >>> market leader, either. Linux has come an awful long way, and the first >>> releases were just plain awful. > >>Many of the commercial Unices of the late 80's and early 90's were >>just plain awful, too. (Although in different ways.) > >Um. Yes, there were some real horrors coming from Santa Cruz, for example, >and in fact there still are. But the first versions of Linux were really >pretty shaky even by that standard. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it >wasn't an amazing achievement, and it was a big step forward from Minix, but >it had some problems that had to be backed out of later and it didn't >really come out of nowhere. The kernel design was completely conventional >and it used Minix as a bootstrap system... though it was *not*, as some >people were ready to dismiss it as, just a 386 version of Minix: the design >was completely different from Tannenbaum's. I had most of them installed at one time or another. But I always ended back to QNX when I needed serious work done on PC platforms; up until 1994 or so. 386 came close to a stable OS, but remained an OS for hackers. I gave 386BSD serious scrutiny; as well as Linux from 0.98something. I still have the '386 I installed these on; now running Linux 1.0.9. (That was as far as I could do the upgrades without breaking something; and when 1.2 came out it was time for serious use of Linux, and better hardware was used. ) >OK, to put it in perspective. I looked at Linux, but decided to work on >386BSD instead, and it was pretty unstable at the time too. I did patch >kit 24 for 386BSD, and that was basically me going through the source >tree and fixing bugs that were keeping the whole thing from compiling in >one pass. No new features, not even any user-visible bug fixes, just >making the whole thing compile. The whole mini/microcomputer OS scene was very messy by todays standards. I remember going though hoops to have the same applications work on VMS; unix, Primos and QNX. A disproportionate amount of this code divergence was workarounds for bugs, misfeatures and misdesigned weirdness. -- morten ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 10:13:17 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva0.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1020273199 14322 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva0.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11257 On 1 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > How ignorant you are Mark. You must not have ever seen The Hurd yet > you feel free to comment on its design. It is not very *nix like at > all. *nix doesn't have anything like translators. Admittedly you can > run X on it but you can run X on VMS too. Does that make it *nix? Sigh. Yet another fanatic telling us how wonderful their failed project will be. I've watched the (non-)evolution of HURD since Stallman concocted the notion two decades ago. What were you doing back then, wetting your diapers? -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 1 May 2002 17:48:51 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020275331 68527 10.0.0.43 (1 May 2002 17:48:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 May 2002 17:48:51 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!out.nntp.be!propagator2-SanJose!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-in-sanjose!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11270 In article , Morten Reistad wrote: >I had most of them installed at one time or another. But I always ended >back to QNX when I needed serious work done on PC platforms; up until >1994 or so. 386 came close to a stable OS, but remained an OS for hackers. QNX is an impressive design, that's for damn sure. >The whole mini/microcomputer OS scene was very messy by todays standards. >I remember going though hoops to have the same applications work on >VMS; unix, Primos and QNX. A disproportionate amount of this code >divergence was workarounds for bugs, misfeatures and misdesigned weirdness. Oh yeh. I spent a year just on the code converter for one porting project that started with PL/M on the 286 and ended up in C on the Alpha, with a diversion to the Sparc in the middle. We ended up rewriting the PL/I portion of the program. The higher level PL/I code was less portable than the PL/M code... lots of 36-bit assumptions that people had assumed the compiler would take care of, where we'd made sure that word-size assumptions were explicit in the 16-bit PL/M code. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 2 May 2002 01:09:45 +0100 Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk X-Trace: newsreaderm1.core.theplanet.net 1020298186 4933 195.92.249.252 (2 May 2002 00:09:46 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 May 2002 00:09:46 GMT X-Complaints-To: abuse@theplanet.net Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!tethys.csu.net!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!news.maxwell.syr.edu!colt.net!diablo.theplanet.net!diablo.theplanet.net!news.theplanet.net!parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11285 In article , Baby Peanut wrote: >Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... >> On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: >> > Are you advocating RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL every day? >> >> You seem to be a rather hysterical individual. >> >> No, I don't advocate re-inventing the wheel; yet that is what GNU seems to >> be all about. A nearly 20-year-old windowing system (X) on a 30-year-old >> operating system (UNIX) design -- this is supposed to be the way of the >> future? > >How ignorant you are Mark. You must not have ever seen The Hurd yet >you feel free to comment on its design. It is not very *nix like at Yeah... 'Cause anyone who _had_ seen The Turd would never use "The Hurd" and "design" in a single sentence without negation somewhere in it. >all. *nix doesn't have anything like translators. Admittedly you can That's an... interesting claim. For one thing, implementing translators over portalfs is a weekend project. For another, implementing them (and more interesting beasts) atop of CODA would be even simpler. And that is aside of the reasons why translators are horribly bad design idea. However, I can't agree that Hurd is reinvention of the wheel - it's a great demonstration of the reasons why taste is needed in OS design and how putting many good ideas together can produce a steaming dungpile of amazing size. I'm less than sure that anyone had done that on such scale and with so convincing results. Degree of featuritis alone is enough to claim that it's something novel. ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 1 May 2002 19:41:33 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020307295 29630 127.0.0.1 (2 May 2002 02:41:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 May 2002 02:41:35 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!newsfeed.sjc.globix.net!hub1.meganetnews.com!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!sn-xit-01!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11293 Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... > On 1 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > > How ignorant you are Mark. You must not have ever seen The Hurd yet > > you feel free to comment on its design. It is not very *nix like at > > all. *nix doesn't have anything like translators. Admittedly you can > > run X on it but you can run X on VMS too. Does that make it *nix? > > Sigh. Yet another fanatic telling us how wonderful their failed project > will be. How can a project which is still being developed be a failure? Even a little crufty E-mail program like say, pine, can't be considered a failure if some few people still work on it. > I've watched the (non-)evolution of HURD since Stallman concocted the > notion two decades ago. What were you doing back then, wetting your > diapers? > > -- Mark -- > > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 20:46:47 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva0.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1020311209 12534 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!xmission!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva0.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11289 On 1 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > How can a project which is still being developed be a failure? Even a > little crufty E-mail program like say, pine, can't be considered a > failure if some few people still work on it. Hurd is a failure because it has been worked on for many years and still nobody uses it. Its timeframe passed long ago. The idea was moderately interesting when Stallman proposed it two decades ago. That isn't the case today. Pine, on the other hand, has well over a million users (we have the numbers to prove it). -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### Reply-To: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" From: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 08:06:21 -0400 Lines: 26 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Message-ID: <3cd12bbe$1_2@news.iglou.com> X-Trace: news.iglou.com 1020341182 204.250.0.238 (2 May 2002 08:06:22 -0400) X-Authenticated-User: dougq X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!uunet!ash.uu.net!news.iglou.com Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11287 wrote in message = news:aar5mr$fnv$1@bob.news.rcn.net... > In article , > nospam88@parse.com (Robert Krten) wrote: > >Peter da Silva wrote: > >> In article , > >> Morten Reistad wrote: > >=20 > >>>The whole mini/microcomputer OS scene was very messy by todays=20 > standards. > >>>I remember going though hoops to have the same applications work on > >>>VMS; unix, Primos and QNX. A disproportionate amount of this code > >>>divergence was workarounds for bugs, misfeatures and misdesigned=20 > weirdness. > > > >I had to make stuff work on iRMX86, iRMX286, Xenix, QNX 2, and = VAX/VMS. > >The joy! :-) > > > I bet you gained a lot of new hairs on your chest. It don't always work that way, Barb... it turned mine gray! -dq ###### Reply-To: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" From: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 08:07:36 -0400 Lines: 24 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Message-ID: <3cd12c09$1_1@news.iglou.com> X-Trace: news.iglou.com 1020341257 204.250.0.238 (2 May 2002 08:07:37 -0400) X-Authenticated-User: dougq X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed1.cidera.com!Cidera!nntp.abs.net!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!news.iglou.com Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11286 "Mark Crispin" wrote in message = news:Pine.LNX.4.50.0205012039180.30617-100000@shiva0.cac.washington.edu..= . > On 1 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > > How can a project which is still being developed be a failure? Even = a > > little crufty E-mail program like say, pine, can't be considered a > > failure if some few people still work on it. >=20 > Hurd is a failure because it has been worked on for many years and = still > nobody uses it. Its timeframe passed long ago. The idea was = moderately > interesting when Stallman proposed it two decades ago. That isn't the = case > today. >=20 > Pine, on the other hand, has well over a million users (we have the > numbers to prove it). In case you don't hear it often enough, Thank you for Pine, Mark. -dq ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 2 May 2002 15:53:39 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020380019 27798 127.0.0.1 (2 May 2002 22:53:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 May 2002 22:53:39 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!proxad.net!isdnet!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11316 Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... > On 1 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > > How can a project which is still being developed be a failure? Even a > > little crufty E-mail program like say, pine, can't be considered a > > failure if some few people still work on it. > > Hurd is a failure because it has been worked on for many years and still > nobody uses it. Your opinion that systems which take a long time to write and have few users are bad that implies that systems which were thrown together quickly and have many users are good. That would make M$ windows the best system of all time in your opinion. > Its timeframe passed long ago. Absurd, it hasn't been released yet. > The idea was moderately interesting when Stallman proposed it two decades > ago. That isn't the case today. Maybe to people who don't look at it but comment on it it's not interesting. > Pine, on the other hand, has well over a million users (we have the > numbers to prove it). > > -- Mark -- > > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 2 May 2002 15:55:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 59 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020380151 27844 127.0.0.1 (2 May 2002 22:55:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 May 2002 22:55:51 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!feed.newsfeeds.com!newsfeed.online.be!isdnet!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11317 Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... > All this because Richard Stallman is still angry because, after he broke > the Lisp machine sources [*], the other people working on Lisp machines > moved the official sources over to Symbolics where he couldn't break them > any more. > > Instead of whining about the copyright on someone else's software, why not > invent something new. And I'm not talking about making a new clone of > someone else's work. I'm talking about doing something that nobody has > done before. > > Then you don't have to worry about copyright. > > [*] I'm told that he unilaterally decided that the convention of labelling > variable with an asterisk on both sides, e.g. *foo*, was wrong, and that > there should just an asterisk prefix. So, when he edited a file, he > changed all variables in that file. > > -- Mark -- > > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Richard Stallman replies: << Crispin's message has little relationship to reality. The people who founded Symbolics did not do so because of me or anything I did. They had dreams of riches. The official sources of the MIT Lisp Machine System were never moved to Symbolics; Greenblatt and I kept working on them at MIT after the split. Perhaps Crispin is referring to the fact that the Symbolics staff ceased in 1982 to cooperate in the development of the MIT system and instead developed their own fork. That decision was a tactic to attack their competitor, LMI. They surely did not suppose when they made the decision that I would prove to be a major obstacle to the success of that plan. (See "Hackers" by Steve Levy for a description of the events.) Putting aside these factual errors, I should point out some errors in his broader assertions: * Writing a free replacement for a non-free program is tremendously useful for users' freedom; in cases such as GCC, Linux, and the whole GNU/Linux system, it can also lead to technical advances as well. * If you write the code yourself, you normally don't have to be concerned about infringing copyright on some other code. This is true if your program is a compatible replacement for another program, and equally true if it does some totally new job. * If you write the code yourself, you are in great danger from software patents covering techniques used in the program. This is true if your program is a compatible replacement for another program, and equally true if it does some totally new job. See http://www.programming-freedom.org and http://www.ffii.org for more information. If you can post this on that list, would you please do so? >> ###### Sender: eric@ruckus.brouhaha.com From: Eric Smith Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy. Date: 05 May 2002 00:35:38 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 20 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: ruckus.brouhaha.com X-Trace: 5 May 2002 00:48:16 -0700, ruckus.brouhaha.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!news.he.net!news.kjsl.com!news.spies.com!ruckus.brouhaha.com Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11314 Mark Crispin writes: > No, I don't advocate re-inventing the wheel; yet that is what GNU seems to > be all about. A nearly 20-year-old windowing system (X) on a 30-year-old > operating system (UNIX) design -- this is supposed to be the way of the > future? Maybe it's not the way of the future, but it doesn't appear that anyone has invented anything better yet. Unix originally lacked many facilities of "real" operating systems, but it seems to have absorbed most of them. I'll be the first to admit that there are still things that it doesn't do as well as some other OSes, but it manages to be better suited for my daily needs than any other OS that runs directly (not in simulation) on modern hardware. And it seems to me that as window systems go, there is no obvious alternative that is better than X in any significant way. Rather than whine about Unix and X, if you think they're not suitable, maybe you should write something better? Or, if something better actually already exists, convince everyone? ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 5 May 2002 15:59:38 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020614378 78727 10.0.0.43 (5 May 2002 15:59:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 5 May 2002 15:59:38 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!xmission!news-out.nuthinbutnews.com!propagator-sterling!news-in.nuthinbutnews.com!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11312 In article , Eric Smith wrote: >Maybe it's not the way of the future, but it doesn't appear that anyone >has invented anything better yet. Unix originally lacked many facilities >of "real" operating systems, but it seems to have absorbed most of them. Yes, whether by luck or design, the UNIX model seems to be well suited to adaptation to different designs without having an overly complex environment be the result. In fact most of the places where UNIX does get complex are in areas where the obvious UNIX-like solution to a problem was ignored and something alien was grafted on instead. >And it seems to me that as window systems go, there is no obvious >alternative that is better than X in any significant way. Berlin or NeWS seem to have a number of fairly significant advantages in resource use and performance, as well as being a lot less impacted by network latency and bottlenecks. 8½ provides a significantly better API. The user interface is somewhat clumsy, but still better than the original X interface. It has potential that is alas unlikely to be developed further. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 09:48:31 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva0.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1020617313 20456 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!feedme.news.mediaways.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva0.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11306 On 5 May 2002, Peter da Silva wrote: > In fact most of the places where UNIX does get complex are > in areas where the obvious UNIX-like solution to a problem was ignored and > something alien was grafted on instead. Sockets being a very obvious example. A similar horror was forced upon the Tenex world in the form of the BBN TCP/IP system calls. But we in the TOPS-20 world revolted and forced the creation of a more natural interface. All the while, the "experts" claimed that the BBN interface was more appropriate for network programming and "nobody" would want a (to TOPS-20 people, natural) filesystem interface. The BBN interface was horrible; it had I/O system calls like nothing else on TOPS-20, including a TOPS-10 like buffer ring. I have heard similar "experts" claim that it would be inappropriate to have had a /dev/tcp on UNIX. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 5 May 2002 19:05:22 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020625522 88974 10.0.0.43 (5 May 2002 19:05:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 5 May 2002 19:05:22 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!newsfeed.sjc.globix.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!64.42.15.2!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11313 In article , Mark Crispin wrote: >On 5 May 2002, Peter da Silva wrote: >> In fact most of the places where UNIX does get complex are >> in areas where the obvious UNIX-like solution to a problem was ignored and >> something alien was grafted on instead. >Sockets being a very obvious example. Yes and no. Sockets themselves are a natural extension of pipes, and UNIX domain sockets are a much better IPC mechanism than the overly complex multiplexed files they replaced. The problem is internet domain sockets: they're not exposed through the file system, but through a whole new namespace that isn't visible through the existing system calls. But at least they result in something that works like a bidirectional pipe. I would say the System V IPC mechanisms trump them for true horror: ironically Microsoft came up with a better mechanism for operating on shared memory and similar objects in Xenix, using special files that were associated with pipes and shared memory segments. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 6 May 2002 05:57:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020689857 5193 127.0.0.1 (6 May 2002 12:57:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 May 2002 12:57:37 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!newsfeed.sjc.globix.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!64.42.15.2!HSNX.atgi.net!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!sn-xit-01!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11325 Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... > On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 berdpee@ami.com.au wrote: > > Are you advocating RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL every day? > > You seem to be a rather hysterical individual. > > No, I don't advocate re-inventing the wheel; yet that is what GNU seems to > be all about. A nearly 20-year-old windowing system (X) on a 30-year-old > operating system (UNIX) design -- this is supposed to be the way of the > future? You'd think that if they were just writing another unix they'ed be on version 2 or 3 now not 0.2. Why if it's just another unix is is taking so long to write? > I advocate the inventing of new things, that nobody else has ever done > before. > > -- Mark -- > > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 6 May 2002 06:20:32 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020691232 5827 127.0.0.1 (6 May 2002 13:20:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 May 2002 13:20:32 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!isdnet!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11324 peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) wrote in message news:... > In article , > Mark Crispin wrote: > >On 5 May 2002, Peter da Silva wrote: > >> In fact most of the places where UNIX does get complex are > >> in areas where the obvious UNIX-like solution to a problem was ignored and > >> something alien was grafted on instead. > > >Sockets being a very obvious example. > > Yes and no. Sockets themselves are a natural extension of pipes, and UNIX > domain sockets are a much better IPC mechanism than the overly complex > multiplexed files they replaced. The problem is internet domain sockets: > they're not exposed through the file system, but through a whole new > namespace that isn't visible through the existing system calls. The portal filesystem daemon in *BSD has a tcp namespace that interfaces INET sockets to the filesystem. Admittedly it can't do other protocols than TCP. Portal can interface much more than just TCP to the filesystem. http://www.tac.eu.org/cgi-bin/man-cgi?mount_portal++NetBSD-1.5.1 > But at least they result in something that works like a bidirectional > pipe. I would say the System V IPC mechanisms trump them for true horror: > ironically Microsoft came up with a better mechanism for operating on > shared memory and similar objects in Xenix, using special files that were > associated with pipes and shared memory segments. ###### From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 6 May 2002 14:49:37 GMT Organization: TSS Inc. Lines: 20 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: citadel.in.taronga.com X-Trace: citadel.in.taronga.com 1020696577 51855 10.0.0.43 (6 May 2002 14:49:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@taronga.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 May 2002 14:49:37 GMT X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!newsfeed.sjc.globix.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!64.42.15.2!HSNX.atgi.net!news.kjsl.com!news.usenet2.org!citadel.in.taronga.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11323 In article , Baby Peanut wrote: >The portal filesystem daemon in *BSD has a tcp namespace that >interfaces INET sockets to the filesystem. Admittedly it can't do >other protocols than TCP. Portal can interface much more than just >TCP to the filesystem. That's pretty nifty, but is it currently maintained? I mean, it doesn't have a disclaimer like mount_union does[1] but the last mod date on the man page in FreeBSD at least is 1994. [1] THIS FILESYSTEM TYPE IS NOT YET FULLY SUPPORTED (READ: IT DOESN'T WORK) AND USING IT MAY, IN FACT, DESTROY DATA ON YOUR SYSTEM. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. BEWARE OF DOG. SLIPPERY WHEN WET. -- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD? "Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept" -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans) ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 09:29:00 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CBFABDC.3C900D74@Empire.Net> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva0.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1020702542 17708 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!feedme.news.mediaways.net!priapus.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!nnxp1.twtelecom.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva0.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11322 On 6 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > You'd think that if they were just writing another unix they'ed be on > version 2 or 3 now not 0.2. Why if it's just another unix is is > taking so long to write? Incompetance. They fell into the standard trap of taking on a task that was far beyond their ability. They aren't the first; and they won't be the last. Meanwhile, they are fobbing just another UNIX on the world. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 8 May 2002 07:46:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020869171 14822 127.0.0.1 (8 May 2002 14:46:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 May 2002 14:46:11 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!telocity-west!TELOCITY!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11331 Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... > On 6 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > > You'd think that if they were just writing another unix they'ed be on > > version 2 or 3 now not 0.2. Why if it's just another unix is is > > taking so long to write? > > Incompetance. > > They fell into the standard trap of taking on a task that was far beyond > their ability. They aren't the first; and they won't be the last. > > Meanwhile, they are fobbing just another UNIX on the world. I see. It makes perfect sense. The FSF have a working GPLed unix kernel, Linux, so they go to make a new one since they simply must have two unix systems one would never do and they fail because they are incompetent but go on working this second unix anyway which does not have any users, only user groups like THUG (http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/thug/). Everything you say just makes so much sense *I can't believe it* > -- Mark -- > > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 8 May 2002 07:51:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.92.164.43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1020869487 14975 127.0.0.1 (8 May 2002 14:51:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 May 2002 14:51:27 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hub1.nntpserver.com!hub1.meganetnews.com!telocity-west!TELOCITY!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11330 peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) wrote in message news:... > In article , > Baby Peanut wrote: > >The portal filesystem daemon in *BSD has a tcp namespace that > >interfaces INET sockets to the filesystem. Admittedly it can't do > >other protocols than TCP. Portal can interface much more than just > >TCP to the filesystem. > > That's pretty nifty, but is it currently maintained? I mean, it doesn't > have a disclaimer like mount_union does[1] but the last mod date on the > man page in FreeBSD at least is 1994. > > [1] THIS FILESYSTEM TYPE IS NOT YET FULLY SUPPORTED (READ: IT DOESN'T WORK) > AND USING IT MAY, IN FACT, DESTROY DATA ON YOUR SYSTEM. USE AT YOUR OWN > RISK. BEWARE OF DOG. SLIPPERY WHEN WET. I think that portal is better maintained in NetBSD than in FreeBSD. ###### From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 09:08:39 -0700 Organization: Networks and Distributed Computing Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3cc600ef.2948695@news.ami.com.au> <3CC68ADD.B8AA017D@Empire.Net> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva1.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 1020874122 21086 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 314159 (believe this at your own risk) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!feedme.news.mediaways.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!140.142.17.34.MISMATCH!news.u.washington.edu!shiva1.cac.washington.edu!mrc Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11328 On 8 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > > Meanwhile, they are fobbing just another UNIX on the world. > I see. It makes perfect sense. The FSF have a working GPLed unix > kernel, Linux, so they go to make a new one since they simply must > have two unix systems one would never do and they fail because they > are incompetent but go on working this second unix anyway which does > not have any users, only user groups like THUG > (http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/thug/). Everything you say just > makes so much sense *I can't believe it* Apparently you are on drugs. Ask someone who is sober to look up the word "meanwhile" in a dictionary for you, and explain its meaning. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: baby_p_nut@yahoo.com (Baby Peanut) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 13 May 2002 21:17:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.80.171.28 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1021349822 32261 127.0.0.1 (14 May 2002 04:17:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 14 May 2002 04:17:02 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!fr.colt.net!isdnet!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11351 Mark Crispin wrote in message news:... > On 8 May 2002, Baby Peanut wrote: > > > Meanwhile, they are fobbing just another UNIX on the world. > > I see. It makes perfect sense. The FSF have a working GPLed unix > > kernel, Linux, so they go to make a new one since they simply must > > have two unix systems one would never do and they fail because they > > are incompetent but go on working this second unix anyway which does > > not have any users, only user groups like THUG > > (http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/thug/). Everything you say just > > makes so much sense *I can't believe it* > > Apparently you are on drugs. Ask someone who is sober to look up the word > "meanwhile" in a dictionary for you, and explain its meaning. But since The Hurd has users you statement was ambiguous as to what was being fobbed on the world (GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd.) You could have been calling the Hurd another UNIX from the way you said it. > -- Mark -- > > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. ###### From: "Zane H. Healy" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 16 May 2002 00:03:05 GMT Organization: Aracnet Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3ccb4d6b.1904005@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-692.newsdawg.com User-Agent: tin/1.4.4-20000803 ("Vet for the Insane") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.19 (i686)) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!cyclone.bc.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11376 Baby Peanut wrote: > But since The Hurd has users you statement was ambiguous as to what > was being fobbed on the world (GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd.) You could have > been calling the Hurd another UNIX from the way you said it. There is no such thing as GNU/Linux, that's just Stallman trying to lay claim to someone elses work. Don't bother trying the gcc arguement on me, I'm not buying it. As for these Hurd users, are they able to get anything useful done? The following paragraph is taken from the GNU Hurd webpage: "The Hurd, together with the GNU Mach microkernel, the GNU C Library and the other GNU programs, provides a rather complete and usable operating system today. It is not ready for production use, as there are still many bugs and missing features. However, it should be a good base for further development and non-critical application usage." This paragraph tells me that Hurd still isn't done. Now what I'd really like to know is, what is GNU Mach? How does it differ from CMU Mach? All in all, it looks to me like even with Hurd, the GNU project is using someone elses kernel (a Micro Kernel in this case). Interesting. Zane ###### From: Charles Shannon Hendrix Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 29 May 2002 03:13:13 -0400 Organization: Gnil Message-ID: <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> Sender: shannon@daydream.shannon.net References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 52 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!feedme.news.mediaways.net!news.belwue.de!newsfeed.arcor-online.net!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!isdnet!sn-xit-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!escape!nobody Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11430 >>>>> "Tim" == Tim Shoppa writes: Tim> Peter da Silva wrote: >> And it's not because of any inherent quality to the current >> "free OS" market leader, either. Linux has come an awful long >> way, and the first releases were just plain awful. Tim> Many of the commercial Unices of the late 80's and early 90's Tim> were just plain awful, too. (Although in different ways.) I think he might have been referring to the "distribution" of Linux as much as the holes in the early kernel. Hmm... like you said, many of the... :) Tim> To me, the mark of success for an OS (or a language) is when Tim> it is widely used in problem domains completely outside what Tim> the original architects were considering. This indicates Tim> that the design has not only stood the test of time, it Tim> indicates a framework that is vastly more general than was Tim> originally needed. Doesn't this describe what has happened with UNIX? It is now operating very far out of it's original problem domain, and doing a good job for the most part. It's difficult to point to any other operating system that has done so well. Lot's of people, myself included, like to point at it's flaws but I've not seen a substantially better alternative. In fact, the only OS I currently see as having any chance would be it's follow-on, Plan 9, and I think it has some grave problems. I've actually been disappointed that there is not more OS development going on with some practical uses as a goal. It seems that a large amount of alternative OS research just ends up being bolted onto UNIX, or somethings driving a rewrite of parts of UNIX or another OS. Tim> It's hard for me to see a generic OS or language coming out Tim> of *any* traditional analysis and design process. Tim> Application-specific OS's and languages, yes. But something Tim> that truly identifies the generic and universal traits we Tim> want in an OS or language, coming out of traditional analysis Tim> and design process? I can't imagine it. It seems to me that an OS, like all tools, has to evolve primarily from people who are using it to do work. UNIX, for all it's warts, was used and modified for the purpose of getting things done. Too many other operating systems come with agendas orthagonal to this idea. -- UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza__________________________________shannon_AT_ widomaker.com ###### From: berdpee@ami.com.au Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 10:46:14 GMT Message-ID: <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au> References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.55.31.80 X-Trace: 5 Jun 2002 18:46:04 +0800, 203.55.31.80 Lines: 69 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!xmission!news-out.spamkiller.net!propagator2-maxim!propagator-maxim!news-in.spamkiller.net!feed.newsfeeds.com!newsfeed.iinet.net.au!nntp.waia.asn.au!usenet.per.paradox.net.au!203.55.31.80 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11475 Hello Charles, It is a common misconception to judge an OS on it's performance in the hands of a GURU. The true gauge is how quick can an outright DUMMY learn to use an OS. Judging by my own 35 years experience the PDP-6 and later TOPS-10 are hard to beat. Many of the later OSs cage you up l;ike you're in a prison. Most modern day programmers don't know what it's like to have the freedom of a good OS because they've never had it. On 29 May 2002 03:13:13 -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote: >>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Shoppa writes: > > Tim> Peter da Silva wrote: > >> And it's not because of any inherent quality to the current > >> "free OS" market leader, either. Linux has come an awful long > >> way, and the first releases were just plain awful. > > Tim> Many of the commercial Unices of the late 80's and early 90's > Tim> were just plain awful, too. (Although in different ways.) > >I think he might have been referring to the "distribution" of Linux as >much as the holes in the early kernel. Hmm... like you said, many of >the... :) > > Tim> To me, the mark of success for an OS (or a language) is when > Tim> it is widely used in problem domains completely outside what > Tim> the original architects were considering. This indicates > Tim> that the design has not only stood the test of time, it > Tim> indicates a framework that is vastly more general than was > Tim> originally needed. > >Doesn't this describe what has happened with UNIX? It is now >operating very far out of it's original problem domain, and doing a >good job for the most part. > >It's difficult to point to any other operating system that has done so >well. Lot's of people, myself included, like to point at it's flaws >but I've not seen a substantially better alternative. In fact, the >only OS I currently see as having any chance would be it's follow-on, >Plan 9, and I think it has some grave problems. > >I've actually been disappointed that there is not more OS development >going on with some practical uses as a goal. It seems that a large >amount of alternative OS research just ends up being bolted onto UNIX, >or somethings driving a rewrite of parts of UNIX or another OS. > > Tim> It's hard for me to see a generic OS or language coming out > Tim> of *any* traditional analysis and design process. > Tim> Application-specific OS's and languages, yes. But something > Tim> that truly identifies the generic and universal traits we > Tim> want in an OS or language, coming out of traditional analysis > Tim> and design process? I can't imagine it. > >It seems to me that an OS, like all tools, has to evolve primarily >from people who are using it to do work. UNIX, for all it's warts, >was used and modified for the purpose of getting things done. Too >many other operating systems come with agendas orthagonal to this idea. > > > >-- >UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza__________________________________shannon_AT_ widomaker.com aeolus ###### From: Charles Shannon Hendrix Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 13:07:39 -0400 Organization: Too Much Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au> Reply-To: shannon@nospam.widomaker.com User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.3 (Linux) X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 27 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed-west.nntpserver.com!hub1.meganetnews.com!nntpserver.com!DirecTVinternet!DirecTV-DSL!sn-xit-03!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!escape!nobody Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11535 In article <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au>, berdpee@ami.com.au top-posted: > It is a common misconception to judge an OS on it's performance in the > hands of a GURU. The true gauge is how quick can an outright DUMMY > learn to use an OS. I don't think this is any better criteria. MacOS is very good at letting an outright DUMMY learn to use it. But once you learn, you find it lacking. > Judging by my own 35 years experience the PDP-6 and later TOPS-10 are > hard to beat. Many of the later OSs cage you up l;ike you're in a > prison. Most modern day programmers don't know what it's like to have > the freedom of a good OS because they've never had it. I used UNIX, TOPS-20, and VMS, and I picked up UNIX much faster than the others. UNIX just did whatever I wanted while I was always fighting VMS. TOPS-20 was OK: easier to get started, but harder to do difficult things with for me. I think this kind of thing will vary from person to person. If I had used them all equally for 2-3 years, I'd probably not have felt the same way. The only time I feel seriously caged is when using Windows. It seems you are always reacting to it, instead of directing it. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Tue, 25 Jun 02 07:25:47 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 48 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVba9T3uyZ1QjGBxmWipfNm9dxiay8pYfmMSQriUPlOzsUOEmdHAlNHW X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Jun 2002 11:03:30 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!208-59-181-227 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11537 In article , Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote: >In article <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au>, berdpee@ami.com.au >top-posted: > >> It is a common misconception to judge an OS on it's performance in the >> hands of a GURU. The true gauge is how quick can an outright DUMMY >> learn to use an OS. > >I don't think this is any better criteria. MacOS is very good at >letting an outright DUMMY learn to use it. But once you learn, you find >it lacking. The key to a good OS is rule consistency, usually at the user interface level. That's why it was "easy" for me to learn how to use a new OS in a day. A good OS indicator is being able to learn the fundamental commands empirically. > >> Judging by my own 35 years experience the PDP-6 and later TOPS-10 are >> hard to beat. Many of the later OSs cage you up l;ike you're in a >> prison. Most modern day programmers don't know what it's like to have >> the freedom of a good OS because they've never had it. > >I used UNIX, TOPS-20, and VMS, and I picked up UNIX much faster than >the others. UNIX just did whatever I wanted while I was always fighting >VMS. TOPS-20 was OK: easier to get started, but harder to do difficult >things with for me. > >I think this kind of thing will vary from person to person. If I had used >them all equally for 2-3 years, I'd probably not have felt the same way. A guy I know is very fond of VMS. I asked him if it was his first timesharing system. He mentioned that the fondness was similar to first girlfriend memories. > >The only time I feel seriously caged is when using Windows. It seems >you are always reacting to it, instead of directing it. > One should never have to wrestle to get your work done...unless you are getting paid to wrestle. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: Charles Shannon Hendrix Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 01:48:12 -0400 Organization: Too Much Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au> Reply-To: shannon@nospam.widomaker.com User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.3 (Linux) X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 61 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!isdnet!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-04!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!escape!nobody Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11540 In article , jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > The key to a good OS is rule consistency, usually at the user > interface level. That's why it was "easy" for me to learn how > to use a new OS in a day. A good OS indicator is being able > to learn the fundamental commands empirically. I found UNIX to be that way. Sure, it has wierdisms... but so does TOPS, VMS, MVS, etc. MVS I actually liked once I got it through my head that it was ancient. As soon as you start thinking in terms of cards and such, even on a machine built today, it makes a lot more sense. Of course, MVS and UNIX are the only old systems that have survived, and most of the new stuff is either bad or Windows. Yes, logically, that last sentence is still true... :) >>I think this kind of thing will vary from person to person. If I had used >>them all equally for 2-3 years, I'd probably not have felt the same way. > > A guy I know is very fond of VMS. I asked him if it was his > first timesharing system. He mentioned that the fondness was similar > to first girlfriend memories. I think to like VMS, that has to be. It's not the worst OS I ever used, but it always seemed to be very uncomfortable, especially sitting at the shell. It just never hooked me like UNIX did. PrimeOS almost did, but then at the time it was all I had in college. I learned MVS/XA on an IBM 4381 and while it was OK, I never felt like I was working with the hardware. The interface to the machine was forms and flowcharts. The way IBM admins and programmers were trained at my school was just terrible. By the time I actually got to really use TOPS, it was dying out and I last used a TOPS-20 machine in 1990 or 1991. So, I never really got to play with them, though I've fired up an emulator now and then. I generally don't want a system around taking up my time unless I can do work with it. That doesn't leave many real choices any more, unfortunately. The only old systems that have really survived are UNIX and MVS. I should include VMS I suppose, but I think it's a goner too. The only new system I know of that I think of as being designed carefully and thoughtfully right now is Plan 9. > One should never have to wrestle to get your work done...unless you > are getting paid to wrestle. I have come to think that it's never really worth it. Programming already has a tendency to burn you out, and spinning your wheels wrestling with bad ideas and technology just makes it that much worse. It's also depressing. ###### From: Charles Shannon Hendrix Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 12:05:43 -0400 Organization: Too Much Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au> Reply-To: shannon@nospam.widomaker.com User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.3 (Linux) X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 25 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.stealth.net!news.stealth.net!feed.textport.net!sn-xit-04!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!escape!nobody Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11553 In article , Zane H. Healy wrote: >> I think to like VMS, that has to be. It's not the worst OS I ever used, >> but it always seemed to be very uncomfortable, especially sitting at >> the shell. It just never hooked me like UNIX did. PrimeOS almost did, >> but then at the time it was all I had in college. > > Just to disprove this theory, OpenVMS is probably my favorite OS. By the > time I touched it, I'd already used something from Harris (Vulcan OS or > something like that), GCOS-8, GCOS-6, and several flavors of Unix. Of > course it also easily blows all four of those OS's away. Your one case doesn't disprove the theory, even if it had been offered as a serious one. It's what I think: theory restored. VMS doesn't easily blow anything away. Inflexibility and a user experience that looks like it was designed by Congress keep it from "blowing anything away". It has strengths and weaknesses just like the rest. But right now it cannot do what my UNIX systems do every day. It could of course, but I suspect it's future is dim. It would be nice if HP/Compaq/whoever would set it free since they seem to hate it. ###### From: Jim Thomas Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. Date: 29 Jun 2002 20:57:59 -1000 Organization: Canada France Hawai`i Telescope Lines: 20 Message-ID: References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: atlas.cfht.hawaii.edu X-Trace: news.hawaii.edu 1025420279 10098 128.171.80.135 (30 Jun 2002 06:57:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@hawaii.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Jun 2002 06:57:59 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.6 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!news.hawaii.edu!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11562 >>>>> "Charles" == Charles Shannon Hendrix writes: Charles> In article , Zane H. Healy wrote: >> Just to disprove this theory, OpenVMS is probably my favorite OS. By the >> time I touched it, I'd already used something from Harris (Vulcan OS or >> something like that), GCOS-8, GCOS-6, and several flavors of Unix. Of >> course it also easily blows all four of those OS's away. Charles> Your one case doesn't disprove the theory, even if it had been Charles> offered as a serious one. It's what I think: theory restored. Charles> .... Charles> But right now it cannot do what my UNIX systems do every day. And, other than boot unix, what might that be? Nothead :-) ###### Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: PDP-6 monitor routines. References: <3cbf631f.3661625@news.ami.com.au> <3CCE3B26.35A8FD39@trailing-edge.com> <87wutnzat2.fsf@daydream.shannon.net> <3cfdea56.3727737@news.ami.com.au> From: Ric Werme X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 CURRENT #123 Lines: 25 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.128.108.156 X-Complaints-To: abuse@attbi.com X-Trace: sccrnsc01 1025457120 24.128.108.156 (Sun, 30 Jun 2002 17:12:00 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 17:12:00 GMT Organization: AT&T Broadband Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 17:12:01 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!wn1feed!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!sccrnsc01.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.sys.pdp10:11555 Charles Shannon Hendrix writes: >In article , Zane H. Healy wrote: >VMS doesn't easily blow anything away. Inflexibility and a user >experience that looks like it was designed by Congress keep it from >"blowing anything away". >It has strengths and weaknesses just like the rest. But right now it >cannot do what my UNIX systems do every day. It could of course, but >I suspect it's future is dim. It would be nice if HP/Compaq/whoever >would set it free since they seem to hate it. Last I heard the VMS business was growing. It brings in too much money for HP/Compaq/whomever to abandon it. It's Gartner that hates it. I asked one of the original VMS people if they had put Gartner's latest report on a dart board. -Ric Werme -- "Engineers are unreasonable people." -- NH Judge John Korbey Ric Werme http://ewerme.home.attbi.com/ | ewerme@xxxxx.com see also http://dcyf.home.attbi.com/ | Change xxxxx to attbi