Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Wayne.Brown]

Ah, yes, the RT/PC.  That brings back some fond memories.  My first exposure to
Unix was with AIX on the RT.  I still have some of those weird-sized RT AIX
manuals around somewhere...

Wayne




John Adams <johna@onevista.com> on 06/23/2001 07:49:42 PM

To:   linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
cc:    (bcc: Wayne Brown/Corporate/Altec)

Subject:  Re: Microsoft and Xenix.



On Saturday 23 June 2001 10:07, Rob Landley wrote:
> Here's what I'm looking for:
>
> AIX was first introduced for the IBM RT/PC in 1986, which came out of the
> early RISC research.  It was ported to PS/2 and S/370 by SAA, and was
> based on unix SVR2.  (The book didn't specify whether the original
> version or the version ported to SAA was based on SVR2, I'm guessing both
> were.)

You are partially correct.  AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) was built
by the Boston office of Interactive Systems under contract to IBM.  We had
a maximum of 17 people in the effort which shipped on the RT in January
1986.

Prior to that time, Interactive Systems had produced a port of System III
running on the PC/XT called PC/IX which was sold via IBM.  I used PC/IX to
produce the software only floating point code in the first version of AIX.

johna
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Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Mike Castle]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 09:41:29PM -0500, Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> Ah, yes, the RT/PC.  That brings back some fond memories.  My first exposure to
> Unix was with AIX on the RT.  I still have some of those weird-sized RT AIX
> manuals around somewhere...

We always ran AOS on RT's.  Actually, the server was the only RT, the rest
were some other model that was basically a PS/2 (286) that booted DOS, then
booted the other same chip that the RT used that was on a daughter card.

AOS was basically IBM's version of BSD.  Academic Operating System.

mrc
-- 
     Mike Castle      dalgoda@ix.netcom.com      www.netcom.com/~dalgoda/
    We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan.  -- Watchmen
fatal ("You are in a maze of twisty compiler features, all different"); -- gcc

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Rob Landley]

On Saturday 23 June 2001 22:41, Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> Ah, yes, the RT/PC.  That brings back some fond memories.  My first
> exposure to Unix was with AIX on the RT.  I still have some of those
> weird-sized RT AIX manuals around somewhere...
>
> Wayne

Ooh!  Old manuals!

Would you be willing to part with them?

I am collecting old manuals, and old computing magazines.  I even pay for 
postage, with a bit of warning that they're coming...

Rob

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Rob Landley]

On Saturday 23 June 2001 23:07, Mike Castle wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 09:41:29PM -0500, Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> > Ah, yes, the RT/PC.  That brings back some fond memories.  My first
> > exposure to Unix was with AIX on the RT.  I still have some of those
> > weird-sized RT AIX manuals around somewhere...
>
> We always ran AOS on RT's.  Actually, the server was the only RT, the rest
> were some other model that was basically a PS/2 (286) that booted DOS, then
> booted the other same chip that the RT used that was on a daughter card.
>
> AOS was basically IBM's version of BSD.  Academic Operating System.

Now if somebody here could just point me to a decent reference on A/UX - 
Apple's mid-80's version of Unix (for the early macintosh, I believe...)

A big thing I'm trying to show in my book is that Unix has been, for almost 
thirty years, the standard against which everything else was compared.  Even 
when it wasn't what people were directly using it's what the techies were 
thinking about when they designed their other stuff.  (That and the Xerox 
Parc work...)

Let's see, the real earthquakes in the computing world (off the top of my 
head) are:

MIT: project whirlwind (which got computing off of vacuum tubes, spawned DEC, 
and Minsky's hacker lab.  Gurus too numerous to mention.)

Bell Labs: (the transistor, and 20 years later Unix.  Gurus ken thompson, 
dennis ritchie, the three transistor guys, ).

DARPA: (Arpanet (BBN), funded project MAC at MIT, and Multics which brought 
the MIT stuff to bell labs.)

Xerox Parc (WIMP interface, WYSIWYG word processing/printing/desktop 
publishing, object oriented programming, 

The integrated circuit/microchip (Texas Instruments' manufacturing 
innovation, which led to the Intel 4004, which eventually led to the Altair, 
which led to the personal computer.  Moore's Law would probably be the theme 
here...)

The whole free software thing (Berkeley in the 70's to early 80's, Stallman 
and the FSF taking over from there.  And Andrew Tanenbaum's Minix, which 
spawned Linux...)

Huh, I'd have to mention IBM (forget the PC, how about the winchester 
drive?), and of course the AT&T breakup (a negative earthquake, but big 
anyway, sort of leading to the commercialization of the software side of 
things, although Gates was trying that already.  AT&T just removed a lot of 
the roadblocks by shattering the opposition for a while.)

Alright, I need to sit down and make an outline and a timeline.   I admit 
this...  (Collecting the data is the easy part.  ORGANIZING this fermenting 
heap of disconnected facts and observations is the hard part...)

> mrc

Rob

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Rob Landley]

On Monday 25 June 2001 11:13, you wrote:

> 1937 claude shannon A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits,"
>
> 1948 claude shannon A mathematical theory of information.
>
> without those you're kind in trouble on the computing front...

Yeah, I know I've bumped into that name (and probably taken notes) somewhere. 
 Hmmm...  Might be from "Where wizards stay up late", or might have been an 
article linked from slashdot...  (I don't THINK it was mentioned in 
"Hackers"...  Rodents, where was the reference...  Crystal fire?  That's 
mostly hardware.  Accidental Empries?  Doesn't sound right...  Can't have 
been "Fire in the valley" because I haven't read that yet, it's still sitting 
on the bookshelf.  Not soul of a new machine, that's post-digital Equipment 
Corporation...)

I THINK that's in the set of notes that's on the box that's not hooked up 
right now...  (Shortage of monitors at home.)

This was the dude who decided to apply a binary and boolean approach to 
electronic computation, right?  I KNOW I've read some stuff about him... late 
last year?

Now I remember.  Slashdot linked to his obituary:

http://www.bell-labs.com/news/2001/february/26/1.html

Rob

The list for this discussion is:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/penguicon-comphist

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Sun, 24 Jun 2001, Rob Landley wrote:

> On Saturday 23 June 2001 23:07, Mike Castle wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 09:41:29PM -0500, Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> > > Ah, yes, the RT/PC.  That brings back some fond memories.  My first
> > > exposure to Unix was with AIX on the RT.  I still have some of those
> > > weird-sized RT AIX manuals around somewhere...
> >
> > We always ran AOS on RT's.  Actually, the server was the only RT, the rest
> > were some other model that was basically a PS/2 (286) that booted DOS, then
> > booted the other same chip that the RT used that was on a daughter card.
> >
> > AOS was basically IBM's version of BSD.  Academic Operating System.
>
> Now if somebody here could just point me to a decent reference on A/UX -
> Apple's mid-80's version of Unix (for the early macintosh, I believe...)
>
> A big thing I'm trying to show in my book is that Unix has been, for almost
> thirty years, the standard against which everything else was compared.  Even
> when it wasn't what people were directly using it's what the techies were
> thinking about when they designed their other stuff.  (That and the Xerox
> Parc work...)
>
> Let's see, the real earthquakes in the computing world (off the top of my
> head) are:

1937 claude shannon A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits,"

1948 claude shannon A mathematical theory of information.

without those you're kind in trouble on the computing front...

> MIT: project whirlwind (which got computing off of vacuum tubes, spawned DEC,
> and Minsky's hacker lab.  Gurus too numerous to mention.)
>
> Bell Labs: (the transistor, and 20 years later Unix.  Gurus ken thompson,
> dennis ritchie, the three transistor guys, ).
>
> DARPA: (Arpanet (BBN), funded project MAC at MIT, and Multics which brought
> the MIT stuff to bell labs.)
>
> Xerox Parc (WIMP interface, WYSIWYG word processing/printing/desktop
> publishing, object oriented programming,
>
> The integrated circuit/microchip (Texas Instruments' manufacturing
> innovation, which led to the Intel 4004, which eventually led to the Altair,
> which led to the personal computer.  Moore's Law would probably be the theme
> here...)
>
> The whole free software thing (Berkeley in the 70's to early 80's, Stallman
> and the FSF taking over from there.  And Andrew Tanenbaum's Minix, which
> spawned Linux...)
>
> Huh, I'd have to mention IBM (forget the PC, how about the winchester
> drive?), and of course the AT&T breakup (a negative earthquake, but big
> anyway, sort of leading to the commercialization of the software side of
> things, although Gates was trying that already.  AT&T just removed a lot of
> the roadblocks by shattering the opposition for a while.)
>
> Alright, I need to sit down and make an outline and a timeline.   I admit
> this...  (Collecting the data is the easy part.  ORGANIZING this fermenting
> heap of disconnected facts and observations is the hard part...)
>
> > mrc
>
> Rob
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Jaeggli				       joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Academic User Services			     consult@gladstone.uoregon.edu
     PGP Key Fingerprint: 1DE9 8FCA 51FB 4195 B42A 9C32 A30D 121E
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of
arms.  Karl Marx -- Introduction to the critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
the right, 1843.

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Kai Henningsen]

landley@webofficenow.com (Rob Landley)  wrote on 24.06.01 in <0106241044060C.01519@localhost.localdomain>:

> Now if somebody here could just point me to a decent reference on A/UX -
> Apple's mid-80's version of Unix (for the early macintosh, I believe...)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%2ba/ux%22

Usually a good idea.



Also, you probably want to look at RFC 2235.

MfG Kai

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Erik Mouw]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 10:17:09AM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> On Monday 25 June 2001 11:13, you wrote:
> > 1937 claude shannon A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits,"
> >
> > 1948 claude shannon A mathematical theory of information.
> >
> > without those you're kind in trouble on the computing front...

[snip]

> This was the dude who decided to apply a binary and boolean approach to 
> electronic computation, right?  I KNOW I've read some stuff about him... late 
> last year?

Yes, but the latter paper was the real milestone. This was the guy who
actually defined what information *is*, and found out the upper limits
of communication rates on a given channel. This was the guy who laid
the fundaments of the information theory. Without information theory no
compression, reliable transmission, reliable storage, crypthography,
etc.


Erik
[who works in an information theory group]

-- 
J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems,
Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031,  2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-15-2783635  Fax: +31-15-2781843  Email: J.A.K.Mouw@its.tudelft.nl
WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[asmith]

Hi again,



some old brain-cells got excited with the "good-ol-days" and other names have
surfaced like "Superbrain","Sirius" and "Apricot".Sirius was Victor in the
USA.  If you go done the so-called IBM compatible route then the nearly
compatible  nightmares  will arise and haunt you, your lucky if the scars
have faded!!

I learnt my computing on a PDP8/E with papertape punch/reader, RALF, Fortran
II, then later 2.4Mb removable cartridges (RK05 I think).  toggling in the
bootstrap improved your concentration. Much later you could
get a single chip(?) version of this in a wee knee sized box.

One summer job was working on a PDP15 analog computer alongside an 11/20 with
DECTAPE, trying to compute missile firing angles. [A simple version of Pres
Bush's starwars shield].

--

Andrew Smith in Edinburgh,Scotland

 On 25 Jun 2001, Kai Henningsen wrote:

> landley@webofficenow.com (Rob Landley)  wrote on 24.06.01 in <0106241044060C.01519@localhost.localdomain>:
>
> > Now if somebody here could just point me to a decent reference on A/UX -
> > Apple's mid-80's version of Unix (for the early macintosh, I believe...)
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%2ba/ux%22
>
> Usually a good idea.
>
>
>
> Also, you probably want to look at RFC 2235.
>
> MfG Kai
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>

Re: [comphist] Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Rob Landley]

On Monday 25 June 2001 16:19, asmith@14inverleith.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
> Hi again,
>
>
>
> some old brain-cells got excited with the "good-ol-days" and other names
> have surfaced like "Superbrain","Sirius" and "Apricot".Sirius was Victor in
> the USA.  If you go done the so-called IBM compatible route then the nearly
> compatible  nightmares  will arise and haunt you, your lucky if the scars
> have faded!!

With the spelling cleaned up slightly, I just might want to quote that last 
sentence in my book.  Would you object?

I take it that superbrain, sirius/victor, and apricot were PC clones like the 
Tandy and Wang that were sort of but not really compatable?

> I learnt my computing on a PDP8/E with papertape punch/reader, RALF,
> Fortran II, then later 2.4Mb removable cartridges (RK05 I think).  toggling
> in the bootstrap improved your concentration. Much later you could
> get a single chip(?) version of this in a wee knee sized box.

"A quarter century of unix" mentions RK05 cartridges several times, but never 
says much ABOUT them.

Okay, so they're 2.4 megabyte removable cartridges?  How big?  Are they tapes 
or disk packs?  (I.E. can you run off of them or are they just storage?)  I 
know lots of early copies of unix were sent out from Bell Labs on RK05 
cartidges signed "love, ken"...

What was that big reel to reel tape they always show in movies, anyway?

I need a weekend just to collate stuff...

> One summer job was working on a PDP15 analog computer alongside an 11/20
> with DECTAPE, trying to compute missile firing angles. [A simple version of
> Pres Bush's starwars shield].

Considering that the Mark I was designed to compute tables of artillery 
firing angles during World War II...  It's a distinct trend, innit?  And the 
source of the game "artillery duel", of course...

> --
>
> Andrew Smith in Edinburgh,Scotland
>
>  On 25 Jun 2001, Kai Henningsen wrote:
> > landley@webofficenow.com (Rob Landley)  wrote on 24.06.01 in 
<0106241044060C.01519@localhost.localdomain>:
> > > Now if somebody here could just point me to a decent reference on A/UX
> > > - Apple's mid-80's version of Unix (for the early macintosh, I
> > > believe...)
> >
> > http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%2ba/ux%22
> >
> > Usually a good idea.
> >
> >
> >
> > Also, you probably want to look at RFC 2235.
> >
> > MfG Kai
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel"
> > in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Penguicon-comphist mailing list
> Penguicon-comphist@lists.sourceforge.net
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/penguicon-comphist

Re: [comphist] Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Jonathan Lundell]

At 10:44 AM -0400 2001-06-26, Rob Landley wrote:
>"A quarter century of unix" mentions RK05 cartridges several times, but never
>says much ABOUT them.
>
>Okay, so they're 2.4 megabyte removable cartridges?  How big?  Are they tapes
>or disk packs?  (I.E. can you run off of them or are they just storage?)  I
>know lots of early copies of unix were sent out from Bell Labs on RK05
>cartidges signed "love, ken"...

http://www.pdp8.net/rk05/rk05.shtml

>What was that big reel to reel tape they always show in movies, anyway?

The big-refrigerator-sized guys were generally attached to 
mainframes, IBM or otherwise. Here's a little info: 
http://www.digital-interact.co.uk/site/html/reference/media_9trk.html 
(but take it with a grain of salt; IBM surely didn't go to nine 
tracks because of ASCII!).
-- 
/Jonathan Lundell.

Re: [comphist] Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Alan Cox]

There seems to be a bug in the mail routing again. It may be related to the
recent problem with ditto copier history outbreaks on Linux S/390 and the
infamous 'pdp-11 memory subsystem' article routing bug that plagued 
comp.os.minix once.

In the meantime can people check that their mailer hasnt spontaneously added
linux-kernel to their history articles before posting them ?

Alan

Re: [comphist] Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Michael Meissner]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 10:44:53AM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> Okay, so they're 2.4 megabyte removable cartridges?  How big?  Are they tapes 
> or disk packs?  (I.E. can you run off of them or are they just storage?)  I 
> know lots of early copies of unix were sent out from Bell Labs on RK05 
> cartidges signed "love, ken"...

IIRC, rk05 was a removable disk drive, 1 platter to the assembly, about the
size of a large pizza box.  They were the standard disk drives for small DEC
machines of the era.  My memories from 30+ years ago, say they were maybe 10
pounds each.  I would imagine you are confusing tapes with disks (ie, tk<num>
instead of rk<num>) in terms of the release media Bell Labs sent out (at least
I never saw a disk with the media, and I did have a job of trying to port the
V7 compiler to a V6 system).  It could be the very early customers got disks,
and the later ones got tapes.

-- 
Michael Meissner, Red Hat, Inc.  (GCC group)
PMB 198, 174 Littleton Road #3, Westford, Massachusetts 01886, USA
Work:	  meissner@redhat.com		phone: +1 978-486-9304
Non-work: meissner@spectacle-pond.org	fax:   +1 978-692-4482

Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Steve Underwood]

Rob Landley wrote:
> 
> On Monday 25 June 2001 11:13, you wrote:
> 
> > 1937 claude shannon A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits,"
> >
> > 1948 claude shannon A mathematical theory of information.
> >
> > without those you're kind in trouble on the computing front...
> 
> Yeah, I know I've bumped into that name (and probably taken notes) somewhere.
>  Hmmm...  Might be from "Where wizards stay up late", or might have been an
> article linked from slashdot...  (I don't THINK it was mentioned in
> "Hackers"...  Rodents, where was the reference...  Crystal fire?  That's
> mostly hardware.  Accidental Empries?  Doesn't sound right...  Can't have
> been "Fire in the valley" because I haven't read that yet, it's still sitting
> on the bookshelf.  Not soul of a new machine, that's post-digital Equipment
> Corporation...)
> 
> I THINK that's in the set of notes that's on the box that's not hooked up
> right now...  (Shortage of monitors at home.)
> 
> This was the dude who decided to apply a binary and boolean approach to
> electronic computation, right?  I KNOW I've read some stuff about him... late
> last year?
> 
> Now I remember.  Slashdot linked to his obituary:

Shannon was one of the clearest thinkers of the 20th century, and yet
his name is hardly known outside his own field. Within his field he is
respected at the level of, say, Newton. It was a real loss to mankind
when he died a few months back.

Regards,
Steve

Re: [comphist] Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Jesse Pollard]

Rob Landley <landley@webofficenow.com>:
> On Monday 25 June 2001 16:19, asmith@14inverleith.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
...
> > I learnt my computing on a PDP8/E with papertape punch/reader, RALF,
> > Fortran II, then later 2.4Mb removable cartridges (RK05 I think).  toggling
> > in the bootstrap improved your concentration. Much later you could
> > get a single chip(?) version of this in a wee knee sized box.
> 
> "A quarter century of unix" mentions RK05 cartridges several times, but never 
> says much ABOUT them.
> 
> Okay, so they're 2.4 megabyte removable cartridges?  How big?  Are they tapes 
> or disk packs?  (I.E. can you run off of them or are they just storage?)  I 
> know lots of early copies of unix were sent out from Bell Labs on RK05 
> cartidges signed "love, ken"...

Ah, the memories... (apologies for the interruptions, but just had too ...)

RK05 cartriges looked very similar to a floppy case the size of an old 78 RPM
record (about 12 inches across, 2 - 3 inches high). I never used them, but
I did see them. They were among the first disk drives DEC ever made. Not the
first (I think that was a DF-32 for PDP 8 systems with 32 K bytes of disk
space). The raw storage was reported as 2.5 MB, formatted was ~2.4MB, with
two recording surfaces. The drive looked very similar to a modern CD drive
that would fit in about a 3U (ummm 4U?) 19 inch rack. It had 2 recording
surfaces. It did have a write enable/disable switch. If I remember right
these were originally made for the PDP 11/10-20 systems used for laboratory
device control - chromatographs were mentioned by the chemistry department
back in school.

I may have an old DEC peripheral specification book at home (11/45 version).
I really liked those books that DEC used to put out. If you ever needed to
program a DEC interface, that book had everything. It was almost like the
engineers were bragging about how easy the interfaces were to program.

> What was that big reel to reel tape they always show in movies, anyway?

I think they were CDC transports.

> I need a weekend just to collate stuff...
> 
> > One summer job was working on a PDP15 analog computer alongside an 11/20
> > with DECTAPE, trying to compute missile firing angles. [A simple version of
> > Pres Bush's starwars shield].
> 
> Considering that the Mark I was designed to compute tables of artillery 
> firing angles during World War II...  It's a distinct trend, innit?  And the 
> source of the game "artillery duel", of course...

Or the 11/34 version of the Lunar Lander (load from paper tape, graphics
display on VT11 - 512x512 8 bit color). It used to be distributed as a
diagnostic tool (hardware level interrupts, dual A/D conversion via joystick,
I/O via VT11). Any memory, DMA, or bus configuration errors would hang
the system with a known diagnostic one-liner message explaining the problem.

I also saw a report of a "terminal warfare" event where the graphics display
was being used for text editing when two little stick figure men would walk
onto the display, pick up a line, and then walk off the screen. There was
nothing the user could do until it finished. The text buffer wasn't touched,
only the display buffer.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse I Pollard, II
Email: pollard@navo.hpc.mil

Any opinions expressed are solely my own.

[OT] Re: [comphist] Re: Microsoft and Xenix.

[Guest section DW]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2001 at 08:26:55AM -0500, Jesse Pollard wrote:

> a DF-32 for PDP 8 systems with 32 K bytes of disk space

32768 13-bit words (12-bit plus parity)