ooh, there's an idea for new project...

I also have a soft spot for the old PDP11 architecture and aesthetics, and
like the idea of an emulator sitting behind an 11/70 front panel, but I
havn't been able to decide what software to run on it...

Unix ran quite nicely on an 11/70 back in the late 70s, but I doubt you
would squeeze much more than the boot loader of a modern bloated system
onto one.... And a Unix image from that era would probably be a little
limited. (I don't really have enough history with RT11/RSTS to want to use
them).

So the question is... is plan9 still lean and mean enough to fit onto a
machine with a 64K address space? Doing a port would certainly provide
plenty of opportunity to tinker with the lights and switches on front
panel, and if it the port was initially limited to being a CPU server,
there would be no need to worry about displays and mass storage.... just
the compiler back end and low level kernel support.

Has anyone already looked at that? I expect it would be a fun, educational
and nostalgic exercise, but of course not of much practical use...

Regards,
DigbyT

On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 at 00:23, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Fri, Oct 5, 2018 at 12:11 AM Mayuresh Kathe <mayuresh@kathe.in> wrote:
> > man, i experienced such heavy negativity towards my efforts to build ...
> >
> > the idea was to have a 64-bit linux kernel with the advantages of
> > plan9port (small and elegantly designed+developed tools).
>
> Mayuresh,
> To echo what others have said, don't let the negativity
> itself affect your work.  Consider only the technical points
> that have been raised.  To the extent that you evaluate
> them and consider them relevant to your objectives, factor
> them into your work.
>
> It really doesn't matter if anyone else ever cares about
> or uses your work.  If you learn from it, get intellectual
> satisfaction from it, and it's useful to you, then it's worth
> doing.  If others can benefit too, great, but lack of interest
> on the part of others is not a good reason for lack of
> initiative on your part.  As far as I can tell, I'm the only
> one using a file system I developed.  Sure, in some ways
> I would like if everyone thought it was as great as I do,
> but just because they don't doesn't stop me from benefitting
> from it.
>
> As for the specifics of your project, I personally don't think
> I'd be all that interested in the results.  As much as I like
> the elegance and simplicty of the implementation of the
> Plan 9 user-land, much of the beauty of the system comes
> from the simplicity and elegance of the kernel.  So if I
> were using the Plan 9 user-land on top of the LInux kernel,
> I wouldn't feel the same sense of beauty, intellectual satisfaction,
> and connection to the original developers as I do running
> the same user-land on the Plan 9 kernel.  But just because
> I wouldn't be interested is no reason to stop your research.
> Just be sure to study the similar efforts that have come
> before and that have been mentioned here.  What did
> they accomplish?  Did they go wrong somewhere?  Can
> you get to that goal avoiding those mistakes?  If nothing
> else, the whole experience will almost certainly give you
> a greater appreciation for the Plan 9 kernel.
>
> Just a couple of thoughts from an old-timer who misses
> the days of working on PDP-11s.
>
> BLS
>
>