[9fans] gnot

[9fans] gnot

[Charles Forsyth]

not really about the gnot but a pleasant diversion anyway:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/rob/movies/blit.mpg
(it's 41 meg or so)

[9fans] gnot funny

[Jack Johnson]

Charles Forsyth wrote:
> not really about the gnot but a pleasant diversion anyway:
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/rob/movies/blit.mpg
> (it's 41 meg or so)

Just a plug, apparently the new version of Nero Burning ROM (30-day demo
available) will happily convert your MPEG-1 videos into VCD format (1/2
SIF, I think) and burn them for use in most recent DVD players.

In case you still don't trust venti. ;)

-J

Re: [9fans] gnot

[emanuel stiebler]

Charles Forsyth wrote:
> not really about the gnot but a pleasant diversion anyway:
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/rob/movies/blit.mpg
> (it's 41 meg or so)

This video only increased my appetite for the "REAL" thing ;-)

cheers

[9fans] rc on U/WIN?

[Jack Johnson]

Has anyone tried compiling the Rakitzis/Goodwin version of rc under
U/WIN with the GNU dev toolchain?

I've read that U/WIN is much happier about compiling random UNIX source
out of the box than Cygwin, but I have to admit that I haven't tried it
(yet) under either.  I'm just fishing for some wholeheartedly subjective
opinions.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> On Fri Oct 25 06:06:19 EDT 2002, geoff@collyer.net wrote:
> > I haven't seen a gnot in years.
> There's one sitting by the freight elevator right now on
> its way to the silicon graveyard.

I'm not sure I could make use of a gnot, but if anybody has
5620, 630, or 730 terminals he wants to get rid of, I'll be
happy to add them to the queue in my garage awaiting
resuscitation.

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[presotto]

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Well, a researcher, name omitted, did come the the STREAMS review
at USG with a looseleaf binder sporting a sewer plate cover.

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From: Boyd Roberts <boyd@strakt.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Gnot
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 14:55:33 +0200
Message-ID: <3DB93F45.8000100@strakt.com>

rob pike, esq. wrote:

>STREAMS (USG always capitalized it for some reason)
>
Didn't they capitalise it SEWERS?

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[jmk]

On Fri Oct 25 06:06:19 EDT 2002, geoff@collyer.net wrote:
> I haven't seen a gnot in years.
> ...

There's one sitting by the freight elevator right now on
its way to the silicon graveyard.

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[Boyd Roberts]

rob pike, esq. wrote:

>STREAMS (USG always capitalized it for some reason)
>
Didn't they capitalise it SEWERS?

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[rob pike, esq.]

> I looked at:
>
>     http://www.bell-labs.com/user/dwd/5620faq.html
>
> which says:
>
>     In the System V world, someone (we don't know who) apparently decided
>     that a pty-like solution was too inefficient. Thus, they created the
>     xt driver.
>
> I think the original xt work was done by Piers Lauder [at 1127].

piers was in USG at the time.  i believe he wanted to use the streams
version but STREAMS (USG always capitalized it for some reason) wasn't
politically viable in USG yet, so he did a kernel muxer instead.

-rob

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[Geoff Collyer]

Two small corrections to my earlier note (it was late when I
wrote it).

Bart Locanthi invented the Blit hardware, Rob Pike wrote
much of the software.

Blits were known internally as Jerqs, in homage to the
Three Rivers' Perq.  Thus Bart's paper on how to assemble
your shiney new Blit from parts was called ``Jerqs are Made,
not Born''.

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[rob pike, esq.]

another minor detail: i put the draw interface into plan 9 (which was
pretty trivial other than hacking loads of applications); russ converted
it from 8 color mapped bits per pixel to true color, which was a
harder problem.

-rob

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[rob pike, esq.]

the blit work was a collaboration between bart locanthi and myself,
as was the gnot. the gnot used the case and monitor from the 630
but was all new inside. it had a 68020. the 'crisp gnot' came later
and didn't really succeed due to various chip problems. the 68020
version was widely deployed and pretty successful within the
research group at bell labs.

one of the new pieces of the crisp gnot was a special support chip
for graphics, to compensate for the poorer bit swizzling capability
of the crisp relative to the 68020.  the chip watched the bus and
did things to memory as it flew by.  it was a pretty clever idea but
failed because the crisp would double-execute stores and fetches
across page faults, causing the BALU to double-execute the graphics
ops.

-rob

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[Boyd Roberts]

I looked at:

    http://www.bell-labs.com/user/dwd/5620faq.html

which says:

    In the System V world, someone (we don't know who) apparently decided
    that a pty-like solution was too inefficient. Thus, they created the
    xt driver.

I think the original xt work was done by Piers Lauder [at 1127].

I know he ported xt to streams for the Basser 8th Ed system.

I Cc'd Piers on it but he made no comment (typical Piers :).

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[Geoff Collyer]

I haven't seen a gnot in years.  I think there were still a few in use
when I started at AT&T in 1994.  Adequate PCs now are cheaper (and a
good deal more studly) than gnots were then (my notes from a talk Rob
gave in 1987 say ``gnots cost US$5,000'').

People other than Bart knew what was in gnots.  Surely Rob Pike did.
Ted Kowalski probably did.  There was a paper by Bart called ``This is
Gnot Hardware'', but I don't know if it ever made it to the outside
world.

A very quick history of this stuff is that Rob invented the Blit in
about 1980 (maybe 1981) shortly after joining the Labs.  It used an 8
MHz 68000 CPU, 256K bytes of RAM, a small ROM, an 800x1024
portrait-mode monochrome (green on black) display, no MMU, no fans, no
disks and its own little window system and OS (variously called mpx,
mux, layers).  I believe this even preceded the Sun-1.  Graphics
leaned heavily on the bitblt operator and graphics programming was
relatively painless (certainly compared to X11).  It connected to a
Unix host via serial line and provided quite a pleasant window system
without Unix knowing much about it.  The Blit got commercialised by
Teletype, who swapped the processor for the Western Electric 32000 and
generally increased the price and sold the result as the DMD 5620 for
something like US$5,620 (easy for the sales force to remember :-).
Teletype then reversed themselves and swapped the processor back to a
68010, I believe, replaced the sturdy metal case with a flimsy plastic
one, dropped the price somewhat and sold the result as the MTG 630.
There was a follow-on, the 730, that could optionally connect to its
host(s) via Ethernet and could even run X11 (you can see the influence
of marketting droids).

The gnot, as noted earlier, attempted to use some of the 630 or 730
hardware but included an MMU.  (My notes say ``essentially a Teletype
630 with a [AT&T] CRISP CPU instead of a 68k, a [AT&T] Datakit
connection instead of a serial port, an MMU, and lots of memory.'')
The gnot and early Plan 9 terminals in general used what looks to me
like a slightly mutated Blit bitblt interface for graphics.  It grew
support for grey-scale and then colour displays and lasted through the
2nd edition release, as I recall.  It was replaced by raw rasters
(/dev/graphics), and then Rob invented the draw interface, tried it
out in Inferno and then had Russ put it into Plan 9 in time for the
3rd edition release.

At least that's how I remember it.

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[emanuel stiebler]

Geoff Collyer wrote:
>
> A better reference is ``Plan 9 from Bell Labs'', probably from 2nd
> edition.  Google finds it at
>
> http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Glamorgan/gaius/lans9495/Plan9.2.pdf

I read this one, thanks.

So, are they still used ? Are there any left ?
I like the concept of a cheap intelligent terminal, but why use a whole
PC for that ?

Is Bart Locanthi, the only person who knew what is in the Gnot ?

sorry for all this questions,
cheers

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[emanuel stiebler]

Anders Soendergaard wrote:
>
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 08:56:11AM +0000, ext emanuel stiebler wrote:
> > Anybody has any usefull links to the "gnot" ?
>
> Try http://www.bell-labs.com/user/dwd/5620faq.html

Which has only one line of information, which is probably even wrong.
It states, that it is a better controller for the 630 monitor, using
a mc68030.

cheers

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[Geoff Collyer]

A better reference is ``Plan 9 from Bell Labs'', probably from 2nd
edition.  Google finds it at

http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Glamorgan/gaius/lans9495/Plan9.2.pdf

Re: [9fans] Gnot

[Anders Soendergaard]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 08:56:11AM +0000, ext emanuel stiebler wrote:
> Anybody has any usefull links to the "gnot" ?

Try http://www.bell-labs.com/user/dwd/5620faq.html

/Anders

[9fans] Gnot

[emanuel stiebler]

Hi,

In the documentatuion of Plan9, there is many times a reference to
the "Gnot" terminal/computer. But I didn't find any usefull or complete
reference what it really is, or if they are still alive, or available.

Anybody has any usefull links to the "gnot" ?

thanks