[TUHS] finding help in v7 in 1980

[ron@ronnatalie.com (Ron Natalie)]

> I started in 1977 at UC Santa Barbara with Unix V6 that was running on a
> PDP11/45 just during the night. The rest of the time it ran RSTS/E. In fact, there was a sign that said "Oh say can you C by the dawn's early light" on the wall because the time you were able to learn C was in the early
 > morning hours.

Amusingly, the way UNIX got installed at JHU was on the condition that Mike get Basic Plus from RSTS/E to run on it.   This turned out to only require two modifications.    The first was the addition of a system call to turn off the UNIX stack segment.    The second was to emulate enough of the RSTS system calls.    This turned out to be fairly straightforward because RSTS like most of the DEC operating systems used EMT to trap into the kernel whereas UNIX used TRAP.    I've never understood why DEC operating systems used EMT, but it worked out for us.

Years later during the UNIX port to the HEP, we ran UNIX at night while the ersatz HEPOS (fortunately abandoned) ran in the day time.    The Denelcor guys would know we were still up because when they hit ENTER on their terminals the OS would print:   HEP, two, three, four (hey, we were employees of the US Army, albeit civilians).