[TUHS] Re: Peter H. Salus comments (+32V)

[TUHS] Re: Peter H. Salus comments (+32V)

[Dennis Ritchie]

Peter Salus is quoted as saying

 > ...
 > When the VAX was ``pre-announced,'' the Unix architects at Bell Labs had become
 > disillusioned with DEC, they didn't like VMS and they thought that the VAX had
 > an ``offensively fat instruction set.'' Anyway, Steve Johnson and Dennis
 > Ritchie were working on their Unix port to the Interdata. (Which Steve referred
 > to as the ``Intersnail.'')

We were far from disillusioned, either with the company
or the design; see my contemporary transcription of Ossanna's
notes of the preannouncement presentation.

	http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/vax.html

But it is true that our own attention was focussed on the Interdata
work at the time; not only was it underway, but for stretching
portability it looked useful to work on an architecture that
was Not "culturally compatible" with the PDP-11.

 > So DEC approached Charlie Roberts at AT&T in Holmdel, NJ. Tom London, John
 > Reiser and Ken Swanson were interested; they got a VAX in early 1978. In three
 > months they ported Version 7 to the VAX. Roberts told me: ``We got the machine
 > in January, they had it running in April, and by August it really worked.'' >>

and indeed left the Vax port to Reiser and London.  (VMS
didn't figure into the equation.)

A later poster, nao, asked about London and Reiser's memo
about their work on what became 32V (TM-78-1353-4).
This seems to be in the company archives, but not in scanned form.
I've ordered a paper copy, but the mechanism sometimes
is a black hole.

	Dennis

[TUHS] Re: Peter H. Salus comments (+32V)

[Kenneth Stailey]

--- Dennis Ritchie <dmr at plan9.bell-labs.com> wrote:
> Peter Salus is quoted as saying
> 
>> ...
>> When the VAX was ``pre-announced,'' the Unix architects at Bell
>> Labs had become disillusioned with DEC, they didn't like VMS and
>> they thought that the VAX had an ``offensively fat instruction
>> set.'' Anyway, Steve Johnson and Dennis Ritchie were working on
>> their Unix port to the Interdata. (Which Steve referred to as the
>> ``Intersnail.'')
> 
> We were far from disillusioned, either with the company
> or the design [...]

Yes, perhap Peter was confused by the propaganda coming from the
groups that were disillusioned such as the PDP-10 crowd who did not
want to give up their luxury mainframes for the VAX.

> [...] 
> A later poster, nao, asked about London and Reiser's memo
> about their work on what became 32V (TM-78-1353-4).
> This seems to be in the company archives, but not in scanned form.
> I've ordered a paper copy, but the mechanism sometimes
> is a black hole.
> 
> 	Dennis

Thanks, this will be a great addition to TUHS if it works out.

Ken


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[TUHS] Re: Peter H. Salus comments (+32V)

[Naoki Hamada]

Hi,

In message "[TUHS] Re: Peter H. Salus comments (+32V)"
    on 03/10/19, Dennis Ritchie <dmr at plan9.bell-labs.com> writes:
>A later poster, nao, asked about London and Reiser's memo
>about their work on what became 32V (TM-78-1353-4).
>This seems to be in the company archives, but not in scanned form.
>I've ordered a paper copy, but the mechanism sometimes
>is a black hole.

I would appreciate it if you would make it available by some means. I
hope it is still nearer than the event horizon of the black hole.

-nao