From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:11:40 -0500 (EST) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20160125011140.8235618C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (raw)
> From: Norman Wilson
> I have to disagree in part
You make a number of good points. A few comments:
> the PDP-11 is a big part of what made UNIX so widespread, especially in
> university departments
That last part was really a big factor, one not to be understated. That
penetration led to production of a whole generation of people who i) were
familiar with Unix, and ii) liked it, and were not about to put up with the
OS's being turned out by various vendors.
> I too suspect that a majority (though I'm not so sure about `vast') of
> PDP-11s never ran UNIX.
'Embedded systems'. The number of PDP-11's running timesharing was a small
share of the total number, I expect.
> I don't think those who weren't around in the latter 1970s and early
> 1980s can appreciate the ways in which UNIX captured many programmers
> ... as no other competing system could.
Very true. My jaw basically hit the floor when I first saw (ca. '75) what Unix
was like. People who didn't live through that transition can't _really_ grok
it, any more than my kids can really fully grok a world without mobile
phones. It wasn't as powerful as Multics, but I was completely blown away that
anyone could get that much capability into a PDP-11 OS.
Noel
next reply other threads:[~2016-01-25 1:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 41+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-01-25 1:11 Noel Chiappa [this message]
2016-01-25 1:30 ` Clem cole
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2016-01-26 20:07 Doug McIlroy
2016-01-26 20:44 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-26 19:36 Doug McIlroy
2016-01-26 19:59 ` Warren Toomey
[not found] <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2016-01-25 3:07 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-01-25 3:09 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-01-25 12:54 ` John Cowan
2016-01-25 13:09 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-01-25 13:49 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-01-25 16:00 ` John Cowan
2016-01-25 16:17 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-01-25 16:43 ` John Cowan
2016-01-24 22:40 Norman Wilson
2016-01-25 1:55 ` David Ritchie
2016-01-25 1:59 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-25 2:14 ` Clem cole
2016-01-25 11:29 ` Tony Finch
2016-01-25 13:25 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-25 16:18 ` Pete Turnbull
2016-01-25 19:37 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-24 22:40 Norman Wilson
2016-01-25 0:23 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-24 18:56 Noel Chiappa
[not found] <mailman.25.1453658502.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2016-01-24 18:34 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-01-24 18:30 Noel Chiappa
2016-01-24 18:36 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-24 21:10 ` John Cowan
2016-01-25 0:11 ` scj
2016-01-25 0:36 ` Clem cole
2016-01-24 18:01 Noel Chiappa
2016-01-24 17:37 Mark Longridge
2016-01-24 18:49 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-25 3:16 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-01-25 5:32 ` Warren Toomey
2016-01-25 12:27 ` Clem cole
2016-01-25 13:38 ` Lawrence Stewart
2016-01-25 14:15 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-26 19:52 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-01-26 20:41 ` Clem Cole
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