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* Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix
@ 2021-04-09 14:41 Noel Chiappa
  2021-04-09 15:18 ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 34+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2021-04-09 14:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Jason Stevens

    > apparently cisco used them as well but 'borrowed' someone's RTOS design
    > as the basis for IOS? There was some lawsuit and Stanford got cisco
    > network gear for years for free but they couldn't take stock for some
    > reason?

I don't know the whole story, but there was some kind of scandal; I vaguely
recall stories about 'missing' tapes being 'found' under the machine room
raised floor...

The base software for the Cisco multi-protocol router was code done by William
(Bill) Yeager at Stanford (it handled IP and PUP); I have a vgue memory that
his initially ran on PDP-11's, like mine. (I think their use of that code was
part of the scandal, but I've forgotten the details.)

    > From: Tom Lyon

    > the design ... relied on CAD tools only extant on the Stanford PDP-10.

Sounds like SUDS?

	Noel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 34+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix
@ 2021-04-10  2:41 Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 34+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2021-04-10  2:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'Earl Baugh ', 'Clem Cole '
  Cc: 'tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org '

 I'd totally subscribe to your newsletter :P

that's cool, there is a tape dump of the old stuff on bitsavers... the
UniSoft port I think was the original stuff before Bill showed up?

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Sun/UniSoft_1.3/

along with some ROM images

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Sun/sun1/

but more pictures and whatnot are always interesting!

-----Original Message-----
From: Earl Baugh
To: Clem Cole
Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Sent: 4/10/21 4:02 AM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix

I’ve done a fair amount of research on Sun 1’s since I have one ( and it
has one of the original 68k motherboards with the original proms ).
It’s on my list to create a Sun 1 registry along the lines of the Apple
1 registry. ( https://www.apple1registry.com/
<https://www.apple1registry.com/> )
Right now, I can positively identify 24 machines that still exist.  Odd
serial numbering makes it very hard to know exactly how many they made.



Cisco was sued by Stanford over the Sun 1.  From what I read, they made
off with some Stanford property ( SW and HW ). Wikipedia mentions this (
and I have some supporting documents as well ). They ended up licensing
from Stanford as part of the settlement.  From what I’ve gathered VLSI
licensed the design from Stanford not Andy directly. However the only
produced a few machines and Andy wasn’t all that happy with that. That
was one of the impetus is to getting sun formed and licensing the same
design.  I also believe another company ( or 2 )licensed the design but
either didn’t produce any or very very few machines. 

You can tell a difference between VLSI boards and the Sun Microsystems
boards because the SUN is all capitalized on the VLSI boards ( and is
Sun on the others ).  At least on the few I’ve seen pictures of. 

The design was also licensed to SGI — I’ve seen a prototype SGI board
that’s the same thing with a larger PCB to allow some extensions. 

And the original CPU boards didn’t have an MMU. They could only run Sun
OS up to 0.9, I believe was the version. When Bill Joy got there, again
from what I’ve gathered, he wanted to bring more of the BSD code over
and they had to change the system board.  This is why you see the Sun
1/150 model number ( as an upgrade to the original Sun 1/100 designation
).  The rack mounted Sun 1/120 was changed to the 1/170. The same
upgraded CPU board was used in the Sun 2/120 at least initially.   

The original Sun OS wasn’t BSD based.  It was a V32 variant I believe.
And the original CPU boards were returned to Sun, I believe as part of
the upgrade from the 1/100 to the 1/150. ( Given people had just paid
$10,000 for a machine having to replace the entire machine would’ve been
bad from a customer perspective).  Sun did board upgrade trade ups after
this ( I worked at a company and we purchased an upgrade to upgrade a
Sun 3/140 to a Sun 3/110 — the upgrade consisted of a CPU board swap and
a different badge for the box ) 

Sun then, from when I can tell, sold the original CPU boards to a German
company that was producing a V32 system.  They changed out the PROMs but
you can see the Sun logo and part numbers on the boards 

I could go on and on about this topic ?
A Sun 1 was a “bucket list” machine for me - and I am still happy that
some friends were willing to take a 17 hour road trip from Atlanta to
Minnesota to pick mine up.  ?

After unparking the drive heads it booted up, first try ( I was only
willing to try that without a bunch of testing work because I have some
spare power supplies and a couple plastic tubs of multi bus boards that
came with it ?) 


Earl 


Sent from my iPhone


On Apr 9, 2021, at 11:13 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:



?


On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 10:10 AM Tom Lyon < pugs@ieee.org
<mailto:pugs@ieee.org> > wrote:


Prior to Sun, Andy had a company called VLSI Technology, Inc. which
licensed SUN designs to 5-10 companies, including Forward Technology and
CoData, IIRC.  The SUN IPR effectively belonged to Andy, but I don't
know what kind of legal arrangement he had with Stanford.   But the
design was not generally public, and relied on CAD tools only extant on
the Stanford PDP-10.  Cisco did start with the SUN-1 processor, though
whether they got it from Andy or direct from Stanford is not known to
me.  When Cisco started (1984), the Sun-1 was long dead already at Sun.

Bits passing in the night -- this very much is what I remember,
expereinced. 
 
<https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=
zerocontent&guid=57eccb88-2f68-40ed-9f5a-ce8913f2b4cc> ?


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 34+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix
@ 2021-04-09 15:34 Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS
  2021-04-09 17:01 ` Dan Cross
  2021-04-10  3:16 ` Dave Horsfall
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 34+ messages in thread
From: Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS @ 2021-04-09 15:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

> On 09/04/2021 11:12, emanuel stiebler wrote: > You're comparing a z80 SBC running CP/M? Or are you thinking of 68000 SBCs? 

Z80 CP/M machines were still competitive in 1981-1983 (Osborne, Kaypro)

> I've never seen a 68k SBC. Have I missed out something along the way? Is there a community for 68k SBC's? Kind regards, Andrew

Well, Rob Pike designed one: http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/blit/

I guess the original hacker scene for the 68K was around Hal Hardenberg’s newsletter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTACK_Grounded

The ready-made 68K SBC’s only arrived 1984-1985:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_QL (I think Linus Torvalds owned one)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1000

All these machines are rather similar at the hardware level - 68K processor, RAM shared between CPU and display. Only the Amiga had a (simple) hardware GPU.

What set the SUN-1 apart was its MMU, which none of the above have.

What influenced the timing was probably that Motorola made the 68K more affordable by the mid-80’s.

Paul


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 34+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix
@ 2021-04-09  5:31 Jason Stevens
  2021-04-09  6:13 ` Jon Steinhart
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 34+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2021-04-09  5:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'Jon Steinhart ', 'tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org '

Is there any solid info on the Stanford SUN boards?  I just know the SUN-1
was based around them, but they aren't the same thing?  And apparently cisco
used them as well but 'borrowed' someone's RTOS design as the basis for IOS?
There was some lawsuit and Stanford got cisco network gear for years for
free but they couldn't take stock for some reason?

I see more and more of these CP/M SBC's on ebay/online and it seems odd that
there is no 'DIY' SUN boards... Or were they not all that open, hence why
they kind of disappeared? 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Steinhart
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Sent: 4/8/21 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] PC Unix

Larry McVoy writes:
> On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 12:18:04AM +0200, Thomas Paulsen wrote:
> > >From: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
> > >Sun was making 68000-based systems in 1981, before the IBM PC was
created.
> > 
> > Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. The Sun-1 was launched in May
1982. 
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-1
>
> John may be sort of right, I bet avb was building 68k machines at
> Stanford before SUN was founded.  Sun stood for Stanford University
> Network I believe.
>
> --lm

Larry is correct.  I remember visiting a friend of mind, Gary Newman,
who was working at Lucasfilm in '81.  He showed me a bunch of stuff
that they were doing on Stanford University Network boards.

Full disclosure, it was Gary and Paul Rubinfeld who ended up at DEC
and I believe was the architect for the microVax who told me about
the explorer scout post at BTL which is how I met Heinz.

Jon

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 34+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2021-04-16  1:53 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 34+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2021-04-09 14:41 [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix Noel Chiappa
2021-04-09 15:18 ` Clem Cole
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2021-04-10  2:41 Jason Stevens
2021-04-09 15:34 Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS
2021-04-09 17:01 ` Dan Cross
2021-04-09 17:20   ` Lawrence Stewart
2021-04-09 18:32     ` Jon Steinhart
2021-04-09 22:28       ` Warner Losh
2021-04-10  3:16 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-04-10 12:06   ` David Arnold
2021-04-13 21:57     ` Dave Horsfall
2021-04-13 22:30       ` Bakul Shah
2021-04-15  5:01   ` Robert Brockway
2021-04-16  1:17     ` Brad Spencer
2021-04-09  5:31 Jason Stevens
2021-04-09  6:13 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-04-09  6:34   ` Rich Morin
2021-04-09 15:08     ` Clem Cole
2021-04-09  7:22 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2021-04-09  9:29   ` Lars Brinkhoff
2021-04-09 17:02   ` Al Kossow
2021-04-09 18:37     ` Lars Brinkhoff
2021-04-09 10:12 ` emanuel stiebler
2021-04-09 11:13   ` U'll Be King of the Stars
2021-04-09 17:22     ` Rob Gowin
2021-04-09 20:16       ` joe mcguckin
2021-04-10  2:22     ` Dave Horsfall
2021-04-09 14:08 ` Tom Lyon
2021-04-09 14:23   ` Jim Geist
2021-04-09 15:11   ` Clem Cole
2021-04-09 20:02     ` Earl Baugh
2021-04-09 20:08       ` Al Kossow
2021-04-09 20:46         ` Clem Cole
2021-04-10  1:30         ` Earl Baugh

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