[TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History

[Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>]

I dunno.  I've heard DG did a pretty much from the ground up rewrite of
Unix to make it scale well on SMP machines.  I've never seen the source
or used DG-UX, so it's all heresay.  If anyone has more info than what
Clem said, I'm all ears.

The reason I'm interested is the original model of disabling interrupts
really isn't pleasant on an SMP but people tried to evolve it towards
something that scaled.  It seems like DG went at it starting over,
designing SMP in from the start.  Be interesting to understand what
they did.  Sequent as well.

On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 10:54:16AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> This recent activity on the simh mailing list WRT to DG Nova and
> Ecpilse got me wondering.  At Locus in the 80s and 90s, we did a lot of
> work with DG and DG-UX with their later MP-based ports using commercially
> available microprocessors (which I have reported was a very nicely done
> system, easy to work on, the locks tended to scale well, e*tc*.).
> 
> But I am trying to remember if C or UNIX was on a Nova or an Eclipse.  This
> could be my failed memory, given that so many people ported V7 in the late
> 1970s (the infamous 'NUIX' bug from the Series/1 port probably being my
> favorite tale).  So to the hive mind, did anyone (DG themselves or a
> University) ever build 16 or 32-bit tools for the DG architectures and do a
> UNIX port, and if so, does anyone know what became of those efforts?  Is
> this something that needs to be in the TUHS archives also?
> 
> Clem
> ???

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Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat