[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Nemo]

All this talk of targets for UNIX makes me wonder (given the
eccentricity of the machine).

N.

[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Steve Johnson]

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PCC ended up being ported to many dozen different architectures, so
it's quite possible, but I don't recall it being done.  It was kind
of a dinosaur by the early 70's.  I'm not even sure that it had
memory protection, and it certainly didn't have paging.  And the I/O
system was strange.  So porting Unix would have been next to
impossible.

The main thing I remember about the 6600 was that it didn't have
parity bits on its memory.  So people used to run the same program
three times and if two of the answers agreed, they published...

Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nemo" <cym224@gmail.com>
To:"Steve Johnson" <scj at yaccman.com>
Cc:"TUHS main list" <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>
Sent:Wed, 18 Jan 2017 21:52:58 -0500
Subject:Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

 All this talk of targets for UNIX makes me wonder (given the
 eccentricity of the machine).

 N.

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[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[ron minnich]

well, you know, parity is for farmers.

For more good fun with SRC's arithmetic, ...

> https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/CS279/CrayUG.pdf
>
>
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[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Charles Anthony]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 9:47 AM, Steve Johnson <scj at yaccman.com> wrote:

> PCC ended up being ported to many dozen different architectures, so it's
> quite possible, but I don't recall it being done.  It was kind of a
> dinosaur by the early 70's.  I'm not even sure that it had memory
> protection, and it certainly didn't have paging.
>

"base and bound" memory protection; no paging.


> And the I/O system was strange.
>

<nod>

-- Charles
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[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Dave Horsfall]

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On Thu, 19 Jan 2017, Steve Johnson wrote:

> PCC ended up being ported to many dozen different architectures, so it's 
> quite possible, but I don't recall it being done.  It was kind of a 
> dinosaur by the early 70's.  I'm not even sure that it had memory 
> protection, and it certainly didn't have paging.  And the I/O system was 
> strange.  So porting Unix would have been next to impossible.

My memory of the Kyber (as we called them; we had a 72) was that it was 
not character-addressable, but 60-bit word-addressable, thus making string 
handling somewhat difficult.  Don't get me started on its utterly broken 
architecture...  I have thankfully lost my programming manual for the 
beast.

> The main thing I remember about the 6600 was that it didn't have parity 
> bits on its memory.  So people used to run the same program three times 
> and if two of the answers agreed, they published...

Parity only slowed it down, and besides, hardware never failed...

My fondest memory of the thing was its command completion; I would start 
to type "O, TR" and it would fill out "O, TRANSACTION TERMINAL STATUS".  
Which reminds me that my worst memory was its console keyboard, with "0"
on the left...
 
-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Kay Parker]

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> My memory of the Kyber (as we called them; we had a 72)
wasn't it a CDC Cyber? 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Cyber

On Sat, Jan 21, 2017, at 04:38 AM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jan 2017, Steve Johnson wrote:
> 
> > PCC ended up being ported to many dozen different architectures, so it's 
> > quite possible, but I don't recall it being done.  It was kind of a 
> > dinosaur by the early 70's.  I'm not even sure that it had memory 
> > protection, and it certainly didn't have paging.  And the I/O system was 
> > strange.  So porting Unix would have been next to impossible.
> 
> My memory of the Kyber (as we called them; we had a 72) was that it was 
> not character-addressable, but 60-bit word-addressable, thus making
> string 
> handling somewhat difficult.  Don't get me started on its utterly broken 
> architecture...  I have thankfully lost my programming manual for the 
> beast.
> 
> > The main thing I remember about the 6600 was that it didn't have parity 
> > bits on its memory.  So people used to run the same program three times 
> > and if two of the answers agreed, they published...
> 
> Parity only slowed it down, and besides, hardware never failed...
> 
> My fondest memory of the thing was its command completion; I would start 
> to type "O, TR" and it would fill out "O, TRANSACTION TERMINAL STATUS".  
> Which reminds me that my worst memory was its console keyboard, with "0"
> on the left...
>  
> -- 
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."


-- 
  Kay Parker       
  kayparker at mailite.com

-- 
http://www.fastmail.com - Does exactly what it says on the tin

[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Lorne Wilkinson]

Control Data had a lab in Mississauga On, (outside of Toronto) in the 70s
and 80s where some of the CDC Cyber 180s were designed and built.

A company called HCR Corp in Toronto did a considerable amount of work for
CDC re-targeting pcc and UNIX System V for the 180s and ETA10.

I was fortunate enough to work for both companies. I didn't work on the pcc
port to the Cyber 180, but some of the UNIX port. I thought the Cyber 180
architecture was way ahead of it's time. Virtual memory, 64-bit ints,
shared libraries. Some of the 180s were also dual-state, NOS/VE 64-bit OS
and apps 50% of the time, a CPU microcode switch, to NOS and the 60-bit
platform for 50% of the time, to support NOS to NOS/VE migration. Pcc
re-targeting was challenging in a number of ways, addresses were 48 bits,
with a ring and segment number, which resulted in a NULL pointer actually
not being 0.

HCR also did work on the ETA10 UNIX port, I didn't participate on that
project, but HCR also re-targeted pcc for the Intel iWarp CPU, which I
worked on. HCR had a portable global code optimizer and peephole optimizer
for pcc, so much of the work involved splitting pcc, for the global
optimizer, to operate between front and back ends, and integrating the
peephole optimizer, re-targeting the code generator, and tuning.

A lot of very smart people who were great to work with at CDC and HCR,
certainly a great way to start my career.

Some more background here on the CYBERs

http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/cdc/cyber/cyber_180/

I seem to remember reading a number of those manuals 30 years ago or so.

And info on the iWarp project:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~iwarp/






On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 7:51 AM, Kay Parker <kayparker at mailite.com> wrote:

> > My memory of the Kyber (as we called them; we had a 72)
> wasn't it a CDC Cyber?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Cyber
>
> On Sat, Jan 21, 2017, at 04:38 AM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > On Thu, 19 Jan 2017, Steve Johnson wrote:
> >
> > > PCC ended up being ported to many dozen different architectures, so
> it's
> > > quite possible, but I don't recall it being done.  It was kind of a
> > > dinosaur by the early 70's.  I'm not even sure that it had memory
> > > protection, and it certainly didn't have paging.  And the I/O system
> was
> > > strange.  So porting Unix would have been next to impossible.
> >
> > My memory of the Kyber (as we called them; we had a 72) was that it was
> > not character-addressable, but 60-bit word-addressable, thus making
> > string
> > handling somewhat difficult.  Don't get me started on its utterly broken
> > architecture...  I have thankfully lost my programming manual for the
> > beast.
> >
> > > The main thing I remember about the 6600 was that it didn't have parity
> > > bits on its memory.  So people used to run the same program three times
> > > and if two of the answers agreed, they published...
> >
> > Parity only slowed it down, and besides, hardware never failed...
> >
> > My fondest memory of the thing was its command completion; I would start
> > to type "O, TR" and it would fill out "O, TRANSACTION TERMINAL STATUS".
> > Which reminds me that my worst memory was its console keyboard, with "0"
> > on the left...
> >
> > --
> > Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> > suffer."
>
>
> --
>   Kay Parker
>   kayparker at mailite.com
>
> --
> http://www.fastmail.com - Does exactly what it says on the tin
>
>
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[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 09:42:22AM -0500, Lorne Wilkinson wrote:
> HCR also did work on the ETA10 UNIX port, I didn't participate on that
> project

Do you know what they did on the ETA10 project?  I was part of the Lachman
team that did the Unix port, I wasn't there at the very beginning so maybe
that's why I never heard of them.

[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Ronald Natalie]

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BRL got the last 7600 ever built.   After a fiasco one night when they left me to turn on the “network” (in CDC terms that just means the dumb terminals connected to it), they didn’t much let me near it again.
When they were planning to decommission it in anticipation of the Cray 2 I ordered (nothing like putting your signature on a $25MM procurement), I snuck in and put a “surplus property tag” on the corner of the 7600.
They weren’t amused.

Amazingly, CDC makes some of the prettiest computers built.    When I worked for one of their subsidiaries I was always mesmerized looking in the glass windows at the main machine room.

[TUHS] Was pcc ever ported to the CDC6600?

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sat, 21 Jan 2017, Kay Parker 	  wrote:

> > My memory of the Kyber (as we called them; we had a 72)

> wasn't it a CDC Cyber? 

As I said, we called it the Kyber (as in Kyber Pass i.e. arse; you have to 
know Cockney rhyming slang).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."