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From: Lawrence Stewart <stewart@serissa.com>
To: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] non-blocking IO
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 17:15:21 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <515ABF82-79D4-4DB8-90F1-4DDD512C7706@serissa.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2NT-KGP6hb0Zsd2uNpMJjRDxp3EKU2xC2WJW1U8Npawjw@mail.gmail.com>

I remember working on getting Arpanet access on an 11/34 running V7 around 1978 or 1979.  (SU-ISL). We used an 11/23 as a front end to run NCP, using a variation of Rand’s code.  I wrote some sort of bisync driver for packet communications between the /23 and the /34, and I think added an IOCTL or some hack to ask if there was a message ready.  So a polling variety of non-blocking I/O :)

Meanwhile, on the Alto, surely an underpowered machine, the style for UI programming and asynch I/O was mostly event driven, much like libevent in more recent years.  I found that very easy to understand.

The main trajectory of PARC was lightweight threads calling synchronous I/O which really has to be counted as a Bad Idea not yet fully stamped out.

I’ve always thought select(2) was a pretty good thing.  In 1995 at Open Market we had a single-process web server that had no difficulties running 1000 to 1200 connections.  I think that was BSD, and later OSF-1.

-L


  reply	other threads:[~2020-06-02 21:21 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 41+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-06-02 14:19 Paul Ruizendaal
2020-06-02 17:45 ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 17:59   ` arnold
2020-06-02 18:53     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 19:18       ` Clem Cole
2020-06-02 21:15         ` Lawrence Stewart [this message]
2020-06-02 22:03           ` [TUHS] non-blocking IO - threads Jon Steinhart
2020-06-02 23:05             ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:09               ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:21                 ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-03  0:39                   ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:12               ` Jon Steinhart
2020-06-03 16:42                 ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-03 17:57                   ` Jon Forrest
2020-06-03  5:38           ` [TUHS] Unix on the Arpanet Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-03 12:23             ` Lawrence Stewart
2020-06-02 18:23   ` [TUHS] non-blocking IO Dan Cross
2020-06-02 18:56     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 19:23       ` Clem Cole
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-06-06 13:29 Noel Chiappa
2020-06-02 20:13 Noel Chiappa
2020-06-02 20:43 ` Clem Cole
2020-06-02 22:14   ` Rich Morin
2020-06-03 16:31     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-03 19:19       ` John P. Linderman
2020-06-02  8:22 Paul Ruizendaal
2020-06-02  0:08 Noel Chiappa
2020-06-01 23:17 Noel Chiappa
2020-05-31 11:09 Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-31 16:05 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-31 16:46   ` Warner Losh
2020-05-31 22:01     ` Rob Pike
2020-06-01  3:32       ` Dave Horsfall
2020-06-01 14:58         ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-04  9:04           ` Peter Jeremy
2020-06-04 14:19             ` Warner Losh
2020-06-04 16:34               ` Tony Finch
2020-06-04 16:50               ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-05 16:00                 ` Dan Cross
2020-06-12  8:18                   ` Dave Horsfall
2020-06-01 16:58     ` Heinz Lycklama

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