[TUHS] Re: RIP Niklaus Wirth, RIP John Walker

[Jon Forrest <nobozo@gmail.com>]

On 3/1/2024 10:14 AM, Paul Ruizendaal wrote:
>
> For Walker, the link is via the company that he was running as a
> side-business before he got underway with AutoCAD:
> https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/marinchip/
> 
> In that business he was selling a 16-bit system for the S-100 bus,
> based around the TI9900 CPU (which from a programmer perspective is
> quite similar to a PDP11). For that system he wrote a Unix-like
> operating system around 1978-1980, called NOS/MT. He had never worked
> with Unix, but had spelled the BSTJ issues about it. It was fully
> written in assembler.

I've mentioned that I worked at Ford Aerospace in the software tools
group in 1977-1978. I had the desk next to John Nagle. One day
John had a visitor who was talking about interesting stuff so I
went over to see who it was. It was John Walker, and he was
talking about what he was doing with the TI9900 chip. I don't
remember what he said, but I do remember being quite impressed.

More name dropping - I was walking the dog on the trail in back
of my house the other day and I started talking to a guy about
my age who was also walking his dog. He said he was a retired software
guy, so I asked him where he had worked. He said that he was
one of the founders, along with John Walker, of AutoCad! His
name was Greg Lutz.

Jon Forrest