From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
To: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
Cc: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question")
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2020 14:18:48 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAC20D2M70qm-sgK+Oq8c7EK2pDO+pdz=pL8VbE2C8tw=CwQE-A@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200120180432.GJ28686@mcvoy.com>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1757 bytes --]
On Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 1:04 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> I know those Nat Semi chips very well, or did at the time. I so wanted to
> love those chips, the instruction set felt like whoever did the PDP-11
> did the 320xx chips.
It was clear, the NS folks, like the Moto folk, knew the PDP-11 and VAX.
It was a nice architecture and should been a win but...
> But they couldn't produce chips without bugs and that killed them.
I really think it was they were the third man and too late. Between Apple
on the Mac and Apollo, Masscomp and eventually Sun, the 68000 and later
68010 had volume. 8086 family had volume with the PC.
As Jon can tell you, Tektronix decided the use the NS chip and tossed a
working 68000/68010 design (Magnolia - which would later ship at 4400) for
a completely new workstation. But it meant starting from scratch. Big
mistake...
If they had just shipped Magnolia at the beginning, I'm not sure either
Masscomp or Sun would have been birthed. Apollo and Triple-Drip were
already there, but thy would have had the first UNIX workstation on the
market, with a super graphics system. Sigh....
> It's a crying shame, I liked the instruction set
> WAY better than the VAX. The VAX seemed really messing compared to
> the PDP-11, the 320xx chips seemed clean. Might be rose colored
> glasses but that's my memory.
I would not say way better, but much cleaner. To DEC's credit, the idea of
the VAX was to take the PDP-11 forward and keep things running. Funny, DG
did that better in the end, but that was the idea at least. NS was trying
to make the VAX without the rough edges, mistakes DEC had made. Prof. Yale
Patt consulted on both Instructions sets BTW, which may be why they look so
similar.
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3740 bytes --]
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-01-20 19:19 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 54+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-01-17 16:01 [TUHS] On the origins of Linux - "an academic question" Arrigo Triulzi
2020-01-17 16:53 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-17 17:08 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2020-01-17 17:25 ` Brantley Coile
2020-01-17 19:59 ` Arno Griffioen
2020-01-18 3:50 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-18 4:19 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-18 15:25 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-18 16:19 ` reed
2020-01-19 2:49 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-19 3:12 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 3:47 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Warren Toomey
2020-01-19 3:51 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 3:58 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 13:25 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-19 13:48 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 3:32 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-20 3:51 ` George Michaelson
2020-01-20 3:59 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Jon Forrest
2020-01-20 17:19 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Clem Cole
2020-01-20 17:49 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-20 19:00 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 18:04 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-20 18:09 ` David Barto
2020-01-20 18:34 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Arthur Krewat
2020-01-20 19:18 ` Clem Cole [this message]
2020-01-20 19:46 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Jon Steinhart
2020-01-20 20:15 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 6:58 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Lars Brinkhoff
2020-01-21 14:30 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 17:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-21 17:22 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 17:25 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-21 18:43 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 18:44 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 19:14 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 20:27 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-22 0:14 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg A. Woods
2020-01-21 0:44 ` Bakul Shah
2020-01-20 19:09 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-20 19:51 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 23:04 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-21 0:13 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 23:45 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-18 15:30 ` [TUHS] On the origins of Linux - "an academic question" Larry McVoy
2020-01-17 23:11 ` Andrew Warkentin
2020-01-17 23:20 ` Rob Pike
2020-01-17 23:38 ` Brantley Coile
2020-01-18 0:23 ` Wesley Parish
2020-01-18 15:35 [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Jason Stevens
2020-01-18 15:49 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-19 14:17 Noel Chiappa
2020-01-19 20:49 ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-01-19 16:05 Noel Chiappa
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to='CAC20D2M70qm-sgK+Oq8c7EK2pDO+pdz=pL8VbE2C8tw=CwQE-A@mail.gmail.com' \
--to=clemc@ccc.com \
--cc=lm@mcvoy.com \
--cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).