On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Dan Cross wrote: > That's a bit different. It's possible that some early Unix machines had > actual drum devices for storage or swap (did any of them?), but the > /dev/drum device is what Clem says it was. > > It's funny, I just happened across this a couple of days ago when I went > looking for the `hier.7` man page from 4.4BSD-Lite2: > > https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hier&apropos=0&sek > tion=7&manpath=4.4BSD+Lite2&arch=default&format=html > > It refers to this: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=drum&sektion > =4&apropos=0&manpath=4.4BSD+Lite2 > > The claim is that it came from 3.0BSD. > ​yes - I believe that is true,​ I just looked at a 4.1 manual it 's definitely there, > ​​ > Why was it called drum? > ​wnj was being 'cute' -- drum's were historically ​the device large systems paged too. So people understood the reference at the time. > I imagine that's historical license coupled with grad student imagination, > but I'm curious if it has origin in actual hardware used at UC Berkeley. > Clem, that was roughly your era, was it not? > ​Yes - very much my era, Clem​ ᐧ ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: