Re: [TUHS] Tandem NSK implementation language (was: Happy birthday, John Backus!)

Re: [TUHS] Tandem NSK implementation language (was: Happy birthday, John Backus!)

[Paul McJones]

> On Dec 4, 2018, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> 
> The original Tandem OS (called Guardian at the time) was written in Tandem's TAL (Transaction Application Language, amongst other productions), a vague evolution of HP's SPL that looked more like Algol, starting in about 1974.  That is also the earliest I know of an operating system being implemented entirely in a high level language.

Most likely the earliest operating system written in a high-level language was the one for the Burroughs B5000 (early 1960s), written in a dialect of Algol 60. Others: Multics, written in PL/1 (starting in mid 1960s), the  operating system for the Berkeley Computer Corporation’s BCC-500, written in BCC SPL (system programming language) (late 1960s), OS6 by Stoy and Strachey, written in BCPL (early 1970s), Xerox Alto OS, written in BCPL (about 1974).

Re: [TUHS] Tandem NSK implementation language (was: Happy birthday, John Backus!)

[Dr Iain Maoileoin]

> On 5 Dec 2018, at 04:48, Paul McJones <paul@mcjones.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Dec 4, 2018, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The original Tandem OS (called Guardian at the time) was written in Tandem's TAL (Transaction Application Language, amongst other productions), a vague evolution of HP's SPL that looked more like Algol, starting in about 1974.  That is also the earliest I know of an operating system being implemented entirely in a high level language.
> 
> Most likely the earliest operating system written in a high-level language was the one for the Burroughs B5000 (early 1960s), written in a dialect of Algol 60. Others: Multics, written in PL/1 (starting in mid 1960s), the  operating system for the Berkeley Computer Corporation’s BCC-500, written in BCC SPL (system programming language) (late 1960s), OS6 by Stoy and Strachey, written in BCPL (early 1970s), Xerox Alto OS, written in BCPL (about 1974).
> 

About 1972 the Department of Computer Science at Strathclyde University in Scotland had an operating system implemented on a front-end-processor (Icant remember the make)  that allowed the submission and control of jobs to a “mainframe” - an ICL 1904s.
The operating system was written in STAB - a language initially designed and developed by Professor Andrew Colin - and loosely modelled on BCPL.

My memory is that the FEP was about 12 19” racks, it supported about 15-20 users and did not lose your files terribly often ;-)

Re: [TUHS] Tandem NSK implementation language (was: Happy birthday, John Backus!)

[Clem Cole]

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Paul beat me to it.. HP's SPL and Tandem's TAL were old news by then ...
In fact the HP's 3000's and HP 9000's stack architecture was model from the
B5000, see below...

On Wed, Dec 5, 2018 at 12:35 AM Paul McJones <paul@mcjones.org> wrote:

> > On Dec 4, 2018, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> >
> > The original Tandem OS (called Guardian at the time) was written in
> Tandem's TAL (Transaction Application Language, amongst other productions),
> a vague evolution of HP's SPL that looked more like Algol, starting in
> about 1974.  That is also the earliest I know of an operating system being
> implemented entirely in a high level language.
>
> Most likely the earliest operating system written in a high-level language
> was the one for the Burroughs B5000 (early 1960s), written in a dialect of
> Algol 60.

Called Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language or ESPOL
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Systems_Problem_Oriented_Language>.
 A later edition (66/67 time frame) of the reference manual for the 5500
can be found on bitsavers as: ESPOL B5500 Reference Manual 1967
<http://bitsavers.org/pdf/burroughs/B5000_5500_5700/1032638_B5500_ESPOL_RefManOct67.pdf>
ᐧ

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Re: [TUHS] Tandem NSK implementation language (was: Happy birthday, John Backus!)

[Paul Winalski]

On 12/4/18, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday,  4 December 2018 at 15:59:46 -0500, Paul Winalski wrote:
>>
>> I forgot one:  Tandem NonStop OS on Alpha, which was under development
>> at Compaq at the time that Compaq decided to sell off the Alpha
>> technology to Intel.
>
> Was this a start-from-scratch operation?  The original Tandem OS
> (called Guardian at the time) was written in Tandem's TAL (Transaction
> Application Language, amongst other productions), a vague evolution of
> HP's SPL that looked more like Algol, starting in about 1974.  That is
> also the earliest I know of an operating system being implemented
> entirely in a high level language.

No, not start-from-scratch.  They modified the existing MIPS TAL front
end to generate GEM intermediate language.  I don't know if the TAL
front end generated GEM IL directly or if they wrote some sort of
IL-to-IL translator wedge.  IIRC we didn't need to do any object file
work in GEM to support Tandem because they were already using an
object file format we supported (ELF or COFF).

> When Tandem started using other architectures (MIPS) in the late 1980s
> we discussed translating the whole thing to C.  I was asked to write a
> 99% translator (maintaining comments and such), and failed.

IIRC some of the Tandem code was in C at this point (1999) but a TAL
for Alpha was also needed.

-Paul W.

[TUHS] Tandem NSK implementation language (was: Happy birthday, John Backus!)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Tuesday,  4 December 2018 at 15:59:46 -0500, Paul Winalski wrote:
> On 12/4/18, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Over the years GEM was targeted to MIPS, PRISM, Alpha, and Itanium
>> machine architectures, and VMS, Unix, Linux, and Windows NT operating
>> systems.  We were working on x86 when Compaq sold the Alpha
>> architecture and its engineering team (including GEM) to Intel.
>
> I forgot one:  Tandem NonStop OS on Alpha, which was under development
> at Compaq at the time that Compaq decided to sell off the Alpha
> technology to Intel.

Was this a start-from-scratch operation?  The original Tandem OS
(called Guardian at the time) was written in Tandem's TAL (Transaction
Application Language, amongst other productions), a vague evolution of
HP's SPL that looked more like Algol, starting in about 1974.  That is
also the earliest I know of an operating system being implemented
entirely in a high level language.

When Tandem started using other architectures (MIPS) in the late 1980s
we discussed translating the whole thing to C.  I was asked to write a
99% translator (maintaining comments and such), and failed.

I lost track of the system after that, but it seems surprising that
they would have started again from scratch.

Greg
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