From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
To: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Anyone ever heard of teaching a case study of Initial Unix?
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2024 13:04:42 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAC20D2N-+BxaYJYYsm9wj9=sKyLsBnb+q38zsh71OgdcdDpfFg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20240708132218.GF18818@mcvoy.com>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3262 bytes --]
Al is right. Tom West led the Eagle project in Westboro, MA, which is
documented in the Soul of the New Machine. The Eagle project became the
32-bit MV/8000 Eclipse [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General for
more details]. I knew a few of the HW guys, as I went to CMU with one of
them, and a couple of them came to do the Stellar CPU a few years later.
But I did not know the SW folks there like I know the DEC folks,
particularly since I never worked there.
That said, WRT to their later UNIX box, I did have access to the same at
Locus. As we did a lot of work for DG, adding features and helping them
with POSIX/FIPS and SPEC1170 conformance — IIRC, we added the FS Switch for
NFS support. It was probably the easiest UNIX kernel I have ever worked
with, with the shortest learning curve. I may remember that the User API
was based on SVR3/SVID, which means >>IIRC<<; it was based on Streams/TLI,
but ISTR is a user mode sockets layer for porting (but I'm not sure of that
-- it has been almost 30 years now). The kernel itself was a scratch
rewrite with SMP in mind. The locking scheme was clean and simple and
worked well to order 32/64 processors in our tests. Moreover, the kernel
was well-documented. I do not know for sure, but I remember being told by
some of the DG folks in NC that it was originally planned for the failed
Fountainhead system, which was canceled after West and the MA-based folks
delivered Eagle before the new system came from DG NC.
Also, I believe that DG had in response to BLISS a low-level system
language they called PL/N, but I don't know much about it/I never saw it -
I'm told that it was a >>very<< subset PL/1 syntax, but like PL/360 -
exposed a lot of hardware. ISTR that they developed some MV series
compilers with it, but since Eagle was a 32-bit super set of Nova, AOS was
ported. FWIW:. Since Multics had used PL/1 and supposedly Fountainhead was
heavily influenced by Multics (as was Pr1me, by the way), it would not
surprise me that PL/n has a PL/1 'flavor.'
I'd love to know for sure >>but my WAG<< is that that core work for
Fountainhead was reimplemented in C for their SMP 88000 box, and they added
a UNIX API layer to it.
ᐧ
On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 9:22 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 08, 2024 at 12:59:14AM -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> > Brad Spencer <brad@anduin.eldar.org> wrote:
> >
> > > The later MV/xxxxx Supernova boxes could run Unix, I
> > > believe... (at least I remember the university running Unix on a MV
> > > series after I left).
> >
> > I think these were called "Eclipse", and the story of their
> > development is told in the famous book "The Soul of a New Machine".
> > For you youngsters out there, it's a great read.
> >
> > We had one at Georgia Tech, it ran a Unix emulation on top
> > of AOS (or whatever it was called). Later on DG ported Unix to
> > run on it native.
>
> I've heard, but never verified, that they did a really nice SMP Unix.
> If anyone has seen the code I'd like to hear what you thought. The
> way it was described to me, it sounded like an SMP SunOS.
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy Retired to fishing
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5011 bytes --]
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-07-08 17:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 96+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-07-03 4:51 [TUHS] " sjenkin
2024-07-03 5:02 ` [TUHS] " Al Kossow
2024-07-03 6:46 ` arnold
2024-07-03 14:04 ` Clem Cole
2024-07-03 15:22 ` Theodore Ts'o
2024-07-03 15:36 ` Larry McVoy
2024-07-03 14:59 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-07-03 23:35 ` G. Branden Robinson
2024-07-04 13:00 ` Marc Donner
2024-07-03 9:04 ` A. P. Garcia
2024-07-03 15:17 ` Vincenzo Nicosia
2024-07-03 15:35 ` Marc Donner
2024-07-03 17:39 ` Jon Forrest
2024-07-03 17:49 ` segaloco via TUHS
2024-07-03 18:16 ` Erik E. Fair
2024-07-03 19:58 ` Rich Salz
2024-07-03 23:15 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-03 23:23 ` Marc Donner
2024-07-03 23:26 ` Rik Farrow
2024-07-04 23:26 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-03 15:37 ` Al Kossow
2024-07-03 16:01 ` Al Kossow
2024-07-03 16:05 ` Warner Losh
2024-07-03 23:29 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-07-03 23:50 ` G. Branden Robinson
2024-07-04 8:23 ` Vincenzo Nicosia
2024-07-04 20:34 ` Nevin Liber
2024-07-04 20:44 ` segaloco via TUHS
2024-07-04 21:41 ` sjenkin
[not found] ` <7AC009E5-C985-44AD-A55E-E0BFC05CDD31@serissa.com>
2024-07-05 9:41 ` Steve Jenkin
2024-07-05 9:47 ` Steve Jenkin
2024-07-05 0:03 ` Stuff Received
2024-07-05 0:12 ` Larry McVoy
2024-07-05 2:24 ` Adam Thornton
2024-07-05 2:42 ` Bakul Shah via TUHS
2024-07-05 7:13 ` arnold
2024-07-05 7:42 ` Bakul Shah via TUHS
2024-07-05 8:20 ` arnold
2024-07-05 8:52 ` G. Branden Robinson
2024-07-05 7:36 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-05 10:18 ` Peter Yardley
2024-07-05 21:38 ` [TUHS] Re: mental architecture models, " John Levine
2024-07-05 21:49 ` Larry McVoy
2024-07-05 22:08 ` Charles H Sauer (he/him)
2024-07-05 22:24 ` Larry McVoy
2024-07-05 23:17 ` John Levine
2024-07-06 12:52 ` sjenkin
2024-07-06 14:02 ` John R Levine
2024-07-06 15:58 ` Clem Cole
2024-07-06 20:56 ` John R Levine
2024-07-06 21:32 ` Charles H Sauer (he/him)
2024-07-06 23:46 ` Peter Yardley
2024-07-07 17:43 ` James Frew
2024-07-07 1:39 ` John Levine
2024-07-07 3:26 ` [TUHS] Re: PL.8 [was " Charles H Sauer (he/him)
2024-07-08 21:39 ` [TUHS] " Aron Insinga
2024-07-08 22:14 ` Paul Winalski
2024-07-09 1:04 ` Aron Insinga
2024-07-08 22:17 ` Rik Farrow
2024-07-09 0:08 ` Adam Thornton
2024-07-09 2:40 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-09 2:43 ` Warner Losh
2024-07-09 4:23 ` Adam Thornton
2024-07-09 5:06 ` Aron Insinga
2024-07-07 5:33 ` arnold
2024-07-05 22:10 ` Dan Cross
2024-07-07 22:00 ` [TUHS] " Dave Horsfall
2024-07-07 23:28 ` Brad Spencer
2024-07-08 6:17 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-08 6:27 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2024-07-08 6:51 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-08 9:36 ` David Arnold
2024-07-08 6:59 ` arnold
2024-07-08 13:22 ` Larry McVoy
2024-07-08 15:37 ` Al Kossow
2024-07-08 17:22 ` Tom Lyon
2024-07-08 17:04 ` Clem Cole [this message]
2024-07-08 15:28 ` Brad Spencer
2024-07-08 15:33 ` Al Kossow
2024-07-09 22:54 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-10 13:18 ` Chet Ramey via TUHS
2024-07-10 14:29 ` John Levine
2024-07-08 0:21 ` John Levine
2024-07-08 0:35 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-08 12:29 ` Peter Yardley
2024-07-05 16:40 ` Jon Steinhart
2024-07-06 13:20 ` Dave Horsfall
2024-07-05 0:08 ` Marc Rochkind
2024-07-04 1:53 ` John Levine
2024-07-04 2:59 ` segaloco via TUHS
2024-07-04 6:53 ` Rob Pike
2024-07-04 15:07 ` Larry McVoy
2024-07-03 14:46 [TUHS] " Norman Wilson
2024-07-03 15:45 ` [TUHS] " Clem Cole
2024-07-03 15:52 ` Clem Cole
2024-07-03 16:12 ` Chet Ramey via TUHS
2024-07-05 13:20 Douglas McIlroy
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='CAC20D2N-+BxaYJYYsm9wj9=sKyLsBnb+q38zsh71OgdcdDpfFg@mail.gmail.com' \
--to=clemc@ccc.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).