* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 16:52 ` arnold
@ 2022-11-12 17:05 ` Larry McVoy
2022-11-12 17:09 ` Miod Vallat
` (3 subsequent siblings)
4 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-11-12 17:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs, simh
On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 09:52:05AM -0700, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> P.S. For the youngsters here who've never heard of it, I highly
> recommend Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" about the
> development of the Eclipse. (https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+soul+of+a+new+machine+by+tracy+kidder&qid=1668271720&sprefix=the+soul+of+a+new%2Caps%2C233&sr=8-1).
>
> It was originally written in 1982 - 40 years ago!
That's a great read, +1.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 16:52 ` arnold
2022-11-12 17:05 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-11-12 17:09 ` Miod Vallat
2022-11-12 17:12 ` Warner Losh
2022-11-12 17:39 ` arnold
2022-11-12 17:13 ` David Barto
` (2 subsequent siblings)
4 siblings, 2 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Miod Vallat @ 2022-11-12 17:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs
> There was a guy who worked at DG and contributed a lot of the Motorola
> 88000 code to GCC whose name I don't remember, although I met him
> at a USENIX. If someone else remembers who this is, maybe he can
> be tracked down for more info.
I suppose you're referring to Tom Wood here?
> P.S. For the youngsters here who've never heard of it, I highly
> recommend Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" about the
> development of the Eclipse. (https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+soul+of+a+new+machine+by+tracy+kidder&qid=1668271720&sprefix=the+soul+of+a+new%2Caps%2C233&sr=8-1).
>
> It was originally written in 1982 - 40 years ago!
Seconded - definitely a must read; even if technology has evolved a lot
since then, management and human factors have not.
Miod
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 17:09 ` Miod Vallat
@ 2022-11-12 17:12 ` Warner Losh
2022-11-12 17:39 ` arnold
1 sibling, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-11-12 17:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Miod Vallat; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
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On Sat, Nov 12, 2022, 10:10 AM Miod Vallat <miod@online.fr> wrote:
> > There was a guy who worked at DG and contributed a lot of the Motorola
> > 88000 code to GCC whose name I don't remember, although I met him
> > at a USENIX. If someone else remembers who this is, maybe he can
> > be tracked down for more info.
>
> I suppose you're referring to Tom Wood here?
>
> > P.S. For the youngsters here who've never heard of it, I highly
> > recommend Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" about the
> > development of the Eclipse. (
> https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+soul+of+a+new+machine+by+tracy+kidder&qid=1668271720&sprefix=the+soul+of+a+new%2Caps%2C233&sr=8-1
> ).
> >
> > It was originally written in 1982 - 40 years ago!
>
> Seconded - definitely a must read; even if technology has evolved a lot
> since then, management and human factors have not.
>
Bring them in, burn them out, sweat every hour out of them... call it
excellence. Bah
Warner
>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 17:09 ` Miod Vallat
2022-11-12 17:12 ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-11-12 17:39 ` arnold
1 sibling, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2022-11-12 17:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: miod, arnold; +Cc: tuhs
Miod Vallat <miod@online.fr> wrote:
> > There was a guy who worked at DG and contributed a lot of the Motorola
> > 88000 code to GCC whose name I don't remember, although I met him
> > at a USENIX. If someone else remembers who this is, maybe he can
> > be tracked down for more info.
>
> I suppose you're referring to Tom Wood here?
That doesn't sound right... I wish I could remember. :-(
Arnold
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 16:52 ` arnold
2022-11-12 17:05 ` Larry McVoy
2022-11-12 17:09 ` Miod Vallat
@ 2022-11-12 17:13 ` David Barto
2022-11-12 17:37 ` Brad Spencer
2022-11-12 18:04 ` Clem Cole
4 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: David Barto @ 2022-11-12 17:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Aharon Robbins; +Cc: tuhs, simh
I worked on the DG-UX software porting device drivers to it.
It wasn’t a Unix port, it was a complete re-write from the ground up.
The interfaces to the drivers was different and the internal locking mechanisms
were unique to the OS. I’d never seen anything like it before, or after.
David
> On Nov 12, 2022, at 8:52 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
>
> I'm pretty sure that DG never ported DG-UX to the Nova. There was
> a native port to the Eclipse (32 bit). There was also a Eunice-style
> Unix environment that sat on top of their native OS, whatever it was
> called.
>
> When I was working there, DG gave the Georgia Tech School of Information
> and Computer Science an Eclipse running their native OS in the early
> mid-80s. I didn't do much with it, and I suspect that nobody else there
> did either.
>
> I'm bcc-ing Scott Lee, who was the admin for that machine at the time;
> maybe he remembers more.
>
> There was a guy who worked at DG and contributed a lot of the Motorola
> 88000 code to GCC whose name I don't remember, although I met him
> at a USENIX. If someone else remembers who this is, maybe he can
> be tracked down for more info.
>
> DG-UX was a pretty generic SVR3 (and later SVR4) system, IIRC.
>
> In any case, DG-UX on the Eclipse preceded it on the 88000.
>
> I hope this helps,
>
> Arnold
>
> P.S. For the youngsters here who've never heard of it, I highly
> recommend Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" about the
> development of the Eclipse. (https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+soul+of+a+new+machine+by+tracy+kidder&qid=1668271720&sprefix=the+soul+of+a+new%2Caps%2C233&sr=8-1).
>
> It was originally written in 1982 - 40 years ago!
>
> Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> This recent activity on the simh mailing list WRT to DG Nova and
>> Ecpilse got me wondering. At Locus in the 80s and 90s, we did a lot of
>> work with DG and DG-UX with their later MP-based ports using commercially
>> available microprocessors (which I have reported was a very nicely done
>> system, easy to work on, the locks tended to scale well, e*tc*.).
>>
>> But I am trying to remember if C or UNIX was on a Nova or an Eclipse. This
>> could be my failed memory, given that so many people ported V7 in the late
>> 1970s (the infamous 'NUIX' bug from the Series/1 port probably being my
>> favorite tale). So to the hive mind, did anyone (DG themselves or a
>> University) ever build 16 or 32-bit tools for the DG architectures and do a
>> UNIX port, and if so, does anyone know what became of those efforts? Is
>> this something that needs to be in the TUHS archives also?
>>
>> Clem
>> ???
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 16:52 ` arnold
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2022-11-12 17:13 ` David Barto
@ 2022-11-12 17:37 ` Brad Spencer
2022-11-12 18:04 ` Clem Cole
4 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Brad Spencer @ 2022-11-12 17:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs, simh
arnold@skeeve.com writes:
> I'm pretty sure that DG never ported DG-UX to the Nova. There was
> a native port to the Eclipse (32 bit). There was also a Eunice-style
> Unix environment that sat on top of their native OS, whatever it was
> called.
AOS and then AOS/VS for the Eclipse. In the late 1980s and early 1990s
I messed a whole lot with AOS/VS at the university I was at. It was
very much Not Unix. Towards the end of my time there, a number of
programs that traditionally would be on a Unix system, things like
sendmail, ftpd, and etc.. were natively ported to AOS/VS. The ports
were probably done as best as they could have been, but they lacked a
whole lot of ability if I remember things correctly.
After I left, the university acquired a DG of some sort that ran DG-UX
(or DGUX).
[snip]
>
> Arnold
--
Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 16:52 ` arnold
` (3 preceding siblings ...)
2022-11-12 17:37 ` Brad Spencer
@ 2022-11-12 18:04 ` Clem Cole
2022-11-12 18:36 ` Larry McVoy
4 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2022-11-12 18:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs, simh
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On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 11:52 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>
>
> DG-UX was a pretty generic SVR3
>
User space was generic. But the SVR3/88K kernel was a heavy rewrite.
LCC did a lot of work with DG adding stuff too it -- it was very well done
by the DG team in NC. The memory and FS was well integrated. Of all the
UNIX kernels we did work, it was pretty much the easiest to learn and
modify.
ᐧ
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 18:04 ` Clem Cole
@ 2022-11-12 18:36 ` Larry McVoy
2022-11-12 19:36 ` Clem Cole
0 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-11-12 18:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Clem Cole; +Cc: tuhs
On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 01:04:30PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 11:52 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> > DG-UX was a pretty generic SVR3
> >
> User space was generic. But the SVR3/88K kernel was a heavy rewrite.
> LCC did a lot of work with DG adding stuff too it -- it was very well done
> by the DG team in NC. The memory and FS was well integrated.
So read()/write()/mmap() all shared the same cache like SunOS? In SunOS the
only things not in the page cache were directories and inodes. All data
pages had one, and only one, place to be (ZFS broke this in Solaris,
which has always blown my mind).
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 18:36 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-11-12 19:36 ` Clem Cole
2022-11-13 1:56 ` Larry McVoy
0 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2022-11-12 19:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: tuhs
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To be honest, I've forgotten many (most) of the details. But that sounds
about right. As I remember it, it was like SunOS. The key point was that
the kernel only had one view of the memory system period, no FS
buffer cache etc...which was a departure from many of the traditional UNIX
implementations. IIRC they did not support BSD's mmap -- but check the
SVR3 docs to be sure -- they had the SVR3 user interfaces but none of the
BSD ones. They did support the System V shared memory, however. I do seem
to remember there was something funny in the driver interfaces, it was just
like UNIX only different, and that causes some heartache - but it was
fairly straightforward to move a DMA driver like getting a VME Xylogics
tape controller to work, but it took a little tweaking. I've forgotten
exactly why that was -- it's been a long time ago.
Clem
ᐧ
On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 1:36 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 01:04:30PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 11:52 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> > > DG-UX was a pretty generic SVR3
> > >
> > User space was generic. But the SVR3/88K kernel was a heavy rewrite.
> > LCC did a lot of work with DG adding stuff too it -- it was very well
> done
> > by the DG team in NC. The memory and FS was well integrated.
>
> So read()/write()/mmap() all shared the same cache like SunOS? In SunOS
> the
> only things not in the page cache were directories and inodes. All data
> pages had one, and only one, place to be (ZFS broke this in Solaris,
> which has always blown my mind).
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy Retired to fishing
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Re: DG UNIX History
2022-11-12 19:36 ` Clem Cole
@ 2022-11-13 1:56 ` Larry McVoy
0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-11-13 1:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Clem Cole; +Cc: tuhs
On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 02:36:05PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> To be honest, I've forgotten many (most) of the details. But that sounds
> about right. As I remember it, it was like SunOS. The key point was that
> the kernel only had one view of the memory system period, no FS
> buffer cache etc...which was a departure from many of the traditional UNIX
> implementations. IIRC they did not support BSD's mmap -- but check the
It sounds like they could have supported mmap() easily. I'd love to see
this kernel, it sounds to me like it was SunOS with nicely done SMP
support. The guy that said he'd never seen anything like it before or
since, just makes me want to see it more.
I know someone who was friends with one of the kernel guys, haven't talked
to her in years but I'll see if I can find anything.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread