[TUHS] Public access multics

[TUHS] Public access multics

[Will Senn]

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So, it looks like someone has gone and started running a multics instance:

http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/semibug/2018-August/000288.html

That’s interesting, and y’all may even have been aware of it. But, I was thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of unix and it’s craziness an inspiration for how unix isn’t multics... straighten me out :)

Will



Sent from my iPhone

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[TUHS] Fwd: Public access multics

[Clem Cole]

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below...

On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 4:37 PM Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:

> So, it looks like someone has gone and started running a multics instance:
>
> http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/semibug/2018-August/000288.html
>
> That’s interesting, and y’all may even have been aware of it. But, I was
> thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of unix and it’s craziness
> an inspiration for how unix isn’t multics... straighten me out :)
>
>
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Unix-succeed-and-not-Multics/answer/Clem-Cole
ᐧ
ᐧ

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Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[jcs]

Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> writes:

> So, it looks like someone has gone and started running a multics 
> instance:
>
> http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/semibug/2018-August/000288.html
>
> That’s interesting, and y’all may even have been aware of it. 
> But, I was thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of 
> unix and it’s craziness an inspiration for how unix isn’t 
> multics... straighten me out :)

Failed only in the sense that the Labs withdrew from the project. 
Honeywell, which bought out GE's computer division, sold Multics 
systems, although I don't remember them being very successful.

The real mystery is what it's running on. Multics originally ran 
on the GE/H 600(0) systems. I doubt any are still around. It's 
probably a simulator but I've never heard of one for the H6000.

Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[John P. Linderman]

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I was at MIT in the late 60's, using Multics when Bell Labs decided to pull
out. A problem, in retrospect, was the use of PL/I as the primary language.
PL/I was a language designed by a committee, and it showed. It would never
have made a plausible systems programming language. But Multics was a lot
more fun to use than CTSS, which it replaced.

On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 5:27 PM, jcs <lists@irreal.org> wrote:

>
> Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> writes:
>
> So, it looks like someone has gone and started running a multics instance:
>>
>> http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/semibug/2018-August/000288.html
>>
>> That’s interesting, and y’all may even have been aware of it. But, I was
>> thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of unix and it’s craziness
>> an inspiration for how unix isn’t multics... straighten me out :)
>>
>
> Failed only in the sense that the Labs withdrew from the project.
> Honeywell, which bought out GE's computer division, sold Multics systems,
> although I don't remember them being very successful.
>
> The real mystery is what it's running on. Multics originally ran on the
> GE/H 600(0) systems. I doubt any are still around. It's probably a
> simulator but I've never heard of one for the H6000.
>

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Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Dan Cross]

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On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 6:15 PM jcs <lists@irreal.org> wrote:

> Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> writes:
> > So, it looks like someone has gone and started running a multics
> > instance:
> >
> > http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/semibug/2018-August/000288.html
> >
> > That’s interesting, and y’all may even have been aware of it.
>

Yup. A few Multics sites are publicly accessible; the one at the Living
Computer Museum has a guest account, a few others one can get an account if
one asks the site administrator nicely. Some amount of Multics maintenance
has been restarted.

> But, I was thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of
> > unix and it’s craziness an inspiration for how unix isn’t
> > multics... straighten me out :)
>

Multics was the immediate predecessor of Unix, and one can certainly see
some of the influence, though of course many of the details are different.

Failed only in the sense that the Labs withdrew from the project.
> Honeywell, which bought out GE's computer division, sold Multics
> systems, although I don't remember them being very successful.
>

The multicians.org site has a lot of good information on Multics and what
ultimately become of it. (jcs probably knows this already; I'm writing this
more for general information of those who may not have been following these
developments.) The TL;DR was that a smallish number of sites eventually
installed Multics and it was a moderate success for Honeywell, but for the
reasons that have been mentioned (failure to market, lack of management
understanding, tied to a decomposing architecture well past its prime) it
never carved out more than a niche.

The real mystery is what it's running on. Multics originally ran
> on the GE/H 600(0) systems. I doubt any are still around. It's
> probably a simulator but I've never heard of one for the H6000.
>

The last working hardware installation was shut down in, I think, 2000. An
DPS8/M emulator has been built on top of the SIMH framework, and is what
folks are running Multics on. Some more details are here:
https://multicians.org/simulator.html.

        - Dan C.

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Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Grant Taylor via TUHS]

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On 09/01/2018 06:57 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
> Yup. A few Multics sites are publicly accessible; the one at the Living 
> Computer Museum has a guest account, a few others one can get an account 
> if one asks the site administrator nicely. Some amount of Multics 
> maintenance has been restarted.

I was chatting with modern day Multicians within the last week.  They 
were actively working on getting a 3270 interface working for Multics 
running in an emulator.

They are hanging out in the #multics channel on freenode.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


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Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Charles Anthony]

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>
>
>
> The real mystery is what it's running on. Multics originally ran
> on the GE/H 600(0) systems. I doubt any are still around. It's
> probably a simulator but I've never heard of one for the H6000.
>

A simulator. Originally running Multics release 12.5, but a dedicated team
of new and original Multicians have completed the Y2K transition, fixed
some bugs and added some features, so now running release 12.6f.

All of the original systems are believed to be destroyed with the exception
of DOCKMASTER (an NSA machine), now in possession of the National
Cryptographic Museum, but warehoused.

A video of the Living Computer Museum's Multics emulator (with maintenance
panel) booting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jni7wk7bjxA

At least one of the new Multicians (me) is subscribed to TUHS.

-- Charles

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Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Sep 01, 2018 at 07:32:53PM -0700, Charles Anthony wrote:
> At least one of the new Multicians (me) is subscribed to TUHS.

Welcome.  You'll find this list to be pleasant, it's mostly Unix but
we've got Ted from Linux (which is a big deal, he has a lot of history
in his head and is a good guy), Ken is on here though he rarely posts
(and we all try and be nice to keep him around), Doug is here, Steve is
here, and all of us wannabes are here.

I love being on this list, as a young dude I was pretty unhappy that I 
was born at the wrong time, I really really wanted be part of Bell Labs.
But I got to be part of Sun, which I think was the Bell Labs of their
time.  And then there is this list which has some of the Bell Labs folks.

It reminds me of the Band, there is a video and Neil Young says "it's
one of the pleasures of my life to be on stage with these people".  
Yeah, it's one of the great pleasures of my life to be able to talk
the Bell Labs people on this list.  And other fans of the Unix history,
love this list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2z7LXpAX3Q

Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sat, 1 Sep 2018, John P. Linderman wrote:

> PL/I was a language designed by a committee, and it showed. [...]

I have never seen a full-blown PL/I compiler (only subsets), and I recall 
being told that there never will be one because it is simply impossible, 
given the spec.

Naturally I am happy to be proven wrong on this.

-- Dave

Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Charles Anthony]

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On Sun, Sep 2, 2018 at 6:07 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 1 Sep 2018, John P. Linderman wrote:
>
> > PL/I was a language designed by a committee, and it showed. [...]
>
> I have never seen a full-blown PL/I compiler (only subsets), and I recall
> being told that there never will be one because it is simply impossible,
> given the spec.
>
> Naturally I am happy to be proven wrong on this.
>
>
AM83 Multics PL1 Reference Manual, pg 1-1: "Multics PL/I is closely related
to American National Standards Programming Language PL/I. ... ANSI
X3.53-1976... For a complete description of the differences between Multics
PL/I and Standard PL/I, see Appendix A of the PL/I Language Specification."

Appendix A, pp A-1 to A-4:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=12wRW7vgCVTP4bL7942YiEEUQc2J9bWes
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1McndftW6HPioowfIAmL1P8WhabpvYeWg
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XJdaj8YGHTERjTu9xq3KEM0nAGiAFm2M
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18VdXROFQmkm_9zL1XLHZCeOxiPLmWDMD

-- Charles



-- Dave
>

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Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Paul Winalski]

On 9/2/18, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>
> I have never seen a full-blown PL/I compiler (only subsets), and I recall
> being told that there never will be one because it is simply impossible,
> given the spec.
>
> Naturally I am happy to be proven wrong on this.

IBM had PL/I compilers for TOS, DOS, and OS on System/360, and for
DOS/VS and OS/VS on System/370.  If those weren't full implementations
of the original spec, they were pretty close.

IBM PL/I had a good number of what I call toxic language features,
such as the DEFAULT statement (which was Fortran's IMPLICIT on
steroids).  Most PL/I shops had as part of their coding standards a
set of language features banned from the code.  The ANSI standard
eliminated a lot of these, although it also threw out some useful
features such as iSUB defining and by-name structure assignment.

One of my favourite features was sterling pictures, with pounds,
shillings, and pence fields (represented internally as a packed
decimal value in pence).  Sterling pictures weren't finally deprecated
in the IBM PL/I compilers until 1979, IIRC.

-Paul W,.

Re: [TUHS] Public access multics

[Paul Winalski]

On 9/2/18, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> IBM had PL/I compilers for TOS, DOS, and OS on System/360, and for
> DOS/VS and OS/VS on System/370.  If those weren't full implementations
> of the original spec, they were pretty close.

TOS, DOS, and DOS/VS PL/I didn't implement PL/I's multitasking
features (such as TASKs and EVENTs) because those OSes had no
multitasking support.

-Paul W.

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Public access multics

[Will Senn]

On Sep 1, 2018, at 6:25 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:

>> From: Will Senn
> 
>> I was thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of unix
>> ... straighten me out :)
> 
> I'd start with:
> 
>  https://multicians.org/myths.html
>> 

Noel, Fascinating read. I must’ve read at least a good handful of the references leading to the myths described in the writeup. As usual, I can trust the folks who lived history to remember it more clearly than many revisionists writing about it later.

Thanks for sharing.

Now, I’m wondering what awesome features Multics had that we’re still lacking in modern *nices... anything as amazing as say, my favorite filesystem, ZFS?

Will

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Public access multics

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Will Senn

    > I was thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of unix
    > ... straighten me out :)

I'd start with:

  https://multicians.org/myths.html


    > From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>

    > https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Unix-succeed-and-not-Multics/answer/Clem-Cole

Clem, I think that's too limited in scope.

Like a lot of 'big' 'failures' (defined in Multics' case as 'failure to grow
to significant market share, and continue in the long term'), I don't think
Multics 'failed' for a single reason.

In general, in large failures, there are a number of causes, all doing their
bit. Now, if there are M causes, ranked in priority, maybe the first N1 are
_each_ big enough that _any one_ of them could have led to that outcome. Or
maybe not; maybe it needed the first N2, all acting in concert.


My crystal ball isn't that accurate. But here's my take on _some_ of Multics'
main issues.

- Management: if you look at:

  https://multicians.org/hill-mgt.html

it's clear that Honeywell top management didn't understand Multics, and
didn't understand that it had a long-term potential. They terminated
investment in new hardware, and that was what finally killed Multics.

- Non-portability: the system was too tied to a specific platform; it
couldn't really be moved elsewhere. (E.g. the code is riddled with 'fixed bin
18'; yes, that could be changed with a program to edit the source, but there
are lots of dependencies on the specifics of the machine's architecture.) It
would be possible to re-write it to run on, say, a 386, but you'd pretty much
have to start from scratch.

- Built for the wrong future: a key assumption was that people would continue
to get their computes from large centralized machines. Clearly, that was
wrong (and it played into the issues with Honeywell management)>. Multics
_could_ have made the transition to today's 'small' (physically) machines, in
which case it would have been really good to have - e.g. if we could run
browsers in AIM boxes a lot of malware simply would not be an issue. But the
point above prevented that.


Those are some of the big ones; I may come up with more. I've CC'd a couple
of Multicians - perhaps they can add additional insight.

	Noel