From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: henry.r.bent@gmail.com (Henry Bent) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2017 22:00:18 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Why did PDPs become so popular? In-Reply-To: References: <20171229163832.GA17231@mcvoy.com> <091301d3810a$9df2d6b0$d9d88410$@ronnatalie.com> Message-ID: On 29 December 2017 at 21:30, Paul Winalski wrote: > On 12/29/17, Ron Natalie wrote: > > The Alpha was hot > > stuff for about nine months. Ran OSF/1 formerly DigitalUnix formerly > > OSF/1. > > Digital UNIX for the VAX was indeed derived from OSF/1. The port to > Alpha was called Tru64 UNIX. > > Tru64 UNIX was initially a pure 64-bit system, with no provision for > building or running 32-bit program images. This turned out to be a > mistake . DEC found out that a lot of ISVs had code that implicitly > "knew" that sizeof() a pointer was the same as sizeof(int) was the > same as 4 bytes. Tru64 was forced to implement a 32-bit compatibility > mode. > > There was also a problem with the C compiler initially developed at > DECwest in Seattle. It supported ONLY ANSI standard C and issued > fatal errors for violations/extensions of the standard. We (DEC > mainstream compiler group) called it the Rush Limbaugh > compiler--extremely conservative, and you can't argue with it. > I'm curious about this. As far as I know the development of the released OS for the Alpha went this way: (OSF/1 reference) -> (OSF/1 for MIPS) -> OSF/1 V[1.2, 2, 3.0] -> Digital UNIX [3.2, 4] -> Tru64[5]. Was there ever a branch of this for the VAX? And was the frontend for the compiler for the Alpha not the same as for the DECstations? That had the -std options to switch between K&R, "compatibility," and pure ANSI. My DECstation isn't up right now but I believe its compiler under OSF/1 could even take the Sun compiler options, -Xc, -Xa, etc. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: