[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Douglas McIlroy]

> * What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a
> PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is it
> the integration of display into the system that differentiates?

Certainly integration is critical. The display should be integral to the
terminal, not simply an available device.

Without that stipulation Ken's original single-user PDP-7 system would
count (unless, perhaps, the system had not yet been christened "Unix").

Doug

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Phil Budne]

Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2023 16:16:56 -0500
>
> > * What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a
> > PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is it
> > the integration of display into the system that differentiates?
>
> Certainly integration is critical. The display should be integral to the
> terminal, not simply an available device.
>
> Without that stipulation Ken's original single-user PDP-7 system would
> count (unless, perhaps, the system had not yet been christened "Unix").

Tho perhaps the EXACT same PDP-7 (in its original use as a prototype
for the PDP-9 based Graphic-2 circuit design/simulation system) would
qualify as a workstation?

Here's a 1965 video of the earlier (PDP-5 based?) Graphic-1 system in use:
https://techchannel.att.com/playvideo/2012/09/07/AT&T-Archives-Graphic-1

Both Graphic-1 and Graphic-2 were display "workstations" that fronted
for mainframes.

[TUHS] Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Joseph Holsten]

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[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Chris Hanson]

On Jan 25, 2023, at 4:31 PM, Joseph Holsten <joseph@josephholsten.com> wrote:
> 
> It seems like there are bountiful articles able the decline and fall of the UNIX workstation, but I’ve had a hard time finding narrative about workstations prior to the Stanford SUN workstation.
> 
> * was the SUN-1 the first commercially successful product? What are the “it depends” edge cases?

Nope, Apollo and the Three Rivers PERQ both predate Sun. And while one can certainly question PERQ's commercial success I don't think one can question Apollo's—they were done in by HP's purchase, not by market forces.

Apollo Aegis wasn't actually UNIX, but was very UNIX-like since it was designed by people who had worked at Prime on PrimOS and on MULTICS before that. And later releases provided more specifically UNIX-style environments for users as an alternative to Aegis.

The Three Rivers PERQ had several different environments available, including multiple UNIX implementations.

> * were there common recipes for proto-workstations within academic or industrial research? What did those look like, who was involved?

They mostly looked like the Xerox Alto, once it made waves in the research community.

> * What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is it the integration of display into the system that differentiates? 

I think "a graphical system intended to be used by a professional to use in their work" is a good starting point for a definition. I should check at home tonight how "A History of Personal Workstations" defines it. Note that I wouldn't necessarily require a workstation to be primarily used by a single user; lots of 1970s CAD systems supported multiple user workstations on a single computer.

  -- Chris

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[John Cowan]

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On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 8:47 PM Chris Hanson <cmhanson@eschatologist.net>
wrote:


> > * What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a
> PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is it
> the integration of display into the system that differentiates?
>
> I think "a graphical system intended to be used by a professional to use
> in their work" is a good starting point for a definition. I should check at
> home tonight how "A History of Personal Workstations" defines it.
>

WP says the Terak 8510/a was the first graphical workstation; it came out
in 1976-77 and ran the UCSD p-System.  I had never heard of it before. The
first *personal* workstation (non-graphical) was probably the IBM 1620 (aka
the CADET system, "Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try") from 1959.

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[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Jon Steinhart]

John Cowan writes:
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 8:47 PM Chris Hanson <cmhanson@eschatologist.net>
> wrote:
>
>
> > > * What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a
> > PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is it
> > the integration of display into the system that differentiates?
> >
> > I think "a graphical system intended to be used by a professional to use
> > in their work" is a good starting point for a definition. I should check at
> > home tonight how "A History of Personal Workstations" defines it.
> >
>
> WP says the Terak 8510/a was the first graphical workstation; it came out
> in 1976-77 and ran the UCSD p-System.  I had never heard of it before. The
> first *personal* workstation (non-graphical) was probably the IBM 1620 (aka
> the CADET system, "Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try") from 1959.

I think that WP is not correct here, the Tektronix 4051 beat it to market
by a year.

[TUHS] Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Joseph Holsten]

I love how I can fire off a query and get so much info. But I wonder: does TUHS have any way of consolidating these threads into easily digestible documents? What would be preferred, a wiki? or a source control repo with “articles”?

I’m mostly wanting summarize this kind of thread and include links to mailing list messages and other resources.
But also, I’m lazy and I am not committing to editing a journal.

On Thu, Jan 26, 2023, at 10:04, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> John Cowan writes:
>> On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 8:47 PM Chris Hanson <cmhanson@eschatologist.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> > > * What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a
>> > PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is it
>> > the integration of display into the system that differentiates?
>> >
>> > I think "a graphical system intended to be used by a professional to use
>> > in their work" is a good starting point for a definition. I should check at
>> > home tonight how "A History of Personal Workstations" defines it.
>> >
>>
>> WP says the Terak 8510/a was the first graphical workstation; it came out
>> in 1976-77 and ran the UCSD p-System.  I had never heard of it before. The
>> first *personal* workstation (non-graphical) was probably the IBM 1620 (aka
>> the CADET system, "Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try") from 1959.
>
> I think that WP is not correct here, the Tektronix 4051 beat it to market
> by a year.

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Jon Steinhart]

Joseph Holsten writes:
> I love how I can fire off a query and get so much info. But I wonder: does
> TUHS have any way of consolidating these threads into easily digestible
> documents? What would be preferred, a wiki? or a source control repo with
> “articles”?
>
> I’m mostly wanting summarize this kind of thread and include links to
> mailing list messages and other resources.  But also, I’m lazy and I am
> not committing to editing a journal.

Seems like you already know the answer and just don't like it.
The only way to get coheret articles is to write the.  Wikis
suck for this sort of thing.

An appropriate way for us to do this sort of thing would be to create
a repository where we can contribute to documents written in troff.

Jon

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Joseph Holsten]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2023, at 13:38, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Joseph Holsten writes:
>> I love how I can fire off a query and get so much info. But I wonder: does
>> TUHS have any way of consolidating these threads into easily digestible
>> documents? What would be preferred, a wiki? or a source control repo with
>> “articles”?
>>
>> I’m mostly wanting summarize this kind of thread and include links to
>> mailing list messages and other resources.  But also, I’m lazy and I am
>> not committing to editing a journal.
>
> Seems like you already know the answer and just don't like it.
> The only way to get coheret articles is to write the.  Wikis
> suck for this sort of thing.
>
> An appropriate way for us to do this sort of thing would be to create
> a repository where we can contribute to documents written in troff.

Ah, I meant to ask: is there an existing wiki or repository? Or am I starting one?

And if I’m writing in troff, is there a preferred macro set for articles these days? A decade ago I wrote manuals in mdoc but papers in LaTeX; these days I just lean on pandoc to translate. I’ll need to knock my rust off.

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[segaloco via TUHS]

> Ah, I meant to ask: is there an existing wiki or repository? Or am I starting one?

https://wiki.tuhs.org/

I've discussed writing a few articles with Warren and it sounds like he's all for more folks producing content.  Ultimately it's Warren's call on that one, but I'm very interested in starting to produce some content.

> An appropriate way for us to do this sort of thing would be to create
> a repository where we can contribute to documents written in troff.

I've considered this exact thing save not for this project, but just as a way to approach collaborative writing.  I wouldn't have the attention span to admin such a repository, but would more than happily contribute to one, I love exposition and free access to knowledge.

- Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[G. Branden Robinson]

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Hi Joseph,

At 2023-01-26T14:41:50-0800, Joseph Holsten wrote:
> And if I’m writing in troff, is there a preferred macro set for
> articles these days? A decade ago I wrote manuals in mdoc but papers
> in LaTeX; these days I just lean on pandoc to translate. I’ll need to
> knock my rust off.

There's always ms.  It's pretty easy to acquire, and will produce
authentic looking traditional Unix papers with little effort.  Here's a
manual that Larry Kollar and I wrote, in source and PDF forms.  It's
gotten positive feedback from the groff mailing list.

Regards,
Branden

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[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[segaloco via TUHS]

You just got my head all abuzz on whether a *roff<->MediaWiki transpiler would be: 1. Possible and 2. Beneficial.

We use a MediaWiki at work for aggregating random tidbits from people that they think might get lost in project noise.  There's times I'd love to have some way to *roff-ize the materials for white papers, the printouts from MediaWiki are uuuuugly.  Benefits on the flip-side would be rapidly getting all sorts of documentation into Wiki format pretty quickly.

Of course, for an actual documentation project, there would need to be a master as diverse edits in different places wouldn't track with one another.  In this case, the *roff sources would probably make a better master for diff reasons.

- Matt G.

------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, January 26th, 2023 at 4:36 PM, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:


> Hi Joseph,
> 
> At 2023-01-26T14:41:50-0800, Joseph Holsten wrote:
> 
> > And if I’m writing in troff, is there a preferred macro set for
> > articles these days? A decade ago I wrote manuals in mdoc but papers
> > in LaTeX; these days I just lean on pandoc to translate. I’ll need to
> > knock my rust off.
> 
> 
> There's always ms. It's pretty easy to acquire, and will produce
> authentic looking traditional Unix papers with little effort. Here's a
> manual that Larry Kollar and I wrote, in source and PDF forms. It's
> gotten positive feedback from the groff mailing list.
> 
> Regards,
> Branden

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[David Arnold]

fwiw, Pandoc (https://pandoc.org) claims to be able to translate between MediaWiki and both man and ms roff macros. 




d


> On 27 Jan 2023, at 11:54, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> You just got my head all abuzz on whether a *roff<->MediaWiki transpiler would be: 1. Possible and 2. Beneficial.
> 
> We use a MediaWiki at work for aggregating random tidbits from people that they think might get lost in project noise.  There's times I'd love to have some way to *roff-ize the materials for white papers, the printouts from MediaWiki are uuuuugly.  Benefits on the flip-side would be rapidly getting all sorts of documentation into Wiki format pretty quickly.
> 
> Of course, for an actual documentation project, there would need to be a master as diverse edits in different places wouldn't track with one another.  In this case, the *roff sources would probably make a better master for diff reasons.
> 
> - Matt G.
> 
> ------- Original Message -------
>> On Thursday, January 26th, 2023 at 4:36 PM, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Joseph,
>> At 2023-01-26T14:41:50-0800, Joseph Holsten wrote:
>>> And if I’m writing in troff, is there a preferred macro set for
>>> articles these days? A decade ago I wrote manuals in mdoc but papers
>>> in LaTeX; these days I just lean on pandoc to translate. I’ll need to
>>> knock my rust off.
>> There's always ms. It's pretty easy to acquire, and will produce
>> authentic looking traditional Unix papers with little effort. Here's a
>> manual that Larry Kollar and I wrote, in source and PDF forms. It's
>> gotten positive feedback from the groff mailing list.
>> Regards,
>> Branden

[TUHS] Re: Collecting notes for future “historians” was: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Warner Losh]

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I've moved to markdown or asciidoc for things like this. So many things can
import them and they are easier to write than roff or TeX.

Warner

On Thu, Jan 26, 2023, 6:29 PM David Arnold <davida@pobox.com> wrote:

> fwiw, Pandoc (https://pandoc.org) claims to be able to translate between
> MediaWiki and both man and ms roff macros.
>
>
>
>
> d
>
>
> > On 27 Jan 2023, at 11:54, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > You just got my head all abuzz on whether a *roff<->MediaWiki
> transpiler would be: 1. Possible and 2. Beneficial.
> >
> > We use a MediaWiki at work for aggregating random tidbits from people
> that they think might get lost in project noise.  There's times I'd love to
> have some way to *roff-ize the materials for white papers, the printouts
> from MediaWiki are uuuuugly.  Benefits on the flip-side would be rapidly
> getting all sorts of documentation into Wiki format pretty quickly.
> >
> > Of course, for an actual documentation project, there would need to be a
> master as diverse edits in different places wouldn't track with one
> another.  In this case, the *roff sources would probably make a better
> master for diff reasons.
> >
> > - Matt G.
> >
> > ------- Original Message -------
> >> On Thursday, January 26th, 2023 at 4:36 PM, G. Branden Robinson <
> g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi Joseph,
> >> At 2023-01-26T14:41:50-0800, Joseph Holsten wrote:
> >>> And if I’m writing in troff, is there a preferred macro set for
> >>> articles these days? A decade ago I wrote manuals in mdoc but papers
> >>> in LaTeX; these days I just lean on pandoc to translate. I’ll need to
> >>> knock my rust off.
> >> There's always ms. It's pretty easy to acquire, and will produce
> >> authentic looking traditional Unix papers with little effort. Here's a
> >> manual that Larry Kollar and I wrote, in source and PDF forms. It's
> >> gotten positive feedback from the groff mailing list.
> >> Regards,
> >> Branden
>
>

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