[TUHS] Why did PDPs become so popular?

[rudi.j.blom@gmail.com (Rudi Blom)]

A bit off the PDPs, but to do a minor correction on mail below

The commercial version of 'UNIX' on Alpha was maybe first called
Digital Unix OSF/1, but quickly changed to Digital Unix at least with
v3 and v4.0 (A - G). From there we had a 'break' which only in part
was due to take over by Compaq and we had Tru64 UNIX v5.1A and V5.1B.
The V5.1B saw updates till B-6.

As for the Digital C compiler, I'm still using
 DTCCMPLR650  installed  Compaq C Version 6.5 for Compaq Tru64 UNIX Systems

When I get some old source (some even developed on SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2) I
like to run it through all compiler /OS-es I got handy. With the
Compaq C compiler and HP-UX ANSI C I mostly get pages of warning and a
few errors. By the time I 'corrected' what I think is relevant some
nasty coredumps tend to disappear :-)

Compile for a better 2018,
uncle rubl

>Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2017 21:30:11 -0500.
>From: Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com>
>To: Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com>
>Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>
>Subject: Re: [TUHS] Why did PDPs become so popular?
>Message-ID:     <CABH=_VRwNXUctFPav5rHX83wfUS0twMQuBhinRZ6QEY1cB3TNQ at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
>On 12/29/17, Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> 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.