From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: rochkind@basepath.com (Marc Rochkind) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2017 12:24:36 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] shared memory on Unix In-Reply-To: References: <201702011833.v11IX5Yu017326@freefriends.org> Message-ID: @Joerg: "Interesting.... does this mean that you did not do the rework that defined the new ASCII based history file format?" I'm sure it does, as I have no idea what that is/was. I stopped working on SCCS around 1975 or 1976, about when the IEEE paper was presented. --Marc On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 12:11 PM, Steve Johnson wrote: > I can't speak for the dates, but Ken did a hack to the OS to interface > with his Chess machine. Recall that all the I/O on the PDP-11 was memory > mapped, so as I recall he simply mapped a piece of kernel memory into user > space. Was never privvy to the details. > > I do remember a conversation with Dennis about semaphores, though. He > mentioned that no less than five groups inside of Bell Labs had hacked > semaphores into the kernel. Each group did it differently. He thought > they were all a bad idea -- his argument was, "what do you do if a process > sets a semaphore and then dies? It's pretty clear that either releasing > the semaphore or leaving it set would be catastrophic in some cases." > > (Of course there were other similar problems, such as a process closing > its files and dying, and then the kernel discovering that the disc was > full. Luckily, these days, the disc rarely gets full...) > > Also, a comment from my own experience with AT&T marketing. When I was > responsible for the System V languages in Summit, I was told that a > marketing group was staffed and that there was a person in charge of > marketing the language products (at the time, C, Cfront (becoming C++), > Fortran, Pascal, and Ada). I set up a monthly meeting with this person. > The meetings went on for over a year, but *I never met with the same > person twice!* It seemed that the only thing the marketing group knew > how to do was reorganize the marketing group... > > At the time, a lot of people buying VAXes were running VMS because its > FORTRAN was far better than UNIX F77 -- in particular, it had an > optimizer. I started a project to build an optimizer for FORTRAN, and > staffed it with several very good people. Every six weeks there would be > an attempt to kill the project. Each time I'd repeat the argument for > doing it, and it would be saved. We almost started to put these attempts > to kill it on the calendar. At no time did I get any feedback, positive or > negative, from AT&T marketing. When I left AT&T in early 1986, the > optimizer, by now almost complete, was immediately killed again. I was > later told by one of my former team members that it was revived several > months later and finally made it out. And that the next year it was the > best-selling add-on to System V. > > Steve > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > arnold at skeeve.com > > To: > , > Cc: > > Sent: > Wed, 01 Feb 2017 11:33:05 -0700 > Subject: > Re: [TUHS] shared memory on Unix > > > > Clem Cole wrote: > > > Note that AT&T Marketing renames PWB 3.0 -- System III thinking that > > "Programmer's Workbench" would be a bad name to sell against IBM, and > this > > it the first non-research system for License outside of the the labs. If > > you look at the documentation set, et al - it all says PWB 3.0 on the > cover > > and throughout Also, the BSD vs AT&T wars basically start around this > > time.... > > > > Roll the clock forward and here is an new problem the PWB 4.0 moniker was > > used internally, but AT&T marketing want to get rid of the PWB term - so > > the decree comes down the next release is to be called System V. > > Sort of. I did some contract work for Southern Bell circa 1983. They > were still part of the Bell System then. I worked on a PDP-11 running > Unix 4.0. At the time, the policy was to release externally one version > behind what was being run internally, so System III was released to the > world while the Bell System was using Unix 4.0. I still have the manual; > I'm pretty sure "PWB" and "Programmer's Workbench" are not on the cover, > it was just called "UNIX". > > As UNIX 5.0 was approaching, someone decided that to be one release > behind on the outside was dumb, thus the jump from System III to System V. > > The doc I have describes UNIX as an operating system for the PDP-11, > the VAX 11/780 *and* the IBM S/370 series of systems and the source > code directory had the machine dependent bits for the IBM. Too bad > that stuff never made it out. > > It's too bad that all I have is just the paper, but that's all I > could get. > > That was a fun job, I learned a lot. Over lunch every day I read a few > more pages of the manual, basically reading it from cover to cover > by the time I was done. What a great way to learn the system! > > Arnold > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: