TUHS February 2017

tuhs@tuhs.org

72 participants
92 discussions

Re: [TUHS] The size of EMACS, and what hides in kLOCs

by Mutiny

> On 26 Feb 2017 07:39 -0500, from jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa):>> I was never happy with the size of EMACS, and it had nothing to do with >> the amount of memory resources used. That big a binary implies a very >> large amount of source, and the more lines of code, the more places for >>bugs...GNU Emacs 26.0.50, GTK+ Version 3.22.8) of 2017-02-25 (Fedora25, Kernel: 4.9.11:Virtual: 794.6Resident:  36.8 

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Joerg Schilling > He is a person with a strong ego and this may have helped to spread > Linux. Well, I wasn't there, and I don't know much about the early Linux versus UNIX-derivative contest, but from personal experience in a similar contest (the TCP/IP versus ISO stack), I doubt such personal attributes had _that_ much weight in deciding the winner. The maximum might have been that it enabled him to keep the Linux kernel project unified and heading in one direction. Not inconsiderable, perhaps, if there's confusion on the other side.,, So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux history? If not, there should be.) It seems to me that they key battleground must have been the IMB PC-compatible world - Linux is where it is now because of its success there. So why did Linux succeed there? Was is that it was open-source, and the competitor(s) all had licensing issues? (I'm not saying they did, I just don't know.) Was it that Linux worked better on that platform? (Again, don't know, only asking.) Perhaps there was an early stage where it was the only good option for that platform, and that's how it got going? Was is that there were too many Unix-derived alternatives, so there was no clarity as to what the alternatives were? Some combination of all of the above (perhaps with different ones playing a key role at different points in time)? Noel

7 years, 1 month

BSDi Imaging

by Cory Smelosky

All, I'm dumping as much BSD/OS stuff as I can tonight. This includes: SPARC, sources, and betas. Unable to dump any floppies, however. -- Cory Smelosky b4(a)gewt.net

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Access to Unix

by Doug McIlroy

> Then one day a couple of them ‘fell off a truck’ and my Dad just happened to be there to pick them up and bring them home. Wonderful story. It reminded me of the charming book, "five Finger Discount" by Helene Stapinski, whose father brought home truckfall steaks. Thanks for sharing the tale. Doug

7 years, 1 month

Put a copy of the TUHS mail archive into the Unix Archive?

by Warren Toomey

Is it worth putting a copy of this mailing list into the Unix Archive? I don't want to dump the mbox in, as it has all our e-mail addresses: spam etc. I could symlink in the monthly text archives, e.g. http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2016-December.txt.gz What do you think? Perhaps in Documentation/TUHS_Mail? Warren

7 years, 1 month

4.3BSD TAHOE aka what is a TAHOE?!

by jsteve＠superglobalmegacorp.com

It’s embarrassing to mention this, but I thought I’d share. I’ve always wondered what on earth a TAHOE was, as they disappeared just about as quickly as they came out. As we all know that they were instrumental from separating out the VAX code from 4.3BSD in the official CSRG source. I was looking through old usenet stuff when I typed in something wrong, and came across people looking for GCC for the Tahoe running BSD. (http://altavista.superglobalmegacorp.com/usenet/b128/comp/sys/tahoe/79.txt) In article <2287(a)trantor.harris-atd.com>, bbadger@x102c (Badger BA 64810) writes: `We have a Harris HCX-9 computer, also known as a Tahoe, and we'd like to `get gcc and g++ up and running. I haven't seen anything refering to `the HCX or any Tahoe machines in the gcc distribution. Anyone have it? `Working on it? Pointers to who might? Know if Berkely cc/ld/asm is PD? Turns out they were using Harris mini’s called the HCX-9. That’s when I went back to the source and saw this: # # GENERIC POWER 6/32 (HCX9) # machine tahoe cpu "TAHOE" ident GENERIC So if anyone else is wondering what was a Tahoe, did it exist, was there actual sales, is their pictures of it, etc, the answer is yes, it was a real machine, yes it was sold, and there are even print ads in Computer world. I thought it was interesting though. Sent from Mail for Windows 10

7 years, 1 month

Linux vs. other X86 options

by Charles H Sauer

Since the X86 discussions seem to have focused on BSD & Linux, I thought I should offer another perspective. TLDR: I worked on System V based UNIX on PCs from 1982 to 1993. IMO, excessive royalties & the difficulty of providing support for diverse hardware doomed (USL) UNIX on x86. It didn't help that SCO was entrenched in the PC market and slow to adopt new UNIX versions. Longer Summary: >From 1975-82 at IBM Research and UT-Austin C.S. dept, I tried to get access to UNIX but couldn't. At IBM Austin from '82 to '89, I worked on AIX and was involved with IBM's BSD for RT/PC. Starting in '89, I was the executive responsible for Dell UNIX (https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2008/01/10/a-brief-history-of-dell-un…) for most of its existence. The royalties Dell paid for SVR4 plus addons were hard to bear. Those royalties were at least an order of magnitude greater than what we paid to Microsoft. We couldn't support all of the devices Dell supplied to customers, certainly couldn't afford to support hardware only supplied by other PC vendors. SCO had dominant marketplace success with Xenix and SVRx products, seemingly primarily using PCs with multiport serial cards to enable traditional timesharing applications. Many at Dell preferred that we emphasize SCO over Dell SVR4. When I joined my first Internet startup in 1996 and had to decide what OS to use for hosting, I was pretty cognizant of all the options. I had no hands on Linux experience but thought Linux the likely choice. A Linux advocate friend recommended I choose between Debian and Red Hat. I chose Red Hat and have mostly used Red Hat & Fedora for my *IX needs since then. Today, Linux device support is comprehensive, but still not as complete as with Windows. I installed Fedora 24 on some 9 and 15 year old machines last week. The graphics hardware is nothing fancy, a low end NVIDIA card in the older one, just what Intel supplied on their OEM circuit boards in the newer one. Windows (XP/7/10) on those machines gets 1080p without downloading extra drivers. (Without extra effort??) Fedora 24 won't do more than 1024x768 on one and 1280x1024 with the other. Charlie

7 years, 1 month

Access to Unix

by David

(somewhat long story) After reading all the stories about how Unix source was protected and hard to access to I’ve got to say that my experience was a little different. I was at UCSD from 76-80 when UCSD got a VAX and I think it was running 32V at the time. Well being a CS student didn’t get you access to that machine, it was for the grad students and others doing all the real work. I became friends with the admin of the system (sdcsvax) and he mentioned one day that the thing he wanted more than anything else was more disks. He had a bunch of the removable disk packs and wanted a couple more to swap out to do things like change the OS quickly etc. My dad worked for CDC at the time, and he was making removable media of the same type that the VAX was using. My luck. I asked him about getting a disk pack, or two. He said that these things cost thousands and he couldn’t just pick them up and bring them home. Then one day a couple of them ‘fell off a truck’ and my Dad just happened to be there to pick them up and bring them home. You know, so the kids could see what he did for a job. I took them into the lab and gave them to the admin who looked the disks, then at me, and asked what I wanted in exchange. I asked for a seat at the VAX, with full access. Since then I’ve had a ucsd email account, and been a dyed in the wool Unix guy. David

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] A Couple of Early Networking Unix System

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Lars Brinkhoff > Yes, please do add some kind of IMP to SIMH! BTDT: http://walden-family.com/impcode/imp-code.pdf Noel

7 years, 2 months

A Couple of Early Networking Unix System

by Warren Toomey

All, thanks to the hard effort of Noel Chiappa and Paul Ruizendaal, we now have a couple of early Unix systems with networking modifications. They can be found in: http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Early_Networking/ I'll get them added to the Unix Tree soon. Cheers, Warren

7 years, 2 months

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TUHS February 2017