Possibly the most time consuming install I did was installing Xenix on a
bunch of Intel i310 systems. Xenix was a "secondary" OS for these
systems, the main OS being iRMX. Xenix for these systems was distributed
on 5.25" floppies. Lots and lots of floppies... They came in a 3-ring
binder, many pages of floppies... We also had a couple of i380 systems,
Xenix for those came on 8" floppies... That was time consuming, but it
was just manual labor.
The most unpleasasnt install I can recall was AIX 2.2.1 on the IBM-PC/RT.
Which also was really (under the covers) Interactive UNIX, with some other
stuff mixed in. Not only was this also time-consuming with a binder full
of 5.25" floppies, but my recollection is that there were too many
opportunities to make a tiny little mistake during the install and have to
start all over again.
--Pat.
Apropos of Steve Johnson's evocative description of JCL and other
pre-Unix OS interfaces, doing legwork for Multics I ran the following
experiment on a lot of then-current time-sharing systems.
As a model of creating and installing a new compiler, I used a very
short Fortran program that simply copied its input to its output,
stopping after finding END in column 7 of the input. The drill was
compile the program
run it, using its own source as input
compile the freshly made output file
This failed on every system I tried it on, though local
experts could intervene with magic to overcome the
gratuitous file-type distinctions that typically
got in the way. Dartmouth's DTSS came closest, but
inexplicably, even to the gurus, it had a special
prohibition against a program reading the source
from which it was compiled.
Incidentally, my favorite manifestation of JCL-like mumbo jumbo
was the ironically named FUTIL control card in GECOS.
Doug
> From: Doug McIlroy
> doing legwork for Multics I ran the following experiment on a lot of
> then-current time-sharing systems.
Fascinating; you don't happen to remember the ones you tried, do you?
Also, when you say "legwork for Multics", was this something done during
the planning stages (so, say '64-'65), or later on?
Noel
I wrote a UNIX shell based on Python the other night in case anyone's
interested: https://github.com/terrycojones/daudin Apologies for a modern
instead of an historic subject...
Terry
FYI. I sent this to one of the lead DOC people from the old days to see if she knew. Here is her answer.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Janet Egan"
> Date: October 11, 2019 at 7:53:16 PM EDT
> To: "'Clem Cole'"
> Subject: RE: Curious Question from the Ether about use of Upper and Lower case at DEC
>
> Hi Clem,
>
> Hmm, I don’t remember whether the style guide addressed that. In the docs for RSX-11M and such I always wrote it “PDP-11”, that is upper case with the dash. I do remember the logo on the machine as always lower case with no dash. The PDP-8 had the same style logo. And you’re right about seeing the lower case on the cover of the handbooks. I have never seen the lower case with the dash or the upper case without it. I don’t think I still have my copy of the style guide. Maybe I’ll take a look around my archives for it.
>
> What a fun question to be thinking about .
> Janet
>
>
> From: Clem Cole
> Sent: Friday, October 11, 2019 9:47 AM
> To: Janet Egan
> Subject: Curious Question from the Ether about use of Upper and Lower case at DEC
>
> Janet,
> I'm part of The Unix Historical Society (TUHS) mailing list and a topic came up that I thought you might be able to shed some light on. The observation was that 'DEC seemed to have a schizophrenic attitude to wrt to use of upper and lower case WRT to the PDP-11 brand,' i.e. sometimes using "PDP-11" and sometimes "pdp11" (but I note rarely if ever PDP11 or pdp-11) . For instance, the logo on the system itself was all lower: PDP-11/40 but DEC documentation mostly used uppercase in the text; but when used on the places like the cover could be either e.g. the "pdp11 peripherals handbook" to transcribe the cover exactly but it uses upper case "PDP-11" several times on pg 1-1 and the same on the binding. But I could not find examples of pdp-11 or PDP11, i.e. if all lower it was with the dash or all upper without.
>
> Do you remember if there were rules or guidelines and if so what they might have been?
>
> Thanks,
> Clem
