[TUHS] PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?)

I decided to poke around in the 'MIT-CSR' dump, since that was the machine the PC/IP project started on, to see what I could find. Hoo boy! What an adventure! In the PC/IP area, I found a 'c86' directory - but it was almost empty. It did have a shell file, 'grab', which contained: tftp -g $1 xx "PS:<Wayne>$1" and a 'graball' file which called 'grab' for the list of compiler source files. ('xx' was MIT-XX, the TOPS-20 main time-sharing machint of LCS.) So I did a Web search for Wayne Gramlich (with whom I hadn't communicated in many decades), and he popped right up. (Amazing thing, this Internet thingy. Who'd have ever thought, back in the day, that it would turn into what it did? Well, probably John Brunner, whom I (sadly) never met, who was there before any of us.) I took a chance, and called his number, and he was there, and we had a long chat. He absolutely didn't do it, although he wrote the loader the project used ('l68', the source for which I did find.) He's virtually certain Romkey didn't (which would have been my guess too; Romkey was like a sophmore when the project started). His best (_very_ faded) memory was that they started off with a commercial compiler. (But see below.) That leaves several mysteries. 1) Why would a commercial compiler not come with a linker? 2) Why did people who wanted to work with the PC/IP source need a Bell license? I did some more poking, and the list of files for the 86 compiler, from 'graball': trees.c optim.c pftn.c code.c local.c scan.c xdefs.c table.c reader.c local2.c order.c match.c allo.c comm1.c manifest mfile1 common macdefs mfile2 mac2defs matched the file names from 'pcc', as given in "A Tour Through the Portable C Compiler": https://maibriz.de/unix/ultrix/_root/porttour.pdf (in section "The Source Files"). So whether the 86 compiler was done at MIT (by someone in RTS), or at a company, it was definitely a 'pcc' descendant. (Possibly adding to the confusion, we had some other C compilers for various ISA's in that project [building networking software for various micro-computers], including an 8080 C compiler from Whitesmiths, Ltd, which I have also found. It's possible that Wayne's vague memory of a commercial compiler is of that one?) I really should reach out to Romkey and Bridgham, to see what they remember. Later today. Whether the main motivation for keeping the compiler source on XX was i) because disk space was short on CSR (we had only a hand-me-down pair of CalComp Model 215 drives - capacity 58 Mbytes per drive!); ii) to prevent version skew; or iii) because it was a commercial compiler, and we had to protect the source (e.g. we didn't have the source to the 8080 compiler, only the object modules), I have no idea. There is an 'a86' directory on CSR, but it too is empty, except for a 'grab' command file. That contains only: tftp -g $1 xx "PS:<novick>$1" I have no memory of who 'novick' might have been. A Web search for 'novick mit lcs' didn' turn anything up. (I wonder if it might have been Carol Novitsky; she was in our group at LCS, and I have a vague memory of her being associated with the networking software for micro-computers project.) Anyway, it probably doesn't matter; the c86 'grab' referred to Wayne, but he didn't write c86; 'novick' might not have written a86. Something else to ask Romkey and Bridgham about. Noel