1 May
2025
1 May
'25
3:38 a.m.
Chris was part of the Nu project.
"Was a principal developer of the NuMachine"
"developed a family of portable C compilers for the (then) newly
available microprocessors. These compilers were widely distributed as
the first C implementations for the x86 and 68K processors."
https://people.csail.mit.edu/cjt/resume.html
On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 10:36:01PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
So did Chris compiler go back to the Nu project? And
thank you to Al for
the Trix sources. As I said. It was national 16032 not z8000.
FYI I had the whitesmith compiler at one point also. It generated code for
a funky assembler called “anat” for “a natural assembler” which PJ conjured
up for writing the compiler. It was was sort of a mix between an IL and
8080 assembler if my memory is correct. I’d love to see that
distribution both the doc and the compiler again to May with on SIMH. I
suspect I might appreciate it more than I did in those days. I hated it
then but as I learned more about compilers and architectures PJ might have
been on to something.
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 10:07 AM Jonathan Gray <jsg(a)jsg.id.au> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 09:11:35AM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > > From: Clem Cole
> >
> > > Yes, that was one of the RTS compilers for the NU machine. John
> Romkey
> > > may have done it, as he was the primary person behind PCIP
> >
> > 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.
> >
> >
> > > Anyway the MIT RTS folks made hardware and PCC back ends for the
> 68K,
> > > Z8000 and 8086. I believe that each had separate assemblers, tjt
> who
> > > sometimes reads this list might know more, as he wrote the 68K
> assembler.
> >
> > 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
>
> "a version of the portable C Compiler that was modified by Chris Terman
> to produce code for an 8086 microprocessor was ported from the RTS VAX/780
> to the CSR PDP-11/45."
>
>
https://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/bookcases/R…
>
> "If you think that you need the source code, you should realize that a
> prerequisite to compiling the PC/IP programs is that you must have
> imported Chris Terman's 8086 version of the UNIX Portable C compiler and
> associated loader and assember systems. That importation in turn requires
> a UNIX system, a current UNIX license, and negotiation with Chris Terman."
> https://web.mit.edu/saltzer/www/publications/pcmemo.pdf
>