28 May
2018
28 May
'18
10:43 p.m.
Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> reports on Mon, 28 May 2018 10:31:56 +0000:
> But apparently the inspiration came from VMS:
> http://web.archive.org/web/20170527120123/http://www.unixtop.org:80/about.s…
That link contains the statement
> The first version of top was completed in the
early part of 1984.
However, on TOPS-20, which was developed several years before VMS, but
still from the same corporation, we had the sysdpy utility which
produced a similar display as top does.
From my source archives, I find in
score/4-utilities/sysdpy.mac the
ending comments:
;462 - DON'T DO A RLJFN AFTER A CLOSF IN NEWDPY
;<4.UTILITIES>SYSDPY.MAC.58, 2-Jun-79 14:15:54, EDIT BY DBELL
;461 - START USING STANDARD TOPS-20 EDIT HISTORY CONVENTIONS, AND
; REMOVE OLD EDIT HISTORY.
...
;COPYRIGHT (C) 1976,1977,1978,1979 BY DIGITAL EQUIPMENT \
CORPORATION, MAYNARD, MASS.
I therefore expect that there was 460-entry list of log messages that
predated 2-Jun-1979, and likely went back a few years. Two other
versions of sysdpy.mac in my archives have also dropped log messages
before 461.
Even before TOPS-20, on the CDC 6400 SCOPE operating system, there was
a similar tool (whose name I no longer recall) that gave a
continuously updated display of system-wide process activity. That was
available in at least late 1973.
I suspect that top-like displays were added to most other interactive
operating systems, as soon as screen terminals made updates convenient
without wasting console paper. One of the first questions likely to
be asked by interactive users is "what is my job doing?".
In a TOPS-20 terminal window, you could type Ctl-T to get a one-line
status report for the job that was currently running from your
terminal. For many users, that was preferable to sysdpy, and it was
heavily used.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 -
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
29 May
29 May
12:16 a.m.
New subject: History of top
Below
Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite.
On May 28, 2018, at 6:43 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe
<beebe(a)math.utah.edu> wrote:
....
I suspect that top-like displays were added to most other interactive
operating systems, as soon as screen terminals made updates convenient without wasting
console paper. One of the first questions likely to be asked by interactive users is
"what is my job doing?".
Absolutely true - all interactive systems had
something like it that I remember. Certainly the 10s but as you point out CDC. I remember
In the early - mid 1970s CMU had a display outside of the computer center and in the
terminal room on a ‘large screen display’ connected to the 360/67 system which ran TSS -
IBM’s timesharing system - systat ran constantly.
As I said before there were lots of versions that were hacks off of ps in the Unix world.
Top as we know it was just a matter of time.
Clem
1:34 a.m.
New subject: History of top
On May 28, 2018, at 5:16 PM, Clem cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
I remember In the early - mid 1970s CMU had a display outside of the computer center and
in the terminal room on a ‘large screen display’ connected to the 360/67 system which ran
TSS - IBM’s timesharing system - systat ran constantly.
MTS had something similar. At the U of Alberta, it displayed the HASP batch and print
queues on a monitor in the "I/O" room on the 2nd floor of the General Services
Building, where you came to submit card decks and pick up print jobs. My memory says that
was part of the HASP system operator job.
I think there might have been a top-style variant of "$SYSTEMSTATUS
<mumble>" that would run on the public 3270 (and AJ510) terminals. But I would
have to fire up Hercules to confirm that.
--lyndon
6:53 a.m.
New subject: History of top
Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
I therefore expect that there was 460-entry list of
log messages that
predated 2-Jun-1979, and likely went back a few years. Two other
versions of sysdpy.mac in my archives have also dropped log messages
before 461.
The copyright notice goes back to 1976, which is about then TOPS-20 was
first released, right?
Is this a TOPS-10 version of SYSDPY? It was copyrighted in 1970.
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/bb-jr93e-bb/14/7,6/ap014/sysdpy.x14.html
Even before TOPS-20, on the CDC 6400 SCOPE operating
system, there was
a similar tool (whose name I no longer recall) that gave a
continuously updated display of system-wide process activity. That was
available in at least late 1973.
I didn't mean to start a mine-is-older-than-yours, but anyway, PEEK
is documented in AI memo 169 from November 1968.
2:18 p.m.
New subject: History of top
On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 2:53 AM, Lars Brinkhoff <lars(a)nocrew.org> wrote:
The copyright notice goes back to 1976, which is about then TOPS-20 was
first released, right?
Tops-20 or TENEX (aka Twin-Ex). Tenex was earlier, and came in house to
DEC and was renamed Tops-20 when DEC released the DEC System20 series
(20/40 and 20/60 originally).
Is this a TOPS-10 version of SYSDPY? It was copyrighted in 1970.
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/bb-jr93e-bb/14/7,6/ap014/sysdpy.x14.html
Could be -- looks about right, I do not have a running 10 in simh to
check it these days. But that looks reasonable,
I didn't mean to start a mine-is-older-than-yours
Sorry, did not mean to start that. I just wanted to make sure people knew
that Top was not really a Unix-ism or anything new with VMS, or the PDP-10s
for that matter and clarify the origin. The idea of displaying status was
pretty important in those days for the system as a whole.
As Lyndon pointed out, being able to monitor the batch systems was another
use of this type of display; but that was slightly different than dpy, peek
and the like.
This was really to tell the user, when the system would get to your
work. BTW, ^T was cool on Tenex, because being interactive, it was just
your process and helped you know how where your 'active' process stood
relative to the other things the system was doing (i.e. was it running or
waiting and how busy was the system as a whole).
As terminals (paper and glass) became more the norm (*i.e.* interactive /
time sharing system
s), both the operators of the system as well as the users wanted to keep
track of what was going on to the system -- i.e. processes that were in the
run queue. In those days, most systems were in a 'computer room' and the
human operator could do much to keep the system running, from mounting mag
tapes to changing system priorities, assigning resources as needed.
Remember in late 1960s dollars, a 4Mbyte 360/67 like what CMU had at the
time, was valued in the $5M range, a PDP-10 was likely to be about $1.5M.
So the cost of a human operator was valuable, you really wanted to get
100% out of that system - and the people who actually paid for computing
(like the business office or some research project) needed to get
priority. A tool like this was needed for the operators to know what was
going on and adjust.
The CDC systems had a glass display as the console, that ran the tool
mentioned before. The Univac, DEC and IBM systems tended to use paper
based consoles for commands and operator status, but often had some sort of
glass display near the console that the operators monitored (I have picture
of me in the CMU computer room from those days and the displays are on my
left). I don't know how the the GE/Honeywell system were equipted for a
console, as while I was user of same early in my career, I was never an
operator/system admin - i.e. never behind the glass door with them.
Clem
ᐧ
3:10 p.m.
New subject: History of top
On 5/29/2018 10:18 AM, Clem Cole wrote:
Is this a TOPS-10 version of SYSDPY? It was copyrighted in 1970.
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/bb-jr93e-bb/14/7,6/ap014/sysdpy.x14.html
<http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/bb-jr93e-bb/14/7,6/ap014/sysdpy.x14.html>
Could be -- looks about right, I do not have a running 10 in simh to
check it these days. But that looks reasonable,
This is definitely TOPS-10:
SYSDPY: JFCL ;ALLOW FOR CCL ENTRY
SETZB 0,ZER ;CLEAR OUT SCRATCH
MOVE A,[ZER,,ZER+1]
BLT A,LZER
MOVEI 17,1 ;CLEAR
BLT 17,16 ; ACS
MOVE P,[IOWD PDLEN,PDLST] ;INITIALIZE PDL POINTER
SETZ F, ;NO FLAGS
SETOM .FRAJR ;AUTOMATIC ROLL FEATURE
JUMPPT A,,KA10 ;SEE IF KI-10
TRO F,FR.KIX!FR.KIP ;YES--SET FLAG
KA10: MOVE A,[%CNVER] ;GET MONITOR VERSION
GETTAB A, ;GET MONITOR VERSION VIA UUO!!
SETZM A ;VERY OLD!!
MOVEM A,MONVER ; TESTS
MOVX A,%CNDJB ;ASK MONITOR FOR
GETTAB A, ;PJOBN/DEVJOB INFORMATION
MOVE A,[POINT 9,20,35] ;6-SERIES MONITORS
HRRM A,PJOBNO ;SAVE DEVJOB INDEX
HLLM A,PJOBNP ;AND POINTER TO JOB NUMBER IN SAME
3:48 p.m.
New subject: History of top
On Tue, 29 May 2018, Clem Cole wrote:
This was really to tell the user, when the system
would get to your
work. BTW, ^T was cool on Tenex, because being interactive, it was just
your process and helped you know how where your 'active' process stood
relative to the other things the system was doing (i.e. was it running or
waiting and how busy was the system as a whole).
I found ^T useful on FreeBSD, where it does more or less the same thing.
-uso.
4:54 p.m.
New subject: History of top
On 5/28/18, Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe(a)math.utah.edu> wrote:
I suspect that top-like displays were added to most other interactive
operating systems, as soon as screen terminals made updates convenient
without wasting console paper. One of the first questions likely to
be asked by interactive users is "what is my job doing?".
And even to non-interactive operating systems. Inspired by systat and
sysdpy on TOPS-10, I implemented similar functionality for DOS/VS on
the IBM System/370. It did a continuously updating display of what
each partition was doing on a 3277 transaction terminal. Very useful
for the system operator. OS/VS1 had a similar utility.
-Paul W.
5:08 p.m.
New subject: History of top
On my SIMH running TOPS-10 7.03:
.DIR SYS:SYSTEM.EXE
SYSTEM EXE 1188 <155> 11-Oct-01 703(31042) DSKB: [1,4]
.DIR SYS:SYSDPY.*
SYSDPY EXE 56 <055> 7-Mar-86 703(634) DSKB: [1,4]
From a TOPS-10 6.03A system I managed to cobble together to boot on a KS10:
.DIR SYS:SYSDPY.*
SYSDPY CTL 4 <000> 28-Feb-77 DSKC: [1,4]
SYSDPY EXE 40 <055> 30-Mar-77 433(550)
SYSDPY MAC 192 <000> 6-Jul-76
SYSDPY MEM 1 <000> 7-Dec-78
Total of 237 blocks in 4 files on DSKC: [1,4]
From SYSDPY.MAC:
SUBTTL SYSTAT FOR DISPLAYS -- %433(550) -- 6 JUL 76
SUBTTL /TCK 11-JAN-74
VSYSDPY==433
VWHO==0
VMINOR==0
VEDIT==550
;*** COPYRIGHT 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976
DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORP., MAYNARD, MASS. ***
SEARCH jobdat,C
;EDIT HISTORY
;EDIT LEVEL 471 TO 472
;EDIT 1 SYSVBX DID NOT RUN WITHOUT A CORE ARGUMENT ,AS CORE
; EXPANSION WAS DONE AFTER A LOCK UUO
2166
days inactive
2167
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8 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Arthur Krewat -
Clem cole -
Clem Cole
-
Lars Brinkhoff -
Lyndon Nerenberg -
Nelson H. F. Beebe -
Paul Winalski -
Steve Nickolas