30 Apr
2025
30 Apr
'25
1:11 p.m.
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
30 Apr
30 Apr
1:19 p.m.
New subject: Any Interdata war stories?
On Apr 30, 2025, at 9:11 AM, Noel Chiappa
<jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
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.)
The reference here is to Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner in 1975.
I did meet him once. He came by PARC to talk to John Shoch and John Hupp, who
had written a network “worm” after Brunner’s naming. A very prescient author!
“The “worm” programs — early experience with a distributed computation”. Shoch and Hupp
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/102616.102636
-Larry
1:34 p.m.
New subject: Any Interdata war stories?
It isn’t Unix related, but it is a fun Interdata war story.
I hung out at the MIT Architecture Machine in the early 70’s (the Media Lab before it was
the Media Lab.)
The lab used Interdata minis, with homegrown software. My part was designing and building
various I/O devices, including parts of a network interconnecting the various minis.
There were Interdata model 3, model 5, model 75, and one blazing fast model 85 with
semiconductor memory. The rest were core.
I think the first 7/32 we got had two 32K core modules. There was a microcode bug, such
that in some case the microcode did not disable a non-maskable interrupt, so if the ISR
was so foolish as to cause one, the machine got stuck in an interrupt loop. You couldn’t
clear it by reset or by power cycling the machine, because core! The bad state was in the
memory and was non-volatile. It was possible to clear (sometimes) by swapping the two
core modules with the power off, if the other one didn’t have the poison bits, but if they
did, the only thing that worked was to unplug the memory module with the power on.
Luckily the OS guys figured out how to fix the ISR before we trashed anything permanently.
-L
1:53 p.m.
New subject: Any Interdata war stories?
On Wed, 30 Apr 2025, Noel Chiappa wrote:
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?
A possible answer for 1, since we're probably talking about a compiler for
MS-DOS: most releases of MS-DOS and PC DOS, at least through version 3.3,
came with a linker, so maybe they didn't deem it necessary.
-uso.
2:07 p.m.
New subject: PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?)
On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 09:11:35AM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
"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
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 
1 May
1 May
2:36 a.m.
New subject: PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?)
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:
Romkey
machine
From:
Clem Cole
> Yes, that was one of the RTS compilers for the NU machine. John 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 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
3:38 a.m.
New subject: PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?)
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
>
4:20 a.m.
New subject: PC/IP (was: Any Interdata war stories?)
On 4/30/25 8:38 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
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
I found most of the yearly LCS reports have been digitized to DTIC
which answered a bunch of my questions about who was doing what at
that time
I've archived them at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/lcs/progress_reports
1
days inactive
2
days old
7 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Al Kossow -
Clem Cole -
jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
Jonathan Gray -
Lawrence Stewart -
Steve Nickolas