[pups] 1978 Tynix? (fwd)
Bill Mayhew
Bill.Mayhew at oracle.com
Sat Nov 9 03:36:32 AEST 2002
Hello,
No, TYNIX was not Heinz Lycklama's product... it was not related in any way,
except that both happened to run on the same platform.
In the time period in question, I was Director of the Center for Advanced
Public Computing at the Children's Museum, and TYNIX was my creation. It
was written to work on LSI-11 (aka PDP-11/03) systems (i.e. without memory
management) to bring a few of the simplest components of the technology that
distinguished UNIX from competitors like RSTS/E and RSX-11, to low-end (VERY
low-end, by today's standards!) machines... specifically to handle some
"real-time" (e.g., building security and HVAC control) and transactional
applications, with a VT100 character-cell/"graphics" UI (hey, drawing a box
on the screen was "graphics" in those days!), using a couple of "real"
PDP-11s as... well... today they'd be called storage servers ;-)
TYNIX contained no UNIX code; it ran in a disk-free environment, as a client
in a serial (RS232, 9600bps) network, and was capable of running
applications that were written in C, built, compiled, and tested on a UNIX
system... as long as said applications were small enough ;-) It had drivers
for the industrial/commercial analog and digital I/O components that were,
at the time, typically sold as part of Digital's PDP-14 family... connected
to the LSI-11 via the DRV-11 parallel interface card for the digital
devices, and via another card, whose model number escapes me at the moment
(AXV-11?), which handled analog I/O. Actually, I believe, at that time, the
host system was running an enhanced (by me) version of Whitesmiths, Ltd.'s
Idris operating system, not official UNIX, although it had run true UNIX in
earlier years.
I don't recall that TYNIX was ever circulated widely... there was no such
thing as "marketing" it, and no demand emerged either. In 1981, I left the
Museum, forming my own company, which ultimately did some work to port Idris
to the VAX and the PDP-11 based Professional 3xx machines from Digital
Equipment, along with adding some substantial (again, viewed in the context
of the era) enhancements for performance and user-friendliness to the PDP-11
Idris product... which we re-sold as Idris-Plus, to nonprofit organizations
running our applications software. TYNIX officially belonged to the Museum,
and I doubt that it was circulated after my departure.
TYNIX had potential... but then, so did Digital ;-) ... of course, TYNIX was
developed as a non-profit activity, so it wasn't expected to make money...
and didn't!
I remember reading that article at the time, and being stunned to see my
work mentioned in BYTE. (Then I learned that I was referenced in an edition
of the Whole Earth Catalog, as well!)
(The Children's Museum was the first licensee of UNIX outside the AT&T
umbrella, in 1973. That was right around the cusp of the introduction of C
... in fact the first installation I did was UNIX with no C compiler
available... followed within a matter of months by the first release of C.
I had the pleasure of heavy involvement with USENIX and its predecessors in
that era, and may or may not have submitted TYNIX code to them... along with
some of my other work, such as a simple relational DBMS and some
severely-improved disk and tty drivers). I also had the opportunity to
spend time with Ken and Dennis... we went to Maynard together to test UNIX
on a PDP-11/70, and watched it compile and build itself completely in memory
(no on-disk temporary files), on that awesome 16-bit machine with 22-bit
address space ;-) ... in something like 15 minutes. Today, I use an iPAQ
which also runs completely in memory... but a lot more of it ;-) )
Tomorrow, after being away from Boston for 8 years, I'm flying back there,
from Virginia, to pick up my new car... and, time permitting, plan to visit
the Museum to see if any of my stuff is still running there :-)
-Bill
__________________________________________
Bill Mayhew
The statements and opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent
those of Oracle Corporation.
-----Original Message-----
From: pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org]On
Behalf Of Warren Toomey
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 11:10 PM
To: PDP-11 Unix Preservation Society
Subject: [pups] 1978 Tynix? (fwd)
----- Forwarded message from Jorn Barger -----
From: jorn at enteract.com (Jorn Barger)
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 04:09:15 -0700
I'm not a PUPS subscriber, but I've been browsing the archives and I
wonder if you know anything about this?
In an old Byte (Jan 1981, p200) Sol Libes wrote:
> "UNIX-Like Operating Systems Increasing In Popularity:
> Several software suppliers are now offering UNIX-like
> operating systems that may rival CP/M. The first
> UNIX-like software package, called TYNIX, was released
> for LSI-11 and Heath H-11 systems in 1978 by the
> Boston Children's Museum..."
My guess is that this was Heinz Lycklama's unreleasable LSI-Unix (LSX),
and I've written him to enquire, but haven't heard back yet.
[ you're probably right, but I'd assume that it was a
binary-only release - Warren ]
I'm working on a detailed timeline of Linux prehistory, so I'm also
following your Xenix explorations. I'd really like to know who did the
first x86 Xenix, HCR or MS?
[ I thought it was HCR too, but I could be wrong - Warren ]
----- End of forwarded message from Jorn Barger -----
_______________________________________________
PUPS mailing list
PUPS at minnie.tuhs.org
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-----Original Message-----
From: pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:pups-admin at minnie.tuhs.org]On
Behalf Of Warren Toomey
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2002 11:10 PM
To: PDP-11 Unix Preservation Society
Subject: [pups] 1978 Tynix? (fwd)
----- Forwarded message from Jorn Barger -----
From: jorn at enteract.com (Jorn Barger)
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 04:09:15 -0700
I'm not a PUPS subscriber, but I've been browsing the archives and I
wonder if you know anything about this?
In an old Byte (Jan 1981, p200) Sol Libes wrote:
> "UNIX-Like Operating Systems Increasing In Popularity:
> Several software suppliers are now offering UNIX-like
> operating systems that may rival CP/M. The first
> UNIX-like software package, called TYNIX, was released
> for LSI-11 and Heath H-11 systems in 1978 by the
> Boston Children's Museum..."
My guess is that this was Heinz Lycklama's unreleasable LSI-Unix (LSX),
and I've written him to enquire, but haven't heard back yet.
[ you're probably right, but I'd assume that it was a
binary-only release - Warren ]
I'm working on a detailed timeline of Linux prehistory, so I'm also
following your Xenix explorations. I'd really like to know who did the
first x86 Xenix, HCR or MS?
[ I thought it was HCR too, but I could be wrong - Warren ]
----- End of forwarded message from Jorn Barger -----
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