[TUHS] /dev/drum

[Clem Cole]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> That's a bit different. It's possible that some early Unix machines had
> actual drum devices for storage or swap (did any of them?), but the
> /dev/drum device is what Clem says it was.
>
> It's funny, I just happened across this a couple of days ago when I went
> looking for the `hier.7` man page from 4.4BSD-Lite2:
>
> https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=hier&apropos=0&sek
> tion=7&manpath=4.4BSD+Lite2&arch=default&format=html
>
> It refers to this: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=drum&sektion
> =4&apropos=0&manpath=4.4BSD+Lite2
>
> The claim is that it came from 3.0BSD.
>
​yes - I believe that is true,​  I just looked at a 4.1 manual it 's
definitely there,




> ​​
> Why was it called drum?
>
​wnj was being 'cute' -- drum's were historically ​the device large systems
paged too.  So people understood the reference at the time.



> I imagine that's historical license coupled with grad student imagination,
> but I'm curious if it has origin in actual hardware used at UC Berkeley.
> Clem, that was roughly your era, was it not?
>
​Yes - very much my era,

Clem​
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