[TUHS] changes in C compilers

[Clem Cole]

Fsck was very much a CMU program. I had a small hand in it - the reason why
the errors Messages are upper case in fact. (a different story).    That
said it was hardly a new idea - Ted modelled it from a similar program he
saw at UMich on MTS and one I ran on TSS called the file system checker.
 im guessing there may have been other programs like it.

Before fsck Ken had icheck ncheck and dcheck.  IIRC Masheys team in PWB @
Whippany I think, wrote fsdb which shows up around the same time     I also
think the Columbus folks may have something early on also.

Ted took fsck back To USG and it became part of the Summit releases.  Bill
Joy had been his roommate at Michigan which I think is how to made to ucb.
But Joy had it there before I showed up.

Clem


On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 6:19 PM John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl at gmail.com> wrote:

> *Ted took fsck back to Summit & MH*
>
> I got my introduction to UNIX in '73 or '74, when the group running the
> 11/45 in Piscataway found out I came into work before 6am. UNIX was so
> unstable back then that it had to be rebooted every day, to contain file
> system corruption. A 6 am reboot went pretty much unnoticed. I could swear
> we ran something very like fsck after each reboot. In particular, I recall
> the **gok** diagnostic when the type of an inode wasn't anything
> recognizable. Whatever we ran, I'm sure it continued to evolve.
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 3:58 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 2:38 PM <arnold at skeeve.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The APS work started in the summer of 1979. See
>>> http://www.eprg.org/papers/202paper.pdf
>>> and see some of the other stuff at
>>> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/202/index.html.
>>>
>>> I think that's after V7 was released.
>>>
>> Ok, so that was clearly the first ditroff.
>>
>> Typesetter C *must have been the original troff release* which was
>> separate from V6; but I don't remember what all was in the release.
>>  Looking at the v6 distribution tape I have, the assembler versions of roff
>> and nroff was there; but not troff.   V7 clearly shows the original troff
>> in the sources.
>>
>>
>> The order I remember is this ... V5, V6, Patches, Typesetter C, TS, V7
>> ...   although TS and Typesetter might be switched but I know we got
>> Typesetter C before we got V7.    Ted brought TS to us (in EE) and I
>> thought that had the new compiler.   CS got TS from us in EE.    But
>> somebody at CMU had wanted troff because we had the XGP in CS that we drive
>> with Scribe (I want to say that was EE but I don't remember who was
>> involved).   So I have memory of somebody hacking on the compiler at some
>> point.  The POR (which if ever came to bear at CMU was after I left) was
>> some type of hacking on troff to support the XGP.  Given the time Aharon
>> points out, it might have been direct support it or it might have been
>> something like vcat - I was not involved.   Klone might remember more of
>> that.
>>
>> Clearly from the time, ditroff did not yet exist.   The more I think
>> about it, Brian K actually might know some of the story.  Scribe was Brian
>> Reid's PhD Thesis and Brian K was on Reid's committee at the time and I'm
>> guessing could somehow have been mixed up.
>>
>> FWIW: Compiler hacking at CMU stands out in my mind because of the 11/40e
>> had CSAV/CRET instructions.  The CS versions of the compilers generated
>> code using that, because they had 11/40e with CMU WCS options.  The rest of
>> us in EE, BioMed, Mellon Institute etc were running on 11/34's or 11/34A
>> which could not handle those binaries (no WCS).   So I personally spent
>> time tracking the CS versions of the compiler and bringing things to EE,
>> trying to keep thing clean.  That was one of my jobs at the time.
>>
>> That's fairly sure of the order, because we had Typesetter C at CMU in
>> the Summer '78 when were we negotiating the 'university' commercial V7
>> license with Al Arms [which I was personally mixed up -- the finally
>> ruling/agreement was license one system as a commercial system at the $20K
>> fee and a university, could then use UNIX for back office and commercial
>> style uses like Industry.  Al did not require the $5K second CPU stuff from
>> the Universities, if they got a single $20K license; everyone was happy -
>> details off list or another thread if you want them; although I will say
>> CMU was first in early '79, followed by Case in late 1979].
>>
>> So again, I try to date by things I know are fixed in time and then work
>> from there.   As Dan points out the cross pollination was high in those
>> days and it was not just from the labs to the Universities.  For instance,
>> Ted took fsck back to Summit & MH, as well as a number of other tools
>> (although I think that one had the longest reach).   Noel has mentioned
>> similar stories from MIT.  Chesson brought all the networking stuff from
>> UoI and we saw some of it in datakit (an earlier version of his mpx code
>> for V7 he did as a grad student).   You get the idea....
>>
>> Clem
>>
>>
> --
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual
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