[TUHS] Windows roots and Unix influence (was Re: Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!)

[Clem Cole]

Funny, I was just going to respond with my story about the USS Carl Vincent
- a carrier the USA built in the late 1970s.  When the Navy laid its keel,
the White House was running Alto's donated by Xerox.   The Captain had seen
them and wanted then for his new ship and wanted the CIC to be the most
modern imagined.   Xerox did not sell them (and the Star had not been done
yet), so they were sent to the CMU spin off 3 Rivers Computer (aka Triple
Drip) to purchase 'PascAltos' ) later renamed the Perq instead.   We had a
contract at Mellon to make they work as well as a bunch of programming.
We had designed the deployment with pre-cut ethernet cable (3Com
transceivers) that did not use the 'stinger' technology, but fixed cable
lengths, pre-cut and tested before installation.  But the Captain would
have none of it, he had seen the fact that the taps could be moved and he
wants the stinger types.

The deployment happen after I had graduated and left, so I never knew how
that worked out in practice, but years sailing small boats, I just could
not imagine that being reliable.

Clem
ᐧ

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 3:59 PM, Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> wrote:

> Nemo writes:
> > You can google "Windows for warships" on The Register for more
> > frightening stuff.
> >
> > N.
>
> It's not just Windows.  I remember touring a Navy ship in the early
> days of Ethernet and noticed that they were using stinger taps on
> the coax.  What could possibly go wrong?
>
> Jon
>
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