[TUHS] First machine to run rogue?

[Clem Cole]

On Fri, Jul 2, 2021 at 10:22 PM Matt Day <fjarlq at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think you must be right about the first machine being something running
> BSD UNIX.
>
Be careful when you say 'BSD'-- when people say "BSD UNIX" they
*usually mean* a Unix release post-VAX  support (*a.k.a.* 3BSD).

We know for a fact that Rogue definitely ran on 16-bit PDP-11's - it's an
open question of it needed the '17th bit' (*a.k.a.* separate I/D of
the 11/45 class).  As I said, I had on the TekLab's 11/70 in those days and
I think I got it from Mark Bales, who was a UCB student in the CAD group
which I would later join as a grad student.

Plus Ken Arnold was originally part of the Ingres group, which famously had
the only ArpaNet connection on campus at the time (Ing70 - which I have
forgotten what it's one letter 'Berk-Net' id was -- Mary Ann might remember
- *i.e*. all external email was shipped across the Berknet to Ing70 for
processing).

The original BSD (*a.k.a.* what we call 1BSD on this mailing list) and
2BSD, were already in the wild particularly at other University sites,
since 1BSD had UCB Pascal in it and many schools in those days were using
Pascal as their teaching language.  But ... if you look at the tapes, there
are tools and the C-shell, ex, and other tidbits, but the *kernel* running
at UCB in those days is very much V6 and later V7 based - maybe with a few
changes like some performance tweaks for nami and moving the I/O buffers
(but those were from other places).

The system people ran in those days (particularly on PDP-11s) is not nearly
what we now think of as a 'pure-joy.'  Truth is, until 4.1BSD, that is
really were 'BSD' starts to take an identity of its own as being distinctly
different from Research and both being loved and loathed by many -- Rob's
'cat -v' paper *et al.*.

>From the timing, it is also quite possible Toy and Wichman had either a
3BSD or very early 4BSD Vax or just as likely V7 with 2BSD loaded.

Just an old f*art who was there chiming in ...   :-)

Clem
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