[TUHS] First Unix-like OSes not derived from AT&T code?

Kenneth Goodwin kennethgoodwin56 at gmail.com
Mon May 2 22:59:10 AEST 2022


Compiles before the return key

That phrase as i recall it i have associated with the Amdahl mainframe, not
IBM. Anyone else recall this event at a  USENIX conference???

They released a C Compiler for it and I think also a unix version for it.

the phrase that they coined to indicate the shear speed of it  at the time
went something like this -

You can compile the entire UNIX kernel in the debounce time of the return
key.

It was part of the presentation on their C compiler implementation. Perhaps
it was IBM and I need to replace some faulty core and rebuild some database
indices......

The phrase has been stuck in my head ever since.


On Sun, May 1, 2022, 10:43 PM Phil Budne <phil at ultimate.com> wrote:

> Ron Minnich wrote:
> > in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was not the first, as I
> > understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the
> > code."
>
> My memory, from having a "finger" program that tried to display the
> foreground/active process for each tty/login/utmp entry, is that there
> it was possible there were multiple code bases (tho it's possible
> there was just one, and it mutated wildly across major versions), all
> called "AIX" (and as my old boss, Barry Shein (BZS) at Boston
> University said, they all "will remind you of Unix"), there were (at
> least) versions for:
>
> RT PC
> RS/6000 (POWER, PowerPC)
> PS/2
>
> I never had access to AIX/370, but BZS got a chance to try it out in a
> VM on the academic computing S/390, and ISTR he said it finished
> compiles before you hit return.
>
> There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called
> "ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites.
>
> My memory is also that IBM had a very broad license for SVR2 and when
> the Open Software Foundation came together (with people who weren't
> AT&T or Sun), IBM was able to offer that up as a code base.
>
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> gether,
>
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