[TUHS] Hypothetical: Could MULTICS have been written in C, if available?

[Adam Thornton via TUHS]

That tracks: Melinda's husband Lee is the only person I know who really
used TSS.

Adam

On Sun, May 24, 2026 at 5:15 PM Greg A. Woods via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
wrote:

> At Sat, 23 May 2026 19:02:43 +1000, steve jenkin via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
> wrote:
> Subject: [TUHS] Hypothetical: Could MULTICS have been written in C, if
> available?
> >
>
> Regarding the question in your Subject line:
>
> Well of course it could have, though some minor extensions may have
> helped.
>
> There was, in the end, a C compiler and runtime for Multics.
>
> >       could something like C have improved MULTICS or helped
> >       it's success in the marketplace?
>
> I think early on PL/1 was still acceptable to the marketplace.  The
> problem was more the Honeywell hardware wasn't widely accepted (as much
> as say IBM hardware was, obviously, or even DEC hardware).
>
> In the end-days of Multics, when Unix was gaining steam, a C
> re-implementation may have helped, but of course it would also have had
> to be written for, and/or portable to, more modern CPUs in order for it
> to go anywhere at all.
>
> I think it would be possible to write a Multics-like system for the
> Intel 80386, (i.e. IA-32) though such a system would have some
> constraints due to the limitations of the 386.  I feel sad that the
> support for segmentation was dropped from the amd64 architecture.
>
> Since I'm enamoured with the idea of files just being (virtual) memory
> locations and getting rid of the sucking/blowing-through-a-straw
> read/write API for files, I've written some half-baked thoughts on
> writing a "modern" multics-like system:
>
>         http://www.robohack.ca/~woods/multics.txt
>
> See also:
>
>         http://www.robohack.ca/~woods/C.txt
>
> --
>                                         Greg A. Woods <gwoods at acm.org>
>
> Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods at robohack.ca>
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>