[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[David J Dachtera]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
> In article <qMOZXUt3qWvj at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
>         koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
> >  Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <BZhjsJkqzq4v at spock.koehler.athome.net>,
> >>         koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org writes:
> >> > In article <72pgbbFrckbiU1 at mid.individual.net>, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
> >> >>
> >> >> U*mmmm....  No, not really.  Active development (well, at least as active as
> >> >> VMS seems to be) for three of the PDP-11 OSes just ended last year.  So, if
> >> >> you take when they first started and compare that to when VMS first started
> >> >> VMS will need a few more real good years to match them.
> >> >
> >> >    Hm.  Although possibly not as important as the Berkley port to VAXen,
> >> >    I seem to recall the development of UNIX including a port to PDP-11
> >> >    early on.
> >> >
> >> >    Sadly, I think continued development of that '60s technology will
> >> >    continue for a bit longer.
> >>
> >> Unix is no more 60's technology than VMS (which traces it's roots back
> >> to RSX on the PDP-11 as I recall) or zOS which can trace it's roots all
> >> the way back to the IBM 360.
> >>
> >> It never ceases to amaze me that Unix, which has seen constant development
> >> and considerably more attention from Computer Scientists and Engineers
> >> than VMS is seen as stagnant while VMS which, as frequently stated here,
> >> has seen little in the way of anything beyond the minimal bug fixing, is
> >> seen as the epitome of modern computing.
> >
> >    UNIX is still a two-mode system which forks new processes every time
> >    it turns around, and has no concept of files beyond stream of bytes.
> >    That approach was typical of late 1960's OS design, and can be seen
> >    in other OS, such as TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, which on the outside look
> >    very different.
> >
> >    Nothing that has happened to UNIX over all the years has changed that
> >    basic late-1960's design.
> 
> And yet, it is by far the most successful OS to come along.  Maybe the
> reason none of those features were put into Unix is because Unix does
> the job of being an OS just fine and all of it's users (probably several
> hundred times the number of VMS users) don't see any need for any of
> that extra fluff.

Did you know you needed:
- a PC
- with a GUI interface
- a cell phone
- an MP3 player
- Wii / Playstation / etc.
- a relational database

...until some marketing guru came along and told you so?

Did you know that:
- you need a vehicle that does not rely on either batteries or petroleum
- it was invented in the late 1970s
- it was quashed by the DoE in the early 1980s at the behest of the
  petroleum lobby (and the successors to "the plumbers union")

...? Probably not. 

Why? 

It was either intentionally not publicized or it never "rose above the
noise floor" of the media din.

I first read about it in two of the local papers in 1981.

D.J.D.

P.S. "Google" for "Johnson magnatron motor"