[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Rich Alderson]

Bob Eager <rde42 at spamcop.net> writes:

> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:06:59 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:

> Here's a couple, for starters...

Some further bits of correction...

>> UNIX was ported to PDP-11, using C, about a decade before VMS
>>    was started.

> In 1973. Are you saying that VMS was started in 1983? I think not...

>>  So DEC could have written a C compiler for VAX and
>>    large parts of VMS in C if they'd wanted to.  DEC didn't write a C
>>    compiler for VAX early on because no one outside of a few UNIX users
>>    were using C.  UNIX was the broken down OS that AT&T couldn't find
>>    customers for.

> It was a research project for many years. It had to be pried from their 
> hands to be used outside Bell Labs.

Actually, while it was "just" a research project, that is, through version 6,
Ken and Dennis were happy to give Unix away (send them a tape, get it back with
Unix on it).  Version 7 is where Ma Bell got into the act and started hoarding.

>>  The handwriting on the wall showed that there was
>>    clearly no future for C and/or UNIX.

> It survives, though.

>>    Then AT&T let some kids at Berkley have a copy of the UNIX source.
>>    They ran it on PDP-11, ported it to VAX

> AT&T ported it to the VAX before that.

And to the PDP-11 before that.  The first port, from the PDP-7 to PDP-11, was
in Macro-11 on an 11/20.  The C port was to the 11/45.  Around 1972.

>> added virtual memory

> AT&T did that first.

on the 11/70.

>>  added TCP/IP

> There was an ARPA grant for that, I believe.

>> and somehow got others interested in it.  Start up vendors
>>    like Sun and Apollo found they could throw together some commodity
>>    hardware, toss BSD UNIX on it much faster than they could write their
>>    own OS, and sell workstations.

> But they weren't selling BSD at all....it wasn't a commercial product 
> until much later. They were selling the AT&T version.

Um, no.  SunOS was very much a BSD implementation (with Bill Joy among the
founders, that's hardly surprising); they only went to AT&T System V with
Solaris (= SunOS 5, only !=).  Apollo's DomainOS was not Unix (different
filesystem semantics, for example).  Of the players that went to Unix, only
Hewlett-Packard was a real AT&T fan _ab initio_.

-- 
Rich Alderson                  "You get what anybody gets. You get a lifetime."
news at alderson.users.panix.com                           --Death, of the Endless