[Info-vax] OT: obscure PDP11 OSes (even more dinosaury)

[Dan Cross]

In article <cufqqsFgdqjU1 at mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>                                                            I thought they were
>> on the PDP-7 (which is where Unix was developed; it was developed *further* on
>> the PDP-11, but most of what we know as Unix had its start on the 18-bit box).
>
>I donl't think they got really serious until they were promised that first
>PDP-11.  But I am sure the PDP-7 had even less capabilites than the -11.
>Just compare the size of the original Unix cpio and the current GNU version.
>Also, look at the difference in how one uses the GNU one compared to the
>original.  Look at what is built-in on the GNU version compared to the
>need for additional commands on real Unix.  Talk about bloatware.

Pipes were not available on PDP-7 Unix: they did not appear until
1972 (I think 4th-ish edition research Unix.  The idea of user-level
coroutines connecting programs was due to constant prodding from
Doug McIllroy; the use of the vertical bar as the 'pipe' character
was due to the moment of inspiration on Ken Thompson's part).
However, Dennis Ritchie claimed that much of the system structure
fleshed out on the PDP-7 was relatively unchanged by the move to
the PDP-11 (and of course beyond that); e.g. fork() and exec() as
separate operations.  This wonderful paper gives more details:

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.pdf

        - Dan C.