[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Dave Froble]

On 8/6/2018 11:21 AM, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article <pk7pe6$c30$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy at gfsys.co.uk> writes:
>>
>> One of the reasons why unix and C became so popular in the early days
>> is because the C library provides platform independent access to i/o,
>> storage and a shed load of other functions. If I write a c program for
>> any flavour of unix, or linux and don't try to be too clever, it will
>> almost always compile and run on anything else.
>
>     You obvioulsy haven't done enough with ioctl().  Or am I being "too
>     clever"?
>
>     Years ago, I found I had to get into ioctl() just to identify the contents
>     of a magtape.
>

Basic always worked well with magtape.

Worthless capability now.  What's a magtape?