[Info-vax] VMS x86 performance ?
Dave Froble
davef at tsoft-inc.com
Tue Nov 3 11:10:00 EST 2020
On 11/3/2020 10:32 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 11/3/20 9:16 AM, Henry Crun wrote:
>> On 03/11/2020 9:00, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>>> In article <rnp19d$al7$1 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley
>>> <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 2020-10-31, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>>> About 2 months after I started on VMS, RSTS was forgotten ....
>>>>
>>>> This times a million. The only thing I missed from RSTS/E was the
>>>> ability to detach an interactive job and there were ways around
>>>> that problem.
>>>
>>> That and command completion are the only two things on unix which I
>>> don't have on VMS, though there are various workarounds. Having said
>>> that, these two things aren't as important on VMS as on unix.
>>>
>>
>> Things I miss on VMS that I remember from RSTS/E
>>
>> 1. The SYSTAT cusp, which showed details of running jobs
>> (Took a while, but I have a VMS equivalent. Linux has top and htop)
>> 2. The UTILTY program which had an option to force input to another
>> process
>> (Useful for saving stuck users, or changing batch jobs mid-stream)
>> 3.An undocumented, unsupported SYS call (IIRC SYS(chr(10...) ) which
>> allowed
>> a suitably privileged System Manager to see anaother process' or
>> user's input buffers.
>> (Not used often, but an occasional lifesaver!)
>>
>> OTOH what I don't miss:
>> ACCT.SYS -- all the passwords readable, and using the KED editor
>> (pre-EDT) left it readable on disk.
>
> A lot of systems (maybe most or all?) if they even had passwords
> stored them unencrypted in those days.
>
>> Having to jump through hoops to use the equivalent of a batch queue
>
> Guess I don't know what "hoops" there were. Running batch jobs on RSTS
> was pretty much the same as on other OSes. Some even required operator
> intervention to run a batch job at all.
I've totally forgotten the RSTS batch capabilities.
I do seem to recall writing a line based text editor and printing stuff.
>> TKB runs taking hours (The first time I ran LINK on VMS it completed
>> so fast I was sure something was wrong!)
>
> That probably had more to do with the power of the system than the
> commands used. How long do you think TKB would take if RSTS still
> ran today and the CPU's were all clocked in Ghz.
I like modular programming. Perhaps it is because TKB so warped my
mind. To this day I really don't like huge programs. Always liked KISS.
> It seems anytime people compare "the good ole days" they compare
> 1970's systems to 2020 systems without allowing for differences like
> changes in hardware technology. If RSTS had been handled like VMS
> it would be running on X86-64, using GB's of memory and modified to
> take advantage of the new hardware without abandoning the underlying
> philosophy of the OS.
Only if it had expanded the addressing ....
--
David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA 15486
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