[Info-vax] VMS x86 performance ?

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 10/31/20 2:39 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 10/31/2020 1:20 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 10/31/20 11:44 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Bill Gunshannon  <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> So which one is the most secure?
>>>>
>>>> My money is on RSTS or Primos.
>>>
>>> It's definitely not Pr1mos.  When I was in grad school, the college I
>>> was at
>>> was running Pr1mos 19, and I knew at least ten different ways to get
>>> system
>>> access from a user account.  Not all of them were timing issues either!
>>>
>>> Pr1mos had so many different layers of compatibility stuff, so many
>>> different
>>> operating modes, that there were all kinds of little places for
>>> security holes
>>> to hide.  Complexity is the enemy of security.
>>
>> Try them on Rev 24. Rev 19 was old even before I faded from the
>> Primos world (well, kinda faded, I still have it running on
>> emulators here and now!)
>> Still, I expect Primos has had about as much hacking attacks
>> pointed at it as VMS.
>>
>> Still leaves RSTS, my favorite OS.  :-)
>>
>> bill
>>
>>
> 
> I confess to curiosity.  What is there about RSTS that you like so much?

I don't really kow.  Why do people  like VMS?  Why do people like
Unix?  It was not my first nor my last OS but I always found it
easy, if not fun, to both administer and use.

> 
> RSTS was my first serious OS, and I liked it.  But there were so many 
> restrictions.  16 bit being the most significant.

Hardly significant when most of it's competitors were still 8bit or
also 16bit.

>                                                   There was the dreaded 
> TKB.  (Yes, TKB taught one to be precise and know a bit about what one 
> was doing.)

Never had much problem with TKB.  But then, I was real good at doing
overlays  in Ultrix-11, too.  Probably a brain tumor or something.

> 
> About 2 months after I started on VMS, RSTS was forgotten ....
> 

I had used VMS before I first worked with RSTS.  In those early days
I definitely preferred Unix to VMS.  And while I spent the majority
of my time on Unix, I still enjoy playing with RSTS while Unix is
just a tool to get a job done, to me. (Except Ultrix-11 which is still
fun!!)

Guess there is no real explanation.

I also still like Primos and Exec-8.

bill