[Info-vax] misstatement of Unix origin [was Re: A portable VMS, was: Re: OS Ancestry]

[John Wallace]

On 24/05/2021 13:28, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-05-21, Rich Alderson <news at alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
>> Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>>
>>> VAX. Which is where VMS started (and 32-bit processors are where Unix
>>> and Linux started). It was a lot easier to get 32-bit Unix/Linux working
>>> on 64-bit architectures than it was VMS.
>>
>> NB:  For the purposes of this discussion, Unix started on a *16*-bit
>> architecture.  (We'll ignore the fact that it actually started on an 18-bit
>> word addressed architecture.)
>>
> 
> Yes, oops. :-) Somebody already reminded me about this a few days ago
> and as I pointed out in response this just shows how much more portable
> things are when you are using an implemention language not tied to the
> architecture.
> 
> Simon.
> 

Yeah sure, UNIX code was so portable that back in the 1980s anything 
much more complex than "Hello World" had little chance of being portable 
between (e.g.) BSD and System V even on the very same hardware.

When the two main camps can't even agree on the basics of opening a file 
from C,
as in fd = open(...),
it's no wonder there was a customer/vendor need for a Single UNIX 
Specification.

Fortunately times have moved on since then.