[Info-vax] OS implementation languages

[Dan Cross]

In article <kksieaF4cdU2 at mid.individual.net>,
Bob Eager  <news0009 at eager.cx> wrote:
>On Fri, 25 Aug 2023 17:38:31 +0100, Roy Omond wrote:
>
>> On 25/08/2023 14:14, Bob Eager wrote:
>>> On Thu, 24 Aug 2023 17:39:41 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> 
>>>> That's seriously interesting thanks. So, contrary to what some are
>>>> saying,
>>>> the idea of writing an OS in such a way was well established by the
>>>> mid-1970s. (I'm going off historical documents and the recollections
>>>> of people here as in the mid 1970s I wasn't even in secondary school
>>>> yet. ).
>>>>
>>>> One thing of interest above is you say the OS itself was also written
>>>> in this language. Are you referring to the kernel-level code here or
>>>> something else ?
>>> 
>>> And starting in 1966...
>>> 
>>>   http://www.ancientgeek.org.uk/EMAS/EMAS_Papers/
>>> EMAS_The_Edinburgh_Multi_Access_System.pdf
>>> 
>>> Or for my lecture on it (I was involved, as you will see):
>>> 
>>>   http://www.bobeager.uk/emas/
>> 
>> Just adding another toot of the horn.  I am an Edinburgh Computer
>> Science graduate, so my early background is EMAS and its implementation
>> language IMP, both of which I still miss today.  A good number of my
>> class colleagues ended up at DEC (remember Spiralog ?).
>
>I am looking at resurrecting EMAS. There are IMP compilers around, still. 
>Someone I know has written a viable IMP to C translator.
>
>And you may find the end of my lecture rather interesting.

That would be interesting. One wonders if an initial target may
be an ICL 2900 emulator?  I understand that EMAS was ported to
370/XA; would it boot under Hercules?

Interesting, the EMAS virtual memory subsystem was ported to
Unix in the 80s by Charles Forsyth at the University of York.
He wrote a rather interesting paper on this that you may find
interesting: https://www.terzarima.net/doc/taste.pdf

	- Dan C.