ooh, there's an idea for new project... I also have a soft spot for the old PDP11 architecture and aesthetics, and like the idea of an emulator sitting behind an 11/70 front panel, but I havn't been able to decide what software to run on it...
Unix ran quite nicely on an 11/70 back in the late 70s, but I doubt you would squeeze much more than the boot loader of a modern bloated system onto one.... And a Unix image from that era would probably be a little limited. (I don't really have enough history with RT11/RSTS to want to use them). So the question is... is plan9 still lean and mean enough to fit onto a machine with a 64K address space? Doing a port would certainly provide plenty of opportunity to tinker with the lights and switches on front panel, and if it the port was initially limited to being a CPU server, there would be no need to worry about displays and mass storage.... just the compiler back end and low level kernel support. Has anyone already looked at that? I expect it would be a fun, educational and nostalgic exercise, but of course not of much practical use... Regards, DigbyT On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 at 00:23, Brian L. Stuart <blstu...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > Fri, Oct 5, 2018 at 12:11 AM Mayuresh Kathe <mayur...@kathe.in> wrote: > > man, i experienced such heavy negativity towards my efforts to build ... > > > > the idea was to have a 64-bit linux kernel with the advantages of > > plan9port (small and elegantly designed+developed tools). > > Mayuresh, > To echo what others have said, don't let the negativity > itself affect your work. Consider only the technical points > that have been raised. To the extent that you evaluate > them and consider them relevant to your objectives, factor > them into your work. > > It really doesn't matter if anyone else ever cares about > or uses your work. If you learn from it, get intellectual > satisfaction from it, and it's useful to you, then it's worth > doing. If others can benefit too, great, but lack of interest > on the part of others is not a good reason for lack of > initiative on your part. As far as I can tell, I'm the only > one using a file system I developed. Sure, in some ways > I would like if everyone thought it was as great as I do, > but just because they don't doesn't stop me from benefitting > from it. > > As for the specifics of your project, I personally don't think > I'd be all that interested in the results. As much as I like > the elegance and simplicty of the implementation of the > Plan 9 user-land, much of the beauty of the system comes > from the simplicity and elegance of the kernel. So if I > were using the Plan 9 user-land on top of the LInux kernel, > I wouldn't feel the same sense of beauty, intellectual satisfaction, > and connection to the original developers as I do running > the same user-land on the Plan 9 kernel. But just because > I wouldn't be interested is no reason to stop your research. > Just be sure to study the similar efforts that have come > before and that have been mentioned here. What did > they accomplish? Did they go wrong somewhere? Can > you get to that goal avoiding those mistakes? If nothing > else, the whole experience will almost certainly give you > a greater appreciation for the Plan 9 kernel. > > Just a couple of thoughts from an old-timer who misses > the days of working on PDP-11s. > > BLS > >
