> -----Original Message----- > From: Thomas R Wyant_III [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 1:24 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [OT] VMS Antecedants (was RE: vmsperl Digest 2 Apr 2003 > 21:19:24 -0000Issue 685) > > > "Henderson, Jordan (Contractor) (DAASC)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > RSX came about just about the same time as Unix, and I would be > surprised > > if anything from Unix made it into the RSX design or implementation. > > Unix people like to harken back to it's origins in 1969, but those first > > few years were really unrecognizably Unix. I believe there was no shell > > like we know today until much later. I think RSX came about in 1970 or > > 1971, but that may have initially be RSX-11S. It seems that I recall > > that Cutler actually didn't get involved until RSX-11M, but I'm fuzzy > here. > > I believe Cutler was in RSX from the beginning. In fact, I believe he was > working on it when he still worked for DuPont. My recollection of the RSX > "phylogenetic tree" is something like: > > RSX-11A -> RSX-11B -> RSX-11C -> RSX-11D -+-> IAS > | > +---------------------------------+ > | > +-> RSX-11M -+-> RSX-11M+ -+-> VAX-11 RSX > | | > +-> RSX-11S +-> P/OS > | | > +-> VMS +-> VAX Coprocessor RSX > "compat. | > mode" +-> Micro RSX > > The rumor is that at one point RSX was supposed to come in three sizes: > Large (RSX-11D, which was the mainline version at that point), Medium > (hence RSX-11M) and Small (RSX-11S, which is a proper subset of M with no > file system support, no multiuser protection, and only minimal command- > line > support). Cutler liked M, and was in the throes of adding 22-bit > addressing > support, when the decision was made that this would not be done for M. > Cutler got wind of the decision, and told his secretary late one week to > hold all his mail. He then worked through the following three-day weekend, > and on the following Tuesday, when he opened his mail and read the > cease-and-desist order, he responded that the work had already been > completed.
I think your RSX tree is more accurate. My memory failed me here. I had only ever worked on 11S and 11M, so I had a narrow view. I also think you are correct about Cutler being involved with RSX since the beginning, although I do recall that he was uninterested in RSX-11D and saw it to his favorite, 11M. But, that's what you are saying above about the addressing change made to 11M. I think DEC marketing were trying to sell 11D as the Timesharing RSX and 11M as the 'Industrial' RSX. Cutler thought one baseline could serve both. > > I'm not sure how to fit VMS on here. Probably as a dotted line from 11M, > since it's not binary-compatible. Of course, A, B, C, and D aren't either, > but if you held your tongue right most of the others are, at least for > user-mode code. I've heard of something called RSX-15 for the PDP-15, but > never seen it or known anything but the name. And I believe A-C may have > been more like siblings. I've never seen any of them but 11A, and it bears > the same relation to the others as "pre-C" Unix bears to "real" Unix. That > is, much less than you'd expect. > VMS was, in fact, binary compatible with RSX-11M through PDP-11 emulation. VAX Coprocessor RSX was first (only?) available for later VAX models that lacked PDP-11 emulation. I believe that the VAX models that had PDP-11 emulation all carried the VAX/11 model names, as in VAX/11-780, VAX/11-750, etc. > Rumor has it, though, that the name "PIP" came from CP/M. So should this > be > added? > PIP came to CP/M from TOPS-10 (although I believe there were PIP programs under even earlier DEC Operating Systems) . Gary Kildall developed PL/M under contract to Intel using an 8080 emulator that ran on PDP-10s, before 8080 silicon was available, (or possibly 20s, don't recall) and developed CP/M as an OS environment under which to test programs. Intel was uninterested in CP/M as they were developing their own OS at the time (whose name slips my mind now). Gary developed many of the same commands on CP/M as were available under TOPS-10. Gary formed Digital Research to sell CP/M, originally. This is why CP/M and its descendent MS-DOS uses so many things familiar to DEC people; DIR, COPY, / to introduce parameters to commands. We have this heritage, and the desire by MS to carry in the best things from Unix to thank for the horror of the \ as the directory separator under MS-DOS. This causes endless problems because \ is the quoting character in the C programming language. > And _don't_ ask me who named P/OS. > > > VMS clearly got some ideas from TOPS-10, which lifted some ideas from > > Multics. Many claim that Unix got some things from Multics, but I'm not > > sure what that would be (although I'm not an expert in Multics, by any > > means). So, possibly there's some commonality from that angle. > > I'm not sure how much of the guts came from TOPS-10. I believe they added > the ability to parse TOPS-10 filespecs (with angle brackets instead of > square ones, and a second dot in lieu of the semicolon) as a crumb to the > TOPS-10 people after the Jupiter project was cancelled. And this in turn > tells me that the author of VMS Install was an old TOPS-10 programmer. I'm pretty sure the angle brackets were available in Install in VMS 2/3 days, which predated the Jupiter cancellation. I've heard that a lot of TOPS-10 programmers had been moved over to VMS long before Jupiter was cancelled. I'm fuzzy here, though. > > > Actually, I think that Cutler was somewhat anti-TOPS-10 and anything > that > > made it in from there was probably underground through the many people > > who worked on VMS who had once worked on TOPS-10. > > I don't know about Cutler. I recall a story about Gordon Bell going > through > DEC's TOPS-10 support area and becoming livid at a poster advertising a > VAX > vacuum cleaner (British), captioned "VAX SUX". > I seem to recall reading (hearing?) where Cutler and Bell were on the same page here. > A further story says that DEC's legal department considered suing the > vacuum cleaner people for trademark infringement - but when they found out > the vacuum cleaner was there first, they became all consiliatory of a > sudden. In the U.S., a duplicate name is not an infringement unless the > products are similar enough to cause them to be confused in the > marketplace. Which is why Playtex could sell a "Free Spirit" bra and Sears > Roebuck a "Free Spirit" bicycle at the same time. Maybe British law is > different, or maybe this tells us something about DEC's perception of > their > product. > > Tom Wyant > > > > This communication is for use by the intended recipient and contains > information that may be privileged, confidential or copyrighted under > applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby > formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, > in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender > by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system. Unless > explicitly and conspicuously designated as "E-Contract Intended", > this e-mail does not constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment, > or an acceptance of a contract offer. This e-mail does not constitute > a consent to the use of sender's contact information for direct marketing > purposes or for transfers of data to third parties. > > Francais Deutsch Italiano Espanol Portugues Japanese Chinese Korean > > http://www.DuPont.com/corp/email_disclaimer.html -Jordan Henderson The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel. -- W. Somerset Maugham
