someone smarter than Dave Cutler
in [Device Drivers]
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From: jmfbahciv on 1 Apr 2010 08:00 Morten Reistad wrote: > In article <hova6m51ivj(a)news3.newsguy.com>, jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote: >> Jim Stewart wrote: >>> Scott Lurndal wrote: >>>> Mark Crispin <mrc(a)panda.com> writes: >>>> >>> Anyone that takes the time to leaf through some >>> Datamation magazines of that era would be lucky >>> to find any reference to PDP-10's. >> Snobbery will get you nowhere. PDP-10s were not designed >> for huge data processing tasks. Datamation focused on that >> which was IBM-centric. > > The IBM 360/370 series were mainly corporate workhorses that > churned relatively simple transactions, and more complex > batch jobs for banks, accounting, insurance, airlines, > shipping companies, retail chains etc. They started with a > very inward-looking scope; and gradually openened up. Lots > of homegrown protocols grew up around them to handle > credit cards, atms, airline reservations, cash registers > etc. Yup. IBM was very, very good at doing that kind of computing service delivery. > SNA only did a little part of it. They were always > computing islands, until the PC's built some rickety bridges. > > The Internet built the interstates and the autobahns of > computing from the very start. The PDP10s ruled that kingdom. And 11s and 8s and 12s. > It was small in the beginning, but look at the relative sizes > now. We had a scramble after may 17th, but that setback was > temporary. > > -- mrr > Who worked for the company that said no to world wide > exclusive rights for the entire world wide web. > > <grin> /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 1 Apr 2010 08:02 Mark Crispin wrote: > On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, jmfbahciv posted: >> PDP-8s were the first CPU when a user would use to get at the PDP-10. >> Think about dial-ups and TTYs which were "far away" from the DC-10s. >> Users didn't see the 8s but those systems were used to answer the >> phones. > > Yes, indeed; particularly on the KA10. IIRC, the most notable of these > PDP-8 based front ends was called X680/I using a PDP-8/i. > > However, this was never how any system was connected to the ARPAnet. 11s replaced the 8 functionality pretty quickly. DC72s were PDP-8 based; DC76s were the PDP-11 replacement. > Although I have little doubt that the same hackers who implemented > Kermit on the PDP-8 could figure out how to do an NCP, AFAIK nobody ever > did. An ARPAnet connection also required a special hardware interface > (described in BBN Report 1822, hence an "1822 interface") but once again > AFAIK nobody ever did that for a PDP-8. I was documenting how comm got started. :-) /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 1 Apr 2010 08:09 Jim Stewart wrote: > Mark Crispin wrote: >> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Pat Farrell posted: >>> Jim Stewart wrote: >>>> Setting that aside, and it's a big set-aside, I question >>>> how much the PDP-10 was responsible for building the >>>> internet. My understanding is that PDP-11's, Vaxen and >>>> IMP's built the early internet. >> >> When it comes to Internet history, Jim Stewart is blowing farts out >> his anus and claiming that they are facts. >> >> I was there in the 1970s. > > Yeah, but I try hard not to be an arrogant > jerk. > > And if you'll reread my post, you'll see that > it might be my understanding is incorrect, not > my claim of fact. > > In any case, I thought about this whole thread > long and hard last night. What really mattered > was the people, not the processor. Yes. If you reread one of my posts, I tried to talk about that. > Was the PDP-10 > itself critical to the the accomplishments that > you listed, or was it clever people that had easy > access to good computing hardware? > All of the above. Kiddies, who would have become interested in something else, were exposed to a PDP-10 early in college life. You could do anything you wanted including shoot your foot, without (usually) affecting any other user on the system. If you really had the computer biz itch, you could get a job at the computer center and play with the gear and software as part of your job. Many of us never stopped playing. > Could the AI groups have done their work on a > pair of 360/67's? Could they move TCP/IP packets > and resolve hosts, given a proper interface? that would have depended on the schedules of the computer center w.r.t. delivery of computing services. > > Seems like you're willing to make the researchers > (and that would include yourself) subservient to > the computer. It was a *man's* toy. There were lots of work that had to be done once other groups in universities discovered that computers could do a lot of the grunt work. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 1 Apr 2010 08:11 Peter Flass wrote: > jmfbahciv wrote: >> Jim Stewart wrote: >>> Mark Crispin wrote: >>>> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Jim Stewart posted: >>>>> Anyone that takes the time to leaf through some >>>>> Datamation magazines of that era would be lucky >>>>> to find any reference to PDP-10's. >>>> >>>> Using Datamation as an historical reference is like using the >>>> National Enquirier. >>> >>> A circular religious argument not unexpected from >>> someone that believed that PDP-10's dominated the >>> era. >>> >>> >> You, obviously, have had no experience in non-IBM niches. >> >> /BAH > > Bill Clinton would love this. I guess it depends on what your > definition of "dominated" is. Certainly -10's were popular in > universities and research organizations. On the other hand, in 40 years > I encountered exactly *one* -10, at a timesharing outfit. Naturally I > loved it, but there weren't many out in the real world. And I'm counting all the individuals who had exposure to a computer. If they all had to drop off card decks and come back a week later to pick up the erroneous results, most would have considered the biz as a required PITA instead of fun. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 1 Apr 2010 08:14
Joe Pfeiffer wrote: > Peter Flass <Peter_Flass(a)Yahoo.com> writes: > >> jmfbahciv wrote: >>> Jim Stewart wrote: >>>> Mark Crispin wrote: >>>>> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Jim Stewart posted: >>>>>> Anyone that takes the time to leaf through some >>>>>> Datamation magazines of that era would be lucky >>>>>> to find any reference to PDP-10's. >>>>> Using Datamation as an historical reference is like using the >>>>> National Enquirier. >>>> A circular religious argument not unexpected from >>>> someone that believed that PDP-10's dominated the >>>> era. >>>> >>>> >>> You, obviously, have had no experience in non-IBM niches. >>> >>> /BAH >> Bill Clinton would love this. I guess it depends on what your >> definition of "dominated" is. Certainly -10's were popular in >> universities and research organizations. On the other hand, in 40 >> years I encountered exactly *one* -10, at a timesharing outfit. >> Naturally I loved it, but there weren't many out in the real world. > > I'm a little bit reminded of the days when just about everybody used > ASCII except IBM -- which meant something like 90% of the computers in > the world used EBCDIC. > > To the best of my recollection, I never saw an IBM computer when I was > an undergrad. DEC-10, VAX, PDP-11, DG Nova, CDC, Harris... yes. IBM, > no. It would be easy to forget how big IBM was, if I were to go from my > own university recollections. Schools, who couldn't afford to buy^Wrent an IBM system had to buy time on another university's IBM system. That was real money instead of funny money; so computer time was parceled out with great care. Only a few "users" would have access to that mainframe. /BAH |