<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff">below</font></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Dave McGuire <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mcguire@neurotica.com" target="_blank">mcguire@neurotica.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
I don't know if calling it "insane" is reasonable, Sampsa. You've<br>
fired up a thirty-year-old OS and are expecting it to act like it's a<br>
current OS. It won't.<br></blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff">Amen</font></div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
I ran Ultrix-32 daily back when it was current. It was (and is) a<br>
great OS. </blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">+1 I was the Technical Lead for Ultrix 4.4. If you can get anything post 4.4 you are likely to be much happier. Ultrix 4.3 <<< Ultrix 4.4 -- a huge number of fixes and enhancements went into 4.4 - which was where the MIPS 4000/4400 was first supported. I compiler was upgraded and a whole SCSI I/O system was developed for it that was common with what would eventually be Tru64 (there was some discussions of merging the projects - but that never happened - post Compaq).</font></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">So you might find it a little "fresher" in your mind.</font></font></div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">But as with all commercial UNIX implementations, everyone<br>
fixes a bunch of stuff as their first task after installation. For<br>
Ultrix-32, nearly everyone installs GNU Tar, Bash, and GCC immediately.<br></blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff">Hmmm - yes and no. I personally never install bash on anything -- i.e. as a BSD developer (I believe in typing to the csh and programming the Bourne Shell). But I see your point. There are tools that people move because they are comfortable with them. I also don't see the point in GCC since the DEC VAX compiler was pretty good in those days the gcc did not generate as good code. But if you wanted/needed something that gcc supported and was not yet in DEC C, it might be worth it.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff">Its interesting Sampsa never programmed with a "white book" C compiler --hey - as an old f*rt - I learned C the real way -- talking to dennis and eventually reading his paper ;-) [I used to have a xerox of the proofs for the whitebook - I remember when Dennis and Brian were writing it]. That said, I suspect if you grew up with "modern" C, the original would feel a tad naked.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff">Note: I once pointed out to Dennis that that boot loader for System V had grown to be larger that the V6 kernel. This was around the time when Rob Pike wrote the "cat -v considered harmful" paper. Holzmann of MIT & JPL takes a stab at this in a new very short paper: </font><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><a href="http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2015/04/mso2015020010.pdf">http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2015/04/mso2015020010.pdf</a> </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"> where he discusses "software inflation."</span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,255)"></div></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
The same goes for SunOS4 and HP-UX, from the same era.<br></blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#0000ff">As I said, this is because people are comfortable with some specific tools and want them. The problem is if you never learned to us ed (or EDT on a VAX/VMS) then it is a b*tch to land on a system that offers you something you don't know how to use. So you immediately move or write a version of an old tool. Paul Cantrel's teco (which is pretty much the universal C implementation of same that is flying around these days) came to be because he did not like vi or emacs and had come to UNIX from the 10s and the VMS. So he wrote his own (we also wrote a set of emacs macros to emulate EDT for some of the other ex-VMS folks @ the time).</font></div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
Actually I like that approach quite a bit better than, say, today's<br>
Solaris for example. </blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font color="#0000ff">I agree. I have a image of a number of programs with a (bourne) shell script that patches them so I can recompile a couple of tools I bring with me on any system.</font></div><font color="#0000ff"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> Sometimes to same tools are they but have been screwed with and command line flags changed etc. The roms in fingers were programmed long ago. ;-)</div></font></div><div><font color="#0000ff"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></font></div><div><font color="#0000ff"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">Clem</div></font></div></div></div></div>