<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Believe me, a large number of us in the systems group were really
sorry to retire our 11/60 (or 11/50? 55?) RSTS system. We just
thought it was so neat. And we missed it for years. The
assembler was a little strange for us, but definitely easier for
us to hack than PDP-8 (which had its own advocates) or IBM 370
(which had truly maniacal devotees) The architecture had some
very interesting ideas.<br>
</p>
<p>I was also one of the few that would move between DEC and IBM,
which is quite a paradigm shift if you've ever had to stare a 3270
in the face after EMACS.<br>
</p>
<p>My students always seem to ask me which OS I prefer or what
language is the best, my response is always the same, "I like the
OS that I get paid to use and the language I get paid to program
in". One has to earn a living...<br>
</p>
<p>I honestly don't know where those two got their stamina from...<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">
<hr width="100%" size="2">On 11/11/21 6:26 PM, Johnny Billquist
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:30ff0dfc-8a78-ac99-d5d6-12734565db1a@softjar.se">And
where I'm from we were regularly running 40 people on one 11/70
with RSTS/E, and on bad days we were above 60. But then it was
miserably slow...
<br>
<br>
And yes, I have plenty of memories of the mails between MRC and
BAH. :-)
<br>
<br>
Johnny
<br>
<br>
On 2021-11-11 23:48, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Oh, that old cat fight? Meow!! I'm
walking away from it; I don't know how much email got spewed
between MRC and BAH about it. I don't think either side ever
got the point that you are not comparing apples to apples.
<br>
<br>
Having looked at both schedulers, I don't immediately see that
either was more efficient than the other. There clearly was
cross fertilization in a number of areas.
<br>
<br>
Recall that Tops-20 has processes and that a job may have a
large number of processes. The number of jobs then is not going
to be a valid comparison. For example, let's take a look at
Galaxy on Tops-10, which occupies 10 job slots:
<br>
<br>
<font size="4" face="monospace">Job Who Line# What
Size(P) State Run Time
<br>
<br>
1 [OPR] DET NEBULA 26+40 HB 0
<br>
3 [OPR] 0 QUEUE 9+38 ^C 1
<br>
[OPR] DET QUASAR 40+40 SL 1
<br>
9 [OPR] DET PULSAR 5+40 HB SW 0
<br>
10 [OPR] DET ORION 109+40 SL 0
<br>
11 [OPR] DET NML 15+18 HB 3
<br>
13 [OPR] DET CDRIVE 30+40 HB 0
<br>
14 [OPR] DET FAL-10 104+40 SL 1
</font><br>
<br>
<br>
They're all underneath a _single_ job on Tops-20 or built into
the EXEÇ, but producing the same load because it is the same
code.
<br>
<br>
We did do some instrumenting and we found that the snazzy
parsing (COMND%) was not contributing that much to load. There
was some overhead simulating UUO's, which are obviously natively
executing on Tops-10. Nearly all editing was done with WYSIWYG
video editing, which surely must produce more load than TECO or
SOS. Some work was put into TEXTI% to mitigate the context
switching.
<br>
<br>
MRC's position was that Tops-20 was doing more, but I'm not sure
how comfortable I am with that. Having used and programmed
both, I think it's more like 'doing differently'. I would say
that it was rare to find people who could easily move between
the two and/or who weren't highly opinionated.
<br>
<br>
It's a waste of time; you bought what did the job best for your
environment. It's kind of like apples and pineapples; they
sound the same but they're just not.
<br>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
<br>
On 11/11/21 5:20 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<br>
>You had a 20 that would handle 600 students in 1977/???/
<br>
<br>
I think he said something about six 20s… I’m pretty sure
there’s no way one CPU would have handled 600 timesharing
users. We could get to around 120 on a single KL10E with
TOPS-10 before it got unbearably slow. With TOPS-20 on the
same hardware we could only get to 80 or so; TOPS20 was
something of a pig.
<br>
<br>
Bob
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>