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Research Unix Sixth Edition (WASM)

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Re: Research Unix Sixth Edition (WASM)

#31
post #29
post #12

Sixth Edition is from 1975. Let's consider its contemporary large-scale multiuser OS environments: * PLATO at UIUC. Much more sophisticated graphics and extensive support for multiuser gaming, but requires custom (and expensive) terminals. Homegrown mainframe, then CDC hardware. * Michigan Terminal System at University of Michigan and elsewhere. Runs on IBM mainframes. * Multics, ITS, TOPS-10, and who knows what else…

This omits a bunch of others -- WYLBUR supported interactive program development on IBM mainframes at several universities, for example. (The "large scale" qualifier here is also a little bit dubious -- it seems to be a way of saying that anything running on a machine as small as a PDP-11 doesn't count. But there were timesharing systems on even smaller machines, such as PDP-8s.)

By "large scale" I meant something used by, well, a lot of people. More than a university's CS department (or the math or EE department; whichever side had the proto-CS faculty in 1975). Like, V6 was being used across Bell Labs, but I wouldn't call that a large-scale deployment compared to MTS, let alone DTSS. When V6 was ported to IBM mainframes by Eric Schmidt and others, that didn't result in Unix being made available to any Princeton student who wanted an account. Nor did the Interdata port result in a campuswide Unix system for all Wollongong students. In both cases, had a random student wanted a computer account and was eligible for one, he would have received something on a batch system.

Re: Research Unix Sixth Edition (WASM)

#33
Why a simulated PDP-11 CPU rather than compiling to wasm? I guess because wasm is pure computation with no interrupts and so forth? Also no access to the stack

Also it’s probably a lot more work to retarget the existing compilers to new back ends

Although if this is a new Go implementation, it’s probably a lot of work anyway

Re: Research Unix Sixth Edition (WASM)

#34
post #26
post #12

Sixth Edition is from 1975. Let's consider its contemporary large-scale multiuser OS environments: * PLATO at UIUC. Much more sophisticated graphics and extensive support for multiuser gaming, but requires custom (and expensive) terminals. Homegrown mainframe, then CDC hardware. * Michigan Terminal System at University of Michigan and elsewhere. Runs on IBM mainframes. * Multics, ITS, TOPS-10, and who knows what else…

I've really wondered where things would be if TOPS-20 and Multics has made the leap to a modern architecture and continued development. The command interpreter for TOPS-20 was really intuitive, and if you've used Cisco iOS - you've used something that works a lot like TOPS-20.

How was the command interpreter for the TOPS-20 so intuitive?

Re: Research Unix Sixth Edition (WASM)

#35
post #33

Why a simulated PDP-11 CPU rather than compiling to wasm? I guess because wasm is pure computation with no interrupts and so forth? Also no access to the stack Also it’s probably a lot more work to retarget the existing compilers to new back ends Although if this is a new Go implementation, it’s probably a lot of work anyway

Nontrivial amounts of the source are PDP-11 assembly -- a lot of it in the kernel, but also bits of userland.
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