UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]

[Jon Hall]

bayard at tds.net said:
> AFAIK, no. I believe that the original development was on some
> PDP-11's (11/45's?)

No, the original development was on a PDP-7, and in assembler.

The second machine it ran on was a PDP-11, also in assembler.  It was after
that port that Dennis wrote "C", to make the next port easier.  I think that
for the most part he succeeded.

bscott at ntisys.com said:
>   Okay, I have to ask: What's a "RIM loader"? 

O.K.:

First you toggle in the BIN loader.  On the PDP-8 this was seventeen twelve-bit
instructions, so you have to flip (and get ABSOLUTELY CORRECT) 204 switches,
and this was AFTER you toggled in the correct starting address.

That BIN loader then loaded in a paper tape that had the RIM loader on it,
which (hopefully) stayed in memory to load in things like an Editor, Assembler
and (eventually) your program.  However, with only 4K words (and poor
programming skills) you usually overwrote the RIM loader with your program
bombing (er, ah) running, so you had to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

Ah, the good old days. :-)

md
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Jon "maddog" Hall
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