An interesting article on DEC

[Richard J. Kolb]

Interesting read, thanks for sharing and for the follow on comments.

I'm in the midst of working on porting code from Vax to modern hardware as
we speak.

Richard J. Kolb


On Sun, Oct 8, 2023 at 12:49 PM Jerry Feldman <gaf.linux at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, the pdp-8 also supported multi user and multi tasking. The burger
> king manex system used os-8 as it's os.
>
> --
> Jerry Feldman <gaf.linux at gmail.com>
> Boston Linux and Unix http://www.blu.org
>
> On Sun, Oct 8, 2023, 10:40 AM jon.maddog.hall at gmail.com <
> jonhall80 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I also disagree with many items in the article.
>>
>> Ignoring architectures like the PDP-11 and implying that multi-user
>> started with VMS is just plain wrong.   The PDP-11 was a premier platform
>> for multi-user operating systems like RSTS, RSX-11, and Unix to name just a
>> few.
>>
>> Secondly the movement of the Linux kernel from being a
>> single-architecture 32-bit architecture to being a N-architecture, 32/64
>> bit kernel had immense impact on the computer industry and that was
>> facilitated by the Linux/Alpha project.
>>
>> Finally, I disagree that WNT was based either on OS/2 or VMS.   It was
>> based on a micro-kernel system that was developed by Dave Cutler and his
>> crew, and transported to Microsoft when Dave left and went there.   This
>> was one reason why the three architectures that were supported by WNT at
>> the announcement were Intel, MIPS and Alpha.   MIPS was dropped before
>> shipping since DEC did not care about it anymore.   Alpha was dropped as
>> soon as Microsoft could scrub all the code that came from DEC.
>>
>> I am familiar with this history since I was one of the people that Dave
>> Cutler interviewed for being a product manager for the system when Dave was
>> still working for DEC.   It was only months later that he left for
>> Microsoft.
>>
>> md
>>
>>
>> On 10/07/2023 4:35 PM EDT mikebw at colossus.bilow.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> It's a great article. I was the principal consultant for IDS in that era,
>> and there is a staff alumni group active on Facebook where I posted this
>> link.
>>
>> I disagree with a number of the claims in the article, especially that
>> Windows NT was based on VMS when in fact it was based on and developed
>> using OS/2. There is a good and detailed book about this:
>>
>>
>> https://www.gpascalzachary.com/showstopper__the_breakneck_race_to_create_windows_nt_and_the_next_generation_at_m_50101.htm
>>
>>
>> On 10/7/23 16:07, Don wrote:
>>
>>
>> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/long-gone-dec-is-still-powering-the-world-of-computing/
>>
>>
>>
>>
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