28 Oct
2010
28 Oct
'10
2:24 p.m.
On 2010-10-28 23:02, Rich Alderson<RichA at vulcan.com> wrote:
From: Brad Parker
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 10:12 AM
On Oct 27, 2010, at 11:31 AM, William Donzelli wrote:
Indeed. Well, I don't know about few or no user-visible changes, but
there is no denying that Unix started on a PDP-7, and not a PDP-11.
>> >>> You could insert a small
paragraph here about the role of unix and how
>> >>> unix and the pdp-11 and vax interacted.
> >> Are you saying that the PDP-11 and VAX were the first machines where
> >> the hardware and software were both considered and designed together?
> >> Once again, I think a lot of people would not agree with that.
> No, I didn't say that at all. I was just saying that the it would be
> interesting to explore how the pdp-11 and VAX architectures influenced
> the design of unix, and how unix, in turn, influenced software
> development as a whole. I thin the two are interrelated.
From what Thompson
and Ritchie have written about the origins of Unix,
the PDP-11's architecture had very little to do with how it was created.
The original PDP-7 Unix (specific I/O ports addressed in I/O instructions,
18-bit words, word addressing) was taken up and ported to the PDP-11 with
few or no user-visible changes. Because the VAX offered a virtual memory capability
(hi, Johnny!:-), it
did change the way Unix developed, but so did other ports (Interdata, for
example, and even the IBM Series/1).
Hi. :-)
I hope you do remember that early versions of Unix (even on the VAX) did
not do demand paging. Are you saying that they didn't have virtual
memory either, then? :-)
BSD3 anyone?
As for what PDP-11 might have innovated, we have covered the memory
mapped I/O at some length now, and it appear that the PDP-11 might
atleast have a half claim to fame there. But, as some pointed out, the
x86 do not use memory mapped I/O (and shared memory with a graphics
subsystem is not the same thing). Most RISC machines did/do use memory
mapped I/O anyway, but I digress...
I have not seen anyone comment any of the other things I listed as
possible firsts on the PDP-11.
Can anyone come up with an earlier machine that used condition codes?
How about general registers with addressing modes, which is totally
orthogonal? How about having the PC as a general register?
I don't know of any machines before the PDP-11 that had these.
Admittedly, the only one of these attributes the x86 inherited (from
wherever) is condition codes, but I think it might be interesting to
hear the collective wisdom on some more details than just memory mapped
I/O...
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol