16 Mar
1998
16 Mar
'98
11:10 a.m.
Actually, very little. Most of the AI researchers in the 70's/early
80's
were working on one of the following:
1. PDP-10's running a very advanced operating system such as TOPS-20,
What do
you mean by "advanced"?
2. Things such as the Symbolics LISP machine,
specifically designed
for
AI research and with all sorts of spiffy hardware
features that
make
it automatic to do some really nice things (such as
actual
machine-level
"objects" that aren't just locations
in memory but are real data
types.
I HATE object oriented stuff. Hate it, hate it, hate it. At least in
C++, Java, and Visual Basic, which have been my only expoures to it.
Unfortunately, now if you go to a CS department
it's rare to see people
using anything other than generic Unix boxes. This is a crying shame,
as
Unix was a pretty poor choice of OS's in 1972 (when
it was started) and
on today's big computers it's a much, much poorer choice compared to
all the OS's developed by advanced research groups in the 70's and
80's.
Well, would any "advanced" OS like TOPS be suitable for modern
machines? Anyone want to be the second Linus Torvalds?
To get a feel of what life was like in a AI lab, you ought to read one
(or both) of the following:
_The Hacker's Dictionary_, compiled by Eric S. Raymond. (Yes, it is
mainly
just the jargon file, but there's also essays by
Raymond and others
which
nicely illustrate the AI researcher's "state
of mind" in the book.)
_The UNIX-Hater's Handbook_, discusses many OS's developed in the 70's
and 80's which are far superior to Unix, but never caught on because
they
weren't "lowest-common-denominator"
OS's.
Ironic that now it's the other way around -- we're pushing
UNIX-like
stuff like Linux, BeOS and Rhapsody, against DOS, Windows, NT, and
MacOS
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16 Mar
16 Mar
11:32 a.m.
[Hmm... TOPS/PC...]
Hmm... Port TOPS to the PC/Alpha/Etc...
Kinda above me, but if someone did an ITS or TOPS port to the PC or VAX,
I'd run it as soon as I could get it installed!
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3:53 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Tim Shoppa once stated:
Well, that's because on the VAX (to bring classic computers into this) had
an ENQUEUE and DEQUEUE (I think those are the mnemonics) instructions which
handled double linked lists (of which queues and stacks can be built out
of).
Why the need for PALcode to do that on the Alpha is a bit odd - all you
really need is an instruction that does an atomic "test and set" to ensure
atomicity (hmmm, it could be that instruction they added, although it seems
strange because DEC Unix supports multiple CPUs and you NEED that for
multiple CPUs).
I must admit that some of the features of old OSes (like VMS, TOPS-x0 and
ITS) are neat and it's a shame that it's taken some 30 years for some of
them to make a comeback.
-spc (IMHO - the two worst things to happen to this industry are
Unix and Microsoft. Both promote the lowest common demoninator
oddly enough)
[Hmm... TOPS/PC...]
Hmm... Port TOPS to the PC/Alpha/Etc...
Kinda above me, but if someone did an ITS or TOPS port to the PC or VAX,
I'd run it as soon as I could get it installed!
It wouldn't be easy. Unix is available on so many different systems
because it's a "lowest-common-denominator" OS, and requires very little
hardware support. Porting a OS like TOPS, ITS, or VMS is much harder
because most hardware simply doesn't have the requisite features to implement
things which are basic to the OS.
VMS has been ported to the Alpha, but it needed PALcode support to ensure
that things like queue element insertions/removals could be done without
interruption. 
5:37 p.m.
Captan Napalm (spc) said
As an Ex-DECcie VMS/RSTS/RSX/IAS/RT11 fan with no axe to grind with Unix,
it's funny seeing Unix and Microsoft being tagged as the lowest common
denominator. Unix is a kind of minimum OS which could run multiple processes
and multiple users on systems which wouldn't be able to hardware support
a Tops20 or Vax/VMS. I didn't like Unix because of a lot of things.
Minimal command help compared with VMS or Tops, bad editors (vi was the
BEST choice) compared with EDT, Eve, TPU... A cryptic, non-English
command processor. Bad error handling of hardware failures or problems
(PANIC:sys spit on floor). Bad errorlogging, lousy (AT&T Unix)
background/foreground detaching, fragile linked list (AT&T Unix) filesystems.
(I now make my living with both Unix (SunOS,Solaris2,AIX and Win95/NT) doing
system and network admin...)
I see Microsoft as worse than the current commercial Unix crop. No
documentation without buying Resource Kits... Unknown hidden releases
which slipstream patches. Limited regression testing. No real error
handling (I know the hardware ecc registers aren't there -- but DOS
does 10 retries without telling you the sector's going bad and then
it gives the General Failure msg.).
The C philosophy (which came from Unix) seems to basically support the
minimalist theory of code building -- where there are no system services and
most functionality better be in the application.
Unix sure looks a lot better now. I would've figured that better OS's would
get released -- but commodity hardware and software pushed out the proprietary
stuff that had good hardware error handling and support.
Bill
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It was thus said that the Great Tim Shoppa once stated:
>
> > [Hmm... TOPS/PC...]
> >
> > Hmm... Port TOPS to the PC/Alpha/Etc...
> > Kinda above me, but if someone did an ITS or TOPS port to the PC or VAX,
> > I'd run it as soon as I could get it installed!
I'd love TOPS20/PC or TOPS10/PC or FreeVMS (if it ever gets built).
It wouldn't be easy. Unix is available on so many different systems
because it's a "lowest-common-denominator" OS, and requires very little
hardware support. Porting a OS like TOPS, ITS, or VMS is much harder
because most hardware simply doesn't have the requisite features to
implement things which are basic to the OS.
I must admit that some of the features of old OSes (like VMS, TOPS-x0 and
ITS) are neat and it's a shame that it's taken some 30 years for some of
them to make a comeback.
-spc (IMHO - the two worst things to happen to this industry are
Unix and Microsoft. Both promote the lowest common demoninator
oddly enough)
9797
days inactive
9797
days old
4 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com -
maxeskin＠hotmail.com -
pechter＠shell.monmouth.com -
shoppa＠alph02.triumf.ca -
spc＠armigeron.com