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From: Mike Czaplinski <mcc@nsscmail.att.com>
Subject: Re: Retro-Computing!
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Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 18:13:03 GMT
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esl@sdf.saomai.org (Eric S. Lamemond) wrote:

>The Decsystem20 was also another resource hog.  If you ran one today, you'd
>be looking at spending $1500 a month in just power and cooling.  The brains
>of the Decsystem20 was TOPS-20 Monitor (OS in UNIX).  The monitor was nothing
>but a glorified program loader (VP/IX in UNIX). PDP-10 programmers are often
>called hackers because nothing worked on the Decsystem20 and always had to
>be "hacked" to work.  Some of the tools of the day were TECO (VI in UNIX)
>and DDT.  Fortunately these days no one needs to use a debugger.  In the
>superior operating systems (such as SunOS, ULTRIX, AIX and LINUX) the system
>does what is called a PANIC .. the machine then just needs to be rebooted
>therefore debugging is not necessary.

Then howcome whenever any of the Pyramid systems (running DC/OSx,
which is a port of AT&T SVR4) we work with go into 'Kernal Debugger
Mode' whenever they start to poop their pantaloons?  If I had the
nerve (and the knowledge of UNIX internals), I could hack away to my
hearts content, and DC/OSx dates from the late 1980's......

Don't think for a moment that any flavor of UNIX is any better than
any other operating system.  In fact, in some ways it is worse; you
often have to hand optimize parameters that other 'Less Advanced' are
smart enough to leave alone (Like, for example, 'Size Of Available
Shared Memory' perhaps?), and if you change one parameter, you will
probably need to change 5 or 6 others to re-establish the balance
that you upset when you made your first change.

UNIX is built like an Italian sports car, whereas things like VMS are
much more Mack-Truck-Like in construction.  These are not value 
judgements (Lord knows I'm really trying not to rekindle the Wars of
OS Religious Fundalmentalism):  you use an OS that works for you and
that you feel comfortable with.

But, which would you rather rely on for your everyday use?  A
relatively robust truck or a tempramental Italian sports car?

Mike "OSes, like any machine, work sometimes & dont' work others..."
Czaplinski
mcc@nsscmail.att.com
(soon to be mike.czaplinski@washingtondc.attgis.com)

I don't speak for AT&T GIS and..oh shucks, you know the rest.....
