Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Porting OSes (was DEC RISC Architecture)
Message-ID: <1990Oct19.155917.24196@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <4462@trantor.harris-atd.com> <107038@convex.convex.com> <15007@hydra.gatech.EDU> <10734@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <3607@stl.stc.co.uk> <9110@fy.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 90 15:59:17 GMT

In article <9110@fy.sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
>>The whole idea of porting an OS was new in the mid-70's
>
>To add more to Tom's refutation of this...

Actually, I think a more accurate version of the original statement would
be that the idea of porting an OS and getting something useful out of the
effort was novel. :-)  Several groups had looked at it for systems that
were widely (although not always accurately) classed as toys.  Unix gave
the idea credibility with a real-world system.

>... by 1970 several different groups had realised that the
>real issue was not porting an existing OS but designing an OS to
>be portable...

If so this would be a bit ironic, given that Unix was not particularly
designed for portability.  (It shows in various ways.)
-- 
The type syntax for C is essentially   | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
unparsable.             --Rob Pike     |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry