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From: wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Who owns Unix(tm)? (was: Re: Mach, the new standard?)
Message-ID: <1713@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Date: Fri, 18-Sep-87 01:24:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ho95e.1713
Posted: Fri Sep 18 01:24:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 19:03:32 EDT
References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <8381@utzoo.UUCP> <797@Pescadero.ARPA> <8508@utzoo.UUCP> <1459@killer.UUCP>
Reply-To: wcs@ho95e.UUCP (46133-Bill.Stewart,2G218,x0705,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs 46133, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 35
Xref: mnetor comp.arch:2227 comp.unix.wizards:4313 comp.os.misc:188

In article <1459@killer.UUCP> molly@killer.UUCP (Molly Fredericks) writes:
:I was a college student back then.  We had a PDP-11/45 running System III
:and then one summer we got a System 4.0 tape from WECo.  This is a creature
:that I've never seen since, nor ever even heard talked about.  In fact, some
:times I wonder if it ever even existed.  

	4.0, of course, was midway between System III (internally
called 3.0), and System V (5.0).  There was also a 4.1, which was the
3B20 version, and had real GBC-bound manuals instead of 8.5x11 Xerox.
I had just transferred into a new group, which needed someone to run
the snazzy new VAX 11/780 they'd ordered (with 4 Huge Megabytes of RAM!.)

It seems the supervisor hadn't thought to order software, and UNIX support
was being transferred out of Bell Laboratories into Western Electric.
WECo sold the operating systems, but hadn't started handling
documentation, and USG had stopped distributing documentation, so all I
got were 5 tapes labelled with highly revealing J-numbers.  I had to
break into the WECo support group's computer to find out what
documentation existed and how to order it, but it wasn't tough.
	sh: test: argument expected

	(he rambles on about the good old days.)
About a year later we switched to 4.1BSD because we finally exceeded
the 4 MB barrier and needed paging.  (Thanks to Dave Curry for advice
on getting past 4.1BSD's 6 MB limit.)  We later got a under-the-table
early-beta version of 5.2p (thanks, Doris), and learned that we and
Summit had different ideas about what BIG was and how to get it, and
what slow was and how not to get it.  (No, you can't
possibly run something that big on a VAX.)  Eventually RAM got cheap
enough to buy 16 Meg.  Meanwhile we were going to trade shows saying 
"16 Meg is for Wimps!" about all the 68000-boxen and Gould and Pyramid,
while wishing we could port some of our graphics work back to 4.2BSD.
-- 
#				Thanks;
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs