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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: pdp-11/55
Message-ID: <8798@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 20:01:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8798
Posted: Mon Oct 19 20:01:25 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Oct-87 20:01:25 EDT
References: <1755@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <275@usl> <29933@sun.uucp> <8741@utzoo.UUCP>, <1899@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 31

(Note trimmed newsgroup list.)

> For demonstrating the wonders of Unix, for simple time-sharing, and
> for advanced (for 1975) text-processing, I'm sure that Unix V5 must
> have been brilliant in its time (wasn't it also an element known as
> unobtanium?).

Yup, it was pretty good stuff.  And no, it wasn't unobtainable, just not
widely known or distributed.  The site I was at then (U of Saskatchewan)
was one of the first few dozen non-Bell Unix sites.  There actually were
a few sites that had managed to get Unix V4 even earlier.  V6 was when
things really started to take off, though.

> In my experience, most PDP-11s in the mid-70's made
> their way into labs, or onto factory floors. There, I am quite sure,
> Unix V5 would have shined not at all.

Depends on what one wanted to do with it, but there were people who did
real-time work using such early-vintage Unixes.  (In fact, the earliest
still-functioning Unixes in existence are semi-real-time dedicated systems
within the fragments of Ma Bell.)  Remember that those kernels were only
a few thousand lines of source, and it was practical to understand one
completely and then rewrite substantial parts of it to do something odd.

> ... What *were* you doing with 11's in 1975? Just a curious question...

Junior assistant guru in a Computer Science department.  Situations like
that were about the only non-Bell Unix work at the time.
-- 
"Mir" means "peace", as in           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"the war is over; we've won".        | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry