Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pioneer!eugene
From: eugene@pioneer.arpa (Eugene N. Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: the other Unisys machines (was Burroughs stack machines)
Keywords: RISC, real-time
Message-ID: <10089@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Date: 9 Jun 88 20:36:44 GMT
References: <1521@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1532@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <476@pcrat.UUCP> <2868@louie.udel.EDU> <370@dlscg1.UUCP> <3147@polyslo.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Reply-To: eugene@pioneer.UUCP (Eugene N. Miya)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Lines: 32

I've never worked on MCP, but a friend headed their Large Systems
Language group in Pasadena.  The language isn't quite ALGOL, it's SPL.

My observations come from the formerly Univac side.  That world is
populated by EXEC*8 or EXEC*1100 depending when you learned it.
Now I know the lineage of NOS, COS (Cray Operating System) and CTSS
(Cray Time Sharing System (I know of 3 CTSSes)).  It's that trail
of engineers who migrated with Seymour.  EXEC*8 fans are also
diehard in their beliefs that they live in the perfect world.

An observation by an old Group Supervisor (I came from an IBM background
at the time, he didn't) was that the interactive environment on EXEC*8
was initially so advanced 1960s compared to IBM, that EXEC was only
lapped by other operating systems.  All those fun @ commands.
Best thing since sliced bread (EXEC*1100).
65K word address space limitation [at the time], then 262Kw.
If you know EXEC*8 you won't have too much difficulty learning COS.

Univac published that ad in Scientific American: "User friendliness
wastes too many machine cycles (about late 70s early 80s)."
No high level languages for this OS, it's written in assembly language
like all "real" operating systems.  Naw, I have to stop, this
topic is getting to me.  Pity all those students attending schools
which don't use Unix or are locked into certain H/W and S/W (and don't
know about nets...).

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  {uunet,hplabs,ncar,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
  "Send mail, avoid follow-ups.  If enough, I'll summarize."