Robots again

From: Bill/Carolyn Pechter <pechter_at_shell.monmouth.com>
Date: Mon Mar 16 17:37:07 1998

Captan Napalm (spc) said
>
> It was thus said that the Great Tim Shoppa once stated:
> >
> > > [Hmm... TOPS/PC...]
> > >
> > > Hmm... Port TOPS to the PC/Alpha/Etc...
> > > Kinda above me, but if someone did an ITS or TOPS port to the PC or VAX,
> > > I'd run it as soon as I could get it installed!

I'd love TOPS20/PC or TOPS10/PC or FreeVMS (if it ever gets built).

> >
> > It wouldn't be easy. Unix is available on so many different systems
> > because it's a "lowest-common-denominator" OS, and requires very little
> > hardware support. Porting a OS like TOPS, ITS, or VMS is much harder
> > because most hardware simply doesn't have the requisite features to
> > implement things which are basic to the OS.
>
> I must admit that some of the features of old OSes (like VMS, TOPS-x0 and
> ITS) are neat and it's a shame that it's taken some 30 years for some of
> them to make a comeback.
>
> -spc (IMHO - the two worst things to happen to this industry are
> Unix and Microsoft. Both promote the lowest common demoninator
> oddly enough)
>

As an Ex-DECcie VMS/RSTS/RSX/IAS/RT11 fan with no axe to grind with Unix,
it's funny seeing Unix and Microsoft being tagged as the lowest common
denominator. Unix is a kind of minimum OS which could run multiple processes
and multiple users on systems which wouldn't be able to hardware support
a Tops20 or Vax/VMS. I didn't like Unix because of a lot of things.
Minimal command help compared with VMS or Tops, bad editors (vi was the
BEST choice) compared with EDT, Eve, TPU... A cryptic, non-English
command processor. Bad error handling of hardware failures or problems
(PANIC:sys spit on floor). Bad errorlogging, lousy (AT&T Unix)
background/foreground detaching, fragile linked list (AT&T Unix) filesystems.

(I now make my living with both Unix (SunOS,Solaris2,AIX and Win95/NT) doing
system and network admin...)

I see Microsoft as worse than the current commercial Unix crop. No
documentation without buying Resource Kits... Unknown hidden releases
which slipstream patches. Limited regression testing. No real error
handling (I know the hardware ecc registers aren't there -- but DOS
does 10 retries without telling you the sector's going bad and then
it gives the General Failure msg.).

The C philosophy (which came from Unix) seems to basically support the
minimalist theory of code building -- where there are no system services and
most functionality better be in the application.

Unix sure looks a lot better now. I would've figured that better OS's would
get released -- but commodity hardware and software pushed out the proprietary
stuff that had good hardware error handling and support.


Bill

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Received on Mon Mar 16 1998 - 17:37:07 GMT