Article 4370 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news2.best.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail From: "Alan H. Martin" Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Tops10 a "baroque" operating system? Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2001 22:19:53 -0400 Lines: 130 Message-ID: <3AD11C49.149F9B84@MA.UltraNet.Com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVZFS7I6WeIYR1UHDM3Pfg+FJ9JMHwSS9UohfVT8Icaez87GG3QWKWvq X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 9 Apr 2001 02:19:59 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en,en-US,en-GB,es Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4370 JD wrote: > Perhaps my memory is going, but, looking at the MIG and trying out TS10, it > sure looks as though Tops10, before it finally died, went right over the top > with switches, gizmos, daemons and options. ... > > The Tops10 I remember was far simpler and more straightforward than > 7.03/7.04. When did it get so incredibly baroque? Was there one monitor > where the ratio of bells and whistles to functionality took a big jump? Am > I correct in believing that Tops20 never acquired such a level of gadgetry? Some functionality was accessible through 2, 3, 4 families of UUOs. Some utilities were written and replaced wholesale 2, 3, 4 times. But some of the added functionality was to support concepts that didn't exist when the original systems shipped, or wouldn't even fit on the original systems. Also, the TOPS-10 you remember was parameterized so it could be configured with a bunch of software options. Many parameters that hadn't been turned on or off in ages were removed to simplify maintenance. Much of this may have happened after you last used a -10. The following options were made mandatory: 5.06 EXECUTE ONLY FILES 7.00 GALAXY-10 FEATURES VIRTUAL MEMORY SWAPPER COMPIL COMMANDS NXM ERROR RECOVERY CODE MEMORY PARITY RECOVERY CODE 2 SEGMENT MONITOR LOGIN DISK SYSTEM SUPPORT CTY1 DEVICE ERRS TO OPER TMPCOR AREA 7.01 JOBSTS AND CNTLJOB UUOS JOB PRIVS GETTAB UUO SLEEP UUO HIBER/WAKE UUOS COMPIL-CLASS QUEUE AND FRIENDS SET UUO/COMMAND BATCH CONTROL FILE SET DAYTIME AND SET DATE FINISH AND CLOSE REASSIGN UUO/COMMAND E AND D SEND USER NAME KI-10 INSTR CHECK ON KA10 BOOT BOOTSTRAP HALTS IN MONITOR INTERNAL REDUNDANCY CHECKS MISC. 5-SERIES UUOS PHYSICAL ONLY STRUUO FUNCTIONS SMALLER ALLOC. OF DISK CORE BLOCKS INCLUDE RP04 SUPPORT READ BACKWARDS ON TU70 TAPOP. UUO HIGH-SPEED LOGICAL DEVICE SEARCH 7.02 JOB CONTINUE EXTENDED PJOB COMMAND ATTACH COMMAND/UUO ACCOUNTING SUPPORT TIME/CORE LIMITS, ETC. CHARGE NUMBER KILO-CORE-TICKS RUN TIME 22 BIT CHANNEL (DF10C) MULT. SWAPPING DEVICES WHY RELOAD LIB/SYS/OLD/NEW ETC. APPEND IMPLIES READ MULTIPLE STRUCTURES SUB FILE DIRECTORIES SWAP READ ERROR RECOVERY HUNG DISK RECOVERY LATENCY OPTIMIZATION DC76 SPECIAL LINE CONTROL HARDWARE SCANER CDP TROUBLE INTERCEPT CDR TROUBLE INTERCEPT LPT DEVICE ERROR RECOVERY CDR SUPER IMAGE MODE MTA DENSITY/BLOCK COMMANDS The following options were eliminated: 7.00 2-REGISTER RELOCATION SHUFFLER THIS IS A KA10 SWAPPING PDB MONITOR CHECKSUMMED MONITOR WRITE PROTECTED TYPESET-10 FEATURES IN DC76 7.01 2 PART ACCESS BLOCKS PREVENT RACES IN FILFND 7.02 SEEK UUO BACK TRACKING FEATURES DISK ERROR SIMULATOR 7.03 SUPPORT 2741-LIKE TERMINALS U.K. MODEM SUPPORT TRULY HALF DUPLEX TERMINALS 7.04 DC10-H (2741 ON DC10) /AHM -- Alan Howard Martin AMartin@MA.UltraNet.Com Article 4471 of alt.sys.pdp10: Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!newsfeed.mathworks.com!europa.netcrusader.net!207.172.3.44!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-245-190 From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Tops10 a "baroque" operating system? Date: Sun, 15 Apr 01 10:37:13 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 53 Message-ID: <9bc664$nms$8@bob.news.rcn.net> References: <3AD18A06.25DABDFB@inwap.com> <9ba4iu$aa0$1@bob.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVZoo5V2JBUQJ/XMRU6X8vjiRNyZnJGMKxPCOKPHTM/AczIHxia5QmWB X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 Apr 2001 13:03:00 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:4471 In article , Jim Thomas wrote: >>>>>> "/BAH" == jmfbahciv writes: > > /BAH> In article <3AD18A06.25DABDFB@inwap.com>, > /BAH> Joe Smith wrote: > > >> I blame PULSAR and friends in 7.03. > > >> PULSAR was the process that allowed ANSI standard tape labels, > >> invisible to the application. Hit the end of a 2400-foot 1/2-inch > >> tape? No problem. PULSAR writes EOV tape labels, puts in a tape mount > >> request to QUASAR, who gets ORION to notify the operators via OPR. New > >> scratch tape mounted, PULSAR writes header records, then allows the > >> application to proceed. The user sees a single logical tape spanning > >> several physical volumes. > > >> That's when things got all hairy. > > /BAH> We wouldn't have done if the customers hadn't screamed for it. > /BAH> Customers _said_ that they couldn't live without labelled tapes > /BAH> and that they had to have them in order to do their business. > /BAH> We wasted 2 developers' time for ...what?...2 years for a product > /BAH> that didn't get used by the ones screaming for it. > >Sorry, but getting back on topic ;-) I would use the "baroque" for the >above sequence. The I/O library that should have been LINKed in with my >program would have done all the header stuff and communicated to OPSER. >Why all the other monkey motion? OPSER was a PITA to use from an operator's POV. It was also geared for hardcopy and almost useless for CRTs. The whole GALAXY project was worthwhile in that it eliminated MPB. It also provided the programming interface (which became a standard of sorts) for IPCF. And we no longer had to fuck with OMOUNT. > >I doubt I would have used the above programs either. But then I liked my >KI-10 just fine; it just got a bit "slow" :-) They all ran on the KI :-). Where do think they got debugged? 514/546 was our secondary system and ran those yellow packs. Remember the green, yellow and red system packs? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.