dmr@alice.UUCP (10/17/87)
Good grief. I've been taunted enough.
cat is short for catenate, is one of the approximately 10 primordial
Unix commands, and has nothing to do with G{E}COS.
daemon dates to CTSS whence it came to Multics and Unix.
runoff was Saltzer's very early formatting program on CTSS. Probably
the later ASCII version on CTSS was called roff, but in any event,...
roff is short for runoff.
nroff is new roff.
troff is typesetter roff; it predates nroff, and also the typesetter
attached to CGOS. The Comp Center downstairs, who ran the GCOS
machines, saw our C/A/T (Computer Aided Typesetter, a product of
Graphic Systems, later bought by Singer, later or maybe earlier
bought by Librascope), were envious, and bought one too; in any event,
C/A/T is not to be confused with the cat command.
the gcos field
sometimes we sent printer output or batch jobs to the GCOS machines.
The gcos field in the password file was a place to stash the
information for the $IDENT card. Not elegant.
Dennis Ritchiemccarthy@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (10/19/87)
Written 3:47 am Oct 17, 1987 by dmr@alice.UUCP (Dennis Ritchie) >Good grief. I've been taunted enough. [....] >daemon dates to CTSS whence it came to Multics and Unix. ^^^^ >runoff was Saltzer's very early formatting program on CTSS. Probably ^^^^ > the later ASCII version on CTSS was called roff, but in any event,... ^^^^ Now you're out to taunt us back, eh? ;-) What are you referring to when you use the abbreviation CTSS? Around here it stands for "CRAY Time-Sharing System", and not only do I think that it does not use daemons or runoff, but it also came into use *after* Multics and Unix. That's why I think you mean something else than what it seems to me; do you, and if so, what is it *really*? I'm not saying you got it wrong, I'm saying I'd like to know what you're using CTSS to stand for. _____ D. J. McCarthy
cosell@cosell.bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (10/20/87)
CTSS was the Compatible Time Sharing System (can't remember what it was compatible with any more). It ran on the 7094. In fact, as I recall the transition IBM made from the 7090->7094 was the result of MIT-suggested improvements *specifically* to make the machine time sharable. [we did a similar thing here at bbn at around the same time: in our case we were working with DEC and specified the upgrade from the PDP-1c to the PDP-1d. CTSS was *not* compatible with us... :-)] /Bernie\ Bernie Cosell Internet: cosell@bbn.com Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Inc USENET: bbn.com!cosell Cambridge, MA 02238 Telco: (617) 497-3503
dmr@alice.UUCP (10/21/87)
Re CTSS: Sorry for not spelling the acronym; as Bernie Cosell pointed out, CTSS was "Compatible Time-Sharing System" at MIT, and ran on the IBM 7090/94. "Compatible" meant it had a batch mode that would run FMS programs (FMS was Fortran Monitor System). This was not used much. The 7090->7094 transition was not influenced by CTSS; the real difference between the CTSS '90 or '94 and the commercial models was the second core box (another 32K 36-bit words!) and a kludged-in supervisor mode. These were RPQs (sorry, another acronym: "request price quotation", i.e. a special feature not ordinarily available.) The stock 7094 was no more sharable than earlier models. Dennis Ritchie
john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software) (10/22/87)
In article <48800008@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>, mccarthy@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > > Written 3:47 am Oct 17, 1987 by dmr@alice.UUCP (Dennis Ritchie) > >Good grief. I've been taunted enough. > >daemon dates to CTSS whence it came to Multics and Unix. > >runoff was Saltzer's very early formatting program on CTSS. Probably > > the later ASCII version on CTSS was called roff, but in any event,... > Now you're out to taunt us back, eh? ;-) > What are you referring to when you use the abbreviation CTSS? Around here > it stands for "CRAY Time-Sharing System", Compatible Time-Sharing System. Compatible with what, I don't recall. That was a time-sharing system developed by MIT people back when time-sharing was unheard of (I think it was the third or so in operation). This led to the MIT AI people developing the Incompatible Time-Sharing system (ITS) for their PDP-10 computers (and a queer beast it was!). "Now go away, or we shall taunt you a second time!" -- John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101 ...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw@eddie.mit.edu "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation." -- Johnny Hart
turner@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu (10/22/87)
> > Written 7:51 am Oct 19, 1987 by mccarthy@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu > >Written 3:47 am Oct 17, 1987 by dmr@alice.UUCP (Dennis Ritchie) > > >daemon dates to CTSS whence it came to Multics and Unix. > ^^^^ > What are you referring to when you use the abbreviation CTSS? Around > here it stands for "CRAY Time-Sharing System" > ... > I'm not saying you got it wrong, I'm saying I'd like to know what you're > using CTSS to stand for. > _____ > D. J. McCarthy CTSS (I assume) stands for Compatible Time Sharing System, an OS designed at MIT circa 1962. It ran on an IBM 7090 and was quite a milestone in timesharing systems. It supported up to 32 users interactively and consumed only 5K 36 bit words. Pretty amazing what you can do with limited resources, eh?. (The 7090 had only 32K words to work with.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Turner (on the Si prairie - UIUC CSRD) UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,pur-ee,convex}!uiucdcs!uicsrd!turner ARPANET: turner%uicsrd@a.cs.uiuc.edu CSNET: turner%uicsrd@uiuc.csnet *-)) Mutants for BITNET: turner@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu Nuclear Power (-%
msf@amelia (Michael S. Fischbein) (10/22/87)
In article <1877@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software) writes: > This led to the >MIT AI people developing the Incompatible Time-Sharing system (ITS) for their >PDP-10 computers (and a queer beast it was!). It was incompatible when you weren't happy with the way it worked. When you were, or when ITS vs Multics bull sessions were held, it was the Incomparable Time-sharing System! mike Michael Fischbein msf@prandtl.nas.nasa.gov ...!seismo!decuac!csmunix!icase!msf These are my opinions and not necessarily official views of any organization.
ekwok@cadev4.intel.com (Edward C. Kwok) (10/22/87)
In article <5507@bbn.COM> cosell@bbn.com.UUCP (Bernie Cosell) writes: > >CTSS was the Compatible Time Sharing System (can't remember what it was >compatible with any more). It ran on the 7094. In fact, as I recall the >transition IBM made from the 7090->7094 was the result of MIT-suggested >improvements *specifically* to make the machine time sharable. [we did a Subsequently, MIT made some more improvements and created a time-sharing system called ITS, which was still in use the last time looked (1980). ITS is, of course, a concatenation of "in" and "CTSS" (expanded). Ah, the relentless pace of progress!
mikkel@cg-atla.UUCP (Carl Mikkelsen) (10/23/87)
In article <3190@ames.arpa> msf@amelia.UUCP (Michael S. Fischbein) writes: >In article <1877@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software) writes: >> This led to the >>MIT AI people developing the Incompatible Time-Sharing system (ITS) for their >>PDP-10 computers (and a queer beast it was!). > >It was incompatible when you weren't happy with the way it worked. When >you were, or when ITS vs Multics bull sessions were held, it was the >Incomparable Time-sharing System! > > mike > >Michael Fischbein msf@prandtl.nas.nasa.gov > ...!seismo!decuac!csmunix!icase!msf It was hardly incompatible. There were four machines, on the same floor, all running the same OS. Through a local ARPA-net link, they could directly access each other's disks, perhaps the first true remote file system implementation. I hacked TECO into being an interactive screen editor, laying the foundation for Stallman and EMACS. All of this was done on a PDP-10 with about 3-5 MICROsecond core memory. A 68000 makes it look slow! Kernal documentation! No problem. The listings were the docs, and everything was written in God's own programming language, PDP-10 assembler. Although it was called Incompatible as a play on CTSS (which it used parasitically to find out the time of day), I cast my vote for Incomparable. +--------------------------+--------------------------------+ | Carl Mikkelsen | ..!ism780c\ | | | ..!cbosgd!ima>!cg-atla!mikkel | | Compugraphic Corporation | ..!ulowell/ | | 200 Ballardvale St. | ..!decvax/ | | Wilmington, Ma. 01887 | (617) 658-5600 x 5220 (voice) | | | (617) 658-0200 x 5220 (TT-auto)| +--------------------------+--------------------------------+