12 Nov
2021
12 Nov
'21
12:38 a.m.
Believe me, a large number of us in the systems group were really sorry
to retire our 11/60 (or 11/50? 55?) RSTS system.? We just thought it was
so neat.? And we missed it for years.? The assembler was a little
strange for us, but definitely easier for us to hack than PDP-8 (which
had its own advocates) or IBM 370 (which had truly maniacal devotees)?
The architecture had some very interesting ideas.
I was also one of the few that would move between DEC and IBM, which is
quite a paradigm shift if you've ever had to stare a 3270 in the face
after EMACS.
My students always seem to ask me which OS I prefer or what language is
the best, my response is always the same, "I like the OS that I get paid
to use and the language I get paid to program in".? One has to earn a
living...
I honestly don't know where those two got their stamina from...
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On 11/11/21 6:26 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
And where I'm from we were regularly running 40
people on one 11/70
with RSTS/E, and on bad days we were above 60. But then it was
miserably slow...
And yes, I have plenty of memories of the mails between MRC and BAH. :-)
? Johnny
On 2021-11-11 23:48, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
Oh, that old cat fight?? Meow!!? I'm walking
away from it; I don't
know how much email got spewed between MRC and BAH about it.? I don't
think either side ever got the point that you are not comparing
apples to apples.
Having looked at both schedulers, I don't immediately see that either
was more efficient than the other.? There clearly was cross
fertilization in a number of areas.
Recall that Tops-20 has processes and that a job may have a large
number of processes.? The number of jobs then is not going to be a
valid comparison.? For example, let's take a look at Galaxy on
Tops-10, which occupies 10 job slots:
Job??? Who???? Line#??? What Size(P) State?? Run Time
?1??? [OPR]???? DET???? NEBULA? 26+40?? HB 0
?3??? [OPR]????? 0????? QUEUE?? 9+38??? ^C 1
????? [OPR]???? DET???? QUASAR? 40+40?? SL 1
?9??? [OPR]???? DET???? PULSAR? 5+40??? HB SW 0
10??? [OPR]???? DET???? ORION?? 109+40? SL 0
11??? [OPR]???? DET???? NML???? 15+18?? HB 3
13??? [OPR]???? DET???? CDRIVE? 30+40?? HB 0
14??? [OPR]???? DET???? FAL-10? 104+40? SL 1
They're all underneath a _single_ job on Tops-20 or built into the
EXE?, but producing the same load because it is the same code.
We did do some instrumenting and we found that the snazzy parsing
(COMND%) was not contributing that much to load.? There was some
overhead simulating UUO's, which are obviously natively executing on
Tops-10.? Nearly all editing was done with WYSIWYG video editing,
which surely must produce more load than TECO or SOS.? Some work was
put into TEXTI% to mitigate the context switching.
MRC's position was that Tops-20 was doing more, but I'm not sure how
comfortable I am with that.? Having used and programmed both, I think
it's more like 'doing differently'.? I would say that it was rare to
find people who could easily move between the two and/or who weren't
highly opinionated.
It's a waste of time; you bought what did the job best for your
environment.? It's kind of like apples and pineapples; they sound the
same but they're just not.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 11/11/21 5:20 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
>
> >You had a 20 that would handle 600 students in 1977/???/
>
> ??I think he said something about six 20s?? I?m pretty sure there?s
> no way one CPU would have handled 600 timesharing users.?? We could
> get to around 120 on a single KL10E with TOPS-10 before it got
> unbearably slow.? With TOPS-20 on the same hardware we could only
> get to 80 or so; TOPS20 was something of a pig.
>
> Bob
>