Brian Masinick
@PDP-8 I can tell that while, on one hand, you may (and probably do) have more modern equipment plus the older stuff you like to use, it appears from everything you write that you take pleasure in getting as much as possible out of REALLY OLD stuff (for all I know, you STILL have a PDP-8 system!)
By the way, I believe that the dd program came into existence because AT&T UNIX users also interacted with IBM mainframe computers with Job Control Language (JCL). An important data definition “card” when using these systems was dd, used for input and output data specifications.
I don’t remember if we discussed this, but I actually worked at Digital Equipment Corp. for 13 1/2 years. I never used the PDP-8 at work; it wasn’t produced by the time I joined them, BUT one of my educational classes actually DID have a PDP-8. Ironically enough we didn’t use it for every day programming, we used it to get a basic understanding of a pretty low level “machine language” – not even assembly language, the bits and bytes.
As for my first PDP system that I booted regularly and ran, I remember using a toggle console, entering the boot codes beginning at address 200! It took a few moments, but it wasn’t very difficult. It was a PDP-11 model. The group I joined at Digital was building conversion device drivers between a couple of bus technologies they used. One was a physically larger bus, the second was a newer, smaller bus with a PC-sized form factor. Incidentally, Digital’s own operating systems already had the various drivers. We were PORTING them to the actual AT&T UNIX System V software widely used at AT&T and what was, at that time, the newly organized SEVEN regional Bell Operating Companies, abbreviated BOC’s.
How I got into all of this was twofold: 1) my first job was at GM; I worked in their telephony division, which managed both their telephone systems and their data communication systems. Back then, the two were separate; as things changed, we integrated both of them; that work led me to Digital, who were directly selling computers to Telco companies to support billing and operation support system (OSS). Something we now take for granted today, the current signalling system, had not yet been 100% completed; the previous generation of that signalling system (separate voice and data) was still in operation.
All of these factors also contributed to my experience with UNIX. I was already at Digital by the time Linux emerged. What was cool was that I was VERY close to several people who were on the ground floor of the Digital work to bring in Linux. One person was Jon “maddog” Hall, who in 1985, I met at the coffee station/popcorn maker at our location in New Hampshire. The other contacts were two or three of my fellow 1979 graduates at Michigan Tech, I think there were four of us from a class of 17 in those early days, who started out elsewhere, and within 5-10 years ended up, as I did, at Digital Equipment Corp. It was a conversation with a few of them that led me to actually buying a computer for personal use and putting Slackware Linux on it! That was in the Fall of 1995 for me.
So that’s PART of my UNIX and Linux background; at GM I ALSO received a small introduction to MULTICS, which I gained by supporting one MULTICS Hourly Personnel systems application for a short time.
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Brian Masinick
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