yeah, i think some of that was cp/m compatibility crap; too bad about 8.3
the other thing is that the pdp-11 had working segmentation, the 8086 didn't, so trapping faults in user processes so they couldn't break the kernel would have required some kind of interpretation or something
did you know microsoft was shipping xenix in 01981 (the same year they started shipping qdos/ms-dos/pc-dos) and shipping xenix for the 8086 in 01982, and that seattle computer products was selling 8086 xenix boxes in 01983
According to some sources, which I sadly cannot point out to, just vague memories from somewhere, so take it with a grain of salt.
Early MS-DOS development used to be done from those Xenix environments, they would cross-compile to PCs, until later on, did they migrate to MS-DOS directly.
Most likely around MS-DOS 5, given the MS-DOS 3.3 resources and how MS-DOS 4 development went.
On the other hand, there is the what-if alternative universe of what would have happened had they kept Xenix around.
you're thinking of basic-80, which gates and allen (and davidoff) did (in 01976?) on the dec-10 at harvard, but we're talking about qdos, which tim paterson did in 01981 at seattle computer products before selling it to microsoft
indeed, and https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html reminds us that in fact in the time period we're talking about, the pdp-11 that unix was running on didn't have working segmentation, so anyone could crash it easily and people often did so accidentally
this also explains a remark in the manual that puzzled me about the break() system call (p. 43, §A1.17):
> To save time, UNIX does not swap all of the 4K user core area when exchanging core images. The locations swapped are those from the beginning of the core image to the initial program break, and from the top of user core down to the stack pointer. The initial program break is determined by the size of the file containing the program. The system’s idea of how much to swap may be altered by using this call:
sys break
newbreak
> newbreak becomes the first location not swapped. If it points beyond the stack, or to the verify first word
in the core image, the entire core image is swapped.
in later versions of unix, of course, attempting to access memory after the break would result in a segmentation fault, but evidently in this version whatever you wrote there would just sometimes be lost when 'exchanging core images' — and presumably it wasn't just the segment limit that was missing on the -11/20, but also implicit indexing off the segment base pointer, which would imply that a mere context switch would require swapping the user program out in this way, just as on the pdp-7
i don't suppose anyone else here has knowledge if this inference is correct?
in any case, thank you very much for this correction!
The first time you zero-padded a year to five digits, I thought it was an accident, but there's two more instances of it. Why do you write 1983 as 01983?
Personally I think it's a harmless but also not useful affectation (but I also think our chances of making it into the 10,000s as anything still using equivalent dates are slim at best).
It's not harmless. 1) It's annoying. 2) It's off-topic - this isn't an article about the long now, or about dating systems. 3) It's inefficient to write dates not in the standard format - it makes everyone waste mental energy trying to figure out how to parse it.
The third point is especially bad for this article, where in context, the assumption should be that 0xxxx is octal, which isn't what he's actually doing at all.
So the upshot is that, rather than efficiently communicate what he's trying to say on this topic, he'd rather grind is axe on an unrelated topic. His choice, I guess, but I think it's a bad one. And an unfortunate one - he's got really good information on this topic, and his choice has hijacked us into talking about his date format.
And, thinking about it, it's not really the "long now". It's more like the "medium now". If it were the long now, he'd have several more zeroes in front.
Despite the fact that they've got a point, in my opinion (which I won't try to impose onto others, be reassured), I don't how it could considered harassing. He wrote one comment, that's all. Also, that comment didn't talk about haircuts or clothes, and I don't see how they could be seen as antisocial through that comment.
Antisocial? If you do something in public, I can complain about it in public. If the complaining can be antisocial, so can the doing be antisocial. So think well before you throw that charge at me.
That's a bit like his signature but it's also fairly annoying, it doubles the time required to interpret the number as a year, and I usually have to read the number twice.
That's the main reason I asked. It took longer than normal just to read a date, and it apparently has no useful benefit (yes I saw the side-comment about the "Long Now").
the other thing is that the pdp-11 had working segmentation, the 8086 didn't, so trapping faults in user processes so they couldn't break the kernel would have required some kind of interpretation or something
did you know microsoft was shipping xenix in 01981 (the same year they started shipping qdos/ms-dos/pc-dos) and shipping xenix for the 8086 in 01982, and that seattle computer products was selling 8086 xenix boxes in 01983