Linux-Hams archive - August 1998: Re: Training utilities

Re: Training utilities

Alan Crosswell (terhi.victor@logonet.com)
Sat, 1 Aug 98 23:29:19 EDT


>software. The name of the machine was SIMTEL-20.WSMR.ARMY.MIL, apparently

Gee, call me a geezer, but I remeber when it was just plain SIMTEL20.ARPA:-)

>Simtel-20 machine was notoriously unfriendly, running the TOPS operating system

You know not of which you speak to blaspheme the glorious TOPS-20
operating system and the truly wonderful DECSYSTEM-20 hardware it ran
on. 36 bits per word, variable size bytes from 1 to 36 bits wide
yielding stuff like 5 ASCII characters per word, or even better, six
6-bit characters (uppercase only please). Why do you think they say
"octet" on all that Internet RFC stuff when you know they mean an
8-bit byte anyway? Yes, Unix rules supreme today, but once TOPS was
king.

Where do you think all those neat shell features like tab and/or
escape causing command/file names to get filled out came from? Why is
it called tcsh? Hint: the T is for TOPS (and/or TENEX, a relative of
TOPS, from TOPS-10, the predecessor of TOPS-20). Ever notice in one
of those older Korn shells, that the option was called "set -o tenex?"
And, what about the EMACS editor, the earliest versions of which were
written not in LISP on Unix, but in TECO on TOPS-20!

73 de Alan N2YGK
US.ALAN@CU20B