4 ms·

>The unix text utilities were written in the 60's and 70's when computers were 33mhz and had 5MB of ram. I'm not positive (I was born in the 70s), but I'm pret

>The unix text utilities were written in the 60's and 70's when computers were 33mhz and had 5MB of ram. I'm not positive (I was born in the 70s), but I'm pretty sure they had less RAM and speed than this.

trezor 18y ago
The Amiga 500 came in the late 80s and had a 7.14Mhz CPU and 512kb of RAM, and it was considered awesome... So yeah.
dzorz 18y ago
My 1990's Amiga 1200 had 14 MHz and 2-8 MB ram, so you're off by 20-30 years :-)
ojbyrne 18y ago
The very first computer I saw Unix on was a minicomputer/workstation in 1985. It had a 68020 processor running at 20 mhz, and had 4mb of RAM. It cost around $75k.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  The first one I saw (not used - the first one I used was a 680x0 box) was a Z-80 based Cromemco monster running Cromix on less than 512K. Unix can be really small, if we sacrifice some stuff.
  - ojbyrne 18y ago
    I thought we were making the point that hardware was slow and expensive much later than the 60s and 70s, not that Unix could be really small.
    - rbanffy 18y ago
      I was making the point that even a lowly hare-brained 8-bit processor can run a Unix-like OS.
spolsky 18y ago
Yep. Unix was written on a PDP-7 http://www.linfo.org/pdp-7.html http://www.linfo.org/pdp-7.html -- probably with 8,000 or 16,000 words of memory (18 bit words), probably running on the order of several thousand instructions per second
tom_rath 18y ago
Yeah, my first non-commodore computer was a blazing fast 33MHz 386 with 4MB RAM -- 1991 (~$3,400 by the way) Damn, do I feel spoiled watching a modest app compile in a few seconds today!
maw 18y ago
So much misinformation indeed! One reason, out of many, of course, that I stopped reading Slashdot was the amount of misinformation propagated there. I was afraid that I would read something false while in an insufficiently wary frame of mind and believe it. I'd hate to see the same start to happen here.
- alexk 18y ago
  What are you talking about?
  - maw 18y ago
    People shooting off things like "The unix text utilities were written in the 60's and 70's when computers were 33mhz and had 5MB of ram." as though they were fact.
rbanffy 18y ago
IIRC, my first unix machine was a 16 MHz 68020 with about a megabyte of RAM and about 200 MB of fixed disk storage. It served around 40 terminals.
deleted 18y ago
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trezor 18y ago

The Amiga 500 came in the late 80s and had a 7.14Mhz CPU and 512kb of RAM, and it was considered awesome... So yeah.

dzorz 18y ago

My 1990's Amiga 1200 had 14 MHz and 2-8 MB ram, so you're off by 20-30 years :-)

ojbyrne 18y ago

The very first computer I saw Unix on was a minicomputer/workstation in 1985. It had a 68020 processor running at 20 mhz, and had 4mb of RAM. It cost around $75k.

rbanffy 18y ago
The first one I saw (not used - the first one I used was a 680x0 box) was a Z-80 based Cromemco monster running Cromix on less than 512K. Unix can be really small, if we sacrifice some stuff.
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  I thought we were making the point that hardware was slow and expensive much later than the 60s and 70s, not that Unix could be really small.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    I was making the point that even a lowly hare-brained 8-bit processor can run a Unix-like OS.

spolsky 18y ago

Yep. Unix was written on a PDP-7 http://www.linfo.org/pdp-7.html http://www.linfo.org/pdp-7.html -- probably with 8,000 or 16,000 words of memory (18 bit words), probably running on the order of several thousand instructions per second

tom_rath 18y ago

Yeah, my first non-commodore computer was a blazing fast 33MHz 386 with 4MB RAM -- 1991 (~$3,400 by the way) Damn, do I feel spoiled watching a modest app compile in a few seconds today!

maw 18y ago

So much misinformation indeed! One reason, out of many, of course, that I stopped reading Slashdot was the amount of misinformation propagated there. I was afraid that I would read something false while in an insufficiently wary frame of mind and believe it. I'd hate to see the same start to happen here.

alexk 18y ago
What are you talking about?
- maw 18y ago
  People shooting off things like "The unix text utilities were written in the 60's and 70's when computers were 33mhz and had 5MB of ram." as though they were fact.

rbanffy 18y ago

IIRC, my first unix machine was a 16 MHz 68020 with about a megabyte of RAM and about 200 MB of fixed disk storage. It served around 40 terminals.

deleted 18y ago

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