5 ms·

"I just don't understand it, I don't see how this is possible, how this one chip can replace these racks of electronics, I just don't get it" "There is no reas

"I just don't understand it, I don't see how this is possible, how this one chip can replace these racks of electronics, I just don't get it" "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" "Unix is snake oil" —Ken Olsen (DEC Founder, president, and chairman)

bsder 4y ago
Sorry, Unix IS snake oil when compared to VMS. Olsen got that one right.
- Taniwha 4y ago
  The thing is that Unix(of the day)'s source wasn't full of 100s of pages of vax assembly code .... so it was portable - just a page or two of assembly. Also prior to that OSs were proprietary - if you didn't work for a hardware manufacturer you mostly didn't get to play with them much. There was no incentive to make them portable - then along came Unix and it was dropped into the hands of a generation of college kids. Sure VMS had a better VM story (I both ported Unix and was a VMS systems hack at the time) - but you couldn't pick it up and put on anything other than a vax, it was pretty useless as an OS unless you were DEC, Unix didn't have that yoke around its neck (it had others mostly because AT&T didn't understand what it had)
  - bsder 4y ago
    The VMS filesystem aboslutely shit all over any offering from Unix (and still does with the exception of ZFS). The Vax FORTRAN compiler smoked everything on Unix until IBM put a good FORTRAN compiler on AIX. VMS systems had actual security that we still don't have nowadays. VMS systems could be used for real-time tasks (Intel's fab line ran on VMS for a very long time). I can go on and on ... Unix "won" by becoming the darling of the people not willing to pay money while Windows swept the field of those willing to cough up cash. However, don't mistake the virality of Unix for it being "better" than VMS.
    - Taniwha 4y ago
      Unix is/was a lot of things, it was developing at a much faster rate than VMS - was VMS better than V6/V7 certainly (I ported V6/V7 so that the kernel ran in VMS sup/user mode in place of DCL), better than V.2 (the VM subsystems were vaguely comparable) - file systems better than Linux's (there are so many, probably not in total, and that whole record based thing was just a straightjacket on so much). The thing is you're comparing 1 VMS that didn't evolve much (it did get sort of cloned by MS) with effectively hundreds of Unix descendants. As I said I've worked intimately with both, and I don't think VMS gets as much love as it's due, but in the long run I think it was a dead end largely because it was held close by a (great!) company that died
    - emmelaich 4y ago
      It may have been better from a sysadmins view, but user wise I loved Unix immediately. Whereas VMS? Meh. I think this same system oriented view (as distinct from user) is what sunk DEC, HP and Sun.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      "Free" is in fact one of the axes along which "better" can be measured.
      - Taniwha 4y ago
        Unix of the day was not "free" you could get free access at a Uni, but outside of there you had to pay AT&T, who frankly didn't really understand what they had (which is why we now have Linux)
        pjmlp 4y ago
        Compared with proper commercial OSes that fee at the time was almost symbolic. They were aware of what they had, hence why their first action after being allowed to commercially take advantage of UNIX was to sue BSD.
    - kjellsbells 4y ago
      Dont forget the clustering/disaster recovery. VMS' clustering was incredible. The lesson I take from tech of this era is that good enough (and cheap) beats superior over time. Unix over VMS, Ethernet over Token Ring, etc. I posit that Unix's simplicity of that era (you really could hold the entirety of the system in your head back then, and rereading the entire manual set every few months was something considered perfectly feasible and regularly recommended for power users) was the winning formula. It certainly helped that unix was all over academia. 20 years later, when Solaris was the incredibly powerful big dog and linux was the upstart, history repeated itself.
  - jonjacky 4y ago
    The thing is that Unix(of the day)'s source wasn't full of 100s of pages of vax assembly code ... VMS wasn't all vax assembly either. VMS and a lot of VAX system software was mostly written in BLISS [1], a high level language intended for systems programming that was created about the same time as C. It was all there for customers to read in a big stack of microfiche cards delivered with each machine. I remember being shown the code for the VMS scheduler or maybe the dispatcher which was 'a page or two of (VAX) assembly' - I recall it was pointed out that it was one of the (few) places in VMS that did use assembly. I don't know how portable the BLISS code for VMS was, but there were BLISS compilers for several other machines besides the VAX. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS
    - Taniwha 4y ago
      Oh I completely agree - but I also remember putting a graphical header on the first page of the output from the print symbiont (aka daemon, essentially CUPS), I had to type in pages of assembler from microfiche
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      And it had bounds checking like most sane system programming languages since late 1950's.
    - ch_123 4y ago
      Most of the kernel was in VAX assembly (I've seen source code listings of VAX/VMS circa V4.x). They were able to port the kernel over to other architectures by creating a compiler that treated VAX assembly as a high level language. This approach came with its costs - even to this day, large parts of VMS remain 32-bit only because it was not possible to automatically make 32-bit assembly code into 64-bit object code for other platforms. Even in programs which use 64-bit addressing, VMS essentially requires you to use a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit pointers in the same program.[1] A similar problem (AFAIK) befell BLISS - BLISS code for the VAX treats all values as 32-bit. There is a separate BLISS-64 compiler for the 64-bit platforms VMS was ported to, but I don't think all the BLISS-32 code was converted over to BLISS-64.[2] [1] http://www0.mi.infn.it/~calcolo/OpenVMS/ssb71/6467/6467p005.htm#chapter_10 http://www0.mi.infn.it/~calcolo/OpenVMS/ssb71/6467/6467p005.... [2] https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/ronald-brender/bliss.pdf https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/ronald-brender/bl...
- panick21_ 4y ago
  The reality is that lots and lots of early sun costumers were running Unix on their VAX and then the bought a sun and simply continued to use Unix just on a much cheaper machine. So the question is why were all these university people running Unix instead of VMS. Were they just dumb?
  - bsder 4y ago
    > So the question is why were all these university people running Unix instead of VMS. Were they just dumb? The "university" people were still running VMS certainly up through 1990 or so. Very few people ran Ultrix on their VAX hardware. And workstations were never widespread in universities as workstations basically cost as much as a car. A lab with 8 workstations was still a big deal in 1990. Unix didn't sweep away VMS, PCs did. Just like PCs swept away workstations. Unix didn't "win" until it latched onto PCs as a host. And people also forget that Unix didn't "win"--it lost terribly to both Microsoft and Apple.
imglorp 4y ago
I was thinking the same as implied here, and yes he said that in 1977 but it was taken out of context; he was referring to home automation and not personal computing. [2] It seems, no, DEC did not miss the PC boat due to one person's nearsighted view. Microvax was 1985 and yes it would have been interesting if they had a low-end personal product based on VAX at that time. They did have the Professional [0] around 1982 based on PDP-11 which I used at school to learn Macro-11 assembly, C and Pascal. It was blazing fast and ran RSX/11 which was years ahead of DOS. They also had the Rainbow [1] around 1982 (maybe marketed to officework) with a z80 and 8088. And then there was the VAXMate in 86 which we don't talk about :). So it seems these were all aiming at the new "PC" market in a scattergun manner but nobody really knew what that was at the time. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Professional_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Professional_(computer) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100 2. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ken-olsen/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ken-olsen/
- panick21_ 4y ago
  The had to many attempts at building a PC, not to few. It kind of crazy, they basically launched 3 PC type computers at the same time. Between non of them being a actual PC clone, not running the same software and not really able to compete in the race to the bottom price fight they simply failed to get traction.

bsder 4y ago

Sorry, Unix IS snake oil when compared to VMS. Olsen got that one right.

Taniwha 4y ago
The thing is that Unix(of the day)'s source wasn't full of 100s of pages of vax assembly code .... so it was portable - just a page or two of assembly. Also prior to that OSs were proprietary - if you didn't work for a hardware manufacturer you mostly didn't get to play with them much. There was no incentive to make them portable - then along came Unix and it was dropped into the hands of a generation of college kids. Sure VMS had a better VM story (I both ported Unix and was a VMS systems hack at the time) - but you couldn't pick it up and put on anything other than a vax, it was pretty useless as an OS unless you were DEC, Unix didn't have that yoke around its neck (it had others mostly because AT&T didn't understand what it had)
- bsder 4y ago
  The VMS filesystem aboslutely shit all over any offering from Unix (and still does with the exception of ZFS). The Vax FORTRAN compiler smoked everything on Unix until IBM put a good FORTRAN compiler on AIX. VMS systems had actual security that we still don't have nowadays. VMS systems could be used for real-time tasks (Intel's fab line ran on VMS for a very long time). I can go on and on ... Unix "won" by becoming the darling of the people not willing to pay money while Windows swept the field of those willing to cough up cash. However, don't mistake the virality of Unix for it being "better" than VMS.
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    Unix is/was a lot of things, it was developing at a much faster rate than VMS - was VMS better than V6/V7 certainly (I ported V6/V7 so that the kernel ran in VMS sup/user mode in place of DCL), better than V.2 (the VM subsystems were vaguely comparable) - file systems better than Linux's (there are so many, probably not in total, and that whole record based thing was just a straightjacket on so much). The thing is you're comparing 1 VMS that didn't evolve much (it did get sort of cloned by MS) with effectively hundreds of Unix descendants. As I said I've worked intimately with both, and I don't think VMS gets as much love as it's due, but in the long run I think it was a dead end largely because it was held close by a (great!) company that died
  - emmelaich 4y ago
    It may have been better from a sysadmins view, but user wise I loved Unix immediately. Whereas VMS? Meh. I think this same system oriented view (as distinct from user) is what sunk DEC, HP and Sun.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    "Free" is in fact one of the axes along which "better" can be measured.
    - Taniwha 4y ago
      Unix of the day was not "free" you could get free access at a Uni, but outside of there you had to pay AT&T, who frankly didn't really understand what they had (which is why we now have Linux)
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Compared with proper commercial OSes that fee at the time was almost symbolic. They were aware of what they had, hence why their first action after being allowed to commercially take advantage of UNIX was to sue BSD.
  - kjellsbells 4y ago
    Dont forget the clustering/disaster recovery. VMS' clustering was incredible. The lesson I take from tech of this era is that good enough (and cheap) beats superior over time. Unix over VMS, Ethernet over Token Ring, etc. I posit that Unix's simplicity of that era (you really could hold the entirety of the system in your head back then, and rereading the entire manual set every few months was something considered perfectly feasible and regularly recommended for power users) was the winning formula. It certainly helped that unix was all over academia. 20 years later, when Solaris was the incredibly powerful big dog and linux was the upstart, history repeated itself.
- jonjacky 4y ago
  The thing is that Unix(of the day)'s source wasn't full of 100s of pages of vax assembly code ... VMS wasn't all vax assembly either. VMS and a lot of VAX system software was mostly written in BLISS [1], a high level language intended for systems programming that was created about the same time as C. It was all there for customers to read in a big stack of microfiche cards delivered with each machine. I remember being shown the code for the VMS scheduler or maybe the dispatcher which was 'a page or two of (VAX) assembly' - I recall it was pointed out that it was one of the (few) places in VMS that did use assembly. I don't know how portable the BLISS code for VMS was, but there were BLISS compilers for several other machines besides the VAX. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    Oh I completely agree - but I also remember putting a graphical header on the first page of the output from the print symbiont (aka daemon, essentially CUPS), I had to type in pages of assembler from microfiche
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    And it had bounds checking like most sane system programming languages since late 1950's.
  - ch_123 4y ago
    Most of the kernel was in VAX assembly (I've seen source code listings of VAX/VMS circa V4.x). They were able to port the kernel over to other architectures by creating a compiler that treated VAX assembly as a high level language. This approach came with its costs - even to this day, large parts of VMS remain 32-bit only because it was not possible to automatically make 32-bit assembly code into 64-bit object code for other platforms. Even in programs which use 64-bit addressing, VMS essentially requires you to use a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit pointers in the same program.[1] A similar problem (AFAIK) befell BLISS - BLISS code for the VAX treats all values as 32-bit. There is a separate BLISS-64 compiler for the 64-bit platforms VMS was ported to, but I don't think all the BLISS-32 code was converted over to BLISS-64.[2] [1] http://www0.mi.infn.it/~calcolo/OpenVMS/ssb71/6467/6467p005.htm#chapter_10 http://www0.mi.infn.it/~calcolo/OpenVMS/ssb71/6467/6467p005.... [2] https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/ronald-brender/bliss.pdf https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/ronald-brender/bl...
panick21_ 4y ago
The reality is that lots and lots of early sun costumers were running Unix on their VAX and then the bought a sun and simply continued to use Unix just on a much cheaper machine. So the question is why were all these university people running Unix instead of VMS. Were they just dumb?
- bsder 4y ago
  > So the question is why were all these university people running Unix instead of VMS. Were they just dumb? The "university" people were still running VMS certainly up through 1990 or so. Very few people ran Ultrix on their VAX hardware. And workstations were never widespread in universities as workstations basically cost as much as a car. A lab with 8 workstations was still a big deal in 1990. Unix didn't sweep away VMS, PCs did. Just like PCs swept away workstations. Unix didn't "win" until it latched onto PCs as a host. And people also forget that Unix didn't "win"--it lost terribly to both Microsoft and Apple.

imglorp 4y ago

I was thinking the same as implied here, and yes he said that in 1977 but it was taken out of context; he was referring to home automation and not personal computing. [2] It seems, no, DEC did not miss the PC boat due to one person's nearsighted view. Microvax was 1985 and yes it would have been interesting if they had a low-end personal product based on VAX at that time. They did have the Professional [0] around 1982 based on PDP-11 which I used at school to learn Macro-11 assembly, C and Pascal. It was blazing fast and ran RSX/11 which was years ahead of DOS. They also had the Rainbow [1] around 1982 (maybe marketed to officework) with a z80 and 8088. And then there was the VAXMate in 86 which we don't talk about :). So it seems these were all aiming at the new "PC" market in a scattergun manner but nobody really knew what that was at the time. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Professional_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Professional_(computer) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100 2. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ken-olsen/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ken-olsen/

panick21_ 4y ago
The had to many attempts at building a PC, not to few. It kind of crazy, they basically launched 3 PC type computers at the same time. Between non of them being a actual PC clone, not running the same software and not really able to compete in the race to the bottom price fight they simply failed to get traction.