[geeks] Daily Dose of Unix

[Dave McGuire]

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 11:20 PM, Chris Byrne wrote:
> The first part I knew, the second part. Wow. The machine that probably
> did more to spread UNIX than any other, and it didn't get GCC for 10
> years. Any particular reason why not, or was it just that there were
> already good C compilers avaialble for it.

   GCC is a *big* compiler.  The largest PDP-11s have a 22-bit address 
space.  This makes "big" stuff pretty difficult to pull off.

> Huh, very cool. Are they still functional? I knew ITS never made it 
> past
> the PDP-10, I just wasn't sure how long it kept going. According to the
> Jargon file the last one was shut down in may 1990.

   They are complete but haven't been powered up in a couple of years.  
I'm not sure if that 1990 shutdown date is correct...I will ask Doug.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire                 "Rubber duckies *are* important."
St. Petersburg, FL                            -Doc Shipley