[geeks] Daily Dose of Unix

[Dave McGuire]

On Saturday, February 1, 2003, at 04:27 AM, Mike Meredith 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.
>
> This might be total bullshit but ...
>
> I suspect the reason the PDP didn't get it was simply the reason that 
> it
> didn't need it ... the UNIXes for the PDP all came with compilers (as
> far as I remember) whereas commercial UNIXes on newer architectures
> sometimes didn't.

   You make a good point here, but keep in mind that PDP-11s (I assume 
we're talking about -11s) fell out of mainstream general-purpose use 
before GCC became a mainstream general-purpose compiler.  PDP-11s are 
still in very widespread use in process control applications, and 
indeed they're still being developed, manufactured, and sold into those 
markets, but those applications rarely call for a general-purpose C 
compiler like GCC.

> I believe that ITS runs on some of the PDP-10 emulators, so I guess you
> could say that there will never be a last one now.

   Eh.  Emulators.  *spit*  A fun diversion once in a while...but it's 
not real hardware.

   Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that they're out there...but 
there's just no substitute for the real thing.

        -Dave

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