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Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.college
Subject: Re: Free and undirected campus computing facilities
Message-ID: <424@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Nov-84 14:46:46 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.424
Posted: Tue Nov 13 14:46:46 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Nov-84 03:42:57 EST
References: <457@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 47

In case anyone is interested, this is further information on the 11/45
that Peter Rowley mentioned:

The machine was not originally purchased for running UNIX - it was
obtained for another project involving custom code running under RSX.
But after several years, the project still wasn't quite working, and a
group of interested people requested machine time to try to get UNIX
up.  UNIX was booted by building a root filesystem image on another
UNIX 11/45 on campus, taking the RK05 disk to yet another 11/45 running
RT11 which then transferred the disk image over a serial line to the
target machine (which didn't have a DEC disk of any sort).  For four
months, UNIX and the other project were running 12 hours a day each.
At the end of this period, UNIX took over entirely.

After the first few years of running UNIX, the machine was increasingly
used for teaching courses - it was the only UNIX machine available to
the math faculty, and there was no other system that allowed the
operating systems people to build groups of communicating simultaneous
processes, and no other system that had tools as suitable for teaching
a compiler course on.  So it came to be heavily overloaded, and not
really useable for kernel (or other types of) hacking.  In addition,
the professor who was responsible for the system seemed to object to
people doing undirected hacking anyway - he wanted people to have
specific goals, and demonstrate that the hacking wasn't affecting their
schoolwork.

Thus, for the last few years that the 11/45 was in general use, it
really wasn't a hacker's machine anyway.  Then, the faculty purchased
its first VAX to replace the /45, but it was intended for teaching and
research only, and was instantly overloaded too.  The 11/45 was donated
to the computer graphics group (it was the original "watcgl") where it
was used for a year or so.  Then the computer graphics people obtained
their own VAX, and the /45 was donated to the Ontario Science Centre.

I should note that I'm one of the group of hacks who maintained the
/45, and in fact one of the last people who learned UNIX internals on
that machine.  I started using it in 1976, and the few years following
that were the most productive in learning the system and experimenting
with modifications to it.  Then, almost nobody used UNIX for "serious"
work and thus we could reboot it almost any time with little warning.
(The fact that the hardware was a hodgepodge of obsolete stuff from
various vendors with no maintenance support for most of it probably
helped - it went through periods where it crashed so often that only
the hacks could tolerate using it anyway.)

Ah, the good old days!
	Dave Martindale