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From: info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.info-vax
Subject: Re: How big is VMS?
Message-ID: <4199@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 15-Jan-85 11:04:51 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.4199
Posted: Tue Jan 15 11:04:51 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Jan-85 05:38:09 EST
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: fortune!redwood!rpw3@UCB-VAX

+---------------
| A recent posting to net.unix-wizards mentions UNIX's smallness as one of
| its virtues.  For comparison, I know of a functioning MicroVMS system that
| occupies a total of 2878 blocks on an RD disk and can be stored as a backup
| save set on 4 RX50 floppies.  The person responsible for this calls it
| "NanoVMS", and points out that "since it can MOUNT disks, and perform COPY
| and BACKUP operations from them, it can grow into a full VMS system without
| any omissions."
| ---Pete
+---------------

I'll see you a VMS and raise you back a UNIX... The Fortune Systems 32:16
operating system (a UNIX v.7/4.1bsd/Sys-III derivative), including a fancy
menu-driven shell and "user-friendly" software installation package, comes
with the system on THREE (3) 5-1/4" floppies (less than 2370 1K blocks). Since
it can format disks (floppies and hard disks of various sizes), "mkfs" them,
mount/umount, copy, install, backup, and delete software (both protected
and un-), it could "grow into a full UNIX", except that it already is pretty
much of one. (The compilers, major development tools, and applications are
unbundled.)

This so-called "cold boot set" includes an editor (ed), multi-queue print
spooler (with "printcap"), shells (menu and Bourne), system management tools
(ps, pstat, df, fsck, etc.), terminal support (termcap, page, more), run-time
auto-configuration of hardware, etc. (It's over 270 files.)

Actually, the UNIX stuff is really on the first two disks; the third one is
completely full of the "user-friendly" shell (mostly the screens and the error
messages.) So let's trim it down to what a UNIX person would consider a basic
execution environment -- the first two disks. That's less than 1.6 megabytes.

"I'll see your four floppies and raise (oops! lower) you to two..."


Rob Warnock
Systems Architecture Consultant

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