Dennis Ritchie <dmr@bell-labs.com> wrote:
+---------------
| I'm somewhat dubious of Warnock's claim that
| Ward's MIT group had a lot to do with Sun specifically,
| albeit it's made with the support of the document he references
| http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/architects.html
+---------------
Actually, that document was my first and only exposure to that
"claim", which I tossed into my reply only to avoid leaving Sun
Microsystems out of the listing of early 68k-based systems based
on Ward's group's port [if they had been].
All I really know first-hand is that the name "SUN" was originally
the "Stanford University Network" project to provide affordable
networked graphical computing stations for the Stanford campus,
based on homebrew 68k-based Multibus boards with frame buffers &
Ethernet on them, and that many of the folks who had worked on that
went off and started Sun Microsystems, whose first systems were
curiously close to the planned "SUN" terminals. ;-} ;-}
+---------------
| As I recall, Bill Joy took the BSD distribution directly
| from Berkeley. Perhaps the 68K C compiler came from MIT?
+---------------
Your guess is as good as mine. But it's possible, since I know that at
Fortune Systems the MIT 68K C compiler was one of the most important
bits, but we also took a 4.1a-BSD distribution directly from Berkeley.
The Fortune box used a mish-mash of bits, being basically a Unix v.7
kernel hacked locally from the MIT port plus some of BSD-4.1a kernel
(particularly the TTY line disc. code), with a sometimes confusing
union of BSD and Unix System III & PWB user-mode utilities as well.
IIRC, we had a Sys-III license because AT&T had stopped selling the
standalone v.32 licenses needed to get BSD. Or maybe it was that we
wanted PWB too, and PWB came bundled with Sys-III, I forget. Whichever,
our Sys-III license was enough to get both the MIT & BSD tapes, which
were what we *really* cared about... ;-}
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock, PP-ASEL-IA <rpw3@rpw3.org>
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