*BSD News Article 20604


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!col.hp.com!csn!csn!raven!rcd
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Subject: Re: BSD demon? : -)
Message-ID: <1993Sep8.034310@eklektix.com>
Organization: eklektix - Boulder, Colorado
References: <25vn87$2qt@agate.berkeley.edu> <BZS.93Sep1024433@world.std.com> <CCp9p9.KI@ra.nrl.navy.mil>
Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 03:43:10 GMT
Lines: 22

atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil (Ran Atkinson) writes:
...
>Another nice thing about Research UNIX v7 on the PDP-11s was that the
>whole thing was small enough that one person could understand what was
>going on in most places most of the time.  

"In 1980, a single person could understand the UNIX kernel.  In 1990, a
single person couldn't even lift it!"

credit to Steve Zucker, and apologies because I've probably mangled the
quote.  He'd figured out what it would weigh if you printed it out as a
normal listing.

(A listing of the V7 kernel weighed a few pounds.  I think you would have
been able to lift a listing of all of V7.)

Dovetails nicely with Barry's quip about never running on a computer he
can lift..."the good old days were when the hardware was heavier than the
software"???
-- 
Dick Dunn    rcd@eklektix.com   -or-   raven!rcd    Boulder, Colorado USA
   ...Simpler is better.