[Simh] Data General - MV

Fri May 11 11:47:04 EDT 2012

AOS/VS!  That brings back memories.  I used it in college back in the 
1980's on an MV/8000.  Later at a reseller I worked for I had an MV/4000 
in-house and various other MV's that were in various stages of being 
sent to customers.  My last contact with AOS/VS would have been with 
release 6.0.0.0 or 7.0.0.0 in late 1987.  Sadly I have forgotten a lot 
about it though I still have reams of code I wrote back in the day as 
well as some internals tools written in macro.  I did have some fun 
patching the kernel to add "Load System Ring" privilege to PID 2 as well 
as add an IO privilege to my profile that PREDITOR did not offer but 
EXEC was more than happy to pass on to its children.

One thing that was quite advanced for its days was support of "Tasks" 
which we now call "Threads".  The ability to have a program run several 
sections of code simultaneously was an incredible concept though 
necessary in order to implement Control-C/Control-A handlers.  
Cross-task synchronization and deadlocking were all issues I learned 
about before they again became issues for the "multi-threading" community.

If there ever was such an emulator I would not mind trying it out.  
Currently I play with the PDP11 and VAX emulators as I would up spending 
much more time working with DEC equipment than DG.  As such, I have 
retained a lot more knowledge about RSTS/E and VMS than I have about AOS/VS

Robert

On 5/11/2012 4:27 AM, Steve Merrony wrote:
> I have heard it said that most successful OS efforts begin with with 
> someone who 'has an itch to scratch'.  My persistent itch is a curious 
> desire to have AOS/VS running in some form.
>
> Over the years there has been a small amount of discussion on this 
> forum about 32-bit DG, but it always peters out with someone saying 
> they are in touch with ex-DG IP holders and then "nothing continues to 
> happen"...  Given the historical interest in the creation of the Eagle 
> this seems to me to be a crying shame.
>
> I have been pondering a way forward; as I see it there are two options:
>
> 1. We go ahead with an MV simulator in SimH.  There is a lot of intact 
> hardware documentation freely available on the net so I would have 
> thought this is technically feasible.  The problem is software, but 
> there are a few MVs around the world now run by enthusiasts  - maybe 
> they could be persuaded to share privately until an official solution 
> is worked out?
>
> 2. A non-SimH route: we re-implement AOS/VS on modern hardware!  The 
> whole OS, not just the CLI.  This is clearly a wildly different 
> option, and at least as much work as option 1, but I think it could be 
> a fascinating project in its own right.
>
> Anyone interested?
>
>
> -- 
> /Stephen Merrony
> /
>
>
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