<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Hmm since this has deteriorated into stories and history of Dave and what he did. I'll add one of mine and what I know. Apologies to this group ahead of time if you do not, but I think many of you might find it amusing if not interesting.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">I was under the impression Culter built something similar to RSX for the PDP-10 pre-DEC (for DuPont). At least that is what guys like Fossil, Clark D'Elia who had worked with Dave on RSX, Paul Cantrell who had worked on VMS's file systems and Tom Kent on the terminal system had always said to me. I'm pretty sure it was the DEC sales guys that introduced him to the engineering teams and eventually he went to work for Roger in the "VAX SW" team. I've never been completely sure of the path, I think Dave came late to RSX proper, although I thought he had a heavy hand in the "11M" implementation.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">I can say, in the early 1980s, I first met him at a bar in Littleton Ma (the old "Maui ??something??" - which is now the site of the YankeeZee River Restaurant) in Littleton, MA. Clark knew I had programmed on VAX Serial #1 under VMS and done the TCP/IP work so was pretty familiar with the systems and even Dave's C compiler, but prefered UNIX and "Ritchie C." Dave and I knew of each other and had actually exchanged emails previously but have never met in person before that night. Clark wanted us to meet, so he arrange for some of the VMS guys to getgether and dragged me along when Cutler who was at the time at DEC west working on what would later become Mica and had come east at that point for some mtg in Maynard WRT uVax IIRC. Dave Cane (Mr. VAX 750), heard the meeting was going to happen and walked into Roger's office, who was later reported by I think it was Janet Egan as having to have replied: "Oh sh*t one of them is going to tear a new a*shole into the other."</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Anyway, we all ended up at the bar and Clark tried to trying to start a food fight by turning to Dave and introduced me with the words: "Dave meet Clem. He's one of the old UNIX guys and he thinks all the SW DEC built in the last few years sucks." But Fossil then turned to Dave and said "When I hired you I had a fiery red beard [he turned grey in the mid-70s], and then turned to me and said and after you I went bald." Truth is we got along fine that night and would each buy the other a beer or two. In fact, Dave and I would work together a few years later on NT-OS/2 uKernel when he was at MSFT and I was at NCR.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">But that evening, I would not grant him two design issues with VMS - using assembler instead of BLISS [DC hates BLISS] and the file naming conventions [which he defended as being required to be compatible with RSX and I replied but he wasn't]; and he would not give into the fact the UNIX had a command system that was in his words "random" and "unclean" in the handling of things like errors [I understand but accept it as a cost of that's what happens when you have a lot of different developers as opposed to small controlled team and in return you get a lot of useful work from a lot of people]. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The truth is we both respected the work the other had done and understand why both systems were successful and useful and I think Clark was disappointed it did not become a shouting match. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">As for NT, Dave definitely lead Mica, which begat NT-OS/2 @ MSFT. Windows was spliced into what would become NT-Windows by the time it became a product. But Dave's team was responsible for uKernel portion and he will tell you he was influenced by CMU's Mach and what had made UNIX successful. When it was still Mica, the idea was to have two user mode API's, one being VMS and one being UNIX with the new ukernel being coming between them. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Clem</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 2:20 PM, Johnny Billquist <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bqt@softjar.se" target="_blank">bqt@softjar.se</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On 2015-03-04 20:18, Bill Cunningham wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
----- Original Message ----- From: <<a href="mailto:lists@openmailbox.org" target="_blank">lists@openmailbox.org</a>><br>
To: "SIMH" <<a href="mailto:Simh@trailing-edge.com" target="_blank">Simh@trailing-edge.com</a>><br>
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2015 7:45 AM<br>
Subject: Re: [Simh] Regarding "Cutler THE father of VMS" myth<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Incredible post! This list is worth following for the scope of<br>
information<br>
alone, even if you never run SIMH...<br>
<br>
<br>
On Tue, 3 Mar 2015 17:28:25 -0800<br>
Sergey Oboguev <<a href="mailto:oboguev@yahoo.com" target="_blank">oboguev@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Since the topic of "Cutler the Demiurg of VMS" comes up once in a while<br>
here and there...<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
[fantastic post deleted for brevity]<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
This sounds to me that Cutler and maye RSX was about the same time<br>
that Ritchie and Thompson also got Unix together. And I guess it was 5<br>
years later that Kildall put CP/M together. And the 8" diskette came<br>
together.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
Actually, Ritchie and Thompson did Unix before Cutler did RSX. But Cutler didn't design RSX, he just reimplemented it. The early versions of RSX are contemporary with Unix, yes.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
Johnny</font></span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
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