Subject: Re: Genealogy of Mini UNIX?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 22:54:11 -0500

Point me at (or describe) what documentation you've got
and I will try to remember more details.  Names
on it like Heinz Lycklama and Doug Bayer
would be interesting.

	Dennis

Subject: Genealogy of Mini UNIX?
From: Warren Toomey <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 13:23:31 +1100 (EST)

Hi Dennis, sorry to disturb you again. Can you remember the genealogy of
Mini UNIX? From the documentation here, it says:

	The MINI-UNIX system running is configured to run on an 11/10 with
	the given disk and the console teletype (KL) and using the EIS
	(extended instruction set) software emulation package. MINI-UNIX
	uses 12K words of memory for the system and 16K words for user
        programs.

	There are a number of differences between the capabilities of
	MINI-UNIX and standard UNIX of which the user should be aware.
	The concept of ``groups'' is not supported in MINI-UNIX; no
	profiling is done in MINI-UNIX; it is not possible to interactively
	debug another running process in MINI-UNIX. User programs are
        limited to 16K words in size and the sharing of text is not possible.
	Pipes are not implemented in the system; rather they are implemented
	as ``pseudo-pipes'' in the Shell command.

You know, this sounds just like 2nd Edition UNIX, i.e before you got the
11/45 and before pipes were added to the kernel.

I was wondering if Mini UNIX descends from 2nd Edition UNIX with the
addition of application-level things from 3e, 4e, 5e and 6e, or if
someone took 5e or 6e and `undid' all the things like memory management,
pipes and groups.

I'm just off for a few weeks vacation, but hope to be able to read my
e-mail periodically.

Thanks again!
	Warren

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 23:15:22 -0500

I can cope with the attachment, and looked at the beginning
of the memo files.

Heinz L and others did indeed spend time adapting Unix
over 5-6-7 edition to keep running on smaller machines,
and did I think release versions of this.   It wasn't captured
as of 2nd edition; instead (as the memo date indicates)
the 6th was out, and the 7th was being worked on.
They picked out some newer things not to adopt and
found things to delete without too much injury.   We
were getting bigger machines, they wanted to keep
the essentials going on very small ones (especially
without MMU).  They were thinking lab equipment.
Memo2 is explicit that 6th edition was a model for
what they tried to do.

	D.