Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (More info?)
Mxsmanic wrote:
> David Maynard writes:
>
>
>>That, no doubt, is why DARPA chose it to be the preferred "universal
>>computing environment" linking together Arpanet research nodes, which
>>evolved into the Internet.
>
>
> I'm sure they chose it for reasons other than technical superiority;
And what makes you so "sure?"
> if
> they wanted the latter, they could have used Multics.
Multics was long on promise but routinely short on delivery and was
perpetually behind schedule, by years seemingly approaching decades. By
1985 Honeywell (acquired it in 1970, just one year after the first system
emerged) had tried to cancel the thing 5 times, it doesn't instill gobs of
confidence when the maker is trying to assassinate it, till they succeeded
in 85 on the 6'th try. Numerous ports were contemplated but none of any
major significance made it.
There were some revolutionary ideas in Multics but it takes more than just
the ideas.
> Licensing and
> availability issues were very important, then as now. The fact that
> UNIX was a stripped Multics that could run on readily available hardware
> was probably a factor, also, though. And remember that there wasn't
> really much (any?) competition.
>
>
>>One can immediately see the benefits to ARPANET. Applications could be
>>developed ONCE and commonly applied to all machines regardless of the
>>particular hardware employed at any one site.
>
>
> Multics was written in a high-level language long before UNIX.
There's more to it that just programming in a high level language.
Mxsmanic wrote:
> David Maynard writes:
>
>
>>That, no doubt, is why DARPA chose it to be the preferred "universal
>>computing environment" linking together Arpanet research nodes, which
>>evolved into the Internet.
>
>
> I'm sure they chose it for reasons other than technical superiority;
And what makes you so "sure?"
> if
> they wanted the latter, they could have used Multics.
Multics was long on promise but routinely short on delivery and was
perpetually behind schedule, by years seemingly approaching decades. By
1985 Honeywell (acquired it in 1970, just one year after the first system
emerged) had tried to cancel the thing 5 times, it doesn't instill gobs of
confidence when the maker is trying to assassinate it, till they succeeded
in 85 on the 6'th try. Numerous ports were contemplated but none of any
major significance made it.
There were some revolutionary ideas in Multics but it takes more than just
the ideas.
> Licensing and
> availability issues were very important, then as now. The fact that
> UNIX was a stripped Multics that could run on readily available hardware
> was probably a factor, also, though. And remember that there wasn't
> really much (any?) competition.
>
>
>>One can immediately see the benefits to ARPANET. Applications could be
>>developed ONCE and commonly applied to all machines regardless of the
>>particular hardware employed at any one site.
>
>
> Multics was written in a high-level language long before UNIX.
There's more to it that just programming in a high level language.
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