[PLUG] Sans OS: was Richard M. Stallman resigns

[Steve Litt via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Sat, 21 Sep 2019 08:21:50 -0400
"K.S. Bhaskar via plug" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:

 
> Also, I can say from personal experience that utility programs came
> before operating systems. None of the first five computers I
> programmed (IBM 1620, IBM 1401, IBM 7044, IBM 1800 and PDP-1) had an
> operating system, but the IBM 7044 and PDP-1 had utility programs.

What did you do, toggle in a bootloader and boot to lisp, or something
like that? Did the 7044 and PDP-1 have software that translated calls
from the utility programs to hardware, or did each utility program deal
directly with the hardware?

My Heathkit ET-6800 Microprocessor Trainer[1] supposedly had a "monitor"
instead of an OS, but from my point of view the monitor gave me a 16
button hex keyboard input, and a 4 digit 7 segment LED output, so I had
a shell. The machine behaved just like a single user, single process
Linux machine whose data was all hex numbers between 0 and 255, so to
this day I'm not sure why it was called a "monitor" and not an "OS".

[1] https://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/heathkit_et6800.html#

SteveT
 
Steve Litt
Author: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt

___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug