Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?
And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it had
to pass Posix certification.
And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:Interesting. Wonder why only RSX at that point in time as there were
Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?
Believe so.>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimer_SQL#History
https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/xDUlCFx-G0s
Everyone knew about the poor performance. But EUNICE wasn't the onlyAnd here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
I remember having heard about it before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:
<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>
:-)Why would I want to run a VAX? It's fun. It's interesting. It's
Why would you want to run Eunice??
1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it hadNot interested in POSIX. I used that when it first came out on the
to pass Posix certification.
GNV is almost modern.Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:Interesting. Wonder why only RSX at that point in time as there were
Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?
Believe so.>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimer_SQL#History
https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/xDUlCFx-G0s
Everyone knew about the poor performance. But EUNICE wasn't the onlyAnd here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
I remember having heard about it before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:
<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>
:-)Why would I want to run a VAX? It's fun. It's interesting. It's
Why would you want to run Eunice??
1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it hadNot interested in POSIX. I used that when it first came out on the
to pass Posix certification.
GNV is almost modern.Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:Interesting. Wonder why only RSX at that point in time as there were
Is the current Mimer DB derived from the on that ran on PDP-11's
and the VAX back in the mid 80's?
Believe so.>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimer_SQL#History
https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-11/c/xDUlCFx-G0s
Everyone knew about the poor performance. But EUNICE wasn't the onlyAnd here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
I remember having heard about it before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:
<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>
:-)Why would I want to run a VAX? It's fun. It's interesting. It's
Why would you want to run Eunice??
1990's VMS 6.x Posix is newer and likely more compatible as it hadNot interested in POSIX. I used that when it first came out on the
to pass Posix certification.
GNV is almost modern.Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
On 6/28/2026 8:39 PM, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:
GNV is almost modern.Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
Unix?-a Not hardly the same as a functional Unix OS running on top
of VMS.
bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
It did it very, very, very slowly.
EUNICE was a bad idea all around.
However, the Software Tools environment from gatech gave you a reasonably unixlike interface on top of Pr1mos and later VMS without making any of the underlying stuff unixlike.
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
Jerry Scott is still on linkedin.
I am very familiar with STVOS.-a Worked with it pretty much from the beginning and liked it.-a Still play with it today.-a If it's development
had continued at the time there would probably never have been a need
for POSIX except as a standard for STVOS.
As for the methodology behind EUNICE, remember PRIMIX?-a That was Pr1me's attempt at the same thing. It's performance was as dismal as EUNICE and
it also gave Pr1me a reason to withdraw permission from the project to
do a native mode Unix on the 50 series which was just about to be
announced and released.
On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:
[snip]
And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
I remember having heard about it before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:
<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility >inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>
In article <6a41bed2$0$665$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>,
Arne Vajh|+j <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
On 6/28/2026 7:30 PM, bill wrote:
[snip]
And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one. Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around? Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it? It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons) and After all these years I would love to play with
it again. I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750. :-)
I remember having heard about it before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_(software) says:
<quote>
Eunice was criticized for its performance problems and not quite
complete Unix compatibility. Eunice's reputation for poor compatibility
inspired the "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." message
included in the Perl configure script.
</quote>
I think it actually predates that.
I suspect Larry Wall introduced it with `rn`, his news reader,
before Perl. The `Configure` script that came with `trn` has
the same text, and that was a fork (essentially) of `rn`.
Indeed, one sees it in old from volume 1 of `comp.unix.sources`,
posted in 1985; Wall didn't publish Perl until 1987:
https://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume1/rn/part02
On 6/28/2026 8:39 PM, Arne Vajhoj wrote:
GNV is almost modern.Isn't GNV nothing but a handful of userland utilities common to
Unix? Not hardly the same as a functional Unix OS running on top
of VMS.
And here's a more obscure one.-a Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE?-a I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure.-a According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD.-a It ran on top of VMS.-a VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
And one last non-technical one.-a-a Is there anyone from the
old Wollongon Groups still around?-a Is there any chance of
getting a copy of EUNICE and permission to run it?-a It does
not have any commercial value that I can imagine (for obvious
reasons)-a and After all these years I would love to play with
it again.-a I assume running on one of my Vaxstation it would
be-a screamer compared to when I ran it on an 11/750.-a :-)
And here's a more obscure one. Anybody here familiar with
EUNICE? I only got to access it as a user in my very first
days of VAX/VMS exposure. According to the write-up in the
VAX Software Sourcebook it was capable of everything found
in BSD 4.1 BSD. It ran on top of VMS. VMS can not do fork().
How did EUNICE do fork()?
On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
It did it very, very, very slowly.
Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.
Bill, just FYI, we at LSSM recovered EUNICE v3.1 from tape a couple
of years ago, along with manuals. We've not tried to run it on
anything but we believe it to be a complete distribution.
bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> writes:
On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
It did it very, very, very slowly.
Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.
You could run Unix on a PDP-11. You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
In article <87h5jqpu4f.fsf@debian>,
Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> wrote:
bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> writes:
On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
It did it very, very, very slowly.
Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.
You could run Unix on a PDP-11. You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
Apples and oranges, I'm afraid. You could run early versions of
research Unix on PDP-11s, sure, but that's not really comparable
to VMS: VMS compares more closely to 4BSD, which would _not_ run
on a PDP-11.
from AT&T (no paging, just swapping). I used the later circa 1981.
bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> writes:
On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
It did it very, very, very slowly.
Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.
You could run Unix on a PDP-11. You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
Kragen
In article <87h5jqpu4f.fsf@debian>,
Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> wrote:
bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> writes:
On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
It did it very, very, very slowly.
Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.
You could run Unix on a PDP-11. You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
Apples and oranges, I'm afraid. You could run early versions of
research Unix on PDP-11s, sure, but that's not really comparable
to VMS: VMS compares more closely to 4BSD, which would _not_ run
on a PDP-11.
- Dan C.
Comparing hardware to software.
You could run Unix on the VAX.
And EUNICE did exactly that. It was Unix on VMS.
kinda like what we do today with VM's but to far ahead for the
capabilities of the hardware.
In article <EUiqS.3$GI1.2@fx01.iad>, Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net> wrote: >>Plus, Unix did run on a VAX, both BSD and a rather dodgy version
from AT&T (no paging, just swapping). I used the later circa 1981.
Other variations too, like BRL Unix from the Army Ballistics Research Lab >which was BSD with some radical modifications.
On 9/15/26 13:35, Dan Cross wrote:
In article <87h5jqpu4f.fsf@debian>,
Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> wrote:
bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> writes:
On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
It did it very, very, very slowly.
Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.
You could run Unix on a PDP-11. You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
Apples and oranges, I'm afraid. You could run early versions of
research Unix on PDP-11s, sure, but that's not really comparable
to VMS: VMS compares more closely to 4BSD, which would _not_ run
on a PDP-11.
- Dan C.
More than early research versions. Version 7 was
pretty complete. And then you had Ultrix-11 which
had a pretty good choice of production software
available to it.
What could you do on 4BSD that can't be done on 2.11?
Other than run programs too big to fit on a PDP-11.
On 9/15/26 08:38, Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote:
bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> writes:
On 6/29/2026 6:57 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
It did it very, very, very slowly.
Not necessarily EUNICE's fault. As I said in my response to Arne,
that was a time when software was too far ahead of hardware.
You could run Unix on a PDP-11. You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
Comparing hardware to software.
You could run Unix on the VAX.
And EUNICE did exactly that. It was Unix on VMS.
kinda like what we do today with VM's but to far ahead for the
capabilities of the hardware.
Still, it was fun to try.
Bill, just FYI, we at LSSM recovered EUNICE v3.1 from tape a couple
of years ago, along with manuals. We've not tried to run it on
anything but we believe it to be a complete distribution.
ThatrCOs fantastic news! I don't suppose you can release it legally, can you?
I interpreted the message you responded to as a bit of a dig on
VMS; as in, you could run Unix directly on both PDP-11 and VAX,
but VMS only ran on the VAX, thus Unix was more flexible or
portable.
My "Apples and Oranges" comment was highlighting that the
comparison isn't very good; at the time VMS was introduced,
contemporary Unix versions were comparatively primitive in how
they took advantage (or rather, did not take advantage) of the
hardware.
On 2026-09-18, Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
I interpreted the message you responded to as a bit of a dig on
VMS; as in, you could run Unix directly on both PDP-11 and VAX,
but VMS only ran on the VAX, thus Unix was more flexible or
portable.
My "Apples and Oranges" comment was highlighting that the
comparison isn't very good; at the time VMS was introduced,
contemporary Unix versions were comparatively primitive in how
they took advantage (or rather, did not take advantage) of the
hardware.
Also, think about the applications running on top of these
operating systems.
In the PDP-11 DEC OS world, if you wanted to run larger applications
(by the standards of the PDP-11, not the VAX), you were into TKB
overlays. [*] :-(
How did PDP-11 Unix handle this problem ?
Simon.
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
You could run Unix on a PDP-11. You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
On 2026-09-15 12:38:24 +0000, Kragen Javier Sitaker said:
You could run Unix on a PDP-11.-a You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
Reality is a little weirder: you can VMS on a box that is also a PDP-11.
The -11 in VAX-11 indicates hardware PDP-11 support.
A large chunk of early VMS was RSX giblets.
SYE was one of the last remaining RSX giblets, last part of VMS V3.
On 9/25/2026 5:57 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:That's not particularly new.
On 2026-09-15 12:38:24 +0000, Kragen Javier Sitaker said:
You could run Unix on a PDP-11.-a You couldnrCOt do that with VMS.
Reality is a little weirder: you can VMS on a box that is also a
PDP-11.
The -11 in VAX-11 indicates hardware PDP-11 support.
A large chunk of early VMS was RSX giblets.
SYE was one of the last remaining RSX giblets, last part of VMS V3.
And now the same physical hardware runs OS/2 and VMS, sometimes both
at once.
The world is really a strange place.She said "Curiouser and curiouser!"
On 2026-09-18, Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
I interpreted the message you responded to as a bit of a dig on
VMS; as in, you could run Unix directly on both PDP-11 and VAX,
but VMS only ran on the VAX, thus Unix was more flexible or
portable.
My "Apples and Oranges" comment was highlighting that the
comparison isn't very good; at the time VMS was introduced,
contemporary Unix versions were comparatively primitive in how
they took advantage (or rather, did not take advantage) of the
hardware.
Also, think about the applications running on top of these
operating systems.
In the PDP-11 DEC OS world, if you wanted to run larger applications
(by the standards of the PDP-11, not the VAX), you were into TKB
overlays. [*] :-(
How did PDP-11 Unix handle this problem ?
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your >application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your
application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem. Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
In article <nhlautF2k3mU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your
application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem. Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
Efficient in what regard?
- Dan C.
In article <nhlautF2k3mU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your
application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem. Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
Efficient in what regard?
On 9/28/2026 10:49 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
In article <nhlautF2k3mU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon-a <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your >>>> application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem.-a Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
Efficient in what regard?
-a-a-a-a- Dan C.
Not efficient!
I will allow that it can be educational.-a I learned to become very
modular in my work, in those days.-a A separate subprogram for every
little operation.-a I still like that type of design.-a Keeps things
simple, and easy to identify issues.
But overlays are a thing best left in the past.
On 9/28/2026 10:49 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
In article <nhlautF2k3mU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your >>>> application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem. Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
Efficient in what regard?
Not efficient!
I will allow that it can be educational. I learned to become very modular in my
work, in those days. A separate subprogram for every little operation. I still
like that type of design. Keeps things simple, and easy to identify issues.
But overlays are a thing best left in the past.
On 9/28/26 10:49, Dan Cross wrote:
In article <nhlautF2k3mU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an
overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your >>>> application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest
of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do
this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem. Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
Efficient in what regard?
The programmer had to learn a bit more about his program in order
to make the overlays work properly and it kinda force you to look
at things like program flow and structure more closely.
Another
facet of programming that has been lost in the age of Vibe Coding.
In article <nhvlnvFmcs4U1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/28/26 10:49, Dan Cross wrote:
In article <nhlautF2k3mU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an >>>>> overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your >>>>> application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest >>>>> of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do >>>>> this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem. Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
Efficient in what regard?
The programmer had to learn a bit more about his program in order
to make the overlays work properly and it kinda force you to look
at things like program flow and structure more closely.
Ok, I get that, but that's not describing efficiency. Rather,
it is describing a programming process that forces engaging with
software on a deeper level, because otherwise, the program won't
run.
Another
facet of programming that has been lost in the age of Vibe Coding.
No argument there. LLMs can be useful, but only if you already
know what you're doing. If you don't, you're going to have a
bad time.
- Dan C.
In article <119e75n$2hsub$1@dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
On 9/28/2026 10:49 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
In article <nhlautF2k3mU1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
[*] This was a method, used during linking, in which you described an >>>>> overlay map, and the OS then mapped in and out various segments of your >>>>> application at runtime as various parts of it were called by the rest >>>>> of the application.
The :-( is because I have direct personal experience of having to do >>>>> this multiple times... :-) Never, ever, ever, again. :-)
I was very glad to get to VAX and leave all that behind.
Never saw it as much of a problem. Actually helped a lot in making
more efficient programs.
Efficient in what regard?
Not efficient!
I will allow that it can be educational. I learned to become very modular in my
work, in those days. A separate subprogram for every little operation. I still
like that type of design. Keeps things simple, and easy to identify issues. >>
But overlays are a thing best left in the past.
Agreed on all counts.
I can certainly see overlays forcing the program to think more
critically about a program, but I can't imagine how the system
juggling overlays around in memory to compensate for a teeny
address space is efficient in terms of using the machine.
In article <nhvlnvFmcs4U1@mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> wrote:
The programmer had to learn a bit more about his program in order
to make the overlays work properly and it kinda force you to look
at things like program flow and structure more closely.
Ok, I get that, but that's not describing efficiency. Rather,
it is describing a programming process that forces engaging with
software on a deeper level, because otherwise, the program won't
run.
Another
facet of programming that has been lost in the age of Vibe Coding.
No argument there. LLMs can be useful, but only if you already
know what you're doing. If you don't, you're going to have a
bad time.
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