[erlang-questions] Erlang on VAX

[Per Hedeland]

[I doubt that this is of any real interest to erlang-questions@, but I
 guess I'll just follow on...]

Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Mike Williams
><michael.c.williams10@REDACTED> wrote:
>>  Probably 4.1 BSD UNIX, maybe 4.2.

We started with 4.1, but pretty soon upgraded to 4.2 when it was
released - that's the one that brought us TCP/IP, yeah! I'm pretty sure
that we also went to 4.3, but not further. I know that we *had* the 4.4
release (on a cartridge mind you, not the good old 10.5-inch reels
anymore), but I don't think we ever installed it.

>> We bought the VAX with (I think) 4 MBytes of memory and upgraded to 16Mbytes
>> of memory.

My memory (sorry for the pun) is exactly half of those numbers, and I'm
pretty sure about that too - specifically that we had to go from 2 to a
whopping 8 MBytes when we had upgraded to 4.2, because it did much more
agressive caching - with "too little" RAM, 4.2 was significantly slower
than 4.1.

>When was the upgrade bought - at the same time as the original or later?

So the RAM upgrade should have been some time after the 4.2 release,
probably 1984ish, maybe 1985.

--Per

>I'm trying to figure out the configuration when we made the first
>erlang version (so I can compare with a raspberry pi today :-)
>
>/Joe
>
>>
>> From the Wikipedia:
>> "The VAX-11/750, code-named "Comet", was a more compact, lower-performance
>> TTL gate array–based implementation of the VAX architecture introduced in
>> October 1980. The CPU had a 320 ns cycle time (3.125 MHz)"
>>
>> This fits with what I remember. We had 24 RS232 terminal connections, some
>> current loop and some for modems, and mainly VT100 terminals and moved on to
>> Facit Twists.
>>
>> We started  with one RM03 67 Mbyte disk and later added two RP06 256 Mbyte
>> disks and even later added a Fujitsu Eagle 640 Mbyte disk. We also had a DEC
>> tape drive and moved on to a Fujitsu tape drive. There were some sort of
>> cartridge tape drives (small built in one and a larger one taking 3M Tapes)
>> , I can't remember what.
>>
>> For the initial JAM used for the Mobility Server (before ETS and
>> distribution added by Klacke) I wrote somewhere between 10K and 15K lines of
>> C. The Mobility Server had an Industrialised SUN computer initially 68030
>> (68040??) but later Sparc from Force Computers (From Munchen / Munich) and 4
>> Mytes of memory.
>>
>> /m
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7 April 2016 at 12:04, Bjarne Däcker <bjarne.dacker@REDACTED>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Sorry, I have no such documentation.
>>>
>>> Glad vår
>>>
>>> Bjarne
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Can anybody remember the vital statistics of the original VAX that
>>> Erlang was developed on - I think it was a VAX 11/750.
>>>
>>> I'd like to know the basic vital statistics. Clock rate, RAM and disk
>>> volumes. OS version etc.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> /Joe
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>