prime help

[Danny Sharpe]

In article <643 at rclex.UUCP> walt at rclex.UUCP (Walter L. Weber) writes:
>> I am looking for information on a UNIX or UNIX-like operating system to run
>> on a PRIME 2550 at Sharon High School. Does anyone know of such a system.  If
>> so please let me know how I can get a copy.  I have tried PRIME's "PRIMIX"
>> and found it wanting:  too slow, too new, too buggy
>
>An earlier, limited attempt at an emulation was the "Software Tools
>Subsystem" done at Georgia Institue of Technology.  The document I have
>on this is from the School of Information and Computer Science, is dated
>April 1982, and carries the number "GIT-ICS-82/05" on the title page.  It
>is approx. 100 single-sided pages long.
>
>Good luck - PRIMOS is their chosen route.

Good old Software Tools.  Tech isn't supporting it anymore, something to do
with our primes getting too expensive too maintain, I believe.  It's a shame,
too, because I quite liked it.  It was a shock to have to move to unix, and I
didn't move willingly.  There was enough overlap between swt and unix that I
wasn't totally lost and could make intelligent guesses about how to do things.
But unix is a pain in the ass to try to learn on your own, even if you're
already familiar with a derivative system, whereas I learned swt almost
exclusively from the on-line documentation.

By the way, swt was slow, too, in large part because it ran on top of primos.
Its pipes weren't real pipes, either; they were just hidden temporary files.
But the written documentation was infinitely better (more accurate and less
hostile towards the beginning user) and the user interface a bit more consist-
ent.  It didn't have all the bells and whistles unix has, but then there were
also a few functional enhancements here and there.

<Sigh.>  Forgive me.  Just reminiscing.


                                                 -Danny




-- 
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Danny Sharpe
School of ICS
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!dts