[ih] What is the origin of the root account?

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at cox.net>

First off, please be careful to distinguish between _ARPANET_ development
(both hosts and switches) and _Internet_ development. Totally separate
efforts, mostly different people, etc, etc.

    > I thought the initial development was done on IBMish and special
    > purpose hardware

The very earliest Internet development was done, AFAIK, on PDP-11/40's
(running ELF, I think?), PDP-10's running TENEX, Jim Mathis' MOS stuff from
SRI - LSI-11's (only), I think? (I think MOS ran on other kinds of 11 too,
I'd have to go check the source; but IIRC Jim's focus was LSI-11's.)

(I wasn't around for that phase, so someone please correct me if I'm
confused.)

Pretty soon after (I'm talking circa 1978 or so here), more PDP-11's showed
up: Dave Mills' Fuzzballs. Somewhere in there Bob Braden did a TCP for an IBM
mainframe at UCLA, and there was also a Multics implementation (although I
don't think it actualy ran until bit later).

    > did the IMP's have an OS?

The ARPANet was only used as a long-haul service to connect together TCP/IP
sites. The IMP's had no software for doing TCP/IP, they were not IP routers.

    > And don't VAXen speak VMS

Vaxes didn't exist at the time of the earliest Internet work. The first Vaxen
(11/780's) did show up shortly thereafter, circa 1979 or so. But they weren't
significant until later on in the process (after the 11/750's showed up).

All the early Vaxen ran VMS. Unix wasn't brought up on the Vax until they'd
been around for a couple of years.

	Noel