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

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 13/04/2013 04:25, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>      > From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
>>
>>      >> Without checking, I think it was somewhat later. MIT got an
>> early one,
>>      >> but that was around 1978.
>>
>>      > A little earlier than that. I graduated in 1975, and remember one
>>      > arriving a couple of years earlier.
>>
>> This too seems unlikely. The VAX 11/780 was "introduced on 25 October
>> 1977 at
>> DEC's Annual Meeting of Shareholders". See:
>>
>>   
>> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/digital/timeline/1977.htm
>>
>>
>> for corroboration of the year.
>>
> 
> That's very odd - my memory must be failing me, but I could have sworn
> we had a VAX to play with, and I wasn't around MIT after 195.

I'd guess you're remembering a PDP11/45, which was top of the range
around 1973, but nobody could mistake it for a 32-bit machine. My
PDP11/45 processor handbook is (C)1973. Of course, at that time, DEC
couldn't even spell u-n-i-x.

    Brian

> 
> Then again, Gorden Bell provides pretty much the definitive rebuttal to
> my memory:
> 
> "So on April 1, 1975 I pulled a group together we called the VAX A
> group. VAX A was the mailing list and there were 6 of us. We took moved
> together on the 3^rd floor of Building 12, almost at the same spot I had
> when I came to DEC in 1960. My main office was on the first floor with
> Ken."  (from http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/bell.htm#VAX)
> 
> Guess it couldn't have been around before 1975 - given that work on the
> VAX hadn't started yet.
> 
> Wonder what it was we were playing with.
> 
> Miles
> 
> 
>