[ih] Where's Multics now, was Internet-history Digest

[Clem Cole]

First remember Johnny knows a lot about RSX-11M sources so final state I
trust his comment, but he was never a DECie or worked in the Mill or ZKO
like some us so he never lived it and I suggest you take many of comments
with a bit of care.

What I can state for sure is that he’s right that the Culter lead -11M and
later StarOS aka VMS (the later when he worked for my former boss the late
Roger Gourd aka “Fossil” in many DEC histories).

I also know that at the time, DC was said to have made it clear that his
PDP real system was “better” than the early versions RSX which was one of
reasons he got the job to create the rewrite - ie “prove it.”  Knowing Dave
a bit later, I believe those reports.

So how much of -11M came from DEX-15/RSX and how came from DCs system from
DuPont I can not say.  But I can try to ask a few of my
friends and coworkers his were there that might know (I was doing Unix
stuff in those days elsewhere and was not paying attention)

The other point is NT-windows is based on DEC’s which was the new
microkernel DC was writing at DECwest with a VMS and a Tru64 server that he
took to Microsoft’s where IBM, NCR and Microsoft started to write an OS/2
and Presentation manager server. Microsoft was
Also writing a W95 server.

After the divorce,  it became NT-4 net NT-WIN.   IBM move to there original
kernel from Whiteplain and released Warp and NT-windows was released


Again, Multics only came into any influence by the later generations.  But
that was all indirect and by people that joined these projects that
Might have studied it in school.  As I said, I could be Mistaken but I’m
not sure Dave has ever read the book.


Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual


On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 1:01 AM Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 17, 2025 at 4:11 PM Clem Cole via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > Ouch... VMS's parent was RSX, and that's parent was a real-time system
> Dave
> > wrote for the PDP-10 when he was at Dupont before DEC hired him.   To
> > my knowledge, Dave had not read Organick's book when he did those systems
> > (I'm not sure he has even today).   He was purely a real-time guy/process
> > control guy - not a multi-user/mult-tasking.
>
> According to Johnny Billquist, Dave Cutler did a
> "redesign/reimplementation" of RSX-11D, which became RSX-11M. That
> then became the starting point for VMS. RSX started at DEC with Dan
> Brevik on the PDP-15 as DEX-15/RSX-15, then was brought over to the
> PDP-11.
>
> This is part of a post from Dan Brevik on comp.os.vms dated 7/27/2003
> (
> http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=g11Va.162679%24ye4.109589%40sccrnsc01&output=gplain
> ):
> > RSX did not come from a DEC operating system, as you observed. It's
> intellectual
> > precedants were a realtime executive writen by John Neblett (now retired
> in Ashville, NC)
> > for the RW-300 process control computer. Thence to "The Synchronous
> Executive" by
> > me about 1963 for the TRW-330 process control computer. Then I headed
> the project
> > to write "Ops Control" for the BR-340 in 1964 (Dupont loved it).
> Bunker-Ramo left the
> > process control business and I joined Honeywell where I managed the
> project for OLERT
> > on the DDP-516 (John Haynie and Walt Duncan, chief architechs and
> developers). I joined
> > DEC in 1969 in marketing (all marketeers were engineers at that time)
> and hired Sam Reese
> > part time to help me write a real time executive for the PDP-15. (Paid
> him $15,000). I had
> > known Sam at Honeywell where he dashed off a small RT exec called
> Samtran. This gave me the
> > time to just sit back and think. The basic specifications and
> architecture came primarily out of me based
> > on experience.
>
> The Ramo-Wooldridge RW-300 was announced in 1957 and available in 1959.
>
> Visit
> https://web.archive.org/web/20050404121912/http://www.demillar.com:80/RSX/
> and read his outline/notes for more tidbits. And FYI, he does write
> "MULTICS was not an influence."
>
> Jim
>