the grumpiness of old age [was RE: the arrogance of youth [was RE: UNIX V7]]

[Rich Alderson]

> From: John Floren
> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 7:17 PM

> It's pretty cool to hear that TOPS-20 is still out there. Is it the
> kind of thing where you can just hit the OS through a serial port, or
> is it all tucked away carefully behind a lot of special user
> interface? I like the OS, but Plan 9 keeps me busy... too bad that
> either way I couldn't afford one of those boxes.

I haven't seen the new gear in person yet, but I would expect the latter.
Part of my job for a year or so before XKL and I parted ways was defining
the user interface, and it was clear that, for good or ill, customers of
networking gear expect a command set similar if not identical to Cisco's
IOS.

I pushed for an entryway into the OS, but didn't have time to argue for it
strongly.


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104

mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell

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