On Thu, 12 Sep 1991 16:36:59 -0400 (EDT), John C Klensin wrote:
I claim that with the demise of Tenex, TOPS-20, and
Multics that file descriptors are much simpler in
Interesting. The death announcement of one or two of these might be
a tad premature, even if the "mortal wounds" are clear.
Panda.Panda.COM (probably the first home DEC-2020) is still happily churning
out TOPS-20 cycles downstairs. She gets a bit cranky about the unreliable
island power, and her tape drive still isn't working, but the old girl may
live to see the century tick yet. I hope to get her talking TCP/IP someday
(if/when I get the drive that spins my source pack fixed).
Unix-only, hmm? This message comes from a not-UNIX system.
I was speaking with tongue firmly in cheek.
By the way, I'm very happy to see from your Message-ID that there are people
still using the MM mail interface that I did so much to evolve and popularize.
Mike McMahon (the original author way back when) would be happy too. Try IMAP
sometime, it's very much of that religion.
If you'll recall, there's a whole
section of FTP that was devoted to
specifically Tenex and TOPS-20 file transfer.
yes. But, if I recall, that was not a set of file description issues
per se
No, it had to do with transferring the FDB information and file page table,
TYPE XTP or something like that. Bob Clements wrote the first RFC on this
almost 20 years ago. TCP-based FTP tried to define it in an operating system
independent way. Tenex and TOPS-20 used it, I think VMS tried to but I don't
know how successful that was.
-- Mark --