[COLUG] first Unix with demand-paged virtual memory

[Steve Roggenkamp]

I actually had one of these in the late 80s.  It had a 1200 baund modem 
and I used UUCP extensively for email.  To get software source code, I 
had to send an email request to a particular address, somewhere at 
Digital, if I remember correctly and it would FTP the requested file, 
bust it up into chunks and email them back.  I had to reassemble them 
and run it through uudecode to recreate the original tar ball.

It wasn't quite as sophisticated as the UNIX workstations I was used to 
at work (Sun 2/3, Ultrix, etc.), but what the heck, it was UNIX.

I finally replaced it with a Gateway 486 around 1991 using the Williams 
UNIX emulator, I don't remember what it was named.  At work we were 
using the 386BSD distribution.  I installed it on the Gateway using 
about 30 or so floppy disks.  It took forever.  A friend at work gave me 
a Slackware distribution of Linux and I installed it.  The big advantage 
of Linux at that time was that it had dynamic libraries whereas 386BSD 
was statically linked.  The dynamic libraries allowed me to have more 
programs in the limited amount of disk space available at that time, 
about 200 MB.  So I settled on Linux.  The rest is history.  I still 
have my original CD distribution of Linux, a Trans-Ameritech packaging 
of the Slackware 1.2.0 distribution (1.0 kernel).

Times have changed for the better.

Steve

jep200404 wrote:
> Is the claim that the AT&T PC 7300 (aka UNIX-PC aka 3B1) had the first 
> Unix with demand-paged virtual memory? It seems hard to believe. 
>
> In http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1005754, I see the following: 
>
>    Let's not forget the first Unix with demand-paged virtual memory: 
>    the AT&T PC 7300 (or UNIXPC). It had 1MB RAM, 4MB virtual memory, 
>    10 MHz 68010, SysVR3, loadable drivers, and email, among other things. 
>    It even had primitive windowing.
>
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