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Subject: Re: [geda-user] OT-PL/M
From: John Doty <jpd AT noqsi DOT com>
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Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2015 18:02:39 -0600
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On Jul 6, 2015, at 5:07 PM, Dave McGuire (mcguire AT neurotica DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:

> On 07/06/2015 06:37 PM, John Doty wrote:
>>> More history: In the early 80s, IBM first went to Gary Kildall of
>>> CP/M for their IBM-PC DOS.  CP/M did have several PL/M modules (pip
>>> for one).  If Gary had not ignored IBM and go sailing instead of
>>> meeting with the IBM execs, IBM PC-DOS may have had some PL/M in
>>> it.  However, we got ms-dos instead.  As I understand it, Kildall
>>> used a DEC PDP minicomputer running a PL/M cross compiler in order
>>> to develop CP/M.
>> 
>> Must have been one of the bigger DEC machines. He wrote the PL/M
>> cross compiler in Fortran, and it needed at least a 32 bit machine.
>> PDP-10, PDP-20, or VAX maybe.
> 
>  Please pardon me for butting in, but someone mentioned PDPs, so.. ;)
> 
>  The PL/M was done on a PDP-10 (DECsystem-10), a 36-bit machine.

I assume you mean the original development. The actual code was supposed to run on any Fortran with a big enough word size. The code certainly looked very friendly to IBM Fortran IV, but I can’t say I tried it in that environment. I certainly didn’t encounter any use of the peculiar DEC Fortran extensions I’ve seen in other code.

> 
>  The VAX was announced about five years after Kildall began CP/M
> development.

That's right, I wasn’t thinking. 70’s, 80’s, it’s all a blur...

> 
>  (Nit: there's no such thing as a PDP-20, but there are DECsystem-20s,
> which are PDP-10s.)

I’d forgotten that nit, but now my three remaining brain cells are saying yes.

> 
>> In ’75 we upgraded our Intellec system to an 8080, and of course we
>> had to upgrade PL/M as well. One application of that system was Jeff
>> Bokor’s bachelor’s thesis, an early digital CCD camera. Jeff went on
>> to be one of the inventors of the FinFET: there are probably hundreds
>> of millions of those in the computer in front of you.
> 
>  Aren't the "FinFETs" in modern microprocessors not the same thing that
> Bokor et al developed more recently?

As with all inventions, the origins are murky if you look closely enough, and there are variations. I recall the idea of surrounding the channel with gates from an early description of FET technology from the 1960’s. It was part of a pedagogical presentation, which then went on to explain that real FETs used a planar structure. Jeff was certainly involved in the revival of this idea, but I’m not straying any farther into the territory of patent lawyers ;-)

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd AT noqsi DOT com