

VAXen, my children, just don't... - DiabloD3
http://crash.com/fun/texts/vaxen-dont.html

======
ChuckMcM
The really funny thing for me, is that I remember Monday the 19th of October
very differently. Sun had called together the biggest press conference they
had ever had, they were announcing that Sun and AT&T were going to work
together to jointly build one true standard UNIX which everyone would run,
with interoperability and reliably across the spectrum of computing. And that
AT&T was putting 1B$ into Sun and had options to put another B$ in.

Eric Schmidt, who was the lead on that press conference, and Bill Joy who was
his technical backup, were really confused why all during the conference
reporters kept running out of the conference room to make phone calls. They
didn't believe that their announcement was _that_ big but everyone was clearly
quite agitated.

The clipping service didn't find a single major daily that covered that press
release that day. Magazines that had it and were embargoed went with it. But
it got little to no coverage.

~~~
DougMerritt
> Sun and AT&T were going to work together to jointly build one true standard
> UNIX

Which worked, but technically everything was SysV-flavored afterwards, which
in many regards was a huge backward step IMNSHO. Sun OS was a joy to work with
before that, not so much after.

Also it was sad to see NeWS go -- and speaking of pain: motif.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Which worked, but technically everything was SysV-flavored afterwards, which
> in many regards was a huge backward step IMNSHO.

I'm familiar with the history of System V and BSD as the two competing
"flavors" of UNIX, but I've never seen a clear description of what "SysV-
flavored" really meant in terms of regular interaction with the system. Since
you've clearly had some personal history with this change, could you elaborate
on what "SysV-flavored" actually meant for SunOS?

~~~
DougMerritt
Well, AT&T/SysV regarded themselves as the 600 pound gorilla in the room, and
Sun as the young upstart punk kid, so in building a joint system, everything
"compromised" by just doing it the SysV way.

/bin & /usr/bin was populated by SysV tools with SysV options, with the
particularly incompatible command line options of "ps" that plague it and
clones of it to this day.

There were still Sun/BSD bin tools hidden away somewhere for use by the
desperate, but they were deprecated and weren't in the search path of one's
coworkers etc. etc.

I remember there being a lot of pressure to adopt SysV "streams", which from
20,000 feet sounded very powerful but were actually a nightmare -- not
according to me, since I managed to avoid them, but according to later
accounts of people I knew at AT&T.

And of course there were similar changes to libraries and man pages and /etc
and init and etc.

I cut my teeth on BSD, contributing in small ways to its earliest development,
and I considered it an improvement over vanilla Bell Labs/AT&T Unix -- not
just NIH; BSD introduced the fast file system and demand paging and the "more"
command (later incarnation "less").

AT&T on the other hand responded with a _very_ strong case of Not Invented
Here; they really seriously did _not_ want to retrofit improvements like that.
And tried to do various clones, like "pg" to replace "more", which was so
awful it couldn't even page backwards, just to give some idea.

System III had a few new features but mostly sucked, due to that attitude, and
System V was more or less more of the same.

Sun OS took all of the BSD improvements (ok, 7 options to "cat" is arguable,
but whatever) and added more nice stuff, like NFS and RPC (RPC got a lot of
flak, but originally there really was no alternative) and "Yellow Pages"
(later renamed to NIS/Network Information Services for trademark reasons).

NeWS was a breakthrough in windowing, based on postscript rendering to screens
(although not the same as Display Postscript), and was quite brilliant.

In creating a common standard, the compromise was to throw away or hide the
majority of the BSD and Sun OS improvements in order to, basically, just let
AT&T do things their own inferior way.

NFS was already becoming an industry standard, so it didn't go away, but NeWS
did, in favor of the incredibly bad "Common Desktop Environment" GUI standard,
which was a step backwards relative to all X11 offerings, not just relative to
the breakthrough NeWS.

The alternative, Motif, had a ridiculously complex and clumsy API that took
vast amounts of boilerplate programming to get anything done. Dark times for
GUIs.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Desktop_Environment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Desktop_Environment)

[In my first draft I mixed that up with Open Look, a sign of fuzzy memory]

I haven't thought about it in ages, so there are likely a bunch of other
things I'm not remembering, but the net result was a standard that was far
less pleasant to program to or to do system administration on -- plus many
instances of dual standards.

Chuck above was hit by similar nastiness in the kernel itself; I wasn't
dealing much with kernel internals at the time, but from what I heard, it was
perhaps even worse there.

If Sun OS had merged with Plan 9, that would have actually advanced the world,
rather than retarding it.

~~~
rbanffy
> NeWS was a breakthrough in windowing, based on postscript rendering to
> screens (although not the same as Display Postscript), and was quite
> brilliant.

Although the idea of building apps in PostScript is the stuff nightmares are
made of, I recognize it was indeed brilliant. It was partly the work of a
young James Gosling.

I remember CDE was heavily, although indirectly, influenced by Microsoft
through both HP and IBM. CDE windows and menus are just 3D-like versions of
Windows 2 windows.

------
dsr_
A bit of explanation: a VAX 750 is about the size of a large washing machine.
It does about 1 MIPS, and can handle a surprisingly large number of serial
terminal users simultaneously due to the I/O design. An RA60 is a hard disk
unit, but not the sealed "Winchester" technology that IBM was promoting (and
certainly won). Each disk pack could store 200 or so MB on several 14 inch
platters that were held in a clear pack. It was frightening, expensive, and
remarkably rugged.

By the time I was part-time sysadmin of one in 1992 or so, they were totally
obsolete, and my 486DX-33 running Linux was faster at everything... except
effective serial I/O for multiple users.

~~~
hapless
By the time you were a sysadmin of a 750, in 1992, several generations of
newer VAX chipsets had come and gone.

The later VAX CPUs were considerably faster than a 486.

~~~
ajross
Not that overwhelmingly faster. The early 90's were the swan song for the
mainframe. ECL logic was still faster than CMOS, but not by that much, and
transistor density was such that multi-chip CPUs still made sense for many
applications, but not all. The VAX 9000 was contemporary to the 486/33, ran at
about twice the clock speed, probably had 2-3x the net IPC for typical integer
code, had a vector unit (not entirely dissimilar to modern SIMD stuff like
SSE/AVX), and was available in configurations up to 4-way SMP.

That's a much beefier system, surely. But it's not in a different league. And
the contemporary RISC boxes were beating the VAX pretty badly in single-
processor benchmarks already.

~~~
hapless
I meant literal CPUs, in the sense of a microprocessor chip. The ECL VAXen
were not killed off by RISC or 486es. They were killed off by CMOS chip-based
VAX implementations.

The last generations of VAX microprocessors were about 90% as fast as the
giant ECL suckers at a tiny fraction of the cost/heat/size. DEC continued to
manufacture and develop them for several years after the end of ECL.

The VAX chips that killed the 9k sat in desktop/deskside chassis just like a
contemporary RISC system. Literally: you could buy an identical box with
either Alpha or VAX processors.

(Besides, the giant ECL VAXen were always a niche product. Nearly all the VAX
systems sold were based on VLSI and microprocessors.)

~~~
ajross
Oh sure, but the 9000 was DEC's contemporary flagship against which that 486
would have been competing. And my point was that it was faster, but not
immensely so -- maybe 5x, or about the same speed as the Pentium 133 that the
PC owner would be buying within 3 years.

My point wasn't that VAX as an architecture was dead (it wasn't, though it
would be so soon), just a reply to the contention that the line had an
insurmountably large performance lead against commodity CPUs. It didn't
really.

------
mherdeg
In case the date at the end fails to register, the reference (19 October 1987)
is to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_\(1987\))
.

~~~
digisign
And is it true, was this the cause? Or is this fiction?

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
I don't know if the rest is fiction, but it didn't cause the crash. Some
traders I know have told me that many knew they were wiped out before
futures/markets opened.

These can help:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)#Timeline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_\(1987\)#Timeline)

"In 1986, the United States economy began shifting from a rapidly growing
recovery to a slower growing expansion, which resulted in a "soft landing" as
the economy slowed and inflation dropped. The stock market advanced
significantly, with the Dow peaking in August 1987 at 2722 points, or 44% over
the previous year's closing of 1895 points. On October 14, the DJIA dropped
95.46 points (a then record) to 2412.70, and fell another 58 points the next
day, down over 12% from the August 25 all-time high. On Thursday, October 15,
1987, Iran hit the American-owned supertanker, the Sungari, with a Silkworm
missile off Kuwait's main Mina Al Ahmadi oil port. The next morning, Iran hit
another ship, the U.S. flagged MV Sea Isle City, with another Silkworm
missile. On Friday, October 16, when all the markets in London were
unexpectedly closed due to the Great Storm of 1987, the DJIA closed down
another 108.35 points to close at 2246.74 on record volume. American Treasury
Secretary James Baker stated concerns about the falling prices. The crash
began in Far Eastern markets the morning of October 19. Later that morning,
two U.S. warships shelled an Iranian oil platform in the Persian Gulf in
response to Iran's Silkworm missile attack on the Sea Isle City.[8] [9]"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABlack_Monday_(1987)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABlack_Monday_\(1987\))

"The link at the end, which leads to a story about a VAX machine getting into
trouble, might be erroneous. I suggest this because I've seen the story before
without the line at the very end linking it to Black Monday (in fact, I always
thought the event took place significantly prior to 1987). While it's possible
that somebody might add this last line to add dramatic emphasis to the story,
it's unlikely that it would be cut out by somebody - it's forms a punchline to
the story. Therefore I think the link between this VAX story and Black Monday
is probably incorrect. Note: the joke link in question (*Alleged computer
mishap) was removed 2005-11-05 RaulMiller 00:20, 22 November 2005 (UTC)"

------
nate_meurer
I haven't laughed this hard in days:

 _The fire alarm klaxon went off and the siren warning of imminent halon gas
release was screaming. We started to panic but the data center manager shouted
over the din, "Don't worry, the halon system failed its acceptance test last
week. It's disabled and nothing will happen."

He was half right, the primary halon system indeed failed to discharge. But
the secondary halon system observed that the primary had conked and instantly
did its duty, which was to deal with Dire Disasters. It had twice the capacity
and six times the discharge rate._

~~~
d0
I was nearly the victim of a situation like this in the late 90s. There was a
power failure site-wide and the generator failed to start in time (water in
the fuel). There were three of us in the machine room at the time of the power
incident. Unfortunately due to some insane security requirements, the doors
lock in a failsafe situation (this was a UK MoD facility) voiding all health
and safety laws.

One of the idiots decided to light up a cigarette whilst we were sitting in
there in the very dim emergency lighting. Turns out the power system for the
halon was still active and the 60 second alarm went off.

Fortunately we hit the stop button on the wall to prevent it being dumped on
us.

New pants all round that was.

~~~
sdfjkl
Apparently you would not have died:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halomethane#Fire_extinguishing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halomethane#Fire_extinguishing)

~~~
d0
Indeed, but the experience is not one you'd want.

------
bbanyc
_I smiled and said, "No sweat, I'll train you. The first command you learn is
HELP" and proceeded to type it in on the console terminal. So the data center
manager, the shift supervisor and the eight day operators watched the LA100
buzz out the usual introductory text. When it finished they turned to me with
expectant faces and I said in an avuncular manner, "This is your most
important command!"_

 _The shift supervisor stepped forward and studied the text for about a
minute. He then turned with a very puzzled expression on his face and asked,
"What do you use it for?" Sigh._

This feels like every time I've tried to explain some bit of technology to a
non-techie.

------
canadev
I actually clapped and said "Oh my god!" when I got to the last line. That was
a great story.

Also, here is what a Halon discharge looks like:
[http://youtu.be/2fyGGqgVzCY?t=1m36s](http://youtu.be/2fyGGqgVzCY?t=1m36s)

------
pyrocat
So, did the story have anything to do with the punchline or was it a
coincidence? And what happened to the trillion dollars?

------
davb
I enjoy stories like these. I read them throughout my high school years (late
90's, early 2000's).

Now I've been in industry for close to a decade, sometimes I feel like I
missed the golden age of computing.

~~~
sdfjkl
I felt the same. When I was a PFY, I hung out with the then middle aged
mainframe technicians, and they had lots of fantastic stories like this from
the early days of computing.

Stories about unbalanced hard disk units wandering around the room to be found
blocking the door the next morning. HD crashes where you had to vacuum up
metal shavings before replacing the platters (which were the size of a washing
machine drum). Amusing tales of the little vacuum hose that was supposed to
automatically suck the lose end of a tape spool into the drive going wrong.

Now I work almost exclusively with virtual machines, which makes such hardware
failures much less exciting.

------
BillSaysThis
That was the first day of my honeymoon, in Aruba. The hotel had a local four
page paper that came out at noon, so I saw it when we checked in shortly
afterwards. Boy was I glad not to be in the office of the (investment company)
where I worked then. And they said you could never get fired for buying IBM...

------
quux
What was the barrel for?!

~~~
jccooper
Hauling away the destroyed parts, I presume.

------
olssy
Cool story but I read the date was added afterwards and was removed from
wikipedia in 2005 when this was realized:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABlack_Monday_(1987)#Link...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABlack_Monday_\(1987\)#Link_at_end_possibly_wrong)

------
walshemj
I thought that halon systems where supposed to have interlocks so that they
could physically not go off if anyone was in the room.

The dinosaur pen batteries seem to have been done on the cheap though - dont
understated how the power coming back took out the UPS though.

~~~
sp332
The power came back at the same time as the generators came on. I guess this
doubled the, uh, voltage, and threw the phase off... yeah.

Edit: clearly the problem was that too much amperage was pushed! :)

~~~
walshemj
You don't just connect the two in series :-) In fact the best practice is not
to switch from your backup supply back to mains automatically just in case the
power goes out again.

How its should work is mains or your gas turbine are used to charge the
batteries the power is always coming from your battery room.

~~~
rbanffy
I am not sure this was best practice in 1987. We learned a lot from incidents
not entirely unlike this one and I went through one catastrophic power failure
(that took down more than 1000 machines in the late 1990s) due to a cascade
problem between the multiple "redundant" power sources.

One of the machines refused to come back and we got a call from operations
asking where (physically) was the box within the datacenter. It was inside a
Cubix blade-like (we didn't call them blades at the time) chassis.

~~~
walshemj
It's best practice according to my 1948 GPO telecommunications handbook power
always comes from the batteries.

There is an interesting write up on the register about how a London based colo
facility does its UPS here

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/21/city_lifeline_london...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/21/city_lifeline_london_colocation_data_centre/)

~~~
rbanffy
I agree it's the only sane approach, but I have seen a lot of insanity in
computing. It's not impossible telecom best practices were ignored for data
processing until it became obvious computers are every bit as critical as
telephones.

------
novaleaf
is this fiction? if not, then why isn't the causes list of Black Monday
including this?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_\(1987\))

