On January 14, the first day of the old New Year 2017, an article was published "».
1987 year
After reading it, which caused a lot of emotions, the year 1987 surfaced in my memory, in its own way a significant year in my life. This is the year when I moved from an ordinary junior researcher to the head of one of the leading departments in the research institute, which was entrusted with ensuring the maximum automation of the scientific research process.
And so, 30 years ago, now back in 1987, Andrew Tanenbaum wrote a Unix-compatible operating system, Minix, as a tutorial for his book Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (1987, ISBN 0-13-637406-9). . An abbreviated 12000 lines of source code written primarily in the C programming language, the kernel, the memory management subsystem, and the Minix file system were printed in the book. Andrew Tanenbaum developed the Minix OS for the IBM PC and IBM PC/AT computers available at the time. By this time, personal computers compatible with the IBM PC began to appear in our country. and even EC-1845, on which, as it turned out, the Minix OS successfully worked.
In the same year, 1987, I begin to write the column "ENGINEER AND COMPUTER" in the journal "Technology and Science". The first publication in this rubric was an article in No. 7 of the magazine with the title "". And this article says that it is operating systems that allow you to switch to "you" from a computer.
But already in the next issue of the journal an article was published with the title "Introduction to the UNIX operating system":
During this period, the United States put forward a strategic defense initiative (SDI), and the USSR developed the Anti-SDI program.
Simulation stand
Within the framework of this program, it was supposed to create a simulation stand (SIM) and a computer-aided research design (CAD) system, which would allow not only to simulate the consequences of the implementation of SDI, but also put forward requirements for systems that neutralize these consequences. The technical base of SIM/SAIPR was supposed to be a powerful computer network that unites local computer networks of scientific departments:
The network was supposed to include both large EC computers, such as EC-1066, as well as personal computers of the order of 200 pieces. But most importantly, these computers were supposed to install UNIX-compatible operating systems of the MOS EU. And if there were no problems with large machines and the OS MOS EC was installed on them, then there were problems with installing it on computers like the EC-1840, because. a hard drive was required, and the release of the OS was delayed. And the very delivery of personal computers was a very difficult matter. They were sorely lacking. They could only be obtained through the Decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, having previously coordinated all this with interested departments, such as the State Planning Committee of the USSR (now the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation is located in its building), GK VTI (State Committee for Computer Engineering and Informatics, USSR State Committee for computer technology, formed in April 1986) and a number of others.
An amusing incident occurred during the coordination of the plan for the supply of computer equipment to the VTI Group.
They came for you
The three of us arrived there - I was in the rank of major, in chrome boots, with a pistol in a holster on my belt, and with a sealed suitcase in my hands. No, it was not a nuclear suitcase, it contained a draft of the future Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 931-226 dated 8.08.87. I was accompanied for solidity (such was the instruction of the head of the institute, Lieutenant General Volkov L.I.) Major General Bordyukov M. .M. and the real Colonel Boyarsky A.G. When we went up to the Chairman's reception room, we were overwhelmed by two things - a very beautiful blonde secretary and boxes of PC Olivetty dumped all over the reception desk. It was a blue dream to have at least a few such computers at the institute.
To our question, is it possible to get to the Chairman, the secretary replied that he was not there yet, but should arrive any minute and offered to wait. After some time, the Chairman appears with an assistant. To the silent question of the Chairman, the secretary answered sincerely:- "It's for you!". He walks silently into the office, we follow him.
And when he found out what we all came for, we received his coordinating signature without any questions. At that time, these were huge deliveries - one and a half dozen large computers, up to the EU-1066, and about 200 PCs EU-1841/45, almost the entire annual production of computers in the USSR. And I must say, albeit with a delay, we received these computers:
Go away!
But there were other examples as well. It was necessary to obtain a visa from the Deputy Chief of Communications of the Armed Forces of the USSR.
At that time, this position was held by Lieutenant General Trofimov Kirill Nikolaevich, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Hero of Socialist Labor. At the reception to Trofimov K.N. I arrived, as always, accompanied by the general on duty. Trofimov K.N. invited me to the desktop and we discussed for a long time the problems of automation, equipping the institutes of the Moscow Region with computers. The main question is why there should be preferences for you. But in the end he said: - "Give me your papers, I will sign." But while I was getting them out, the voice of the “duty” general (I won’t give my last name) was heard: “How can you not understand the full significance ...”. And this was said to Trofimov KN ... I was numb. And not in vain. General Trofimov K.N. silently got up, took a folder with our papers and threw it towards the exit: "Get out of here!". But all's well that ends well. I came to see him again, apologized and the visa was received. Unfortunately, this highly respected general died in the line of duty on October 19, 1987 in a Mi-8 helicopter crash in Hungary.
First Chairman of the State Technical Commission of Russia / FSTEC of Russia
Simultaneously with the coordination of plans for the supply of computer equipment, the development and coordination of the Terms of Reference for the design and creation of SIM / CAD was underway. The Institute of Technical Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR, director Semenkov O.I. was chosen as the lead contractor. By the way, at one time the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR was also considered. But preference was nevertheless given to the ITC of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. And by the end of 1986, the TOR was ready, it remained to obtain a visa from the First Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Colonel-General Yashin Yu.A., to approve Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences Borisevich N.A. from the President of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. and Commander-in-Chief. After that, roll up your sleeves and complete the task. And in mid-December, I find out that General Yu.A. Yashin arrived at the institute. I grab the suitcase with the TK project and rush down the side stairs towards the reception room of the head of the institute. And on the stairs I collide head-on with the head of the institute and General Yu.A. Yashin. Without hesitation, I ask permission from Yu.A. Yashin. contact the head of the institute. He was taken aback, but allowed. I reported to the head of the institute that we were running out of time and we had to get a visa from Yu.A. Yashin. And lo and behold, this visa was obtained right here on the flight of stairs.
In January 1992, Yashin Yu.A. becomes Acting Chairman, and on January 18, 1993 he was appointed Chairman of the reorganized State Technical Commission under the President of the Russian Federation, the role and status of which increased significantly (the Chairman of the Commission was equated with the Minister). From a highly specialized military body, the State Technical Commission has become a federal agency responsible for information security. Currently, the State Technical Commission of Russia has been transformed into the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC of Russia). And on February 4, 2002, your obedient servant was awarded the nominal watch of the Chairman of the State Technical Commission of Russia under the President of the Russian Federation.
Without windows and doors
All that remained was the final touch - to approve the President of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Borisevich N.A. And four days before the New Year 1987, in agreement with the director of the ITC of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR Semenkov O.I. I come to the Hero City Minsk. I meet with Semenkov O.I. and I ask you to clarify when we are going to the President of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. And then strange things begin, they say that he is busy, then they begin to treat him with caramel pillows from the director's ration, etc., and in the afternoon they suddenly declare that they would like to remove or change this or that item of the TK. In particular, it was suddenly said that they would not want to use a Unix-compatible OS. I realized that I just need to return to Moscow. And I did it. And when I came to work the next day, they were already calling from Minsk, apologizing and asking me to come and sign the ToR. In the evening I was already on the train. On the platform, the director himself met me on the Volga and we immediately went to the President.
We went to the President's office, sat down at the table, and when I looked back at the door through which we entered, it was not there: there were shelves with books all around.
I realized that I can only get out of here with an approved TK. We talked for an hour and a half, talking about the prospects of domestic computer technology (or as it is now fashionable to talk about import substitution), and then with the signed TOR, I went to the station. I celebrated the New Year at home.
Cadres decide everything
And so, in order to train personnel, teach these personnel to work on Unix systems (and everyone worked on the EU OS before), teach the C language (and everyone used PL / 1, Fortran, Pascal before that), a Unix-like operating system was urgently needed . And Andrew Tanenbaum gave it to us. And all this, like in a fairy tale, happened in 1987, and she worked for the EU-1840!
But we had to add something, change something in it. The ability to boot from a hard drive was added, Cyrillic was added, but the most important thing from the point of view of an ordinary user was the development of a user monitor similar in capabilities to the system in MS-DOS, using escape sequences.
By this time, drivers for data exchange via COM ports between a PC with Minix / MINOS were already included in it.
In 1991, at the All-Union Scientific and Practical Conference in the city of Gomel, a report was made on the “Mobile instrumental operating system MINOS”:
Orlov V.N., Moscow
Mobile instrumental operating system MINOS
The MINOS system is a UNIX-class operating system developed on the basis of version 7. The system is intended primarily for use in universities to train system programmers in designing complex software systems.
Distinctive features of the system:
- Operation on PC EC 184x (including PC EC 1840 in the absence of a hard disk), PC AT-286, PC AT 386 and compatible PCs;
- System operation both in the main and alternative encodings;
- System operation with 360 Kb, 720 Kb and 1.2 Mb floppy disks;
- Processing of function keys at the kernel level of systems, which makes them available at any time, regardless of what processes are running in the system;
- If desired, the processing of function keys by the kernel can be disabled;
- Ability to reconfigure function keys;
- Implementation of the Rendezvous mechanism in the system;
- Implementation in the system, in addition to the shell command interpreter, of a user monitor similar in capabilities to the NORTON system in MS-DOS;
- Presence of a built-in command directory in the system.
More than 70 commands are implemented in the system, including text and hexadecimal editors, commands for working with the MS-DOS file system, a tar archiver that allows you to exchange files with other systems such as UNIX, a text formatter, etc.
The system has C compilers, Assembler, TWINDOW package.
The core of the system is 90 Kb, the total volume of the system is about 20000 operators in C and Assembler languages.
The system is supplied on 5 floppy disks of 360 Kb, or on 2 floppy disks of 360 Kb and 2 floppy disks of 729 Kb, or on 2 floppy disks of 360 Kb and 1 floppy disk of 1.2 Mb.
The source texts of the system are supplied separately. Their volume is 10 floppy disks of 360 Kb.
On August 25, 1991, five months after starting work on his project, 21-year-old Linus Torvalds (then a student) spoke about creating a prototype of a completely new OS called Linux, and on September 17, 1991, the first public release of the Linux kernel took place.
And so, in 1991, we had the Minix OS, the Linux OS, and the MINOS OS. At the same time, the last two one way or another relied on the experience of Minix.
At the same time, Andrew Tanenbaum from the very beginning rejected proposals to improve Minix or accept patches that came from readers of his textbook. This is probably why Torvalds' Linux took the lead. The role of the project in which readers of Andrew Tanenbaum would embody their desire to develop operating systems was assumed by Linux, and from this he benefited endlessly.
What about OS MINOS? 1991 is the last year of the Soviet Union. The country is falling apart, the economy is collapsing. It's not about operating systems anymore.
Gold rules the world
And what about the simulation stand, computer-aided research design system, its computer network?
Everything ended sadly. Computers flooded into the country. To acquire them, money was needed and only money. It was decided to turn over all the EU series computer equipment for recycling for gold, and use the proceeds for re-equipment. All permits were obtained, the machine park was dismantled, handed over, but new computers never arrived. Turn it out differently, who knows where MINOS was now!
But the people who created the SIM/CADP got tremendous experience and knowledge. Both helped them survive in the difficult 90s.
And Linux Torvalds is successfully developing, conquering more and more new areas. Now domestic forks / clones of Linux are “walking from Moscow to the very outskirts”. Minix by Andrew Tanenbaum is also developing successfully, and his books .
Andrew Tanenbaum is in the same row with such luminaries from IT as Denis Ricci, Brian Carnigan, Ken Thompson with the Unix operating system, the same Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie with the C language, Elgar Codd with the relational data model, Linus Torvalds with the Linux operating system.
And who knows what other Torvalds will grow up on the books of Andrew Tanenbaum and his Minix tutorial!!!
Source: habr.com