🚀 go-pugleaf

|                  I don't know if it is still available but
| there was even a version of UNIX & RSTS for the PRO. 

Actually, there were at least two versions of UNIX that I'm aware of.
DEC's UEG had something called ProUltrix (or Ultrix/Pro, or something
along those lines), based on the late, lamented Ultrix-11.  Then there
was Pro-Venix from VenturCom.  I remember a DECUS symposium a number of
years back (mid-80s), when both were in the exhibit area.  (This was a
couple years after the Pro (and Rainbow) were announced, since Digital
pigheadedly refused to offer anything but P/OS on the Pro for the first
couple years, despite vociferous requests from its customers for RT-11
and UNIX.  This initial shortsightedness is just one of several examples
from the 80s which, IMHBCO, demonstrate how Digital somehow underwent a
major transformation around 1980, changing from a company closely attuned
to its customers' wants and needs, into an organization that tended to
make its decisions in a vacuum.  But I digress ...)

Anyway, it turned out that Pro-Venix beat the daylights out of Pro-Ultrix
in terms of performance, so Digital soon dropped their own UNIX product
for the Pro, and sold Pro-Venix to their customers who wanted it.  In a
previous life, I even beta-tested what I think was the last release of
Pro-Venix (at least, the last one that Digital distributed).  (We were
also promised a copy of the final release, but never got it; grumble.)

| Don't get me wrong, the PRO is not a VAX or ALPHA but for
| anyone who is nostalgic over the old PDP and wants to keep
| their hands on a system, a PRO is great.

Actually, my recollection is that for non-FP CPU-bound stuff, the Pro/380
running Pro-Venix was actually a bit faster than a VAX/750 running 4.1bsd.
Not bad for a desktop system of that era.

Mark Bartelt                                                  416/978-5619
Canadian Institute for                               mark@cita.toronto.edu
Theoretical Astrophysics                             mark@cita.utoronto.ca

"Clothes not busy being worn are busy drying."   -   Dylan, on laundry day