Episode 4
Tom Lyon
On this episode of On the Metal, we interview Tom Lyon, Sun Microsystems employee #8, network storage pioneer and systems software polymath. Join us as Tom recounts losing bits in the hallway at Princeton, the peril of software-refreshed DRAM, and how
December 23, 20191h 47m
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (media.transistor.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
You can find Tom on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aka_pugs and find his blog at https://akapugs.blog/. You can learn more about DriveScale at https://drivescale.com/.
Tom brought us a present: an IBM 360-era "Ready" button!
Some of the highlights of the show include:
- Williams tube (CRT-based memory): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube
- Mercury delay lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory
- Datapoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint
- Datapoint: The Lost Story of the Texans who Invented the Personal Computer Revolution by Lamont Wood: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16214216-datapoint
- ARCNET: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET
- AppleTalk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleTalk
- Z8530 UART: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_SCC
- Apple LaserWriter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter
- DECnet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECnet
- X.25: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25
- Tom's notes from the NFS offsite in 1983: https://twitter.com/aka_pugs/status/985941297327366144
- Automounter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automounter
- CAP theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem
- Sun's Network Disk (nd) protocol: https://github.com/senjan/ndd/blob/master/nd_pkt.h (if you find nd(4P) from the SunOS 3.x man pages, let us know!)
- The Internet Collapse of 1986: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion#Congestive_collapse
- Larry Roberts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Roberts_(scientist)
- Telenet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet
- Tandem Computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers
- Token ring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_ring
- Ipsilon Networks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsilon_Networks
- FDDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_Distributed_Data_Interface
- Crescendo Communications: https://books.google.com/books?id=PDsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44
- CDC 3400: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_3000_series
- Ones' Complement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ones%27_complement
- IBM 1130: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1130
- Olivetti Programma 101: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programma_101
- TI-83: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-83_series
- HP 48G: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_48_series
- HP-35: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-35
- ed(1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_(text_editor)
- IBM System/370: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/370
- APL\360: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)#APL%5C360
- IBM 2741 with APL keyboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2741#/media/File:IBM2741.JPG
- VM/370: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system)
- Unibus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unibus
- Interdata: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdata
- Greg Chesson: https://grainger.illinois.edu/alumni/distinguished/7939
- Joe Ossanna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ossanna
- nroff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nroff
- IBM 1403: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1403
- Amdahl UTS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl_UTS
- IBM 3270 terminal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270
- Dick Lyon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_F._Lyon
- MAXC, PARC's PDP-10 clone: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/parts/maxc-board/index.html
- Berkeley Computer Corporation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Genie
- Bob Lyon: https://www.facebook.com/bob.lyon.98
- Optical mouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_mouse
- The Oxide garage Sun art work of mysterious origin (a Sun-3/160, perhaps?): https://oxide.computer/img/garage-sun.jpg
- Steve Kirsch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kirsch
- Dick Lyon's (color!) technical report on the optical mouse: http://www.dicklyon.com/tech/OMouse/OpticalMouse-Lyon.pdf
- Ipsilon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsilon_Networks
- ATM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_transfer_mode
- Andy Bechtolsheim on "Death to ATM" (July 1996): https://web.archive.org/web/20001217105700/https://www.redherring.com/mag/issue33/atm.html
- Tom's original announcement of VFIO: https://lwn.net/Articles/391459/
- Open Source Firmware Conference: htt...
Topics
technologyhardwaresoftwareon the metal