Talk:Peripheral Interchange Program

History

I've added some more about the history of PIP, particularly on the reason for the retention of the underscore separator. Kay Dekker (talk) 20:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

122.49.200.122 (talk) 22:01, 24 October 2009 (UTC) ADS: I was using PIP on RSTS/E on PDP-11/70s and 11/45s into the mid 80s. A very powerful utility; under RSTS/E it was pretty close to half of the operating system, as nearly all file operations required its use. I came across this reference to ATLATL, which I think gives more clarity: http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/p/PIP.html 122.49.200.122 (talk) 22:01, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The COPY command

I've deleted the material which described the COPY command on TOPS-10, because it was based on a fundamental flaw - the syntax of the COPY command was actually COPY destination=source, just as with PIP, not COPY source destination as described. I've just verified this by consulting the TOPS-10 Operating System Commands Manual for TOPS-10 7.04, as I ought to have done before I wrote what I did - much embarrassment! :(

I suspect that both the original author of the material and I misremembered our TOPS-10, influenced by familiarity with UNIX, whose file-copying command is indeed cp source destination. My apologies for writing without referring to sources! Kay Dekker (talk) 15:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The NUL: device

In the text, the NUL: device is compared to /dev/nul, which is not correct at all. The PIP-device NUL: is only readable and only returns at most 40 characters of ASCII 0x00 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.106.225.67 (talk) 13:51, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

COPY on DOS and VMS

PIP was replaced by the more convenient copy command on VAX/VMS and IBM PC MS-DOS, it was probably the most important difference in MS-DOS. You didn't have to run PIP first to copy files. Bachcell (talk) 02:09, 17 November 2025 (UTC)