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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Monitoring by loudspeaker (was: BTL pranks)

by Michael Kjörling

(This should probably be on COFF because I don't think this has much to do with UNIX.) On 11 Jul 2020 22:22 -0400, from doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy): > a loudspeaker hooked to the low-order bit of the accumulator played > gentle white noise in the background. The noise would turn into a > shriek when the computer got into a tight loop, How did that work? I can see how tying the low-order bit of the accumulator to a loudspeaker would generate white noise as the computer is doing work; but I fail to see how doing so would even somewhat reliably generate a shrieking sound when the computer is in a tight loop. Please, enlighten me. :-) -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael(a)kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

4 years, 12 months

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Translating Schopenhauer (was: Style command source available?)

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 17:23:11 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > > It was Schopenhauer who definetely said > > Neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva! How about that, I even understood that. But for the fun of it I put it through Google Translate, and the result is worth showing: Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you are able to: strengthen the faint! Of course, if you drop the !, it changes to: Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you can, help the How I love syntax-independent translation! Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

4 years, 12 months

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler

by Lars Brinkhoff

Noel Chiappa writes: > > From: Larry > > It's possible the concept existed in some other OS but I'm not > > aware of it. > > It's pretty old. Both TENEX and ITS had the ability to map file pages > into a process' address space. I have a date for when this feature was announced for ITS. The previous .CBLK UUO could not access files. RMS 09/30/73 10:13:28 JOBS! BE FIRST IN YOUR TREE TO INSERT A DISK FILE PAGE! SEE .INFO.;CORBLK ORDER FOR DETAILS. (This is now redirected to COFF.) In related news: A rather complete full dump of the MIT-AI PDP-10 from 1971 has been found. It includes full source code and documentation for the system, including ITS version 671, DDT, TECO, MIDAS, (MAC)LISP, CHESS (MacHack), MUDDLE, LOGO, MACSYMA, etc.

5 years

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler

by Tony Finch

--> COFF Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> wrote: mmap() / $CRETVA > The VMS image activator (runtime loader in Unix-speak) used these > primitives to load program images into virtual memory. More than one > process can map the same region of a file. This is how sharing of > read-only program segments such as .text is implemented. > > I think Burroughs OSes had this concept even before VMS. Did MULTICS work the same way? The Manchester / Ferranti Atlas had virtual memory in 1962 but I don't know how much they used it for multiprogramming (and by implication shared text segments) - it didn't do timesharing until later, but AIUI virtual memory helped it to have an exceptionally good job throughput for the time. Perhaps their motivation was more to do with having a good shared implementation of overlays and paged IO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-level_store Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, gender, or sexual orientation

5 years

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] A/UX [was Linux is on-topic]

by Tony Finch

moving to COFF ... Thomas Paulsen <thomas.paulsen(a)firemail.de> wrote: > >I'm sure everyone here knows this, but the Cray 1 (I think, the one > that had what looked like a circular bench seat around the bottom) was > designed like that because the clock was at the center and the clock > signal went to all the boards and was right because all the clock lines > to the boards were the same length.< > > you mean that? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Cray-1-deutsches-museum… I found the Cray 1M site planning reference manual very interesting - here's a summary with links to the actual documents http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2012/06/15/they-called-it-big-iron-for-… Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot(a)dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ Ardnamurchan Point to Cape Wrath: North or northeast 3 to 5, becoming variable 2 at times. Slight or moderate, becoming smooth or slight between Barra and Canna. Fog patches. Moderate or good, occasionally very poor.

5 years

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Re: [COFF] [TUHS] 2bsd tarball -> pdtar, with a side of uuslave

by Nemo

(Sent to COFF as too far afield for a subthread) On 29/07/2020, John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote (in part): [...] > There was another chapter to the "tar wars" after UNIX and after POSIX. First, thank you for the chapter. #6-) > I put the pdtar code into the public domain, so it could be widely used. > This produced a variety of support headaches. [...] This eventually led me to > understand more of the value in using the GNU General Public License. As everyone knows, a lot of Usenet source was released into the public domain. I have been told, time and again, by IP lawyers never to release s/w unencumbered. Without an appropriate encumbrance, the author may be liable for any damage caused by said s/w -- as insane as that sounds. (I was told that there is even case law but I cannot remember what.) So your support woes could have been worse. N.

5 years

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Cheby[cs]hev (was: Regular Expressions)

by Greg 'groggy' Lehey

[Moved to COFF] On Monday, 10 August 2020 at 9:53:14 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > Interesting; I was taught it was "Chebychev", which as second ranking > doesn't even come close to "Chebyshev"... > > Possibly a cultural thing; I went to an Australian university (UNSW). I don't think so, more like coincidence. I first came across the name as "Chebyshev" at the CSIRO in Melbourne. But the difference in spelling could be attributed to the person doing the transliteration: "ch" in French corresponds in sound to "sh" in English. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

5 years

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Re: [COFF] BSD 211 Help forum

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Will Senn > So, where's a good place to pester folks for help in 211BSD, v6, v7 when > it's less along the historical interest line and more along the help I > can't get this or that working line? > ... > The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often > arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to > throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? I'd just say TUHS. Your questions would me more on-topic than 1/3 of the posts. Noel

5 years

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BSD 211 Help forum

by Will Senn

So, where's a good place to pester folks for help in 211BSD, v6, v7 when it's less along the historical interest line and more along the help I can't get this or that working line? As an example, I'm having some challenges with the networking in 211, right now. I finally (after on again off again attempts over 2 years) gotten both a vanilla 211BSD p195 system to be accessible via telnet on my local lan and am able to ping out to the internet, if I so choose, and Andru Luvisi's 211BSD p495 doing networking as well. Thanks to Andru's notes and Warner Losh's blog. In both cases, everything just "works"... well most things work :). In the 195 system, I don't seem to be able to get hostname set correctly: Assuming NETWORKING system ... sparks: bad value add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1 Whereas on the 495 system, it sets fine... Assuming NETWORKING system ... add host sparks: gateway localhost add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1 and on the 195 system, name resolution doesn't seem to function, whereas it does on the 495 system. On neither of the systems do I know how to display the routes (no netstat and route doesn't seem to have a display mode). Anyhow, I'm not really asking the question here (feel free to answer it though, if you feel so inclined), but it's the kind of question that I sit on not knowing where to ask it. I know that I often tread the knife's edge between interesting and annoying on some of my questions in TUHS and SIMH because of my lack of knowledge around these systems, but I really enjoy working in them when they work and have found that everything I learn interacting with these ancient systems significantly enhances my skills in the modern realm at least with regards to FreeBSD/Linux and Mac. Whereas, on the other hand, most of what I know about the modern systems doesn't really have an easily accessible analog in ancient unix. Take the question above, to view the route table in freebsd - it's just netstat -r, easypeasy, what the heck it might be in 211bsd is a complete mystery. Grepping the manual turns up nothing that I recognize, which is more often the case than I'd like to admit. The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? Regards, Will -- GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF

5 years

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[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].

5 years

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