I've assembled some notes from old manuals and other sources
on the formats used for on-disk file systems through the
Seventh Edition:
http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~norman/old-unix/old-fs.html
Additional notes, comments on style, and whatnot are welcome.
(It may be sensible to send anything in the last two categories
directly to me, rather than to the whole list.)
Folks,
I recently copied down the 32V source, and compiled the kernel with gcc. Much
to my surprise, most of it compiled. I then split out the machine dependent
versus the machine independent files (loose classification :-), and compiled
again. Naturally, in both cases, you could not actually build a kernel because
there are vax specific .s files, but the individual C files compiled. Not a bad
start.
As a result, I've been giving serious consideration to porting it to Intel IA32
platforms. It's much simpler than the unix I worked on until last year (Tru64,
aka OSF/1 and Digital UNIX), and the 32V kernel is only a little bigger than the
original FreeDOS kernel I wrote. The Caldera license is pretty much a BSD
license, which could be considered an open source license. This means I should
be able to work on it without worrying about IP, although I'd still need
management approval.
Should I undertake such an project, would there be enough interest to justify
the effort?
Pat
--
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. -- Henry Ford
Or, for something really wierd...., how about porting 32V to
the modern VAXen, such as the scsi 3000 or 4000 class
machines? x86 is nice, and good to do because of its
generic ubiquity, but somehow it ought to roll again on
something, VAX, too.....(:+}}... just for usable posterity.
How much of a chore would it be to port from say an
Ultrix box? The tool chain should be basically intact.
Mebbie it is time to dust off our old VAX 3000 M38 crates.
There I go thinking out loud...., again.....
Bob Keys
There exists in one of our listmembers archives the last
running V10 UNIX for VAX on I believe MVII or MVIII class
machines. The availability of it remains a bit in limbo.
But, it would be nice to have that available in the public
archives, if I could make the suggestion. I would be of
the opinion, also, that it would be nice to have them in
the publicly available arena for educational, hobby, or
whatever the current nomenclature is, use. Perhaps
if that person is listening, the subject might be approachable
to whomever controls the legalese mumbo-jumbo. It is a
long-shot, but ya never know if ya don't ask.....(:+}}...
Bob Keys
Apologies if this is a FAQ, but is there any prayer of getting 8th,
9th and 10th edition Unix released under some sort of public or
educational licence?
Now that there are emulators freely available which are capable of
running 32V-derived Unix, there would be some practical educational
value in having them available; and I for one would be utterly
thrilled to be able to see them "in action" (as well as see more of
the evolutionary steps from research Unix on to Plan 9).
cheers,
--Mirian
The HTML rendition of the paper is much improved now, thanks
to Naoki Hamada.
Incidentally, I also associate the term "deadstart"
with CDC/Cray. Maybe London or Reiser had
previous association with that world.
On the other hand, in really early Unix, the
"cold boot" paper tape recreated everything
on the disk. Really cold, just like the "operating
system conversion" section of L&R, or for that
matter the corresponding section of the one
by me and Johnson about the Interdata work.
Dennis
Markus Weber wrote:-
> Didn't CDC's NOS use the term "deadstart"?
Yes, and some of their machines has 'deadstart panels'. A set of 12 x 12
switches that were the bootstrap for peripherial processor zero (12 bit
data/instruction). I think the CDC6600 had 12X12, but some of the latter
machines (Cybers) had up to 20x12
Hi,
in our free lab in catania we have one of these box, you can see
it here:
http://www.freaknet.org/history/freakalbum/freak_hardware/tn/dcp02097.jpg.h…
we only have this computer, and no manuals, no tapes, no floppy
disks, nothing. We made a raw "dd" backup of the whole hard disk, that
have some bad tracks :(
so, we are wondering if someone here can help us finding information
about this machine: PDF manuals, info, tape images, operating
system disks, or whatever useful for our computer museum :)))
p.s a look at http://www.freaknet.org/history/freakalbum/freak_hardware/
to have a little, poor idea about other machines we have, including
the PDP11/34 with the broken chip problem in the RL01 controller
board :(((
p.s.2. yes, we have printed schematics of PDP11/34. we are organizing
to scan all the schemes, maybe this can be useful for someone.
Sorry if i'm not so present in this list, but i read it every
day, it's a fantastic list. thanks to all :)
--
[asbesto : freaknet medialab : radio#cybernet : GPG key on keyservers]
[ MAIL ATTACH, SPAM, HTML, WORD, and msgs larger than 95K > /dev/null ]
[http://www.freaknet.org/asbesto IW9HGS http://kyuzz.org/radiocybernet]
Thanks,
those are the patch kits, Mario. You grab a system, then patch it
up to 'current' with those patches.
I expected something like that - any idea where to grab a system?
Every now and then, a kind sould releases a fully 'current' system.
Are there any old <fully 'current' systems> around?
Has anybody tried to run it on an emulator?
mario
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mario Premke [mailto:premke@ess-wowi.de]
> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 1:43 PM
> To: pups(a)minnie.tuhs.org
> Subject: [pups] 2.11BSD ftp to moe.2bsd.com
>
>
> Hello list,
> there is the 2.11 BSD on moe.2bsd.com. I wonder why there aren't any
> filenames but only numbers instead. Is there somewhere a
> tar-archive of
> 2.11BSD on the net?
> Thanks
> Mario
>
> _______________________________________________
> PUPS mailing list
> PUPS(a)minnie.tuhs.org
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups
>
The London/Reiser internal memo about experiences in
porting Unix to the VAX emerged from the company
archives, and I scanned and OCRed it: it's underneath
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/portpapers.html
As the page cautions, the HTML is missing some stuff, but
the PS and PDF are reasonably good. I also have the
big pre-OCR PDF image scan if anyone wants to check details.
Dennis
