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.)
Hi,
I successfully made SIMH VAX-11/780 emulator run 32V, 3BSD and 4.0BSD.
Details are on my web site (thogh rather tarse):
http://zazie.tom-yam.or.jp/starunix/
Enjoy!
Naoki Hamada
nao(a)tom-yam.or.jp
I was poking around an HP UX system at work today, and noticed a
command I've never noticed before ... /usr/bin/bs.
I'm sure it's been there for a long time, even though I've been an
HPUX admin for more than a decade, sometimes I'm just blind ... but
anyway ....
I tried to search on google ... it looks like only HPUX, AIX, and
Maybe AU/X has it. Seems to be some kind of pseudo BASIC like
interpreter.
Anyone ever use it for anything? Has anyone even noticed it before?
I'll have to boot my Crimson to see if IRIX has it.
- Derrik
Derrik Walker v2.0, RHCE
lorddoomicus(a)mac.com
http://www.doomd.net
"There's nothing nice about Steve Jobs and there's nothing evil about
Bill Gates."
-- Chuck Peddle, MOS 6502 Chip Designer
http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/
Amit Singh has added support for a whole bunch of early UNIX filesystem and
archive formats to FUSE.
Cheers,
Warren
John Cowan:
"Cannot yet" is good. Is there any hope of seeing the 10th Edition
emerge from the shadows, ever?
=======
Unless some energetic person skilled at nudging people in
a friendly way takes on the cause, probably not.
Even were Novell to release the source code to System V,
that wouldn't of itself make 10/e open, since there's plenty
in the latter system that differs substantially from the
former--all the really interesting bits, in fact. As has
been discussed here at some point in the past, someone would
have to get (updated list of players) Novell, AT&T, and Alcatel
all to agree to the release. The good news is that that would
probably mostly require getting Novell to agree that there's
nothing in the system worth protecting for commercial reasons,
and the others just to officially say what is already likely
true, that they don't care. The bad news is that that is
probably substantial work, as he who talked what was then SCO
into a hobbyist-source-license for 7/e and predecessors knows well.
But Warren has already gone far beyond the call in his work
(and cannot be thanked enough, so herewith I thank him yet
again); and I'm old and tired and was never really good at
talking to corporate types anyway; and in my humble but correct
opinion, it is the combination of energy and dedication and
ability to talk cheerfully to corporate times and to persist
without losing either hope or patience or cordiality that
is needed. That has always been a rare combination.
If someone thinks he or she has the requisite skills and wants
to have a go, I'll be glad to offer what little help I can,
and I'm sure Warren likewise. But somehow I wonder whether
it will actually happen before the world ends on 2038 January
18.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
John Cowan:
> Does this depend heavily on OS X, or should it work on Linux and BSD as well?
Warren Krun Toomey:
No idea. I had a brief look at some of the code on the web site and it seems
relatively neutral, but I have not downloaded it yet. I've sent an e-mail
with the same question to Amit.
======
I keep meaning to poke about at FUSE, since it plays more or
less the role of the file-server-implementation library setup
I wrote for my own purposes 20 years ago (in the context of a
UNIX variant that cannot yet be distributed freely).
But I'd be surprised if the stuff was terribly MacOS X dependent.
Certainly FUSE exists in Linux, and the libraries and requisite
kernel module are even included in some Linux distributions
(notably recent editions of Fedora), because sshfs is built atop
FUSE.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
Bit of digging:
> 1. "bs" was written at AT&T, probably at the Labs, at some time between
> the release of 32V and System III. It was part of both System III and
> at least some System V releases.
And of course it is in TUHS! Remember we have 32V and SIII. For example,
look into
TUHS/Other/Distributions/Plexis_Sys3/
or
TUHS/PDP-11/Distributions/usdl/SysIII/
The sources contain 'bs' under cmd/bs
The latter one (under USDL) contains also the man page under usr/src/man/man1
(as 'bs.1').
So, there. You have it.
This leads me to consider we would greatly benefit from an expanded and
indexed TUHS repository tree. I made one on my mirror long ago, but a
series of disk crashes ended with it. Maybe, if there is interest I
could do it again.
j
--
EMBnet/CNB
Scientific Computing Service
Solving all your computer needs for Scientific
Research.
http://bioportal.cnb.csic.eshttp://www.es.embnet.org
Dear all,
(This has got to be the strangest cross-post I've ever done.)
I have just taken a bet from a friend to challenge my geekiness. I was
telling him about my love of Vintage Technology and he proposed that I
combine two hitherto separate hobbies and see what happens. The
topics: the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer (vintage: 1970s) and vacuum-tube
ham radios (vintage: 1960s). I do sincerely apologize for
cross-posting, but I am rather younger than either of these
technologies (vintage: 1984) and this seems like a monumental
challenge.
My question for y'all: how could I possibly design+build a project
that uses both of these technologies? My thought is to port some radio
receiver Digital Signal Processing (DSP) application into PDP-11
assembler, compile and run it via emulator on my PC, then use it with
the vacuum-tube regenerative receiver that I built a few years ago...
Does anybody know if PDP-11 UNIXes even had the capability for a
"sound card"? Or, to get ambitious, I would LOVE to design some
interface circuitry between PDP-11 digital circuitry and vacuum-tube
electronics... The challenges are legion: the tube side of the circuit
operates around 350V DC levels with radio-frequency (RF) signals at 7
MHz (almost the clock rate of some PDP-11s!) and I don't have the DEC
Handbooks, but I'm pretty sure that even those ancient pre-TTL
circuits operate below 350V!
So... any, er, "ideas"?
Best regards,
Ross Tucker
Hey there,
I have two questions. First, does anyone have the original files from
the Seventh Edition boot tape? Second, does simh support tape
operations like writing file markers? No doubt you can see where I'm
headed with this. I want to attach the original boot tape and install
the original V7 tape onto simh.
Thanks,
Brantley Coile
