TUHS May 2015

tuhs@tuhs.org

33 participants
17 discussions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Aharon Robbins > Can anyone still read 9 track tapes? We just un-covered two that date > from my wife's time in grad school, circa 1989 - 1990. They would be > tar tapes. That old, the issue is not going to be the format (TAR is still grokkable), but the physical condition of the tapes; that old, they might have issues with shedding of oxide, etc (which a heat soak can mostly cure). If you really want them read, I would recommend a specialist in reading old tapes; it will cost, but if you really want the data... I have used Chuck Guzis, in Washington (state) in the US. Noel

9 years, 7 months

Questions about the history of cut(1)

by markus schnalke

Hoi. What started as the plan to write a short portrait of cut(1) for a free german online magazine (translation to English is not done yet) became a closer look at the history of cut(1). Well, the topic got me hooked at some point. The text is still only about eight pages long and far from scientific quality, but it features some facts not found in Wikipedia. ;-) So, let me come to my questions. 1) The oldest version of cut that I found is this one in System III. http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=SysIII/usr/src/cmd (The file date says 1980-04-11.) As the sccsid reads version 1.5, there must be older code. How can I find it? Is there a story of how cut appeared for the first time? 2) As far as I found out, POSIX.2-1992 introduced the byte mode (-b) and added multi-byte support for the character mode. Is this correct? 3) Old BSD sources reference POSIX Draft 9 (which, it seems, they implement) but lack multi-byte support and the byte mode. They also support decreasing lists, which, they state, POSIX Draft 9 would not. http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Reno/src/usr.bin/cut/cu… The only POSIX.2 Draft I have access to is Draft 11.2. http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/doc/posix/p1003.2/d11.2/all.ps It does specify the multi-byte stuff and does also allow decreasing lists. Hence, it appears that these things were added somewhen between Draft 9 and Draft 11.2. Does anyone know details? It would be great, if you can give me some pointers for further research or even share some cut-stories from the good old days. :-) meillo P.S. In case you understand German, feel free to have a look at the current version of the text: http://hg.marmaro.de/docs/cut/file/ I welcome your comments, but bear with me, the text issn't meant to become a doctoral thesis; I just want to write it for fun and to learn about the historical background.

9 years, 7 months

Are the O'Reilly X books worth hanging onto?

by Aharon Robbins

Hello All. I have a full set of the O'Reilly X reference manuals - Volumes 1-5, 6a and 6b. Also "The X Window System In A Nutshell". These are all from like the mid-1990s. Are they worth hanging onto? If not, does anyone on this list want them? If so, I'll send them for the cost of postage from Israel. Thanks, Arnold

9 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] Had a crack at assembling the Unix v1 kernel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> >> In V6, the bootstrap in block 0 prompts for a file name, and when that >> is entered, it loads that file into memory and starts it. (It doesn't >> have to be in the root directory, IIRC - I'm pretty sure the bootstrap >> will accept full path names.) > I'm pretty sure that it didn't have the full namei() functionality, so > all files had to be in the root directory. It depends on what you mean by the first "it" above - if you meant 'V6', then no. From the Distribution V6's /src/mdec/fsboot.s: / read in path name / breaking on '/' into 14 ch names The process of breaking the name up into segments, and then later finding each name in the appropriate directory, can be seen. The code is kind of obscure, but if you look at the RL bootstap I dis-assembled: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/rlboot.s it's pretty much the same code, and a little better commented in the 'read in directories' part. Noel

9 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] Had a crack at assembling the Unix v1 kernel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mark Longridge > I'm not sure where Unix v1 is loading the kernel from. > From: Warren Toomey > Have a look here: https://code.google.com/p/unix-jun72/ Thanks for the pointer! From poking around there, it looks like V1 had special 'cold boot' and 'warm boot' disk partitions. I wonder why they lost the 'warm boot' capability in later versions? Maybe it became reliable enough that the extra complexity of supporting it wasn't worth it? Noel

9 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] Had a crack at assembling the Unix v1 kernel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mark Longridge <cubexyz(a)gmail.com> > I'm not sure where Unix v1 is loading the kernel from. .. In all the > other versions of Unix there was always a file like 'unix' in the root > directory but I guess Unix v1 was different? I don't know much about the other versions, but it would all depend on what's in the bootstrap (usually contained in block 0 of drive 0, at least on older 11's). In V6, the bootstrap in block 0 prompts for a file name, and when that is entered, it loads that file into memory and starts it. (It doesn't have to be in the root directory, IIRC - I'm pretty sure the bootstrap will accept full path names.) How did you create a V1 filesystem? (I don't know, BTW, what they look like - is that documented anywhere?) It's probably not the same layout as the V6 (which I think is the same as V5). Noel

9 years, 7 months

Had a crack at assembling the Unix v1 kernel

by Mark Longridge

Ok, I looked around for the instructions on how to assemble the Unix v1 kernel and couldn't find anything so I tried: as u0.s u1.s u2.s u3.s u4.s u5.s u6.s u7.s u8.s u9.s ux.s and that made a.out and I stripped it and it looked like it was around the same size as /etc/core (it was 16400 bytes rather than 16448 for some reason). I'm not sure where Unix v1 is loading the kernel from. I'm guessing it's /etc/core and if that's the case then I must have been successful building the kernel. In all the other versions of Unix there was always a file like 'unix' in the root directory but I guess Unix v1 was different? Mark

9 years, 7 months

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TUHS May 2015