TUHS June 2018

tuhs@tuhs.org

62 participants
71 discussions

by norman＠nose.cita.utoronto.ca

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.)

2 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] Old Unix manuals, TMs, etc

by Warren Toomey

----- Forwarded message from meljmel-unix(a)yahoo.com ----- Warren, Thanks for your help. To my amazement in one day I received 8 requests for the documents you posted on the TUHS mailing list for me. If you think it's appropriate you can post that everything has been claimed. I will be mailing the Unix TMs and other papers to Robert Swierczek <rmswierczek(a)gmail.com> who said he will scan any one-of-a-kind items and make them available to you and TUHS. The manuals/books will be going to someone else who very much wanted them. Mel ----- End forwarded message -----

5 years, 6 months

Frank Heart, Who Helped to Design the ArpaNet IMPs at BBN Dies at 89

by Clem Cole

Note the NY Times head lines this as 'pre-Internet' which is a little sad, but what can you do: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/technology/frank-heart- who-linked-computers-before-the-internet-dies-at-89.html

6 years, 5 months

Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

by Warren Toomey

We do have ken on the list, so I won't be presumptious to ask for ken-related anecdotes, but would anybody like to share some dmr anecdotes? I never met Dennis in person, but he was generous with his time about my interest in Unix history; and also with sharing the material he still had. Dennis was very clever, though. He would bring out a new artifact and say: well, here's what I still have of X. Pity it will never execute again, sigh. I'm sure he knew that I would take that as a challenge. Mind you, it worked, which is why we now have the first Unix kernel in C, the 'nsys' kernel, and the first two C compilers, in executable format. Any other good anecdotes? Cheers, Warren

6 years, 5 months

Happy birthday, Maurice Wilkes!

by Dave Horsfall

As I continue to push the boundaries of subjective topicism, I'd like to mention that today was when Sir Maurice Wilkes FRS FReng was born way back in 1913. He had a bit to do with EDSAC, microprogramming, and that sort of thing. And dmmmit, I missed Alan Turing's birthday last Saturday (23rd June, 1912), and Komrad Zuse's back in 22nd June, 1910, along with the Qwerty keyboard being patented by one Christopher Sholes back in 1868 (long story). -- Dave

6 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] ATT Hardware

by Norman Wilson

Ron Natalie: My favorite 3B2ism was that the power switch was soft (uncommon then, not so much now). I seem to recall that if the logged in user wasn't in a particular group, pushing the power button was a no-op. You didn't have sufficient privs to operate the power. ==== Surely you mean the current user didn't have sufficent power. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

6 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] AT&T Hardware

by Doug McIlroy

Anent 3B's: Last time I visited Paul Allen's Living Computer Museum the only working Unix on display was running on a 3B2. Apparently the machine was robust if nothing else. doug

6 years, 5 months

Unix Kernel Size

by Warner Losh

Greetings, I'd like to thank everybody that sent me data for my unix kernel size stuff. There's two artifacts I've crated. One I think I've shared before, which is my spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13C77pmJFw4ZBmGJuNarBUvWBxBKWXG-jtvA… The second are some simplified graphs and the first half of my BSDcan talk: http://www.bsdcan.org/2018/schedule/events/934.en.html The video should be available soon for my talk as well, but it's not up yet. If there's interest, I'll post an update when it is. Warner

6 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] Masscomp oops [was: Any Good dmr Anecdotes?]

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mike Markowski > a cute, slender gal came into the lab. ... I typed mkfs... On the plus > side, I ended up marrying the girl. OK, so now I _have_ to hear the backstory - _when_ did you tell her what happened? Then? (Maybe she noticed the look on your face once you realized what you'd done? :-) Later? Never? :-) Noel

6 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] Any Good dmr Anecdotes?

by Larry McVoy

I've told this story so much that my kids hear me start it and go "is that the Unix guy? Yeah, we've heard this". And I think many of you have heard it as well so you can hit delete, but for the newbies to the list here goes. Decades ago I was a grad student at UWisc and pretty active on comp.arch and comp.unix-wizards (I was not a wizard but I've lived through, and written up, the process of restoring a Masscomp after having done some variant of rm -rf / so a stupid wizard wanna be?) >From time to time, some Unix kernel thing would come up and I'd email ...!research!dmr and ask him how that worked. He *always* replied. To me, a nobody. All he cared was that the question wasn't retarded (and I bet to him some of mine were but the questions showed that I was thinking and that was good enough for him). I remember a long discussion about something, I think PIPEBUF but not sure, and at some point he sent me his phone number and said "call me". Email was too slow. So yeah, one of the inventors of Unix was cool enough to take some young nobody and educate him. That's Dennis. I've tried to pass some of that energy forward to my kids, telling them that if you want to learn, smart people like that and they will help you. Dennis was a humble man, a smart man, and a dude willing to pass on what he knew. I miss him and cherish the interactions I had with him.

6 years, 5 months

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TUHS June 2018