TUHS September 2019

tuhs@tuhs.org

74 participants
45 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, 6 months

My EuroBSDcon talk (preview for commentary)

by Warner Losh

OK. I've shared my slides for the talk. Some of the family trees are simplified (V7 doesn't have room for all its ports, for example) Some of it is a little cheeseball since I'm also trying to be witty and entertaining (we'll see how that goes). Please don't share them around until after my talk on the September 20th I'd like feedback on the bits I got wrong. Or left out. Or if you're in this and don't want to be, etc. All the slides after the Questions slide won't be presented and will likely be deleted. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/177KxOif5oHARyIdZHDq-OO67_GVtMkzIAlD… Please be kind (but if it sucks, please do tell). I've turned on commenting on the slides. Probably best if you comment there. I have a video of me giving this talk, but it's too rough to share... Thanks for any help you can give me. Warner

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Poll: good location for Unix documentation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warren Toomey > All, I'm just musing where is the best place to store Unix > documentation. My Unix Archive is really just a filesystem, so it's not > so good to capture and search metadata. > Is anybody using archive.org, gunkies or something else BitSavers seems to be the canonical location for old computer documentation. The CHWiki (gunkies.org) isn't really the best place to put original documentation, but that's where I'd recommend putting meta-data. As for searching meta-data, are you speaking of something more powerful than Google? Noel PS: Speaking of old Unix documentation, I recently acquired a paper copy of the PDP-11 V6 Unix manual. Is that something I should scan? I don't know if you already have it (I know where to find sources in the archives, but I don't know where documentation scans live.)

5 years, 1 month

OT: compiler back-end bug

by Warren Toomey

All, very off-topic for TUHS but you have a bounty of experience. If any of you have Intel ia64 skills and/or fixing compiler back-end bugs, could you contact me off-list? I'm writing a back-end for the SubC compiler and I have 'one last bug'™ before it can compile itself, and I'm stuck. Details at: https://minnie.tuhs.org/wktcloud/index.php/s/QdKZAqcBytoFBkQ/download?path=… Thanks, Warren

5 years, 1 month

understand earliest hardware?

by reed＠reedmedia.net

I read in the PDP-7 reference manual that Precision CRT Display Type 30 and Precision Incremental Display Type 340 are the typical displays used with the PDP-7, but aren't standard equipment. I read about the Graphics-II scope. Was it the only display? I read it was used as a second terminal and that it would pause per display full with a button to continue. I assume this second terminal's keyboard was TTY model 33 or similar since it was the standard equipment. Does anyone know? Do you know if the PDP-7 or early edition Unixes have pen support for that Graphics-II or similar displays? Clem has written that the PDP-7 had a disk from a PDP-9. Where is this cited? The ~1971 draft "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" says first version runs on PDP-9 also. https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/McIlroy_v0/ But I cannot find any other reference of running on PDP-9 at all. Was this academic? That draft calls the PDP-7 version the "first edition" but later the PDP-11/20 is called the "first edition". When did the naming of first edition get defined to not include the PDP-7 version? Or is it because the early "0th" version was never released/shared outside? Thompson interview https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/OralHistory/transcripts/thompson… mentions an "interim machine" and a "PDP-11 that had PDP-10 memory management, KS-1." What is this interim machine? Is this a PDP-11 without a disk (for a few months?) What is this PDP-11 and KS-1? Maybe this is the PDP-11/20 with KS-11? Do we know what hardware was supported for the early editions? We don't have all the kernel code and from a quick look from what is available I didn't see specific hardware references. The later ~1974 "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" paper does mention some hardware at that time on the PDP-11/45 like a 201 dataset interface and a Tektronix 611 storage-tube display on a satellite PDP-11/20. When did a CRT with keyboard terminal like DEC vt01 (with Tektronix 611 CRT display), LS ADM-3, Hazeltine 2000, VT01A display with keyboard (what keyboard?) get supported? Any code to help find this? (The https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/picture.html does mention the VT01A plys keyboard). Thanks, Jeremy C. Reed echo Ohl zl obbx uggc://errqzrqvn.arg/obbxf/csfrafr/ | \ tr "Onoqrsuvxzabcefghl" "Babdefhikmnoprstuy"

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Poll: good location for Unix documentation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warner Losh > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/1972_stuff/tmg.pdf > has an earlier version. That's the exact same as the one I have. > From: "Brian L. Stuart" > The M6 manual is another one that I didn't find. Got that too (it's by Andrew Hall). Noel

5 years, 1 month

Peter Collinson interviews?

by reed＠reedmedia.net

Does anyone know where I can find the Unix-related interviews with Dr. Peter Collinson? These are acknowledged in front-matter of Peter Salus's Quarter Century book which says previously appeared in ".EXE". Bottom of https://www.hillside.co.uk/articles/index.html mentions the magazines aren't found. I didn't try contacting him yet. I have read the Mahoney collection (archived at TUHS). Any other interview collections from long ago? Jeremy C. Reed echo Ohl zl obbx uggc://errqzrqvn.arg/obbxf/csfrafr/ | \ tr "Onoqrsuvxzabcefghl" "Babdefhikmnoprstuy"

5 years, 1 month

capturing history of bs(1) command / programming language

by Dave Plonka

Hi TUHS folks, Earlier this month I did a fair bit of research on a little known Unix programming language - bs - and updated the wikipedia pages accordingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bs_(programming_language) Thanks for solving some bs mysteries goes to its author, Dick Haight, as well as those that got us in touch: Doug McIlroy, Brian Kernighan, and John Mashey. Apart from what is in the aforementioned wikipedia page, in exchanging email with me, Dick shared: q( I wrote bs at the time Unix (V 3?) and all of the commands were being converted from assembler to C. So Thompson’s bas became my bs — sort of. I included snobol’s succeed/fail feature (? Operator/fail return). [...] No one asked me to write bs. [...] I tried to get Dennis Ritche to add something like “? / fail” to C but he didn’t. This is probably part of why I wrote bs. I wasn’t part of the Unix inner circle (BTL Computing Research, e.g., Thompson, Ritchie, McIlroy, etc). Neither were Mashey & Dolotta. We were “support”. ) The Release 3.0 manual (1980) mentions bs prominently on page 9: Writing a program. To enter the text of a source program into a UNIX file, use ed(1). The four principal languages available under UNIX are C (see cc(1)), Fortran (see f77(1)), bs (a compiler/interpreter in the spirit of Basic, see bs(1)), and assembly language (see as(1)). Personally, some reasons I find bs noteworthy is (a) it is not much like BASIC (from today's perspective) and (b) as mentioned in the wikipedia page, "The bs language is a hybrid interpreter and compiler and [an early] divergence in Unix programming" (from Research Unix mentioning only the other three languages): q( The bs language was meant for convenient development and debugging of small, modular programs. It has a collection of syntax and features from prior, popular languages but it is internally compiled, unlike a Shell script. As such, in purpose, design, and function, bs is a largely unknown, modest predecessor of hybrid interpreted/compiled languages such as Perl and Python. ) It survives today in some System III-derived or System V-derived commercial operating systems, including HP-UX and AIX. If you have additional information that might be useful for the wikipedia page, please do share it. Peace, Dave P.S. Here is a 2008 TUHS list discussion, "Re: /usr/bin/bs on HPUX?": On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 01:08:26PM -0500, John Cowan wrote: > Lord Doomicus scripsit: > > > 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. > > That's just what it is. Here are the things I now know about it. > > 0. The string "bs" gets an awful lot of false Google hits, no matter > how hard you try. > > 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. > > 2. It was probably meant as a replacement for "bas", which was a more > conventional GW-Basic-style interpreter written in PDP-11 assembly > language. (32V still had the PDP-11 source, which of course didn't work.) > > 3. At one time System III source code was available on the net, > including bs.c and bs.1, but apparently it no longer is. I downloaded > it then but don't have it any more. > > 4. I was able to compile it under several Unixes, but it wouldn't run: > I think there must have been some kind of dependency on memory layout, > but never found out exactly what. > > 5. I remember from the man page that it had regular expressions, and > two commands "compile" and "execute" that switched modes to storing > expressions and executing them on the spot, respectively. That eliminated > the need for line numbers. > > 6. It was apparently never part of Solaris. > > 7. It was never part of any BSD release, on which "bs" was the battleships > game. > > 8. I can't find the man page on line anywhere either. > > 9. The man page said it had some Snobol features. I think that meant > the ability to return failure -- I vaguely remember an "freturn" command. > > 10. 99 Bottles of Beer has a sample bs program at > http://www2.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-bs-103.html . > > 11. If someone sends me a man page, I'll consider reimplementing it as > Open Source. > > -- > We are lost, lost. No name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty. > Only hungry: yes, we are hungry. A few little fishes, nassty bony little > fishes, for a poor creature, and they say death. So wise they are; so just, > so very just. --Gollum cowan at ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan -- dave(a)plonka.us http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~plonka/

5 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Poll: good location for Unix documentation?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: "Brian L. Stuart" > (The tmg doc was one I remember not being there.) Err, TMG(VI) is 1/2 page long. Is that really what you were looking for? (I _did_ specify the 'UPM'.) I do happen to have the V6-era TMG _manual_, if that's what you're looking for. Noel

5 years, 1 month

Poll: good location for Unix documentation?

by Warren Toomey

All, I'm just musing where is the best place to store Unix documentation. My Unix Archive is really just a filesystem, so it's not so good to capture and search metadata. Is anybody using archive.org, gunkies or something else, and have recommendations? Cheers, Warren

5 years, 1 month

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TUHS September 2019