TUHS September 2020

tuhs@tuhs.org

60 participants
63 discussions

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Choice of Unix for 11/03 and 11/23+ Systems

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Riley > On my physical '03 I have twin Sykes floppy drives. I note that in the > LSX archives there is a Sykes driver, so I can adapt that I guess. Yes, here: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=LSX/sys/sykfd.c It looks like it should be a straight drop-in, to run it on Mini-Unix. Not sure if your controller is the exact same model, though? Is there any documentation on yours? (I haven't done any searching.) If you want to boot from it, you'll need to write a bootstrap for it; I poked around, but didn't see one. (Not sure how they booted machines with one, back in the day; maybe it wasn't the only drive, and they booted off something else.) You can probably modify the RX one: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=LSX/src/rxboot.s https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=LSX/src/rxboot2.s Note that this is a 2-stage bootstrap, apparently as a result of the small hardware block size on the RX. And of course there's still the issue of 'how to get bits onto it'. Can floppies for it be written on some other kind of machine? If so, someone on the Classic Computers list: http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk may be able to help you write those, or an RL02 pack. You should start by getting some experience building V6 OS loads (Mini-Unix will be _very_ similar); use a simulator. I have a lengthy tutorial here: http://www.chiappa.net/~jnc/tech/V6Unix.html It's in terms of Ersatz-11, which I prefer because it has that nice DOS device, which makes it easy to get files into the Unix (so I can use my normal editor on the host machine). However, I gather most people prefer SIMH; there is a tutorial here: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Running_Unix_v6_in_SIMH (I didn't write it; I know nothing of SIMH) for that option. How do people using SIMH get files into a Unix running on one? Larry Allen just wrote a PDP-11 simulator in Rust, and he's thinking about adding a paper-tape reader (connectable to a file), so that if he installs the stock V6 PTR driver, he can just do 'cat /dev/ptr > myfile'; sort of like how VM/370 used the virtual card reader. Noel

4 years, 2 months

V6 networking (Was: Choice of Unix for 11/03 and 11/23+ Systems)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal > I'd love to have a look at that and compare and contrast the > approaches. OK; the system is somewhat disorganized, and stuff is in directories here, there and everywhere in it (much is in the home dirs of some of the people who worked on some pieces), so it will take me a fair amount of work to curate it all into an accessible form, but I have put _some_ of it up here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/net/ If you want to slurp up the whole thing: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/net/net.tar I should explain that the kernel only contains inbound de-multiplexing, and not much else; the TCP is in the user process, allong with the application. (Great for V6 on a small machine...) There is most of what documentation I could find in the 'doc' folder. There were at least two different TCP's in use on that system - maybe three. I have currently only included one (gotta do some more work to get the rest; for Server Telnet, and User/Server FTP), along with a couple of appplications which use it: SMTP, Finger, and User Telnet. The kernel code is mostly there, but there are some minor dribs and drabs of changes/additions elsewhere in the kernetl which I'll have to sort out in the future. The main thing that's not there is the Pronet driver; not very useful! There's also an ICMP paemon (and 'ping'), IIRC, but that's something else I'll have to find. Any questions, or stuff you'd really like to see, let me know. Noel

4 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] Apple Quadra to good home

by Rich Morin

We've had three prospects respond (who knew???), so unless they all drop out, I think we're set. -r > A while back, there was some discussion of A/UX. We have an Apple Quadra which was able to boot and run A/UX a few decades ago. If someone wants to pay for shipping from the San Francisco Bay Area, this charming little machine could be theirs. Please respond off-list, to avoid annoying the neighbors... > > -r > > P.S. We're packing and moving, so a prompt response is critical.

4 years, 2 months

Apple Quadra to good home

by Rich Morin

A while back, there was some discussion of A/UX. We have an Apple Quadra which was able to boot and run A/UX a few decades ago. If someone wants to pay for shipping from the San Francisco Bay Area, this charming little machine could be theirs. Please respond off-list, to avoid annoying the neighbors... -r P.S. We're packing and moving, so a prompt response is critical.

4 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Choice of Unix for 11/03 and 11/23+ Systems

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> Would also be great if supported RL02 drives. ;) _Support_ for RL02's will not be a problem (but there are probably some issues - see below). I have an RL11 driver for V6, which will be easy to include in a system build. There is also a RL V6 boostrap (which lives in block 0 - it loads the OS from a V6 filesystem); how to load it off the RL pack on actual hardware, I'm not sure; do you have some PROM device that has an RL bootstrap in it? Or do you have some other drive which is going to be your boot device? If not, how are you going to get the bits onto an RL pack? This was a bit of an issue for Fritz Muelller with his -11/45 (with an RK05 drive); he finally wound up having to load it over a serial line, which took several hours. He used something called PDP11GUI, and you're in luck, that does support RL02's. Also, I'm not sure if you've had any experience with an old removable-pack drive. If not, you have to be very careful with them; if you have a head crash, the heads are now unobtainium, so a head crash will turn the drive into junk. (Which is a big part of why Dave Bridgham and I are doing to QSIC RK11 emulator...) The packs need to be absolutely clean; a number of people have experience with them, you should probably qget some lessons from them before trying to use it. > I'd imagine the V6 TTY driver would support boards with multiple serial > ports. Guess that's what's needed for multi user access. The TTY code in V6 consists of two levels of driver. The bottom layer is a driver which is specific to the particular type of card one's using; DL-11, DZ-11, etc. If the card supports multiple lines, that driver will too. Then there's a layer above that, tty.c, which the low-level driver uses to interace to the OS; the user talks to that. That layer is multi-line. Noel

4 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Choice of Unix for 11/03 and 11/23+ Systems

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: John Foust > Mark Riordan has a copy and some docs... > http://www.60bits.net/msu/mycomp/terak/termedia.htm Alas, the only thing online there is a list of which floppies he had, not any actual content (other than one document). I've sent him an email (at the address given on that site), we'll see if I get a reply. He might not have a way to read those floppies... If not, no biggie; in asking I more wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting my time, I don't really need him to come through. Having done the /40->/23 move, I'm sure the /05->/03 move won't present any major problems. BTW, looking around for a copy of a document he mentioned, I found this: http://www.tavi.co.uk/unixhistory/mini-unix.html so between them and the stuff at TUHS, I think we have everything we'd need. Noel

4 years, 2 months

Origin of Charlie Root

by Jan Schaumann

Hello, Perhaps this has been discussed here before, but I couldn't find a definitive answer as to the origin of "Charlie Root". https://www.geeklan.co.uk/?p=2457 includes links to some of the /etc/passwd files from 4.1cBSD, 4.2BSD, and 2.9BSD, where we see root changing from being "The Man" to "Charlie &". Speculations on the internet about Charlie Root the baseball player are easy enough to find, but no confirmation or official origin story. So I thought I'd ask here: who can (authoritatively) shed light on how we ended up with Charlie Root? -Jan

4 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Choice of Unix for 11/03 and 11/23+ Systems

by John Foust

I wrote: >There was one for the Terak (an 11/03) in May 1979 but I've never found a copy. I take it back... Mark Riordan has a copy and some docs... http://www.60bits.net/msu/mycomp/terak/termedia.htm - John

4 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Choice of Unix for 11/03 and 11/23+ Systems

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> If you want multiple users on an -11/03, Mini-Unix would be an option; > zit doesn't support the -11/03 'out of the box', but looking at it, it > shouldn't be too hard. (Heinz mentioned that it had been done before.) On thinking about it, I might do the -11/03 port of Mini-Unix for the hack value; it looks like it should be a quick project (a couple of hours, much of which would be getting Mini-Unix set up; I'd use a simulator, my QBUS RK11 emulator is broken at the moment). I think it should mostly just be some fairly straight-forward changes to mch.s; I think all the C code would be fine. (Unless there's an 'PS->integ' or something hiding somewhere.) Also a few odds and ends, like a software console switch register (been there, done that). That would make the full power of Mini-Unix available to people with -11/03's; those are still fairly common, and reasonably cheap. (Unlike -11/05's.) It's a considerably more capable system than LSX: e.g. the tty driver is the full V6 one, and supports an arbitrary number of devices. So my question is: had anyone else already done this (I don't want to waste time replicating already-done work)? Also, would anyone have a use for it if I did it? If so, I'll put it up on a Web page when I'm done. (No, I _don't_ use Guthub, and have zero interest in learning how. I'd rather spend my remaining un-comitted neurons improving my ability to read feudal Japanese.) Noel

4 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] reviving a bit of WWB

by norman＠oclsc.org

Doug McIlroy: To put it more strongly. this is not a legal C source file. char *s = NULL; But this is. char *s = 0; Clem Cole: 67)The macro NULL is defined in <stddef.h> (and other headers) as a null pointer constant; see 7.19. ==== $ cat null.c char *s = NULL; $ cat zero.c char *s = 0; $ zero.c is a legal C program. null.c is not. Create files exactly as shown and compile them if you don't believe me. Prepend `#include <stddef.h>' (or <stdlib.h> or <stdio.h>) to null.c and it becomes legal, but I think that's Doug's point: you need an include file. Personally I prefer to use NULL instead of 0 when spelling out a null pointer, because I think it's clearer: if ((buf = malloc(SIZE)) == NULL) error("dammit andrew"); though I am willing to omit it when there's no confusion about = vs ==: if (*p) dammit(*p, "andrew"); But that's just a question of style, and Doug's is fine too. The language does not require the compiler to pre-define NULL or to recognize it as a keyword; you have to include an appropriate standard header file. Norman Wilson Toronto ON (not 0N nor NULLN)

4 years, 3 months

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TUHS September 2020