TUHS April 2021

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ching in Unix

by Warren Toomey

https://ewe2.ninja/stuff/computers/ching/ Interesting story! Cheers, Warren

3 years, 8 months

PC Unix (had been How to Kill a Technical Conference

by Paul Ruizendaal

> On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 11:34 PM Ed Bradford <egbegb2 at gmail.com <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tuhs>> wrote: > > > Why did a Ph.D., an academic, and a computer scientist not know about UNIX > > in 1974 or so? 1976? In 1976, some (many?) universities had source code. > > > > Some knowns/givens at the time ... > 1.) He was a language/compiler type person -- he had created PL/M and that > was really what he was originally trying to show off. As I understand it > and has been reported in other interviews, originally CP/M was an attempt > to show off what you could do with PL/M. > 2.) The 8080/Z80 S-100 style machines we quite limited, they had very > little memory, no MMU, and extremely limited storage in the 8" floppies > 3.) He was familiar with RT/11 and DOS-11, many Universities had it on > smaller PDP-11s as they ran on an 11/20 without an MMU also with limited > memory, and often used simple (primarily tape) storage (DECtape and > Cassette's) as the default 'laboratory' system, replacing the earlier PDP-8 > for the same job which primarily ran DOS-8 in those settings. > 4.) Fifth and Sixth Edition of Unix was $150 for university but to run it, > it took a larger at least 11/40 or 45, with a minimum of 64Kbytes to boot > and really need the full 256Kbytes to run acceptably and the cost of a 2.5M > byte RK05 disk was much greater per byte than tape -- thus the base system > it took to run it was at least $60K (in 1975 dollars) and typically cost > about two to four times that in practice. Remember the cost of > acquisition of the HW dominated many (most) choices. > > *I**'ll take a guess, but it is only that.* I *suspect* he saw the S-100 > system as closer to a PDP-11/20 'lab' system than as a small > timesharing machine. He set out with CP/M to duplication the functionality > from RT/11. He even the naming of the commands was the same as what DEC > used (*e.g.* PIP) and used the basic DEC style command syntax and parsing > rules. That is about it. CP/M predates the Altair / S-100 bus, and was designed for a heavily hacked Intellec-8 system. CP/M was developed on a PDP-10 based 8080 simulator in 1974. It was developed for the dual purposes of creating a “native” PL/M compiler and to create the “astrology machine”. The first versions of CP/M were written (mostly) in PL/M. To some extent, in 1974 both Unix and CP/M were research systems, with a kernel coded in a portable language — but aimed at very different levels of hardware capability. In 1975 customers started to show up and paid serious money for CP/M (Omron, IMSAI) - from that point on the course for Kildall / DRI was set. The story is here: https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-his-own-words-gary-kildall/?key=in-his-… <https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-his-own-words-gary-kildall/?key=in-his-…>

3 years, 8 months

PC Unix (had been How to Kill a Technical Conference

by M Douglas McIlroy

> I wonder. IBM introduced the IBM PC in August of 1981. > That was years after a non-memory managed version of > Unix was created by Heinze Lycklama, LSX. Is anyone > on this list familiar with Bell Labs management thoughts > on selling IBM on LSX rather than "dos"? IBM famously failed to buy the well-established CP/M in 1980. (CP/M had been introduced in 1974, before the advent of the LSI-11 on which LSX ran.) By then IBM had settled on Basic and Intel. I do not believe they ever considered Unix and DEC, nor that AT&T considered selling to IBM. (AT&T had--fortunately--long since been rebuffed in an attempt to sell to DEC.) Doug

3 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix

by Jason Stevens

I'd totally subscribe to your newsletter :P that's cool, there is a tape dump of the old stuff on bitsavers... the UniSoft port I think was the original stuff before Bill showed up? http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Sun/UniSoft_1.3/ along with some ROM images http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Sun/sun1/ but more pictures and whatnot are always interesting! -----Original Message----- From: Earl Baugh To: Clem Cole Cc: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org Sent: 4/10/21 4:02 AM Subject: Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix I’ve done a fair amount of research on Sun 1’s since I have one ( and it has one of the original 68k motherboards with the original proms ). It’s on my list to create a Sun 1 registry along the lines of the Apple 1 registry. ( https://www.apple1registry.com/ <https://www.apple1registry.com/> ) Right now, I can positively identify 24 machines that still exist. Odd serial numbering makes it very hard to know exactly how many they made. Cisco was sued by Stanford over the Sun 1. From what I read, they made off with some Stanford property ( SW and HW ). Wikipedia mentions this ( and I have some supporting documents as well ). They ended up licensing from Stanford as part of the settlement. From what I’ve gathered VLSI licensed the design from Stanford not Andy directly. However the only produced a few machines and Andy wasn’t all that happy with that. That was one of the impetus is to getting sun formed and licensing the same design. I also believe another company ( or 2 )licensed the design but either didn’t produce any or very very few machines. You can tell a difference between VLSI boards and the Sun Microsystems boards because the SUN is all capitalized on the VLSI boards ( and is Sun on the others ). At least on the few I’ve seen pictures of. The design was also licensed to SGI — I’ve seen a prototype SGI board that’s the same thing with a larger PCB to allow some extensions. And the original CPU boards didn’t have an MMU. They could only run Sun OS up to 0.9, I believe was the version. When Bill Joy got there, again from what I’ve gathered, he wanted to bring more of the BSD code over and they had to change the system board. This is why you see the Sun 1/150 model number ( as an upgrade to the original Sun 1/100 designation ). The rack mounted Sun 1/120 was changed to the 1/170. The same upgraded CPU board was used in the Sun 2/120 at least initially. The original Sun OS wasn’t BSD based. It was a V32 variant I believe. And the original CPU boards were returned to Sun, I believe as part of the upgrade from the 1/100 to the 1/150. ( Given people had just paid $10,000 for a machine having to replace the entire machine would’ve been bad from a customer perspective). Sun did board upgrade trade ups after this ( I worked at a company and we purchased an upgrade to upgrade a Sun 3/140 to a Sun 3/110 — the upgrade consisted of a CPU board swap and a different badge for the box ) Sun then, from when I can tell, sold the original CPU boards to a German company that was producing a V32 system. They changed out the PROMs but you can see the Sun logo and part numbers on the boards I could go on and on about this topic ? A Sun 1 was a “bucket list” machine for me - and I am still happy that some friends were willing to take a 17 hour road trip from Atlanta to Minnesota to pick mine up. ? After unparking the drive heads it booted up, first try ( I was only willing to try that without a bunch of testing work because I have some spare power supplies and a couple plastic tubs of multi bus boards that came with it ?) Earl Sent from my iPhone On Apr 9, 2021, at 11:13 AM, Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote: ? On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 10:10 AM Tom Lyon < pugs(a)ieee.org <mailto:pugs@ieee.org> > wrote: Prior to Sun, Andy had a company called VLSI Technology, Inc. which licensed SUN designs to 5-10 companies, including Forward Technology and CoData, IIRC. The SUN IPR effectively belonged to Andy, but I don't know what kind of legal arrangement he had with Stanford. But the design was not generally public, and relied on CAD tools only extant on the Stanford PDP-10. Cisco did start with the SUN-1 processor, though whether they got it from Andy or direct from Stanford is not known to me. When Cisco started (1984), the Sun-1 was long dead already at Sun. Bits passing in the night -- this very much is what I remember, expereinced. <https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type= zerocontent&guid=57eccb88-2f68-40ed-9f5a-ce8913f2b4cc> ?

3 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix

by Jason Stevens

Is there any solid info on the Stanford SUN boards? I just know the SUN-1 was based around them, but they aren't the same thing? And apparently cisco used them as well but 'borrowed' someone's RTOS design as the basis for IOS? There was some lawsuit and Stanford got cisco network gear for years for free but they couldn't take stock for some reason? I see more and more of these CP/M SBC's on ebay/online and it seems odd that there is no 'DIY' SUN boards... Or were they not all that open, hence why they kind of disappeared? -----Original Message----- From: Jon Steinhart To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org Sent: 4/8/21 7:04 AM Subject: Re: [TUHS] PC Unix Larry McVoy writes: > On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 12:18:04AM +0200, Thomas Paulsen wrote: > > >From: John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> > > >Sun was making 68000-based systems in 1981, before the IBM PC was created. > > > > Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. The Sun-1 was launched in May 1982. > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-1 > > John may be sort of right, I bet avb was building 68k machines at > Stanford before SUN was founded. Sun stood for Stanford University > Network I believe. > > --lm Larry is correct. I remember visiting a friend of mind, Gary Newman, who was working at Lucasfilm in '81. He showed me a bunch of stuff that they were doing on Stanford University Network boards. Full disclosure, it was Gary and Paul Rubinfeld who ended up at DEC and I believe was the architect for the microVax who told me about the explorer scout post at BTL which is how I met Heinz. Jon

3 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] SUN (Stanford University Network) was PC Unix

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jason Stevens > apparently cisco used them as well but 'borrowed' someone's RTOS design > as the basis for IOS? There was some lawsuit and Stanford got cisco > network gear for years for free but they couldn't take stock for some > reason? I don't know the whole story, but there was some kind of scandal; I vaguely recall stories about 'missing' tapes being 'found' under the machine room raised floor... The base software for the Cisco multi-protocol router was code done by William (Bill) Yeager at Stanford (it handled IP and PUP); I have a vgue memory that his initially ran on PDP-11's, like mine. (I think their use of that code was part of the scandal, but I've forgotten the details.) > From: Tom Lyon > the design ... relied on CAD tools only extant on the Stanford PDP-10. Sounds like SUDS? Noel

3 years, 8 months

PC Unix

by Paul Ruizendaal

> I developed LSX at Bell Labs in Murray Hill NJ in the 1974-1975 > timeframe. > An existing C compiler made it possible without too much effort. The > UNIX > source was available to Universities by then. I also developed Mini-UNIX > for the PDP11/10 (also no memory protection) in the 1976 timeframe. > This source code was also made available to Universities, but the source > code for LSX was not. > > Peter Weiner, the founder of INTERACTIVE Systems Corp.(ISC) in June > 1977, > the first commercial company to license UNIX source from Western > Electric for $20,000. Binary licenses were available at the same time. > I joined ISC in May of 1978 when ISC was the first company to offer > UNIX support services to third parties. There was never any talk about > licensing UNIX source code from Western Electric (WE) from the founding > of ISC to when the Intel 8086 micro became available in 1981. > DEC never really targeted the PC market with the LSI-11 micro, > and WE never made it easy to license binary copies of the UNIX > source code, So LSX never really caught on in the commercial market. > ISC was in the business of porting the UNIX source code to other > computers, micro to mainframe, as new computer architectures > were developed. > > Heinz The Wikipedia page for ISC has the following paragraphs: "Although observers in the early 1980s expected that IBM would choose Microsoft Xenix or a version from AT&T Corporation as the Unix for its microcomputer, PC/IX was the first Unix implementation for the IBM PC XT available directly from IBM. According to Bob Blake, the PC/IX product manager for IBM, their "primary objective was to make a credible Unix system - [...] not try to 'IBM-ize' the product. PC-IX is System III Unix." PC/IX was not, however, the first Unix port to the XT: Venix/86 preceded PC/IX by about a year, although it was based on the older Version 7 Unix. The main addition to PC/IX was the INed screen editor from ISC. INed offered multiple windows and context-sensitive help, paragraph justification and margin changes, although it was not a fully fledged word processor. PC/IX omitted the System III FORTRAN compiler and the tar file archiver, and did not add BSD tools like vi or the C shell. One reason for not porting these was that in PC/IX, individual applications were limited to a single segment of 64 kB of RAM. To achieve good filesystem performance, PC/IX addressed the XT hard drive directly, rather than doing this through the BIOS, which gave it a significant speed advantage compared to MS-DOS. Because of the lack of true memory protection in the 8088 chips, IBM only sold single-user licenses for PC/IX. The PC/IX distribution came on 19 floppy disks and was accompanied by a 1,800-page manual. Installed, PC/IX took approximately 4.5 MB of disk space. An editorial by Bill Machrone in PC Magazine at the time of PC/IX's launch flagged the $900 price as a show stopper given its lack of compatibility with MS-DOS applications. PC/IX was not a commercial success although BYTE in August 1984 described it as "a complete, usable single-user implementation that does what can be done with the 8088", noting that PC/IX on the PC outperformed Venix on the PDP-11/23.” It seems like Venix/86 came out in Spring 1983 and PC/IX in Spring 1984. I guess by then RAM had become cheap enough that running in 64KB of core was no longer a requirement and LSX and MX did not make sense anymore. Does that sound right?

3 years, 8 months

Story about Microsoft and *ix

by Dan Stromberg

I heard a while back, that the reason that Microsoft has avoided *ix so meticulously, was that back when they sold Xenix to SCO, as part of the deal Microsoft signed a noncompete agreement that prevented them from selling anything at all similar to *ix. True?

3 years, 8 months

[tuhs] fuzz testing of Unix-family utilities

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

I first encountered the fuzz-testing work of Barton Miller (Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin in Madison) and his students and colleagues in their original paper on the subject An empirical study of the reliability of UNIX utilities Comm. ACM 33(12) 32--44 (December 1990) https://doi.org/10.1145/96267.96279 which was followed by Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of UNIX Utilities and Services University of Wisconsin CS TR 1264 (18 February 1995) ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/pub/techreports/1995/TR1268.pdf and An Empirical Study of the Robustness of MacOS Applications Using Random Testing ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 41(1) 78--86 (January 2007) https://doi.org/10.1145/1228291.1228308 I have used their techniques and tools many times in testing my own, and other, software. By chance, I found today in Web searches on another subject that Milller's group has a new paper in press in the journal IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering: The Relevance of Classic Fuzz Testing: Have We Solved This One? https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2020.3047766 https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.06537 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9309406 I track that journal at http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/ieeetranssoftwengYYYY.{bib,html} [YYYY = 1970 to 2020, by decade], but the new paper has not yet been assigned a journal issue, so I had not seen it before today. The Miller group work over 33 years has examined the reliability of common Unix tools in the face of unexpected input, and in the original work that began in 1988, they were able to demonstrate a significant failure rate in common, and widely used, Unix-family utilities. Despite wide publicity of their first paper, things have not got much better, even from reprogramming software tools in `safe' languages, such as Rust. In each paper, they analyze the reasons for the exposed bugs, and sadly, much the same reasons still exist in their latest study, and in several cases, have been introduced into code since their first work. The latest paper also contains mention of Plan 9, which moved bug-prone input line editing into the window system, and of bugs in pdftex (they say latex, but I suspect they mean pdflatex, not latex itself: pdflatex is a macro-package enhanced layer over the pdftex engine, which is a modified TeX engine). The latter are significant to me and my friends and colleagues in the TeX community, and for the TeX Live 2021 production team http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/texlive-utah/ especially because this year, Don Knuth revisited TeX and Metafont, produced new bug-fixed versions of both, plus updated anniversary editions of his five-volume Computers & Typesetting book series. His recent work is described in a new paper announced this morning: The \TeX{} tuneup of 2021 TUGboat 42(1) ??--?? February 2021 https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb42-1/tb130knuth-tuneup21.pdf Perhaps one or more list members might enjoy the exercise of applying the Barton-group fuzz tests (all of which are available from a Web site ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/paradyn/fuzz/fuzz-2020/ as discussed in their paper) to 1970s and 1980s vintage Unix systems that they run on software-simulated CPUs (or rarely, on real vintage hardware). The Unix tools of those decades were generally much smaller (in lines of code), and most were written by the expert Unix pioneers at Bell Labs. It would of interest to compare the tool failure rates in vintage Unix with tool versions offered by commercial distributions, the GNU Project, and the FreeBSD community, all of which are treated in the 2021 paper. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] (no printed copy) (was (no subject))

by Norman Wilson

I'm not sure why people, even in a group devoted to history like ours, focus so much on whether a journal is issued in print or only electronically. The latter has become more and more common. On one hand, I too find that if something is available only electronically I'm more likely to put off reading it, probably because back issues don't pile up as visibly. On the other, in recent years I've been getting behind in my reading of periodicals of all sorts, and so far as I can tell that has nothing to do with whether a given periodical arrives on paper. If anything, electronic access makes it more likely I'll be able to catch up, because it's easier to carry a bunch of back issues around on a USB stick or loaded into a tablet or the like than to lug around lots of hardcopy. The biggest burden has been that imposed by PDF files, which are often carefully constructed to be appallingly cumbersome to read unless viewed on a letter-paper/A4-sized screen (or printed out). HTML used to be better, though the ninnies who design web pages to look like magazine ads have spoiled a lot of that over the years. Since I often want to read PDF files when travelling (e.g. conference proceedings while at the conference) I finally invested in a large-screened tablet. Even so, I have a big pile of back issues of ;login:, CACM (until ACM's policies, having little to do with the journal, recently drove me away), Rail Passenger Association News, and Consumer Reports waiting to be read. And sometimes I'm months behind on this list. My advice to those who find electronic-only publications cumbersome is to invest in either a good tablet or a good printer. I have and use both. There's no substitute for a large, high-quality screen, and sometimes there's no substitute for paper that I can flip back and forth, but I'm fine with supplying those myself. I'm still looking for a nice brass-bound leather tablet case, though. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

3 years, 8 months

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TUHS April 2021