TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

63 participants
6513 discussions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: jcs > The real mystery is what it's running on. ... It's=20 probably a > simulator but I've never heard of one for the H6000. Per: https://multicians.org/multics.htmlhttps://multicians.org/multics.html "Harry Reed and Charles Anthony reached a major milestone on the Multics simulator on Saturday 08 November, 2014. Their SIMH-based simulator booted Multics MR 12.5, came to operator command level, entered admin mode, created a small PL/I program, compiled and executed it, and shut down. Release 1.0 of the simulator is now available." Noel

6 years, 8 months

Re: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 34, Issue 4

by Don Hopkins

> On 1 Sep 2018, at 19:18,Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com <mailto:imp@bsdimp.com>> wrote: > > I recall a more knowledgeable friend complaining about FreeBSD VM in 1994 or so. > > It used to be downright aweful. > That sounds like a GOOD thing: full of awe! At least it wasn’t offal: decomposing animal flesh. -Don

6 years, 8 months

Fwd: Public access multics

by Clem Cole

below... On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 4:37 PM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote: > So, it looks like someone has gone and started running a multics instance: > > http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/semibug/2018-August/000288.html > > That’s interesting, and y’all may even have been aware of it. But, I was > thinking that Multics was a failed predecessor of unix and it’s craziness > an inspiration for how unix isn’t multics... straighten me out :) > > https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Unix-succeed-and-not-Multics/answer/Clem-Cole ᐧ ᐧ

6 years, 8 months

gopher://ftp.icm.edu.pl/1/vol/rzm2/

by Marcus Merighi

Hello, against my plan to stay under my rock and learn from your messages I now have to speak up, because I stumbled over this: https://bsd.network/@sehnsucht/100635118831337239 which speaks of gopher://ftp.icm.edu.pl/1/vol/rzm2/ (after some puzzled searching for a client I found out that lynx still supports gopher) This site has the following list in its root directory: 4.4BSD-Lite FreeBSD LSI NetBSD OpenBSD UnixArchive ancient-unix desktopbsd dragonflybsd ghostbsd kde kde-applicationdata kś linux-alsa linux-archlinux linux-atm linux-bipv6 linux-blackarch linux-bluehawk linux-cbq.init linux-cryptoapi linux-documentation linux-dret linux-e2compr linux-fido linux-gentoo linux-gentoo-portage linux-inner linux-iproute linux-linos linux-net-tools linux-norlug linux-nvidia linux-nvidia.old linux-nvidia.old2 linux-openvz linux-packware linux-pcmcia linux-radvd linux-raspbian linux-reiserfs linux-rtlinux linux-sgi linux-silo linux-slackware linux-sparc linux-superrescue linux-tsx-11 linux-uk linux-usagi linux-uw-linux linux-vectorlinux linuxberg nexenta openindiana opensolaris pcbsd solaris-10 solaris-cd-fsn solaris-cd-pm solaris_i86pc solaris_sparc sun-fixes sun-patches www.tazenda.demon.co.uk I descended into the OpenBSD directory, where things look quite authentic, at a first glance. Please keep the stories coming, Marcus

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] SunOS code?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > The problem is finding some at Oracle that would care Well, I've got a nephew who's been at Oracle for like 20+ years; he can probably point us at the right person. > and finding a proper distribution tape to officially release. Why do we need that? Can't they say 'any and all versions of SunOS', and that term ('SunOS') is sufficiently well defined in real-world documents (e.g. Sun licenses) that that should be 'good enough'. It sounds like the _actual code_ is reasonably available, we wouldn't need Oracle to go looking around for it, would we? Noel

6 years, 9 months

Running 4.3 BSD on x86 hardware? Suggestions?

by Gilles Gravier

Hi! If I wanted to run 4.3BSD on an x86 box (VirtualBox? QEMM? other emu?)... anybody has suggestions? Where can I find media for 4.3BSD (if any are legitimately accessible)? Or on a Raspberry Pi? :) Thanks! Gilles -- *Gilles Gravier* - Gilles(a)Gravier.org GSM : +33618347147 and +41794728437 Skype : ggravier | PGP Key : 0x8DE6D026 <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=0x8DE6D026&op=index>

6 years, 9 months

hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu

by Steve Mynott

Back in the early 90s before the FSF withdrew the service due to misuse it was possible to write off to them to get a free shell account on "hal" as I did. I recall having to telnet through one of three gateway systems so assume it was on its own little subnet. But I can't remember what sort of system (hardware or OS) it was now however and wondered if anyone else did? -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] changes in C compilers

by Norman Wilson

Clem Cole: Clearly from the time, ditroff did not yet exist. The more I think about it, Brian K actually might know some of the story. === I'm quite sure Brian Kernighan knows the full story of the origins of typesetter-independent troff (as it was originally called, in CSTR 97, published in 1981; the binary was just /usr/bin/troff). The reason I'm so sure of that is that it was Brian who rewrote troff to bring it into the modern era and to make it supportable. He's also the author of the CSTR. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] SunOS code?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Larry McVoy > I'd really like the SCCS history. Any idea if that even still exists, or did it get shredded somewhere along the way? Anyway, should I spin up my nephew on trying to find the right person to put out a historic, personal-use license? Noel

6 years, 9 months

Fwd: Re: RetroNet…

by William Pechter

Missed the cc line. Also I have mailman up @ lakewoodmicro.com at Digital Ocean. If we need mailing lists. -----Original Message----- From: William Pechter <pechter(a)gmail.com> To: Grant Taylor <gtaylor(a)tnetconsulting.net> Sent: Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:46 Subject: Re: [TUHS] RetroNet… Damn. Television was autocorrect but I wrote "Telebit" at the time. Perhaps setting up a mumble server for voice chat makes sense. Bill -----Original Message----- From: Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org> To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org Sent: Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:42 Subject: Re: [TUHS] RetroNet… On 08/29/2018 12:26 PM, William Pechter wrote: > Count me in. Cool! Welcome! We're currently hanging out in the #retronet group on the Synchronet network (I'm accessing through irc.chivanet.org) > I think a UUCP over ssh would be nice as would an SSL version. I've personally done UUCP over SSH multiple times. It looks like TCP port 540 is reserved for UUCP over TCP and TCP port 4031 is reserved for UUCP over SSL. So, we'll definitely be offering those services inside of RetroNet. Currently the idea is to make services available inside of RetroNet. I don't know how many services will be openly available across the Internet. Primarily for security / safety reasons. That being said, I think we are planing on a gateway for things. We're certainly willing to talk about other options too. > I would like to see UUCP over ether as serial for backwards compatibility > to talk to old machines and emulation. I / we would like to know more about the "over ether as serial" part. I'd think the goal would be to have RS-232 (et al) serial ports that can connect to retro computers and make things look like what they would expect to see. That being said, we will either need an RS-232 (et al) serial port on a gateway, or something else to translate from serial to likely an IP~>telnet connection. If you have ideas, please bring them and share them. > Some of the kid's I know would be blown away by Cnews and television or > transported over Internet or PPP links. Yep. :-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Running 4.3 BSD on x86 hardware? Suggestions?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Noel Chiappa > I'll update the page as well. I have to do it since, after severe issues with spam, a login is required to make changes. If anyone is interested in adding content (please, we need more in just about every area - I've done a lot of PDP-11's, but that's a fairly small corner overall :-), please drop me a short line, and I'll set you up (just let me know the account name you want, and what email address to associate with it). > From: William Pechter > Just a plug for the 4.3+University of Wisconsin version on Simh. I don't think I see that in the TUHS repository that Clem just pointed to? Got a URL? Any chance I can convince you to add a bit of content about it? :-) Noel

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Running 4.3 BSD on x86 hardware? Suggestions?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Rares Aioanei > gunkies.org works. The URL for getting the sets doesn't Ah, OK. Link-rot; sigh. The bane of the Web! If someone can provide a working alternative for you to use, I'll update the page as well. Noel

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Running 4.3 BSD on x86 hardware? Suggestions?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Rares Aioanei > Link doesn't seem to work, I get "Connection reset". Which link - the gunkies.org (Computer History Wiki) one? It's working for me at the moment. Does your browser accepts non-HTTPS URLs? (There's apparently a craze on to denigrate them at the moment.) Noel

6 years, 9 months

C++ / Kernel

by ron＠ronnatalie.com

> Has anyone experimented with building Unix using C++, to take > advantage of strong typing? My guess is no--it would be a Herculean task likely to introduce more bugs than it would fix. I'm not sure what "strong typing" gain you expect to find. With the exception of the void* difference, C++ isn't much more "type strong" than C. A lot of the type issues you can find on the Kernel just by turning up the compiler warnings (or use lint). The biggest issue we had was BSD didn't use void* at all. Had they converted pointers to void*, which is in implementation necessarily the same as char*, C would have done the right thing. The problem is they did what I call "Conversion by union." They would store a char* into one element of a union and read it out of another typed pointer. This works fine for a VAX where all pointers are the same format, but fails on word address machines (notably in our case the HEP where the target size is encoded in the low order bits of the pointer). Still, running around and fixing those was only a few hours work. The DevSwitch is the beginnings of an object oriented philosophy. Alas, the original UNIX used it only for mapping major dev numbers to functions. It got some later use for other things like multi filesystemsupport. The scary supportability thing in the kernel, isn't so much typing, but the failuer to "hide" implementation details of one part of the kernel from the other.

6 years, 9 months

Research UNIX on the AT&T 3B2?

by Norman Wilson

Seth Morabito: After the past several years of focusing on 3B2 preservation and emulation, I've begun to wonder whether 3B2 hardware was used very much inside of Bell Labs. Has anyone ever heard whether Research UNIX was ever ported to the WE32100? I've certainly never seen anything that would suggest it was, but I'd love to be proven wrong. ===== I never heard of anyone doing such a thing. Had they ported the kernel I would almost certainly have heard about it, because they'd have asked me a question or two. Much VAX-specific structure inside there that I'd love to have had the time and energy to clean up. It's possible that someone did a semi-port, moving a lot of the user-mode tools like the shell and the Jerq software. Dave Kapilow did something like that for early SunOS, including a mux-like X11 terminal program called sux, built atop a library that did a simple mapping from Jerq graphics-library calls to X11. Certainly nobody inside 1127 ever did either of those things. A few of us played with 3B1 or 3B2 systems (I remember Tom Duff had a 3B1 at home at one point), but never very seriously. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] changes in C compilers

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > Looking at the v6 distribution tape I have, the assembler versions of > roff and nroff was there Whoa! The standard V6 distribution tape, as in the one there are a couple of copies of in the repository, does not have that. Do you have that in machine-readable form? If so, can you get it to Mr. Toomey ASAP? > The order I remember is this ... V5, V6, Patches, Typesetter C, TS, V7 Where do USG and PWB fit into that? The repository has PWB (or, what is _claimed_ to be PWB), which is how I know the MIT system is PWB. But there is nothing of the others (except the kernel manual for USG, which shows that the version described in it is basically V6). If anyone has TS in _any_ form (including hardcopy listings, please speak up! Those 'early' PDP-11 versions are very poorly documented now, and I'd love to get more on them. Noel

6 years, 9 months

changes in C compilers

by arnold＠skeeve.com

My two cents, ... > From: Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> > Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2018 20:30:19 -0400 > To: ron(a)ronnatalie.com > Subject: Re: [TUHS] C++ / Kernel > > Yep. Im pretty sure I remember void being in typesetter C also. IIRC the > differences between that version of Dennis???s compiler and what was included > in 7th Edition was mostly in the libraries ie stdio was first released as > part of the typesetter compiler but it was still a work in progress. K&R 1 did not have void or structure assignment. Those came later, although I'm not sure when. They may have been mentioned in an appendix; my copy isn't handy to check. At what point did each struct become its own namespace? I think around the time of K&R1. > From: Clem cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> > Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2018 22:52:24 -0400 > To: Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > Subject: Re: [TUHS] C++ / Kernel > > ... > > The big changes to the language were between 6th Edition and Typesetter > which were done in concert if not to support Brian???s work on the troff > rewrite. Plus the first draft of book was being written around then also. The troff rewrite was later, circa '81 or so. Definitely NOT in the V6/V7 timeframe. Arnold

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] changes in C compilers (Typesetter C)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jaap Akkerhuis > I've been told that when troff was rewritten from assembler to C Was TROFF ever in assembler? I'm pretty sure NROFF was, as of V6; the source is not in the V6 distro, and the binary is stripped, but looking at the object code, it doesn't look like C compiler output. As of the PWB system that MIT had (or maybe it was TS - how can one tell the difference, does anyone know?), NROFF and TROFF were generated from the same C source (which I have, if anyone wants to look at it). > the compiler needed some rework and thus typesetter C was born. I heard he needed features (e.g. longs and unsigned), but... looking at the N/TROFF source, there are _no_ 'unsigned's, and only a handful of 'long' variables! There also don't seem to be any bit fields, typedefs, etc. There is _one_ initialized structure (array of structures, to be precise). (Although there are a lot of places were an int is initialized with a double-character constant!) About the only features in "C Changes" that it uses are i) register types on arguments, and the 'static' storage class. So now I'm wondering about that meme... Noel

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] Details and Dates (was C++ / Kernel)

by Clem Cole

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 10:02 AM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote: > It's my subjective impression, based largely on what I read here on TUHS, > that there was quite a lot of activity and cross-pollination in and out of > Bell Labs at the time, so I'm not surprised that the details here are fuzzy. > Amen - The Ritchie compiler in particular, as well as the Research Kernel and BSD releases are examples a continuous development and express specific points in time. The *people and thus knowledge were fluid* (*a.k.a.* 'open source ;-) and features within the system followed the people. The reasons, order and local politics for many things are sometimes forgotten. Different actions feed back and forth and things get cloudy in the history. For instance, while people give BSD credit for the Unix networking because it was widely released with BSD 4.2 and 4.3 as the vehicle, it was actually BBN did the original IP and TCP stack that Eric Cooper added to 4.1 and Joy would eventually create sockets in 4.1A. All of MIT with ChaosNet, UofI and Rand's work on the ArpaNet NCP predates that work and was used by BBN -- as did the 3Com UNET code for V7, much less things like Rashid's Accent work, Mike Malcom and Cheridon's Thoth and later V Kernel. This is why I try to use other information that we can precisely date, as well as constants like trying code on old V7 releases like Dan just did. To me 'other information' is like when some of us matriculated at which schools or moved jobs, *i.e.* when Ted show up at CMU for his original OYOC year, Noel's time in Tech Sq, me at CMU or UCB, the summer the V6 patch tape 'accidentally' found its way to the Arpanet community can be dated by Ken's trip to California/visit to see Chesson who was finishing up at UofI ; or big outside actions like the need to support to big unmovable (and thus otherwise datable) items such as the APS5 or addition of the Vax VM support at UCB , dvk and my going on strike to force CMU to get a commercial Unix license summer of '78, when UCB got its own C70 IMP instead of the VDHI to LBL for Ing70; *etc* . Dates of different USENIX conferences, which were were a lot of ideas (and code) moved back and forth. Clem

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] C++ / Kernel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ron Natalie > The BSD kernel looks as if it requires such a later compiler (it uses > bit fields which the earlier compilers didn't support). Umm, minor nit: bit fields were added to/as of 'Typesetter C', which I gather was intermediate between V6 and V7. Noel

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] compiler checking types

by Steve Simon

At the risk of being boring, Ken thompson’s portable c compiler on plan9 checks types. -Steve

6 years, 9 months

C++ / Kernel

by Paul Ruizendaal

> Perhaps Steve Johnson can chime in on this? I suspect he'd know the history > here well. The origins of void were discussed 4-7 nov 2017 on this list.

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] C++ / Kernel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > Im pretty sure I remember void being in typesetter C also. Hmm. In the two original 'help' files I have about the changes to C (the term 'typesetter C' doesn't appear, but it's pretty clear that's what the subject is), available through here: http://gunkies.org/wiki/Typesetter_C the term 'void' does not appear (although most other stuff - e.g. unions, bit fields, typedef, yadda yadda - does). Noel

6 years, 9 months

About Unix header files

by Caipenghui

Hello everyone Hello everyone, I have a question, I looked at the source code of early Unix, found that a lot of.c files did not contain header files, so compiler compiler will not error? Caipenghui

6 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] About Unix header files

by Doug McIlroy

> Has anyone experimented with building Unix using C++, to take advantage of strong typing? My guess is no--it would be a Herculean task likely to introduce more bugs than it would fix. How Unix didn't get written in C++: When Bjarne Stroustrup joined Bell Labs, he hoped to write an operating system, but he wanted to do it in an object oriented language, so he took a small detour to make an object-oriented sibling of C. That turned out to be a maelstrom from which he never escaped. Doug

6 years, 9 months

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TUHS