TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

5 participants
6532 discussions

by Clem Cole

This recent activity on the simh mailing list WRT to DG Nova and Ecpilse got me wondering. At Locus in the 80s and 90s, we did a lot of work with DG and DG-UX with their later MP-based ports using commercially available microprocessors (which I have reported was a very nicely done system, easy to work on, the locks tended to scale well, e*tc*.). But I am trying to remember if C or UNIX was on a Nova or an Eclipse. This could be my failed memory, given that so many people ported V7 in the late 1970s (the infamous 'NUIX' bug from the Series/1 port probably being my favorite tale). So to the hive mind, did anyone (DG themselves or a University) ever build 16 or 32-bit tools for the DG architectures and do a UNIX port, and if so, does anyone know what became of those efforts? Is this something that needs to be in the TUHS archives also? Clem ᐧ

2 years, 7 months

the rise of discmaster.textfiles.com

by Arnold Robbins

http://blog.archive.org/2022/10/24/the-rise-of-discmaster/ There seems to be lots of different vendor unix stuff here, as well as many other things. Arnold

2 years, 7 months

[OT?] 1993 'Sourceware' paper anniversary. What was right & any surprises?

by steve jenkin

I’ve only recently stumbled across this paper. It gives the answer to one question I’ve had: Why did Linux become more popular than everything that came before it? There were surprises. The “Dot Boom” then “Dot Bust” along with Y2K. Microsoft developed an architecture, Active Directory, designed to support Enterprise scale deployments. Everything Good in A.D. is Old (LDAP, Kerberos, DNS) everything badly done is New (replicated DB’s & ???). Other surprises is the rise of “Internet Scale” datacentres, Social Media and Smartphones & Tablets. All of which are dominated by Linux or Unix derived solutions. And Virtual Machines on Intel. IA-64 was in the far future :( And ARM CPU’s made a big comeback. ========== The Sourceware Operating System Proposal 9 November 1993 Revision: 1.8 <https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/unix/srcos.html> ========== -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

2 years, 7 months

Keynote Language - Tim Thompson

by Kevin Bowling

Does anyone know if this made it outside the labs? https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/compsystems/1990/spr_thompson.pdf I have a rack of outboard synths and samplers, it would be entertaining to run them with an awk-analogue.

2 years, 7 months

Re: early Unix papers, from Jim Joyce

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Rich Morin > Suggestions? Step #0: make a list of what's there, and post it here. That's crucial input to any recommendation. Noel

2 years, 7 months

vi in cooked mode?

by Diomidis Spinellis

I remember being told back in the 1980s that vi would set the terminal to "cooked mode" when vi was in "insert mode", so as to reduce expensive context switching for each character typed. Only vi's "command mode" would set the terminal to "raw mode" so as to provide immediate feedback on each (command) character typed. This would be a clever system performance optimization, and would also explain designing vi around distinct insert and command modes. However, I can't find such evidence even as far back as BSD 1. It seems that in insert mode ESC was processed like any other character. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1-Snapshot-Develop… Cooked mode was only entered when scrolling in order to receive interrupts. https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-1-Snapshot-Develop… Also, for this scheme to work ESC would need to be mapped to an interrupt key, so as to allow exiting the cooked mode through the corresponding signal handler. Again, grepping for ESC, did not show me any such code. I also remember being told that this optimization was what allowed twenty students to concurrently perform interactive editing on a VAX 11/780 (running 4.2BSD and then 4.3BSD), and that Emacs was not provided to students because it was always operating in raw mode. Was I misled? Was there perhaps a hacked version of vi that worked in this way? -Diomidis

2 years, 8 months

Four windowing systems on SunOS

by Kevin Bowling

Cameron Kaiser has written up a nice survey on some windowing systems that can run under OS/MP or SunOS https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2022/10/if-one-guis-not-enough-for-your-sparc.h…

2 years, 8 months

Re: vi in cooked mode?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Diomidis Spinellis > I remember being told back in the 1980s that vi would set the terminal > to "cooked mode" when vi was in "insert mode", so as to reduce expensive > context switching for each character typed. > ... > However, I can't find such evidence even as far back as BSD 1. Maybe you're thinking of Multics Emacs, which had such a capability: https://multicians.org/mepap.html Noel

2 years, 8 months

[OT] Usenix Conference in Sydney - anybody else?

by Warren Toomey

Hi all, I'll be attending the Usenix SREcon22 Asia/Pacific Conference which is being held in Sydney, Australia on the 7-9 December. Is anybody else attending? If so, it'd be nice to catch up with some other TUHSers :-) https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon22apac/program Cheers, Warren

2 years, 8 months

Re: Early Unix and Keyboard Skills

by Douglas McIlroy

> Touch typists can spot an illtyperate programmer from a mile away. > They don't even have to be in the same room. I once thought of touch typing as employment of all fingers. Then I met Fred Grampp. Using only four fingers, he typed as fast as most good programmers. He knew where to hit, with a kinesthetic sense that had progressed beyond dependence on "home keys". It was an athletic performance, astonishing to watch. Doug

2 years, 8 months

early Unix papers, from Jim Joyce

by Rich Morin

Some of you may recall my friend Jim Joyce, who was an early proponent of Unix. IIRC, he taught the first course on Unix at UCB. Later on, he started and ran mail-order bookstores and seminars specializing in Unix-related topics, helped to found Unix Review, etc. In any event, I have about a cubic foot of early Unix papers, saved from Jim's files after his death. It's quite likely that all of these papers are already available in collections, but I'd like to make sure that any exceptions don't get lost. Also, the printed copies may have some independent historical merit. Suggestions? -r

2 years, 8 months

Re: Four windowing systems on SunOS

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

Larry McVoy reports today: >> People like Sunview's api enough that there was an Xview toolkit which >> was Sunview ported to X10/X11. The interface was nicely documented in three editions of a book (I have no entry for the second edition): @String{pub-ORA = "O'Reilly \& {Associates, Inc.}"} @String{pub-ORA:adr = "981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164, USA"} @Book{Heller:1990:XPM, author = "Dan Heller", title = "{XView} Programming Manual", volume = "7", publisher = pub-ORA, address = pub-ORA:adr, pages = "xxviii + 557", year = "1990", ISBN = "0-937175-38-2", ISBN-13 = "978-0-937175-38-5", LCCN = "QA76.76.W56 D44 v.7 1990", bibdate = "Tue Dec 14 22:55:18 1993", bibsource = "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib", acknowledgement = ack-nhfb, } @Book{Heller:1991:XPM, author = "Dan Heller", title = "{XView} Programming Manual", volume = "7A", publisher = pub-ORA, address = pub-ORA:adr, edition = "Third", pages = "xxxvii + 729", month = sep, year = "1991", ISBN = "0-937175-87-0", ISBN-13 = "978-0-937175-87-3", LCCN = "QA76.76.W56 H447 1990", bibdate = "Mon Jan 3 17:55:53 1994", bibsource = "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib", series = "The Definitive guides to the X Window System", acknowledgement = ack-nhfb, } I have the first edition on a shelf near my campus office chair, and continue to use olvwm as my window manager on multiple O/Ses, for 30+ years. Every window manager designed since seems to fail to understand the importance of user customizable, and pinnable, menus, which I exploit to the hilt. The menu customization goes into a single, easy to edit, text file, $HOME/.openwin-menu. Compare that to the Gnome desktop, with hundreds of files, many of them binary, stored in hidden directories under $HOME, and for which any corruption breaks the window system, and prevents login (except via a GUI console). Also. olvwm does not litter a default desktop with icons for applications that many of use would never use: just a simple blank desktop, with menu popups bound to mouse buttons. With olvwm, you can have any number of virtual desktops, not just the 2 or 4 offered by more modern window manaugers, and unlike some of those, windows can be dragged between desktops. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah - - 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/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 years, 8 months

Memoir Marks the 25th Anniversary of First Transgender Employment Policy

by Mary Ann Horton

This may be a bit off-topic, so please forgive me. Lucent is central to the book. I want to let you know I had a memoir published today, on the 25th anniversary of Lucent's historic policy. Here's the main part of the press release. > Before 1997, transgender workers were routinely fired when their > employers found out they were changing their sex. That changed on Oct. > 28, 1997, when Lucent Technologies became the first Fortune 500 > company to formally commit that it would not discriminate based on > "gender identity, characteristics, or expression". Dr. Mary Ann > Horton, who instigated the change, has written a memoir, Trailblazer: > Lighting the Path for Transgender Inclusion in Corporate America. > "When I led transgender-101 workshops, my personal story was people's > favorite part. They wanted more, and Trailblazer is the result," said > Horton. "It will be released on the 25th anniversary, Oct. 28." > > Horton was a software technology worker at Lucent in Columbus, Ohio, > when Lucent added the language. It allowed Mary Ann, then known as > Mark, to come out in the workplace without fear of reprisal. When she > didn't need to spend energy hiding part of herself, her productivity > soared, and she was promoted. Three years later, she persuaded Lucent > to cover gender-confirming medical care in their health insurance. She > blazed the trail for Apple, Avaya, Xerox, IBM, Chase, and other > companies to follow. Nokia blogged about it today. https://www.nokia.com/about-us/careers/life-at-nokia/employee-blogs/25th-an… You can find the book at https://www.amazon.com/Trailblazer-Lighting-Transgender-Equality-Corporate-… If you read it, please post a review to Amazon. -- Thanks, /Mary Ann Horton/ (she/her/ma'am) maryannhorton.com <https://maryannhorton.com> "This is a great book" - Monica Helms "Brave and Important" - Laura L. Engel Available on Amazon and bn.com! <https://www.amazon.com/Trailblazer-Lighting-Transgender-Equality-Corporate-…>

2 years, 8 months

SunOS4.1.3, etc., on GitHub

by Rich Salz

Sorry if this is a repost. No idea of the legality, and therefore no idea how long it will stay: https://twitter.com/nixcraft/status/1586276475614818305 is the tweet and https://github.com/Arquivotheca/SunOS-4.1.3 is the repository with this README, below. Many other OS's there too. README <https://github.com/Arquivotheca/SunOS-4.1.3#readme> This is the SunOS 4.1.3 SUNSRC CD-ROM. It contains the source in 3 forms. 1. plain text source, as a ufs tree, rooted at the top level of this filesystem. Symlinks to the SCCS hierarchy are in place. 2. SCCS hierarchy, rooted at SCCS_DIRECTORIES. 3. a tar image of the SCCS hierarchy, in a file named 4.1.3_SUNSRC.tar. This is rooted at ./SCCS_DIRECTORIES. Please see the SunOS 4.1.3 Source Installation Guide for further details.

2 years, 8 months

Version 3.1 of Installing and Using Research Unix Version 7 note is up the blog

by Will Senn

Following up on my v6 udpate a couple of weeks ago, I've updated my v7 note to use OpenSIMH and bring it up to date. In addition, I've switched the multi-session notes over to DZ-11 from DC-11 cuz it supports 9600 over telnet. Here's the link: http://decuser.blogspot.com/2022/10/installing-and-using-research-unix_29.h… Changes since revision 2.1 (2/3/2022) Revision 3.1 (10/29/2022) - minor revision: Changed over to DZ-11 vs DC-11 for serial connections which allows for 9600 baud connections. Revision 3.0 (10/28/2022) - major revision: Started using OpenSIMH Restored the learn notes which went missing between 2.0 and 2.1 Updated host notes for Macos Monterey Cleaned up a number of lingering issues This note covers building a working v7 instance from tape files that will run in the OpenSImH emulator. First, the reader is led through the restoration of a pristine v7 instance from tape to disk. Next, the reader is led through adding a regular user and making the system multi-user capable. Then, the reader is shown how to make the system multi-session cable to allow multiple simultaneous sessions. Finally, the system is put to use with hello world, DMR style, and the learn system is enabled. The note explains each step of the process in detail.

2 years, 8 months

who invented the link register

by ron minnich

I know branch and link was in the 360; was it earlier? And ... anybody know who invented it? This came up in a risc-v meeting just now :-) My claim is that if anybody knows, they will be in this group.

2 years, 8 months

Re: who invented the link register

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: ron minnich > I know branch and link was in the 360; was it earlier? Well, as I understand it, branch and link (BAL and BALR) did a couple of different things (if I have this wrong, I hope someone will correct me). It was a subroutine call, but it also loaded a base register. (Those were used to deal with the /360's bizarro memory management, which was not 'base and bounds, with a user's virtual address space starting at zero', like a lot of contemporary machines. Rather, a process saw its actual physical memory location, so depending on where in memoty a process was loaded, it would be executing at different addresses visible to it; the base registers were used to deal with that. This made swapping complicated, since it had to be swapped back in to the same location.) Which function of BALR are you enquiring about? The subroutine call part? > From: Angelo Papenhoff > The Whirlwind used the A register for this purpose. ... > Might be earlier than this, I just happen to know the Whirlwind > somewhat well. It's late 40s machine, so you probably won't find > anything *much* older. The only machines older than Whirlwind I know of are the ACE (design; not implemented until later) and EDVAC. I have ACE stuff, but i) the documentation is really wierd, and hard to read, and ii) it's really bizarre (it didn't have opcodes; different registers did different things). There were subroutines written for it, but it's not clear how they were called. The EDVAC, the only thing I have on it is von Neumann's draft, and it's even harder to read than Turing's ACE Report! Noel

2 years, 8 months

Revised v6 Instructions Posted

by Will Senn

All, I have revised my Research Unix Version 6 instructions for 2022, in part to support the change to OpenSSH and also to bring it along into the modern era (I did it on my Monterey instance). I updated the links, cleaned up some lingering issues, and confirmed it working. Please take a look and let me know if you find any issues, misrepresentations, missing pieces, etc. I haven't touch v6 in a while, but it was fun to reminisce. http://decuser.blogspot.com/2022/10/installing-and-using-research-unix.html Regards, Will

2 years, 8 months

Re: Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

>> Looking at net_vdh.h, it seems to be a "VDH-11C" >> ... >> I wasn't able to find anything out about it at all. (I have some >> hardcopy manuals for other ACC IMP interface products, and I was going >> to look in them to see if any of them listed its manual in a 'see >> also', but I can't find them.) > From: Lars Brinkhoff > Noel Chiappa wrote: >> Did VDH PDP-11's have a special VDH interface > Sorry, no idea. That was a semi-rhetorical question; after I typed it, I did some looking, and came up with the answer above, the ACC VDH-11. I did eventually find the hardcopy manuals for other ACC IMP interface products, but none of them mention the VDH11. On a hunch, I looked to see if there was a VDH11 driver for ELF, and sure enough, there was: https://github.com/pdp11/elf-operating-system/blob/master/files/kdvdh.m11%5… (If anyone wants to look at it, ktbl.sml hold the register definitions.) With no manual for the device, and no museum catalog hits to show that someone has one which hasn't been scanned in yet, that's probably a dead end, although with the two drivers, one could probably mock up a rudimentary programmming manual. I'm not sure there's any point, though; using an LH/DH interface is going to work as well, and those device are already supported. > From: Paul Ruizendaal > impio.c: available here: Thanks for chasing those all down; I knew the BBN system was based on the NCP Unix (called in this discussion the 'NOSC' system), so I figured it would have the missing files, in some form. Looking at a diff between the damaged impio.c in the NOSC tree, and the impio.c in the BBN tree, there are some changes (in the section where we have both versions) between the NOSC one and the BBN one, but it will probably be possible to take the missing piece off the bank end of the BBN one and tack it on to the NOSC one. Somewhere in the document scans available online from DOD, there used to be a long thing from the UIUC people who did the original NCP Unix. I don't know if it included source; it might have. Noel

2 years, 8 months

Re: Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by Paul Ruizendaal

Maybe I’m dim, but I’ve lost track in this discussion of what is missing / corrupted. sys4.c: I think this is available in BBN V6: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ken <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ken> In this file the only real network addition is Jack Haverty’s user timer variable, I think. What else is missing? imp11a.c: available in two versions here: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/dmr <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/dmr> impio.c: available here: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ncpkernel/impio.c <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ncpkernel/impio.c> Maybe the compiler has a different opinion, but they don’t look obviously corrupted [??] Also, the BBN-VAX files may be a solution. BBN sent four tapes with snap shots to CSRG in 1981. The TUHS website has the newest version, but there are 3 older ones (all 4 come from Kirk McKusick’s DVD set). They all have a slightly different set of files. These tapes also have IMP and ACC drivers in them, along with a token ring driver that was apparently based on Noel’s work back in the day. These files may also help filling in blank spots in PDP11 files. Paul

2 years, 8 months

John Lions: 3 sabbaticals at Bell Labs. 1978 and which other years? 1989?

by steve jenkin

Berkeley Tague says he invited John to work with the USG in 1978 [ AUUG, below. Also by Ronda Hauben in multiple places ] [ In two ‘recollections’ / history docs sourced from UNSW, ] [ the first visit was misremembered as 1976 or 1977. ] I was wondering when John's two other sabbaticals to Bells Labs were. The Peter Ivanov interview with John in “Unix Review”, 1985, notes two sabbaticals by then. After writing the celebrated Commentary on the UNIX Operating System in 1976, Lions was asked to spend two sabbaticals at the Labs. This comment in 2000 on “9fans” from Rob Pike says John also visited in 1989, but sadly his work by then had been affected. <https://marc.info/?l=9fans&m=144372955601968&w=2> Anyone know when the other visit was? Presumably 1983 or 1984 if John took a semester off every 5 years. ======== In AUUGN Oct 1995, V16 #5, there’s a collection of emails, an ‘interview’ with John PDF pages 17 & 24 <https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V16.5.pdf> Berkeley Tague says in 1978 he invited John to work with the USG. then He wanted to come to Murray Hill for his sabbatical so it was a win/win situation. He spent two or three summers at Bell Labs over the years and supplied us with many of his graduate students for sabbaticals and permanent employment. Later: AUUGN: What have been the professional highlights of your career? JL: For myself, three sabbaticals at Bell Laboratories have been highlights. For my students, opportunities arose for employment at the Laboratories. ======== -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

2 years, 8 months

Re: Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Michael Casadevall > sys4.c is entirely corrupted, and part of impio.c is cut off The copy on MIT-CSR (the origin of the copy at TUHS) has the same issues. I doubt it's possible to recover them from that system; you'll have to find some other way to recover them (perhaps through a dump of the BBN system), or re-code them (as you did with sys4.c). > I do need to do a readthrough for the VDH driver ... I think that might > be for the radio links to Hawaii and the UK? No. Read BBN 1822. The LH and DH bit-serial physical interfaces only work up to about 1000 feet or so. (Less for LH; DH is logically idential to LH, but uses differential pairs - the LH is single-sided). VDH is, in the bottom layer, simply a synchronous serial link, allowing the host to be up to hunreds of miles from the IMP. > From: Lars Brinkhoff > Another it adding emulators for various IMP interfaces. I.e. you will > not get anywhere without adding one of IMP11A, ACC, or VDH to SIMH. Did VDH PDP-11's have a special VDH interface, or did they simply use an off-the-rack DEC synchronous serial interface like a DU11? (More of them here: http://gunkies.org/wiki/Category:DEC_Synchronous_Serial_Interfaces if anyone wants.) Looking at net_vdh.h, it seems to be a "VDH-11C" Looking online, the VDH-11 seems to be an ACC prodict, but I wasn't able to find anything out about it at all. (I have some hardcopy manuals for other ACC IMP interface products, and I was going to look in them to see if any of them listed its manual in a 'see also', but I can't find them.) I'm not sure why people did just use an off-the-rack DEC synchronous serial interface; maybe the VDH11 did a BBN specific CRC, or something (in addition to using DMA; mostr DEC sync interfaces didn't, IIRC)? Anyway, you don't want to use VDH. Noel

2 years, 8 months

Re: Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by Lars Brinkhoff

Tom Perrine wrote: > A specific example of the VDH interface was the IMP at NOSC. > > IIRC it had 4 ports? Normally yes (depending on the hardware configuration). > One was a local connection to the machine at NOSC in the same room/building. > One was a VDH to UCSD > One was a VDH to LOGICON - the connection at the LOGICON end was a "56K > wideband modem", which was a little larger than a 2-drawer file cabinet. I > also seem to recall that the power supply had tubes. > Not sure where the 4th port went - I only saw the UCSD and LOGICON ends in > person. Maybe this information for IMP 3 and 35 from 1979 can jog your memory. HOST NOSC-SECURE2, 0/35,USER,TENEX,PDP10,[USC-ISIR1,ISIR1] HOST LOGICON, 1/35,USER,UNIX,PDP11 HOST ACCAT-TIP, 2/35,USER,TIP,H316,[NELC-TIP] HOST NOSC-SECURE3, 3/35,USER,UNIX,PDP11 HOST NOSC-CC, 0/3,SERVER,,UNIVAC-1110,[NUC-CC,NOSC-ELF] HOST NOSC-SECURE1, 1/3,SERVER,UNIX,PDP11,[NUC-SECURE] HOST NOSC-SDL, 2/3,SERVER,UNIX,PDP11,[NELC-ELF,NELC] HOST NWC, 3/3,SERVER,EXEC-8,UNIVAC-1110 HOST NPRDC-11, 4/3,SERVER,UNIX,PDP11

2 years, 8 months

Re: Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by Paul Ruizendaal

>> The BBN with TCP stack is a bit mislabeled: it still appears to >> support NCP, but none of the client apps are there, but its directly >> built off the NOSC stack. > > That's very good. I hope the NCP support there is in good shape. > >> it's probably a fork from earlier in development. 79-80 timespawn >> would have been *very* early in TCP's life > > TCP had been underway since 1973. Experiments called "TCP bakeoffs" > started around 1979. That is what the “V6 with TCP” on TUHS is: Following the success of NCP Unix, it became a base for various TCP experiments in the ’77-’79 era. The first was an implementation by Jack Haverty, that wrapped an existing TCPv2 stack that was written in PDP-11 assembler into a Unix application. It ran in user mode and depended on Rand ports and several extensions that Jack added to the kernel (await/capac and a user mode timing variable, where the clock routine incremented a variable in user space). He used a PDP-11 with little core and the pipes (ports) did not stay in the file buffers, but flushed onto disk. This killed performance: Jack recalls that a bad run would average a few characters per second. Next Mike Wingfield wrote a TCPv4 stack in C, more or less using the architecture of the above. It was the “winner" of the December 1979 bake-off. I think it is the first TCPv4 implementation for Unix and maybe the oldest surviving source for TCPv4 overall. I wanted to try if it would still interoperate with modern TCP/IP, but I never got around to that. An actual printout survives in the SRI archives and I painstakingly retyped that source, just weeks before Noel found the right tapes :^). Later still, Craig Partridge found a full report and listing in the BBN archives (report no. 3724). This NCP Unix with the Wingfield library is the version that is labeled “BBN V6 with TCP” on TUHS. Some of the code in the Wingfield stack is to test the protocol. Arpanet essentially offers circuit switching, and some of the code is there to simulate dropped packets, out-of-order packets, etc. It also tested security features that were under consideration, but subsequently dropped as interest shifted to end-to-end encryption. Again, user mode TCP was not found to be practical, the 16-bit era was ending and that is when Rob Gurwitz was assigned to write a new stack for the VAX (1980). By that time Jack Haverty was his boss. Some parts of the BBN VAX-TCP design still echo the user space origins and experiences of the BBN team in the immediate years before. This stack I got working and it still interoperates with modern TCP/IP (at least it did some 5 years ago). Jack Haverty can easily be reached via the internet-history mailing list. I’ve summarised the history here: http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/TUHS_wiki/wiki?name=early_networki… I should transfer it to the TUHS wiki or to Gunkies one of these days. === I am not sure I understood which files are missing or corrupted and in which NCP Unix trees. Noel retrieved the files from old (mouldy even) tapes so some corruption is quite possible. Pulling together material from various sources can hopefully lead to a working source tree. Glad to help. Further note that NCP Unix was initially developed on 5th Edition, but soon migrated to 6th edition. I am sure that the various installations tracked new developments and installed extra bits and pieces. The surviving images are from 1979 and for sure would have picked up bits from newer releases and other sources (such as the Uni of Calgary buffer extensions). Paul

2 years, 8 months

Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by Michael Casadevall

Hey all, I've been recently working on researching ARPANET and the like for use in an upcoming video. As a starting point, I've been looking at the early UNIX networking code in archives, specifically, the NOSC tarball, and I've spent quite a few hours trying to get building on livestreams. What I've found is that there's corruption issues in code; which is noted in JOHNS-NOTE, although it's more severe than I realized. For example sys4.c is entirely corrupted, and part of impio.c is cut off. However, this isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. For example, by kitbashing both the original v6 source code, and the later BBN TCP code, I was able to create a sys4.c that builds and links which should be close to the original. Furthermore, it is possible to use the “vdh” target instead of the imp target to at least try and get the code building. I did successfully get a kernel to build, and it even prints out a mem message before deadlocking. My guess is it's either deadlocked waiting for the IMP, or there’s something wrong with the build. There’s some indication that it might need a split kernel, although I’ve not had any success with that thus far. I have uploaded my current build tree to git, as well as tarball with simh images if anyone wants to try and figure out what has gone wrong. I admit, my knowledge of PDP-11 assembly and debugging platforms is a bit wanting :) There’s some indication that this, and the later BBN TCP (which is from around the same time period) code were built on top of the Programmer’s Workbench vs. stock v6; especially because some code patches were needed to get it to build. I did look at the TUHS PWB archives, I see a bunch of binaries, but absolutely no idea how to install them. I’ve heard that none of these archives are actually complete, but I'm hoping someone might have some idea of how to go forward, since, if nothing else, I’d like to end this with a success story, although I’m happy with as far as I got. Furthermore, I do know that I can run some of the ARPA level utilities in MIT ITS on CHAOSNET, which will be an upcoming project, although that is going to be a dive in and of itself. In short, I’m hoping someone might be able to provide some insight into where things have gone wrong: * Is the netunix kernel I built hanging because of corrupted code, or is it waiting for non-existent hardware. * NOTE: The DC-11 driver was not included, but I don’t think I need that for a single console? * Is there any versions of PWB that is “easily” installable, since its very clear the later BBN code requires it (it refers to ncc explicitly)? * I know IMPs have been emulated, and even have successfully routed packets, so I’m also trying to figure out how much would still be necessary to actually recreate a minimal ARPA network? I did try to build some of the NCP applications regardless; it does appear that some parts are simply missing. Mailer.cc seems to want a hnconv.o but no source file exists. The FTP daemon on the other hand wants a library simply called “j”. My guess is that even if the NCP code was buildable, the applications might not be. However, this did make me take a closer look at the BBN code, and it does have an ifdef for NCP, suggesting that it was still usable/supported? It makes sense, it seems to have been written before the TCP/IP flag day. I’m just not sure where to approach compiling it. I’ve uploaded the code with patches to build with the v6 compiler to github here: https://github.com/NCommander/network-unix-v6/tree/attempted-repair NOTE: v6's cc needs a seperate patch to increase the symbol table size; that's done in the disk image. Files, with SIMH configuration available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QS0B3RU_mwXSGtl2En-d0WI3PJ1-udEs/view?usp=… My livestreams (12 hours or so) are on my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/NCommander Feel free to forward this to other lists that may have PDP-11 or ARPANET experts! ~ NCommander

2 years, 8 months

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

TUHS