TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

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6418 discussions

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

For more on Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, by one who knew her well, see Jean Sammet's remembrance: Farewell to Grace Hopper: end of an era! https://doi.org/10.1145/129852.214846 A Ph.D. thesis about her: The Contributions of Grace Murray Hopper to Computer Science and Computer Education https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278692/m2/1/high_res_d/100… Books: Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea 1-59114-978-9 Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age ISBN 0-262-51726-4 Grace Hopper: Computer Whiz ISBN 0-7660-2273-0 [juvenile literature] I've always found it amusing that she was a strong proponent of the work ethic: "Act first, get permission later", which is in direct opposition to the military chain of command, despite her rank as Rear Admiral of the US Navy. See also ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award https://awards.acm.org/hopper https://awards.acm.org/hopper/award-winners [Awarded to the outstanding young computer professional of the year, selected on the basis of a single recent major technical or service contribution. This award is accompanied by a prize of $35,000. The candidate must have been 35 years of age or less at the time the qualifying contribution was made. Financial support of the Grace Murray Hopper Award is provided by Microsoft.] Don Knuth of Stanford was the first GMHA winner, in 1971; other well-known people include Steve Wozniak (1971), Bob Metcalf (1980), Dan Bricklin (1981), Brian Reid (1982), Bill Joy (1986), John Ousterhout (1987), Guy Steele (1988), Richard Stallman (1990), Bjarne Stroustrup (1993), Vern Paxson (2007), Craig Gentry (2010), ... There is also a 1983 interview on a popular US news broadcast that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year: The 60 Minutes interview with Grace Murray Hopper https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-60-minutes-interview-with-grace-murray-hop… ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 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/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] V7 Addendem

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> I've never seen a detailed description of UNIX/TS, although I have seen > the "Unix Program Description" (January 1976) which documents the USG > version, and of course PWB is described in the BSTJ issue, and UNIX/TS > is supposedly a merge of those two. > ... > Did the later USG versions takeup some of the PWB work, does anyone > know? (My thinking is 'if I find traces of PWB [in the MIT system], > would that be from /TS, or could it be a later USG version' - I think > there were 1-3, from something I saw online.) So I seem to have stumbled on something interesting here (or maybe it's not, and the history is just unclear - well, unclear to me at least, I'm sure someone knows). Looking at "Unix Program Description" (January 1976), it's clearly marked as "Published by the UNIX Support Group". (I have an actual hardcopy, which I don't recall how I came by, but for those who wish to follow along this document is available in the TUHS archive, at: http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/unix_program_description_jan… and in other TUHS mirrors). So, given the credit, I _assume_ that it documents some version of the USG system. So I started looking at that, and the PWB version that's in the archive: http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/spencer_pwb.tar.gz to see how they compare, and it turns out (somewhat to my surprise) that the USG document describes what seems to be an older version of the system. For example, in text.c, it doesn't cover xlock()/xunlock()/xexpand(), all in the PWB system - just xalloc()/xccdec()/xfree()/xswap(). Even more telling, in sys1.c, the USG document describes the older version of exec(), where arguments are collected in a disk buffer, not (as in the PWB system) in swap space. (I had thought that this change was mentioned in the PWB paper in the BSTJ issue, but on checking, it appears my memory was incorrect. Many of the PWB changes appear to be to things like the shell, not the OS.) So it seems the USG document describes a system very close to the 'classic' V6 - not what I had expected. This may also make it hard to recognize USG source (at least, the early versions). More generally, it would be good to try and elucidate the relationship among all these early Bell/AT+T versions: Research, USG, PWB, etc. Clearly the two latter (from what we know now) are descended from V6 - but was there any interchange between USG and PWB? And did either of them feed back into V7? Or, perhaps more likely, were the improvements to text.c, exec() etc _Research_ improvements that got fed into PWB? More questions than answers, sadly... I'm not at all familiar with V7, I'll have to go read it at some point, and compare it to PWB. Not that I expect it will answer many (any?) of these questions, but maybe we'll get lucky and there will e.g. be stuff in this PWB which isn't in V7. Speaking of which, I seem to recall there's more than one PWB version. I wonder which one we have (above). Although there's another 'PWB' tape in the archive: http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/USDL/bostic_pwb.tar.gz (much larger than the other one), when I poked around a bit through that, seeing what's there, and comparing it to the other one, the system sources I looked at there all seemed to be the same as the one on the Spencer tape. > I should look at the MIT kernel and see how much of it is USG, and see > if I can find any traces of the changes described as done for PWB. I > know the MIT version has provisions for longer exec() arguments, and > text.c is considerably more complex than the one in V6 (and IIRC matches > the description in the USG document) So, my memory was in error here; the text.c matches the one from the PWB tape, _not_ the USG document. In general, the parts of the MIT system seem to be a close match to what's on the PWB tape, with the exception that the MIT one seems to be slightly earlier (no 'register' argument types). > Perhaps the MIT system really was /TS Without a better understanding of what was really in /TS, this is totally opaque. > I've always described it as a hacked PWB1, but I might be wrong there. And for once, I think I was right. The MIT system _does_ closely match the one on the 'PWB' tapes - whatever that was! Noel

7 years, 1 month

A nice review of a retrospective paper on the PDP-11

by Arnold Robbins

https://dave.cheney.net/2017/12/04/what-have-we-learned-from-the-pdp-11 Arnold

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] how do I unsubscribe

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So, I'm getting the impression, from the reactions about civility, etc, that people aren't disagreeing with the characterization of "rudeness" (which can only be meaning my posts). Can someone please point to text in my messages which they consider "rude"? Thanks. Noel

7 years, 1 month

ARPAnet now 4 nodes

by Dave Horsfall

The ARPAnet reached four nodes on this day in 1969 (anyone know which?); at least one "history" site reckoned the third node was connected in 1977 (and I'm still waiting for a reply to my correction). Well, I can believe that perhaps there were only three left by then... -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

7 years, 1 month

looking for a quote

by ron minnich

A long time ago, dmr wrote about something that IIRC BSD had done he did not like: unlimited length identifiers in C, maybe? His argument was that being too general was not a good thing. Can't quite find the quote, anyone remember it? Would have been ca. 1980. ron

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] V7 Addendem

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > it's direct predecessor (UNIX/TS) which was not officially released made > its way to number of places ... heavily hacked systems that were combo's > of V6, PWB [1.0], UNIX/TS plus local additions. UNIX/TS had a newer > kernel, updated FS and the compiler that was released with troff - > a.k.a. 'Typesetter C' I'm not sure quite what the MIT system was. I've never seen a detailed description of UNIX/TS, although I have seen the "Unix Program Description" (January 1976) which documents the USG version, and of course PWB is described in the BSTJ issue, and UNIX/TS is supposedly a merge of those two. (If we ever do find V6+ USG source, it should be easy to verify - that document is pretty detailed.) I should look at the MIT kernel and see how much of it is USG, and see if I can find any traces of the changes described as done for PWB. I know the MIT version has provisions for longer exec() arguments, and text.c is considerably more complex than the one in V6 (and IIRC matches the description in the USG document); but I don't recall withough careful checking, what was done where. Perhaps the MIT system really was /TS, and I didn't know that - I've always described it as a hacked PWB1, but I might be wrong there. Did the later USG versions takeup some of the PWB work, does anyone know? (My thinking is 'if I find traces of PWB, would that be from /TS, or could it be a later USG version' - I think there were 1-3, from something I saw online.) I initially got /TS mixed up with /RT, which is the system I'd _really_ like to find - well, MERT, actually. I think that's a really early micro-kernel system (although I haven't done any research to confirm that), a direction I think is important. (I think the 'THE Multiprogramming System' may be the earliest work in that direction, although I'd be interested to hear of anything else.) I actually got contact info for some of the original MERT people, and was going to contact them to see if they still retained anything, but I never got a 'round tuit'... too many other projects. :-( Noel

7 years, 1 month

how do I unsubscribe

by Deborah Scherrer

Could someone please tell me how to get off this list? I was rather appalled at the rudeness in the previous conversation... Deborah

7 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Larry McVoy > an altruistic person trying to make things better. They aren't all bad. I would echo that. During my time on the IESG, I'd say the vast majority of the people in the IETF really did want to make things better for everyone. Of course, that statement covers a vast range of subtle variations, from people who had nothing at all to gain personally, and thus really were pushing what they thought was best; through people who did stand to gain, but truly thought that what they were advocating was in everyone's interest; etc. But the people who I felt were deliberately and knowingly putting their own interests before the community's, i.e. recommending something they knew to be harmful because it was good for them - they were very rare. My recollection is now somewhat dim (too much was happening, at too high a pace) of the details of those later days (well, 'later' only in that they were considerably later than the very early days :-), but my sense is that people like that didn't last long in the community; I have the distinct impression that people figured them out, and as an eventual result, they tended to fade from the scene. The IETF culture was not welcoming to that kind of thinking. I dunno, maybe I'm just being naive (and I would certainly welcome correction if I'm wrong), but that's how I saw it. Noel

7 years, 1 month

Misguided standsads (was What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?)

by Doug McIlroy

> Standards committees are not filled with altruistic folks working to > make something great. Not only in big ways, such as to sway the market. An example from Posix is the undefined meaning of malloc(0). As I understand it, just one committee member held out for malloc(0) to be an optional error, thus confounding a harmless corner case with a fatal error. This nit has burdened conscientious programmers ever since, all so one company's easily fixable variant could be grandfathered into compliance. Doug

7 years, 1 month

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