Hello folks, I'm here today with a question that sprung off of some 3B20 research.
When 1984 happened and ATTIS rose from the ashes of former Bell System computing efforts, presumably ATTIS received all IP rights from Western Electric for 3B processors, WE32000, and so on, and continued to sell related products through to the 3B2 line. Is this the case, is ATTIS the formal recipient of both computing software *and* hardware IPs after the breakup?
Given that, plus subsequent market flow, "old AT&T" scooped up and paraded around in effigy by SBC, other old Bell stuff cannibalized by other RBOCs, spinoffs of stuff to Novell, then Caldera/SCO on the other side...who all wound up with the hardware IPs? The story as it "concludes" concerning UNIX is of course tied up in all the subsequent lawsuits, what with Novell and Caldera conflicts on ownership, transfer to the Open Group, so on and so forth, and SCO and progeny wind up with the Sys V "trunk."
Is there a clear, current owner of these WECo hardware IPs, or have those waters grown even murkier than those of UNIX in the times after AT&T proper?
Thanks everyone!
- Matt G.
P.S. As an aside (even though it's the more directly UNIX thing...) is anything after SVR4 developments that would've involved the same folks as were working up to that point in the USL group? Or did the transfer of System V to Novell also involve their own in house folks starting to take it over, then over to SCO, is there anything post SVR4 (4.2, 5, UnixWare stuff) that would even remotely be considered the logical next step by the same folks that engineered SVR4, or was it basically just another face in the crowd of "UNIX <xyz>" when USL wasn't involved anymore? Probably not the first time this has been asked either so to a finer point I'm basically fishing for whether anything post the initial SVR4 releases in the early 90s is generally considered "pure" in any way or if the Bell streams pretty much terminate with Research V10 and SVR4, (and IX) at the turn of the 90s.
Hoi,
I just discovered that one of my favorite computer books about my
best liked programming language (besides C) releases in a second
edition. Does anyone know what the differences of 1st and 2nd
edition are?
As the original book is almost perfect, the only rework and
extension direction I can think of is towards different
implementations like gawk, mawk, portability and such things.
Does anyone know more about it? Maybe some inside information? ;-)
meillo
Recently, I was looking into the “Das U-Boot” boot loader package. Summarised with great simplification, u-boot bundles device drivers, file systems, commands and a Bourne-like shell into a standalone package. Normally it auto-runs a script that brings up a system, but when used in interactive mode it allows a great deal of poking around.
It made me think of the “standalone” set of programs for installing early Unix. On 16-bit understandably each basic command has to be a separate standalone program, but after the shift to 32-bit bundling more functionality in a single binary would have become possible.
How did the Unix “standalone” package evolve in the 80’s, both in the research and BSD lineages? Is there any retrospective paper about that? Or is it a case of “Use the source, Luke”?
I’ve been playing around trying to link the OpenSolaris launch commit to various pieces in the Unix History Repository, and it’s making me wonder if we’ll ever have a chance to see the history of the systems.
I’m less concerned about HPUX, AIX and SCO’s offerings since I presume someone has copy inside these companies. But what about A/UX, Irix, Tru64? Did these ever get sold with licenses to source tapes? Are there copies we need to preserve in-camera so something can exist 120 years after creation or whenever copyright expires?
--
Joseph Holsten
http://josephholsten.com
mailto:joseph@josephholsten.com
tel:+1-360-927-7234
Hi All,
Is this the only bootable 3bsd distribution tape we have?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/Install%20tapes/3%20BSD/3bsd.ta…
I don't like the idea that sourceforge is the only source, the
provenance is unclear and I'm just not a big fan of how sourceforge
handles downloads generally.
I've found tarballs, but not tapes on TUHS.
Thanks,
Will
Hello All.
Nelson Beebe has added PDF files for all the .ps files that didn't
have them, and I did a little bit more cleaning up of the CSTRs
I made available late last week. The new file is at
https://www.skeeve.com/combined-cstr-2.tar.gz
Warren will eventually add them to the archive, at which point I will
probably take down my copies.
Nelson and I request of the CSTR authors who are on the TUHS list if
they are willing to make source code for their CSTRs available? That
would certainly help in the preservation effort.
Thanks,
Arnold
Yesterday, Arnold Robbins kindly posted to this list a link to a
bundle of Bell Labs Computing Science Technical Reports that he had,
luckily for us, and for Unix, IX, and Plan 9 history, preserved in his
personal library.
There are 67 distinct report numbers in the bundle, and 79 different
files.
Today, I completed a merger of data from all of those reports into the
BibTeX entries in the extensive bibliography at
https://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/unix.bibhttps://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/unix.html
Arnold's bundle has mostly PostScript files, but some also have PDF
companions. I expect to make PDF versions available for all of them
in the TUHS archives, but for now, the new BibTeX entries do not yet
have suitable URLs for their retrieval. URLs will be retrofitted once
the files are widely available in TUHS mirrors.
Some of the reports had already been recorded in unix.bib; those that
had not carry a value "Fri Aug 25" in the bibdate string, making them
easy to find with a text editor, or with an SQL search in the
companion SQLite3 database at
https://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/unix.db
For example,
% sqlite3 unix.db
sqlite> .mode table
sqlite> select label, title from bibtab
where bibtimestamp like '2023.08.25%'
order by number;
For TUHS member convenience, here is a summary from unix.bib of the
thus-far-recorded Bell Labs report numbers, their year (several are
undated, and thus assigned 19xx), their page counts, and their titles,
ordered by increasing report numbers, with column widths chosen to
limit lines to 80 characters:
sqlite> .mode table
sqlite> .width -4 4 -8 51
sqlite> select number, year, pages, title from bibtab
where (filename = 'unix.bib')
and (type = 'Computing Science Technical Report')
order by 0 + number;
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| numb | year | pages | title |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 2 | 1972 | ii + 13 | The M6 Macro Processor |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 33 | 1975 | ii + 18 | A User's Guide to DODES, a Double Precision Ordinar |
| | | | y Differential Equation Solver |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 52 | 1976 | ii + 36 | A Tutorial on Galerkin's Method, using on B-splines |
| | | | , for Solving Differential Equations |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 53 | 1976 | ii + 44 | Numerical Solution of Time-Varying Partial Differen |
| | | | tial Equations in One Space Variable |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 54 | 1992 | ii + 35 | Troff User's Manual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 89 | 1981 | ii + 64 | A Test of a Computer's Floating-Point Arithmetic Un |
| | | | it |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 97 | 1982 | ii + 13 | A Typesetter-independent TROFF |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 100 | 1981 | ii + 14 | Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 102 | 1981 | 12 | The C Language Calling Sequence |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 103 | 1981 | ii + 25 | IDEAL User's Manual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 106e | 1979 | 34 | BPSS |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 106d | 1993 | 34 | BASS |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 106f | 1993 | 13 | CSWAP with X and Y declared complex |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 106b | 1993 | 36 | GESS |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 106a | 1993 | i + 10 | Programs for Solving Linear Equations in the PORT L |
| | | | ibrary |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 106c | 1993 | 30 | SYSS |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 114 | 1991 | ii + 37 | Grap --- A Language for Typesetting Graphs Tutorial |
| | | | and User Manual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 115 | 1991 | ii + 25 | PIC --- A Graphics Language for Typesetting User Ma |
| | | | nual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 117 | 1985 | ii + 2 | A Weakness in the 4.2BSD Unix TCP/IP Software |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 118 | 1985 | ii ++ 38 | Awk --- A Pattern Scanning and Processing Language |
| | | | Programmer's Manual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 120 | 1985 | ii + 19 | Twig Reference Manual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 122 | 1992 | ii + 31 | CHEM --- a Program for Typesetting Chemical Diagram |
| | | | s: User Manual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 123 | 1989 | 29 | C Traps and Pitfalls |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 127 | 1991 | 10 | Maintaining Cross References in Manuscripts |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 128 | 1986 | ii + 13 | Tools for Printing Indexes |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 132 | 1991 | ii + 24 | A System for Algorithm Animation Tutorial and User |
| | | | Manual |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 133 | 1989 | ii + 63 | AMPL: A Mathematical Programming Language |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 135 | 1985 | i + 73 | tt TTGR --- A Package for Solving Partial Different |
| | | | ial Equations in Two Space Variables |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 136 | 1987 | i + 46 | Pictures of Karmarkar s Linear Programming Algorith |
| | | | m |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 142 | 1988 | i + 13 | DFORMAT --- a Program for Typesetting Data Formats |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 143 | 1993 | ii + 13 | Newsqueak: A Language for Communicating with Mice |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 145 | 1992 | ii + 111 | A Permuted Index for TeX and LaTeX |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 148 | 1991 | i + 42 | Generating Automatically-Tuned Bitmaps from Outline |
| | | | s |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 149 | 1995 | i + 25 | A Fortran-to-C Converter |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 150 | 1990 | 10 | Terminal Call Processing in Esterel |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 153 | 1990 | i + 21 | Usage Summary for Selected Optimization Routines |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 154 | 1990 | i + 52 | tt TTGU --- A Package for Solving Time Varying Part |
| | | | ial Differential Equations on a Union of Rectangles |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 155 | 19xx | 29 | There Is No Royal Road to Programs: A Trilogy on Ra |
| | | | ster Ellipses and Programming Methodology |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 157 | 1991 | ii + 39 | Tutorial: Design and Validation of Protocols |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158g | 19xx | 14 | Rc --- A Shell for Plan 9 and UNIX Systems |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158b | 19xx | 9 | Plan 9 from Bell Labs |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158a | 19xx | 1 | Plan 9: The Early Papers |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158f | 19xx | 6 | Process Sleep and Wakeup on a Shared-memory Multipr |
| | | | ocessor |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158d | 19xx | 9 | $ 8 1 over 2 $, the Plan 9 Window System |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158e | 19xx | 10 | Multiprocessor Streams for Plan 9 |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158c | 19xx | 7 | Plan 9, A Distributed System |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 158h | 19xx | 12 | A New C Compiler |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 159 | 19xx | 15 | Efficient Algorithms for Constructing Testing Sets, |
| | | | Covering Paths, and Minimum Flows |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 160 | 1991 | 21 | What is ``Object-Oriented Programming''? |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 161 | 19xx | 19 | Sixteen Ways to Stack a Cat |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 162 | 19xx | 91 | A User's Manual for MetaPost |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163i | 1992 | 50 | GETLAB |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163 | 1992 | 1 | The IX Multilevel-Secure UNIX System |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163h | 19xx | 2 | Glossary |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163d | 19xx | 12 | The Design of IX |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163c | 19xx | 19 | Multilevel Security in the UNIX Tradition |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163f | 19xx | 3 | Multilevel Windows on a Single-level Terminal |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163e | 19xx | 11 | A Tour of IX |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163b | 19xx | 1 | The IX Multilevel-Secure UNIX System |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 163g | 19xx | 8 | Secure IX Network |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| 164 | 19xx | i + 20 | Drawing Graphs with MetaPost |
+------+------+----------+-----------------------------------------------------+
Here is a table of authors:
sqlite> .width -4 4 62
sqlite> .output foo.out.6
sqlite> select number, year, author from bibtab
where (filename = 'unix.bib')
and (type = 'Computing Science Technical Report')
order by 0 + number;
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| numb | year | author |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 2 | 1972 | Andrew D. Hall |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 33 | 1975 | Norman L. Schryer |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 52 | 1976 | Norman L. Schryer |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 53 | 1976 | Norman L. Schryer |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 54 | 1992 | Joseph F. Ossanna and Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 89 | 1981 | Norman L. Schryer |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 97 | 1982 | Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 100 | 1981 | Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 102 | 1981 | Steven C. Johnson and Dennis M. Ritchie |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 103 | 1981 | Christopher J. Van Wyk |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 106e | 1979 | Linda Kaufman |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 106d | 1993 | Linda Kaufman |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 106f | 1993 | Linda Kaufman |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 106b | 1993 | Linda Kaufman |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 106a | 1993 | Linda Kaufman |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 106c | 1993 | Linda Kaufman |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 114 | 1991 | Jon L. Bentley and Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 115 | 1991 | Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 117 | 1985 | Robert T. Morris |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 118 | 1985 | Alfred V. Aho and Brian W. Kernighan and Peter 3. Weinberger |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 120 | 1985 | Steven W. K. Tjiang |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 122 | 1992 | Jon L. Bentley and Lynn W. Jelinski and Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 123 | 1989 | Andrew Koenig |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 127 | 1991 | Alfred V. Aho and Ravi Sethi |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 128 | 1986 | Jon L. Bentley and Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 132 | 1991 | Jon L. Bentley and Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 133 | 1989 | Robert Fourer and David M. Gay and Brian W. Kernighan |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 135 | 1985 | Linda Kaufman and Norman L. Schryer |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 136 | 1987 | David M. Gay |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 142 | 1988 | J. L. Bentley |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 143 | 1993 | Rob Pike |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 145 | 1992 | Bill Cheswick |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 148 | 1991 | John D. Hobby |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 149 | 1995 | S. I. Feldman and David M. Gay and Mark W. Maimone and N. L. S |
| | | chryer |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 150 | 1990 | Gary J. Murakami and Ravi Sethi |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 153 | 1990 | David M. Gay |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 154 | 1990 | Linda Kaufman |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 155 | 19xx | M. Douglas McIlroy |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 157 | 1991 | Gerard J. Holzmann |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158g | 19xx | Tom Duff |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158b | 19xx | Rob Pike and Dave Presotto and Ken Thompson and Howard Trickey |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158a | 19xx | Rob Pike and Dave Presotto and Ken Thompson and Howard Trickey |
| | | and Tom Duff and Gerard Holzmann |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158f | 19xx | Rob Pike and Dave Presotto and Ken Thompson and Gerard Holzman |
| | | n |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158d | 19xx | Rob Pike |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158e | 19xx | David Leo Presotto |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158c | 19xx | Dave Presotto and Rob Pike and Ken Thompson and Howard Trickey |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 158h | 19xx | Ken Thompson |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 159 | 19xx | Alfred V. Aho and David Lee |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 160 | 1991 | Bjarne Stroustrup |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 161 | 19xx | Bjarne Stroustrup |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 162 | 19xx | John D. Hobby |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163i | 1992 | Anonymous |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163 | 1992 | James A. Reeds and M. Douglas McIlroy |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163h | 19xx | Anonymous |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163d | 19xx | M. D. McIlroy and J. A. Reeds |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163c | 19xx | M. D. McIlroy and J. A. Reeds |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163f | 19xx | M. D. McIlroy and J. A. Reeds |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163e | 19xx | Doug McIlroy and Jim Reeds |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163b | 19xx | James A. Reeds and M. Douglas McIlroy |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 163g | 19xx | Jim Reeds |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| 164 | 19xx | John D. Hobby |
+------+------+----------------------------------------------------------------+
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 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/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello, I've been doing some research on the history of disassembly lately, tools available historically, today, and what sorts of developments have been made regarding utilities and systems for taking a machine-code binary and working it back to some semblance of source code.
So in the early days UNIX had das(I), a PDP-11 disassembler I believe written by Ken (he's OWNER in the manual) with very little information other than "it exists". Fast forward to the UNIX 4.1 manual in 1981 for the 3B20S and there is dis(1), a 3B20 disassembler. Other such manuals feature dis(1) versions for other 3B targets.
Was a disassembler ever considered part of the standard binary objects toolkit with the assembler, linker, etc. or was that the sort of thing that was more niche and therefore just kinda cropped up when/if someone decided to write one? Were there legal concerns to be grappled with when producing a disassembler? Were such tools ever shipped or did they only appear in the manuals as they were technically up in the code base, just not commonly distributed or used? Also, was there any thought given during the development of C to producing "decompilers" as has been becoming more common lately? Or was it a foregone conclusion that C to assembly is a "lossy" conversion and going the other direction couldn't be fully automated.
Thank you for any insights!
- Matt G.
Does anyone collect old Linux drivers? I just found one for the
"Backpack CD" which was a CD-ROM reader that would attach to a PC
via the parallel port. This is from April and May 1997. Before I nuke
the code, I thought I'd ask if there is anyone who collects such things.
Feel free to reply privately.
Thanks,
Arnold
