Somewhere between UNIX Release 3.0 and Release 4.1, a portion of the User's Manual was split off into a separate Administrator's Manual, leading to a reordering of the sections among other things. In the directories, these pieces would be placed in u_man and a_man respectively.
There may be some evidence of the manual being intact as of 4.0 or at least not completely separated. I've found consistently that references to manpages in the Documents for UNIX Release 4.0 collection follow their pre-split numbering and all refer to the User's Manual. The catch is that all references are to the UNIX User's Manual Release 3.0, so this may not point conclusively to the state of /usr/man on disk at the time. The Release 4.1 Administrator's Manual hasn't turned up yet but the User's Manual reflects the renumbering and is less the a_man pages. To complete the circle, the various Release 5.0 revisions of the documents do refer to the Administrator's Manual where appropriate.
Was the manual getting split up of any great shock or was it to be expected as the software grew? It would come to happen again between SysV and SVR2 with p_man. Out of curiosity I checked how my own manpage set is organized, it seems to be of the research order, with special files in section 4 rather than section 7 for instance. I've never studied how far reaching the different orders are.
- Matt G.
In a BSTJ article[1] it is said "The availability of a simulated UNIX operating system in DMERT allows UNIX programs from other processors to execute on the 3B20D Processor." Does this just mean C programs which are rebuilt or is there some implication DMERT's particular UNIX environment featured some sort of emulation facilities? I may be reading too much into it...
- Matt G.
[1] - https://archive.org/details/bstj62-1-303/page/n11/mode/2up
P.S. I learned I may walk past DMERT and a 3B20D most days, there's a long-operational telephone CO on my usual walk that through referencing public records I've discovered has a WECo 5ESS up in it somewhere. That's all the listing said, dunno if WECo is given as meaning an early model or just a generic name. Either way...so close yet so far, makes me ever so curious what dusty old bookshelves in that building might hold.
> From: Ken Thompson
> someone rewired someones desk lamp. i dont know how that worked out.
Sometimes electrical 'jokes' don't pan out - in a big way.
I was hacking the light switch in Jerry Saltzer's office (I don't recall
exactly what I was planning; IIRC, something mundane and lame like flipping
it upside down), and as I took it out of the box, the hot terminal touched
the side of the box (which was, properly, well grounded).
The entire 5th floor powered down.
What had happened was that the breaker for Jerry's office probably hadn't
been tripped in decades (maybe since it was put in), and it was apparently a
little sticky. Also, the floor had originally been wired back when all that
most people had in their offices, in the way of electrical load, was an
incandescent desk lamp or so. Now, most offices had, not just a couple of
terminals, most also had an Alto - greatly increased overall load. The total
draw for the whole floor was now very close to the rating of the main breaker
for the whole floor - and my slip of the hand had put it over. And that one
_wasn't_ sticky.
The worst part was that when we looked in the 5th floor electrical closet, we
couldn't find anything wrong. An electrician was summoned (luckily, or
unluckily, it was daytime; not having access to a 5th floor master, we'd gone
in while everything was unlocked - daytime), and he finally located the
breaker responsible - in an electrical closet on the 9th floor.
I got carpeted by Jerry, when he got back; I escaped without major
punishment,in part, IIRC, because I pointed out that I'd exposed a
previously-unsuspected issue. (I have this vague memory that the wiring on
the 5th floor was upgraded not long after.)
That wasn't the only historic CS building that has been abandoned. 545
Technology Square, one-time home of the Multics project, the MIT AI Lab,
and much else (including the above story) was exited by MIT some years
ago.
There, too, some history was abandoned - including the hack that allowed
people to call the elevators to their floor from their terminals. (Some
hackers had run some carefully disguised wires up into the elevator
controller - ran them along the back of structural members, carefully hidden
- and thence to the TV-11 that ran all the Knight TV bit-mapped displays
attached to the AI ITS time-sharing machine. So from a Knight TV console, if
you typed 'Escape E', it called the elevator to your floor - the code:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/system/tv.147
even has a table - at ELETAB: - giving which floor each console was on, so it
got called to the correct floor. I wonder what happened to that when the
Knight TV system was ditched? Did it get moved to another machine? Actually,
I have a dim memory that the elevator people found it, and it was removed.)
Noel
ken.unix.guy(a)gmail.com:
A company I used to work for was vacating a building. I asked, has anyone
checked under the raised floor tiles?
The answer was no. Well I did and found a lot of history down there. From
component parts from long forgotten
systems to water cooling lines for long gone IBM heavy metal and a ground
window.
===
I bet you didn't find a bowling ball.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
After much saying I would and never getting around to it, I've finally started filling out a bit of documentation on the various UNIX manuals I've been tracking down, fleshing out history around, tracing bibliographic references though, etc etc.
https://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:manuals
Thus far I've got the research and CB pages filled out from available information, and PWB/commercial up through about '85-'86, give or take some things. I apologize in advance if I've omitted your favorite piece of trivia or got something wrong, please suggest corrections in any areas needing them, or even better, a Wiki is a communal resource so with Warren's OK, I'm sure you can also make contributions.
Most of the pictures are from my own library, although I've added a few others from thing around the net. There are links to various documents covered, TUHS content where most appropriate, a few archive.org and bitsavers links here and there. I don't intend to include links to any documents after System V's initial 1983 run, just pictures of covers for ease of identification.
I've already mentioned a few times but I highly encourage contributions. I intend to do another round at this sometime soon and round out at least the BSD stuff and later System V. If anyone else has photographs or documents they think should be in these articles and you don't want to do the Wiki part yourself, feel free to send me stuff and I'll make sure it gets put up there.
Finally, some reflection on the path here. "What was UNIX System IV" was one of those questions that plagued my mind for a long time, much before I knew much else about the history of UNIX. Not a crucial question by any means, but it was one of those little mysteries I always wanted to know more about, which is what then lead me to trying to find Release 4.0 documents and all that. Of course, that then lead to the rabbit hole of continuing to turn stuff up, I never imagined I'd actually be successful in trying to turn up more info on that version, let alone then continuing to find little pieces of history and slot in missing parts of stories. Along the way I've learned more about this darn operating system than I ever intended on learning and now feel net gain in several areas of my study. Plus, all this Bell System proximity is largely responsible for my interests in telephony as of late, and may come full circle in the gear I got for telephone experiments helping me resurrect this poor UNIX PC I've got sitting on the floor right now. I don't know what I would've been doing with so much of my free time the past few years otherwise, especially these colder months.
Hope folks enjoy the commentary!
- Matt G.
P.S. Combing over things for this, I've found a few more pieces of the UNIX/TS puzzle. The details are in the Release 3.0 section of the PWB/Commerial page linked above. Short of it is there are some interesting "leaks" of the name "UNIX/TS" into Release 3.0 documentation, inconsistently between the sources on the UNIX tree and the physical document I recently obtained.
Really sobering is the estimate that it will bring 1000 jobs to New
Brunswick. That's a small fraction of the capacity of Murray Hill. On the
upside is proximity to Rutgers.
Contrary to what the article said, Murray Hill does not date from the Labs'
foundation in 1925. The Labs was in the meat-packing district on West
Street in New York in a building now called Westbeth, said to be the
world's largest artist community. The High Line runs right through it. I
worked there one summer in the penthouse with a fine view of ship traffic
on the Hudson. Murray Hill opened in 1941 and West Street closed in about
1967.
> Goodbye, Unix Room!
The Unix Room was dismantled some time ago, but its quirky contents were
grabbed by the Labs archivist, who had them on display at the Unix50
celebration--pink flamingo, G. R. Emlin, CCW clock and all. I wonder
whether these relics will make the move.
Doug
Spotted this this morning: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/186172178090](https://www.ebay.com/itm/18617217809…
After the link is a "Western Electric 3B2 Model 300 C Programming Language Manual". The manual is from Februrary of 1984 and is of the same visual motif as the System V manuals for the 3B5 as well as DWB documentation released at the time, this motif being a small grey binder with a large orange square in the middle (as opposed to small grey binders with the AT&T death star motif that were contemporary to this time as well.) After these two cover styles, which follow the grid patterns System V original documentation, ATTIS then switches to the red covers that are seen throughout the rest of the 80s until the blue SVR4 books and the kinda criss-crossy grid pattern found on their late 80s stuff (not just UNIX, I've seen a similar motif on documentation shipped with AT&T telephones of the period, but in grey)
Interestingly, despite the date, it is still labeled Western Electric, which is strange because the 3B5 manual I have is from 1983 I'm fairly certain but doesn't have "Western Electric" on the cover. Maybe there were mixed stocks of the professionally printed binder covers from the 1982-1984 timeframe with and without WECo branding at the same time.
In any case, this one is still in the plastic and even has the 5 1/2 floppies with the SGS and other C support bits (and AT&T death star logos.) I don't plan on getting this as it's just a pinch later than where my focus is right now, but figured I'd mention it on list in case someone is looking for something like this. I got everything I needed from the pictures.
- Matt G.
Something seems to have slipped through my recordkeeping, someone on list had spoken up with an interest in a free set of vintage V7 manual binders I got in a set of stuff from MIT Lincoln Labs. If you originally spoke up I'm sorry I've misplaced the email in which you sent me your shipping address. I've still got the binders and am finally in a place I can focus on putting my next post-office trip together. I'm a non-vehiculite so I tend to hold until I've got a few things to mail before packing a bag to carry down to the post-office.
I do intend to make good on sending this to the first person that had spoken up last time (and I think you're the only person that bit) but if it gets to be several weeks out and I haven't heard from you (but have heard from anyone else) it may find a different destination. I'll give a few weeks though, not trying to rescind this and hand it to someone else instead.
By the by just a reminder that this isn't a completely stock V7 manual, the Volume 1 manpages have a few additions such as the RAND editor and some other odds and ends. IIRC the only base page that has been replaced (as opposed to added pages) should be od(1).
- Matt G.
P.S. Just to raise the awareness for the more collector-y types, it looks like there is a relatively thorough SVR4 (blue books) manual set bumping around on eBay right now. The catch, it's going for $1,500, which as an owner of a comparable subset and some they're missing, I feel that is overkill and then some...but I don't understand nor want to understand the collector market. Anywho, if this is something your library is burning to include and you're looking to make a donation to that person's retirement fund...then they're up and ripe for the taking. In any case, this set is not complete, not that they're implying that, but I could only really see selling a truly, verifiably complete collection for that sort of asking price. These are a mismash of 3B and 386 versions and the set is missing some odds and ends like the master index, SVID, and any ABI documents.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/204564417674
The network code in ULTRIX-11 v3.1 dies on me a lot and the scripts to set
it up assume classed subnets still. Would anyone want to work with me to
revamp it? I kind of need a mentor in such things but "used to be" a
decent c programmer. Large ask, I know.
I think the first thing would be to troubleshoot it enough to understand
what's breaking (which I dont know know enough ULTRIX to do myself, but
would probably pick it up quick with the company of an expert), then to
replace the ailing pieces of code. Should be a reasonable scope for
someone here, I bet. Over my head. But I'm happy to do all the
housekeeping / gruntwork / announcing, documenting, etc. and I'm eager to
learn your techniques!
thanks!
jake
P.S. If this belongs not on this list but somewhere like cctalk, please
say so and I'll take it there instead.
