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
Hello Folks,
A while back I made avaiable a tarball of two directories I had
of Bell Labs CSTRs (Computing Science Technical Reports). There
was some overlap between them, and at the time I didn't have the
free time to go through and weed through the duplicates.
I have now done that. There is a new tar file available at
https://www.skeeve.com/combined-cstr.tar.gz
Warren, please add this to the TUHS archives.
Enjoy,
Arnold
I thought folks on COFF and TUHS (Bcc'ed) might find this interesting.
Given the overlap between SDF and LCM+L, I wonder what this may mean
for the latter.
- Dan C.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: SDF Membership <membership(a)sdf.org>
Date: Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 9:10 PM
Subject: [SDF] Computer Museum
To:
We're in the process of opening a computer museum in the Seattle area
and are holding our first public event on September 30th - October 1st.
The museum features interactive exhibits of various vintage computers
with a number of systems remotely accessible via telnet/ssh for those
who are unable to visit in person.
If this interests you, please consider replying with comments and
take the ascii survey below. You can mark an X for what interests you.
I would like to know more about:
[ ] visiting the museum
[ ] how to access the remote systems
[ ] becoming a regular volunteer or docent
[ ] restoring and maintaining various vintage systems
[ ] curation and exhibit design
[ ] supporting the museum with an annual membership
[ ] supporting the museum with an annual sponsorship
[ ] funding the museum endowment
[ ] day to day administration and operations
[ ] hosting an event or meet up at museum
[ ] teaching at the museum
[ ] donating an artifact
Info on our first public event can be found at https://sdf.org/icf
I finally got an Emacs running on v7--it's on misspiggy at LCML now as "ue".
It's Microemacs 3.6; what I did was to clone
https://github.com/troglobit/MicroEMACS and check out the first commit.
Some experimentation later, it had the usual problem with v7 and DEC
linkers that not all the function names (er, more generally exported
symbols, but in this case, function names) were unique in the first 7
characters (which is 6 if you're working with DEC OSes). So a bit of sed
later and I had something that built, linked, and appears to run with
TERM=vt100 set.
Arrow keys, naturally, don't work, but C-b, C-f, C-p, C-n do.
I think I'm going to just make a GH repo of it, but I'm happy to send the
tarball, or tar.uue, upon request. I find UUCP kinda fragile on my simh
installation, and I don't know how to get to Miss Piggy's (although the
uucp commands are there), so, well, uuencoding, a pasteboard buffer,
iTerm2's "Paste Slowly", and cat will work as a file transfer mechanism.
Adam
