TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

47 participants
6502 discussions

by Jan Schaumann

Hello, 30 years ago today on March 21st, 1993 at around 09:45:37 UTC, NetBSD was born! I believe this makes NetBSD the oldest, still-maintained and actively developed, free and open source descendant of the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a true genetic Unix (albeit not small-caps UNIX nor UNIX(tm)). If you want to see what the source tree looked like back then: cvs -d anoncvs@anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot co -D "1993-03-21 09:45:37 GMT" src Or browse the tree at that time: https://www.netbsd.org/~jschauma/src-1993-03-21/ Unlike me, many on this list were around at the time and place. Would love to hear some origin stories... -Jan

2 years, 2 months

Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

by John P. Linderman

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/technology/turing-award-bob-metcalfe-eth…

2 years, 2 months

3B20S UNIX 5.0 "Available Documentation" Spotted on eBay

by segaloco

Just sharing this document list I spotted on an eBay listing as I was perusing things: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HIcAAOSwnoZjoSNA/s-l1600.jpg The manual in the auction[1] is interesting in that it features the Bell Logo scratched off, presumably as this was sold/shipped right around that magic flip of the switch. I keep seeing variation upon variation of these covers, some 5.0 with the bell, some 5.0 without, some System V with, some System V without. The oddest I've seen recently is actually another active eBay auction[2] as of this typing in which the typical grid-pattern cover is seen but the title is given as "UNIX operating system" rather than just "UNIX system". Anywho, going to describe the document here so the text is in the archive somewhere. After the above link is a document titled "Section 3 - Available Documentation" with a handwritten note indicating this is a section of DC-001 which is in turn listed as the "3B20S Documentation Catalog". The contents of the document are (all listed documents are Issue/Version 1): Table A - 3B20S Processor System Predelivery Documents 3B20S Technical Data Sheets - TDS-01 3B20S Site Preparation Manual - SPM-01 3B20S Documentation Catalog - DC-001 Table B - 3B20S Processor Applications Documents OAS User's Guide - 302-920 OAS Administrator's Guide - 302-921 OAS Electronic Messaging Reference Card - 302-922 OAS Editor-Formatter Reference Card - 302-923 OAS Document Editing and Formatting Workbook - 302-924 Table C - 3B20S Processor System Basic Documentation 3B20S System Index - 301-901 3B20S System Description - 301-911 UNIX System User's Guide - 301-921 UNIX Operating System Error Message Manual - 301-922 UNIX System User's Manual - 301-925 UNIX System Administrator's Manual - 301-926 UNIX System Administrator's Guide - 301-931 UNIX System Operator's Guide - 301-941 3B20S System Maintenance Guide - 301-951 Looks like there is another page stapled behind that one. I've reached out to the seller to see if they're willing to share the rest info on the pieces of paper. Looks like the OAS card I happened upon recently has friends, and what I wouldn't give for some of that 3B20 stuff. I think that's going to be one of my next documentation goals, to track down some more 3B20 documents, there seems to actually be a surprising lack of 3B20 documentation that has been scanned. - Matt G. [1] - https://www.ebay.com/itm/125672373414?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-235… [2] - https://www.ebay.com/itm/385464959716?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-235…

2 years, 2 months

UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what, user now?

by KenUnix

Interesting Unix related articles. https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/17/ken_thompson_is_a_maccie/ and https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/17/unix_is_dead/ and https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/13/unix_workstations_lessons/ Enjoy, Ken -- WWL 📚

2 years, 2 months

Vax-780 with unix 2.0v2 gdts questions

by KenUnix

I have succeeded in building a complete (including the extra apps) working Vax-780 sim running unix 2.0v2 gdts except for 2 things. 1) Unable to set up to be able print to the host. The device appears to be an LP11 but the Kernel does not have an LP device (c,major,minor) defined. The sim has an entry for LPT. 2) Any way to network (Ethernet) off the sim to the host? It seems to be possible the tools are there, but again is not covered anywhere? I have gone over all the documents I could find. If someone could point me to the appropriate documents that would be great. Any help would be appreciated, Ken -- WWL 📚

2 years, 2 months

Re: GOTO etc.

by Bakul Shah

2 years, 2 months

GOTO etc.

by Steve

After some digging - in the Algol68C compiler we used the names setmp and longjmp for the code generation routines to implement non local goto. So as you say they were not part of the Algol68 language. Steve From: Bakul Shah<bakul(a)iitbombay.org> Subject: [TUHS] Re: GOTO etc To:srb@acm.org Perhaps you’re talking about non-local GOTOs in Algol68, where you can jump from a nested procedure to a label in a lexically enclosing procedure. Pascal has this too. C has no nested procedures but its setjmp/longjmp is much more powerful (& dangerous). Though both can be used to the top level of a REPL or to jump to a known place after an error. > On Mar 12, 2023, at 11:24 AM, Steve<srb(a)unixsh.com> wrote: > > Dennis added setjmp() and longjmp() so the shell could handle errors in a reasonable way. > There are two places where setjmp was used in the original shell (7th edition) code as I recall. Both at the top level > in main.c. > > The idea came from Algol68 but I do not know where it was originally invented. longjmp() was used in the "exitsh" > function that got called on the exit command, default trap routine and a fault with no trap set. > > It was also used when executing a subshell to avoid a fork and exec. In this case the setjmp() was at top level > in the initial sh setup. > > Hope this makes sense. But these were two different uses. One for error recovery and one to reset the execution environment > back to initial state. > > Steve

2 years, 2 months

Re: UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what, user now?

by Norman Wilson

I must admit I don't see much point in this conversation, even as humour, since the humour is easily turned mean-spirited or self- aggrandizing. What difference does it make if Ken runs MacOS systems or Raspberry Pis or just spends his time teaching flying instructors? When he started out in computing, writing your own everything was pretty much the only way to get things that worked. Now it's a huge amount of work, because modern storage controllers and network devices and even CPUs and memory subsystems are so much more complicated, and to talk to anything else requires supporting complicated network protocols and interpreting multiple encodings and languages and data formats and even running stupid little flashy programs. (How much more complicated is a web browser these days than an entire operating system used to be? How much simpler could you make it and still render most of what's on the web these days? And how much work would all that be, and why bother?) When I started out in computing, making a computer run reliably and well still required understanding the hardware and OS software in some detail, and I found that interesting and pursued that as a vocation. I spent much of the 1980s doing that for pay, including six wonderful years in (not-so-wonderful to me) New Jersey working with smart people like Ken. Nowadays I get paid for helping to keep a large computing environment running. The point is not to show off my OS-design chops, but to make things work for a particular user community that needs particular things. Things that are far more complicated than I'm up to designing and writing and supporting, and most of them involving areas of computing in which I don't have a lot of interest. There are plenty of problems that interest me in making it all work, and in designing system setups and writing tools to help us make it all work better. I don't see this as a step down from bare-metal OS work, much as I used to enjoy that, and much as I might enjoy it now should I get back into it (though it's also possible that modern hardware is such an undisciplined mess that I'd just find it frustrating). I used to keep hacking on the old New Jersey Unix system as a hobby. After a while it wasn't interesting enough compared to other things I could do with my time, but I kept it going for a while because I'd made some of my home computing infrastructure depend on it. Eventually I mended that. Maybe I'll get back to it some day, maybe I won't. I still build my own tools from time to time, both for paid work and for personal use. Sometimes I do that because I dislike the existing tools I can find for the same job, sometimes just because it's a chance to learn more about some network protocol or file format or whatnot. But it's no more a sign of virtue to roll my own stuff than it is to insist on using only stuff someone else wrote (or that was supplied by a particular company or by someone who subscribes to a particular political philosophy or whatnot). In the end it is, or ought to be, just about getting the damn job done reasonably well within the current constraints. Getting the job done within current constraints was, after all, pretty much what Unix was originally made for. Norman Wilson Toronto ON Neither proud nor sad no longer to be using a MicroVAX running 10/e Unix as a home firewall

2 years, 2 months

Re: Reply-To and Mail-Followup-To (was: Re: UNIX System V Release 2.2 gdts Vax-780)

by norman＠oclsc.org

Marc Donner: Having taken my daily troll pill, I am forced to ask, where is 'Reply-to-the-right-folks'? ===== Don't they all use VMS, to own the Eunuchs? Norman Wilson Toronto ON

2 years, 2 months

Re: UNIX System V Release 2.2 gdts Vax-780

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: KenUnix > This is what is in conf.c: > ... > Does this help in determining major/minor number for lp? Do you see a line in 'cdevsw' for the lpt? (I can't see one.) While we're talking about SysV, maybe it's time to add the VAX version (and maybe the 3B2 one too) to the Unix Tree at TUHS, to make it easy to look at? I know there was at one point a good reson to be hesitant aout so doing, but the VAX version is now obsolete, and it is available through archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ATTUNIXSystemVRelease4Version2 just not in an easy to peruse form. Noel

2 years, 2 months

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