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6464 discussions

Re: Setting up an X Development Environment for Mac OS

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Lars Brinkhoff > It's my understanding it was started by Bob Scheifler of the CLU group. Yes, that's correct. (Bob's office was right around the corner from me - although I had very little knowledge of what his group was up to; I was too busy with other things.) I have this vague memory that his version was actually written in CLU? Can that be correct? It would make sense, since that group was so focused on CLU - but maybe not, see below. X must have been done after LCS got the 750 farm (on which we ran 4.1c, to start with) - although I don't know what kind of terminals they were using to run X on - we didn't have any bit-mapped displays on them, I'm pretty sure. Although maybe it was later, once Micro-Vaxes appeared? I have this vague memory that it was based (perhaps only in design, not code re-use) on a window system done at Stanford {looks}; yes, W (hence 'X'): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_Window_System The X paper listed there: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/22949.24053 doesn't say anything about the implementation, so maybe that vague memory/assumption that I had that it was originally written in CLU is wrong. Liskov's 'History of CLU' paper, which lists things done in CLU, doesn't mention it, so I must have been confused? Do any of the really early versions of X (and W) still exist? Noel

2 years, 2 months

[off-topic] Anyone still using USENET?

by arnold＠skeeve.com

Hi. I've been using trn for decades to read a very few USENET groups. Until recently I've been using aioe.org as my NNTP server but it seems to have gone dark. Before that I used eternal-september.org, but when I try that I now get: | $ NNTPSERVER=news.eternal-september.org trn | Connecting to news.eternal-september.org...Done. | | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sys.3b1 | | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.sources.bugs | | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.misc | | Invalid (bogus) newsgroup found: comp.compilers | .... And those all are (or were!) valid groups. If anyone has suggestions for a good free NNTP server, please let me know. Privately is fine. I'm at a bit of a loss otherwise. Thanks, Arnold

2 years, 2 months

reading historic magnetic tapes

by Steve Simon

i worked for some years on video and film archive restoration. baking old, badly stored magnetic tapes prior to reading them is a common practice. my favourite was a story of a rock band (i think the stones) who wanted to play an old 24 track master tape but discovered it seemed to be stuck together. there is a nasty affliction of mag tapes called sticky vinegar syndrome, so they did the right thing and sent a section of tape for analysis. the results came back: the tape had suffered impregnation with “vodka and coke”. some things never change. -Steve

2 years, 2 months

tesseract has gotten so much better

by Will Senn

Hi All, I just wanted to let y'all know that tesseract ocr has significantly improved and is much easier to use that it used to be. I have been using it with my workflow for a bit and it's crazy how much better it is than it was back when I tried it last (admittedly 5-6 years ago). For those of you doing your own scans, or those of you finding sad little pdfs without ocr, the process is fairly simple. Let's say you find "The Master Manual of Fortran.pdf" out there in the wild (or scan it). Here's how to turn it into a glorious ocr'd version: Export your pdf as a multi-image tiff - it'll be ginormous, but you can delete it later (on Mac, this is just export from preview and select tiff, but gs will do it to, if I remember correctly) and then: tesseract The\ Master\ Manual\ of\ Fortran.tiff out -l eng PDF et voila, I nice, if large pdf, called out.pdf or somesuch will appear with ocr text that actually matches your scan (it seems to have caught up to adobe's ocr, or is quite close in my view, ymmv). I speak English, so I installed tesseract and tesseract-eng, but it supports a bunch of other languages if you need them. Apparently google's been supporting and developing it for while now and if my results are any indicator, it's paying off (boy do I remember all the gobbledegook it used to produce). tesseract will import from different image types, multiple images, etc. I just like the simplicity of tiff->pdf. Anyhow, thought y'all might like to know as many of you live off the scans :). Will

2 years, 2 months

C port of Ken Thompson's Space Travel

by Lars Brinkhoff

If you don't want to play Space Travel on PDP-7 Unix, you can now do it more easily running this C port. The controls are--so far--just as quirky as the original. https://github.com/mohd-akram/st

2 years, 2 months

Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

by John Foust

At 01:20 AM 1/26/2023, John Cowan wrote: >WP says the Terak 8510/a was the first graphical workstation; it came out in 1976-77 and ran the UCSD p-System.Â I had never heard of it before. I have a dozen or so Teraks (a PDP-11/03 based system) as well as many floppies and other inherited items and notebooks from one of the Terak founders. This may seem like a lot but there's another guy who might still have a larger collection. Mini-Unix is described here: http://www.tavi.co.uk/unixhistory/mini-unix.html Sixth edition, no MMU. The Bell memo there is dated January 1977. There was a Mini-Unix for the Terak described here in May 1979 but I don't think I have a copy. See page 14... https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/159028/UCC_Special%20_Is… Terak floppies are described here: http://www.60bits.net/msu/mycomp/terak/termedia.htm A memo there says they got their copy in April 1980. There's no indication that this Mini-Unix can *use* the Terak's mono bitmapped display, short of writing your own routines. Pinning "first" on computers is always a tricky process. - John

2 years, 2 months

Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

by Paul Ruizendaal

>> * What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a >> PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is >> it the integration of display into the system that differentiates? > > I remember people calling something a workstation, > if it has the four "M" > > at least 1 MByte memory > at least 1 megapixel display > at least 1 mbit/s network > can't remember the fourth(was there a fourth?) I remember it as: at least 1 MByte memory at least 1 megapixel display at least 1 MIPS cost at most 1 mega penny (10K, maybe 35K in today’s money) That matches with Wikipedia, for whatever that is worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M_computer but note that it talks about 3M not 4M. With hindsight, not adding in networking speed looks strange -- but maybe the world had already settled on LAN speeds above 1Mb/s by 1980 (Ethernet, ARCNet)

2 years, 2 months

Fwd: How did Bell Labs start to work on Project MAC?

by Dan Cross

[Bcc: to TUHS as it's not strictly Unix related, but relevant to the pre-history] This came from USENET, specifically, alt.os.multics. Since it's unlikely anyone in a position to answer is going to see it there, I'm reposting here: From Acceptable Name <metta.crawler(a)gmail.com>: >Did Bell Labs approach MIT or was it the other way around? >Did participating in Project MAC come from researchers requesting >management at Bell Labs/MIT or did management make the >decision due to dealing with other managers in each of the two >organizations? Did it grow out of an informal arrangement into >a format one?" These are interesting questions. Perhaps Doug may be in the know? - Dan C.

2 years, 2 months

Release 5.0 Vs. System V

by segaloco

Good morning all, currently trying to sort out one matter that still bewilders me with this documentation I'm working on scanning. So I've got two copies of the "Release 5.0" User's Manual and one copy of the "System V" User's Manual. I haven't identified the exact differences, lots of pages...but they certainly are not identical, there are at least a few commands in one and not the other. Given this, and past discussion, it's obvious Release 5.0 is the internal UNIX version that became System V, but what I'm curious about is if it was ever released publicly as "Release 5.0" before being branded as System V or if the name was System V from the moment the first commercial license was issued. The reason I wonder this is some inconsistencies in the documentation I see out there. So both of my Release 5.0 User's Manuals have the Bell logo on the front and no mention of the court order to cease using it. Likewise, all but one of the System V related documents I received recently contain a Bell logo on the cover next to Western Electric save for the Opeartor's Guide which curiously doesn't exhibit the front page divestiture message that other documents missing the Bell logo include. Furthermore, the actual cover sheet says "Operator's Guide UNIX System Release 5.0" so technically not System V. In fact, only the User's Manual, Administrator's Manual, Error Message Manual, Transition Aids, and Release Description specifically say System V, all the rest don't have a version listed but some list Release 5.0 on their title page. Furthering that discrepancy is this which I just purchased: https://www.ebay.com/itm/314135813726?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110… Link lives as of this sending, but contains a closed auction for an Error Message Manual from the "Release 5.0" documentation line but no Bell logo. Until the Operator's Guide and this auction link, I haven't seen any "Release 5.0" branded stuff without a Bell logo, and before I bought the System V gold set, I hadn't seen System V branded stuff *with* the Bell logo. This shatters an assumption that I had made that at the same time the documentation branding shifted to System V was the same time the removal of the Bell logo happened, given that divestiture was what allowed them to aggressively market System V, but now this presents four distinct sets of System V gold documentation: Release 5.0 w/ Bell logo Release 5.0 w/o Bell logo System V w/ Bell logo System V w/o Bell logo I'm curious if anyone would happen to know what the significance here is. The covers are all printed, I can't see any indication that a bunch of 5.0 manuals were retroactively painted over nor that any System V manuals got stamped with a Bell post-production. What this means is "Release 5.0" documentation was being shipped post-divestiture and "System V" was being shipped pre-divestiture. If Release 5.0 was publicly sold as System V, then what explains the post-divestiture 5.0 manuals floating around in the wild, and vice versa, if USG couldn't effectively market and support UNIX until the divestiture, how is it so many "Release 5.0" documents are floating around in well produced commercial-quality binding, both pre and post-divestiture by the time the name "System V" would've been king. Were they still maintaining an internal 5.x branch past System V that warranted its own distinct documentation set even into the commercial period? This period right around '82-'83 is incredibly fascinating and I feel very under-documented. - Matt G.

2 years, 2 months

Three New Scans (Sys V User and Admin Guides, TS 4.0 Programmer's Package)

by segaloco

Good day everyone, just emailing to notify of three more documents I've uploaded to archive.org since my last slew of them: https://archive.org/details/unix-programming-starter-package - Up first is the UNIX Programming Starter Package. This is one of a pair of manuals that saw publication in the Bell system around the time of UNIX/TS 4.0. The documents here appear to be a subset of those which shipped with Documents for UNIX 4.0. Nothing particularly new here. There is a companion manual, UNIX Text Editing & Phototypesetting Starter Package, which I also have but haven't hit the scan bench with yet. Like this one, that is just a subset of papers from the Documents for UNIX collection. Based on the TOC, this second one also shipped with one of those PWB/MM multi-fold pamphlets, but didn't receive one when I got this. Luckily that was also scanned as part of the 4.0 collection. So nothing really new here, save that these are 1st generation scans vs the scans of photocopies for the 4.0 release. That said, I've seen this set with the same cover motif except with an AT&T death star logo in the upper right. Didn't look into it too much at the time, but I'd be curious if anyone might have those and if they have the programming one, if it still refers to Release 4.0 in the documentation roadmap. https://archive.org/details/unix-system-users-guide-release-5-0 - This is the User's Guide that shipped with Release 5.0/System V. This covers the usual suspects as well as some notes on RJE and SCCS from a user's perspective. https://archive.org/details/unix-system-administrators-guide-5-0 - And this is the Administrator's Guide likewise from SysV era. This one contains setup and maintenance notes for both DEC (PDP & VAX) and 3B20(S) machines, as well as papers on accounting, LP printing, RJE, filesystem checking, and the System Activity Package. Additionally, the guide includes the original Modification Request form. - Matt G.

2 years, 2 months

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