TUHS

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6532 discussions

by Rich Morin

Some of you may recall my friend Jim Joyce, who was an early proponent of Unix. IIRC, he taught the first course on Unix at UCB. Later on, he started and ran mail-order bookstores and seminars specializing in Unix-related topics, helped to found Unix Review, etc. In any event, I have about a cubic foot of early Unix papers, saved from Jim's files after his death. It's quite likely that all of these papers are already available in collections, but I'd like to make sure that any exceptions don't get lost. Also, the printed copies may have some independent historical merit. Suggestions? -r

2 years, 8 months

Re: Four windowing systems on SunOS

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

Larry McVoy reports today: >> People like Sunview's api enough that there was an Xview toolkit which >> was Sunview ported to X10/X11. The interface was nicely documented in three editions of a book (I have no entry for the second edition): @String{pub-ORA = "O'Reilly \& {Associates, Inc.}"} @String{pub-ORA:adr = "981 Chestnut Street, Newton, MA 02164, USA"} @Book{Heller:1990:XPM, author = "Dan Heller", title = "{XView} Programming Manual", volume = "7", publisher = pub-ORA, address = pub-ORA:adr, pages = "xxviii + 557", year = "1990", ISBN = "0-937175-38-2", ISBN-13 = "978-0-937175-38-5", LCCN = "QA76.76.W56 D44 v.7 1990", bibdate = "Tue Dec 14 22:55:18 1993", bibsource = "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib", acknowledgement = ack-nhfb, } @Book{Heller:1991:XPM, author = "Dan Heller", title = "{XView} Programming Manual", volume = "7A", publisher = pub-ORA, address = pub-ORA:adr, edition = "Third", pages = "xxxvii + 729", month = sep, year = "1991", ISBN = "0-937175-87-0", ISBN-13 = "978-0-937175-87-3", LCCN = "QA76.76.W56 H447 1990", bibdate = "Mon Jan 3 17:55:53 1994", bibsource = "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib", series = "The Definitive guides to the X Window System", acknowledgement = ack-nhfb, } I have the first edition on a shelf near my campus office chair, and continue to use olvwm as my window manager on multiple O/Ses, for 30+ years. Every window manager designed since seems to fail to understand the importance of user customizable, and pinnable, menus, which I exploit to the hilt. The menu customization goes into a single, easy to edit, text file, $HOME/.openwin-menu. Compare that to the Gnome desktop, with hundreds of files, many of them binary, stored in hidden directories under $HOME, and for which any corruption breaks the window system, and prevents login (except via a GUI console). Also. olvwm does not litter a default desktop with icons for applications that many of use would never use: just a simple blank desktop, with menu popups bound to mouse buttons. With olvwm, you can have any number of virtual desktops, not just the 2 or 4 offered by more modern window manaugers, and unlike some of those, windows can be dragged between desktops. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 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/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 years, 8 months

Memoir Marks the 25th Anniversary of First Transgender Employment Policy

by Mary Ann Horton

This may be a bit off-topic, so please forgive me. Lucent is central to the book. I want to let you know I had a memoir published today, on the 25th anniversary of Lucent's historic policy. Here's the main part of the press release. > Before 1997, transgender workers were routinely fired when their > employers found out they were changing their sex. That changed on Oct. > 28, 1997, when Lucent Technologies became the first Fortune 500 > company to formally commit that it would not discriminate based on > "gender identity, characteristics, or expression". Dr. Mary Ann > Horton, who instigated the change, has written a memoir, Trailblazer: > Lighting the Path for Transgender Inclusion in Corporate America. > "When I led transgender-101 workshops, my personal story was people's > favorite part. They wanted more, and Trailblazer is the result," said > Horton. "It will be released on the 25th anniversary, Oct. 28." > > Horton was a software technology worker at Lucent in Columbus, Ohio, > when Lucent added the language. It allowed Mary Ann, then known as > Mark, to come out in the workplace without fear of reprisal. When she > didn't need to spend energy hiding part of herself, her productivity > soared, and she was promoted. Three years later, she persuaded Lucent > to cover gender-confirming medical care in their health insurance. She > blazed the trail for Apple, Avaya, Xerox, IBM, Chase, and other > companies to follow. Nokia blogged about it today. https://www.nokia.com/about-us/careers/life-at-nokia/employee-blogs/25th-an… You can find the book at https://www.amazon.com/Trailblazer-Lighting-Transgender-Equality-Corporate-… If you read it, please post a review to Amazon. -- Thanks, /Mary Ann Horton/ (she/her/ma'am) maryannhorton.com <https://maryannhorton.com> "This is a great book" - Monica Helms "Brave and Important" - Laura L. Engel Available on Amazon and bn.com! <https://www.amazon.com/Trailblazer-Lighting-Transgender-Equality-Corporate-…>

2 years, 8 months

SunOS4.1.3, etc., on GitHub

by Rich Salz

Sorry if this is a repost. No idea of the legality, and therefore no idea how long it will stay: https://twitter.com/nixcraft/status/1586276475614818305 is the tweet and https://github.com/Arquivotheca/SunOS-4.1.3 is the repository with this README, below. Many other OS's there too. README <https://github.com/Arquivotheca/SunOS-4.1.3#readme> This is the SunOS 4.1.3 SUNSRC CD-ROM. It contains the source in 3 forms. 1. plain text source, as a ufs tree, rooted at the top level of this filesystem. Symlinks to the SCCS hierarchy are in place. 2. SCCS hierarchy, rooted at SCCS_DIRECTORIES. 3. a tar image of the SCCS hierarchy, in a file named 4.1.3_SUNSRC.tar. This is rooted at ./SCCS_DIRECTORIES. Please see the SunOS 4.1.3 Source Installation Guide for further details.

2 years, 8 months

Version 3.1 of Installing and Using Research Unix Version 7 note is up the blog

by Will Senn

Following up on my v6 udpate a couple of weeks ago, I've updated my v7 note to use OpenSIMH and bring it up to date. In addition, I've switched the multi-session notes over to DZ-11 from DC-11 cuz it supports 9600 over telnet. Here's the link: http://decuser.blogspot.com/2022/10/installing-and-using-research-unix_29.h… Changes since revision 2.1 (2/3/2022) Revision 3.1 (10/29/2022) - minor revision: Changed over to DZ-11 vs DC-11 for serial connections which allows for 9600 baud connections. Revision 3.0 (10/28/2022) - major revision: Started using OpenSIMH Restored the learn notes which went missing between 2.0 and 2.1 Updated host notes for Macos Monterey Cleaned up a number of lingering issues This note covers building a working v7 instance from tape files that will run in the OpenSImH emulator. First, the reader is led through the restoration of a pristine v7 instance from tape to disk. Next, the reader is led through adding a regular user and making the system multi-user capable. Then, the reader is shown how to make the system multi-session cable to allow multiple simultaneous sessions. Finally, the system is put to use with hello world, DMR style, and the learn system is enabled. The note explains each step of the process in detail.

2 years, 8 months

who invented the link register

by ron minnich

I know branch and link was in the 360; was it earlier? And ... anybody know who invented it? This came up in a risc-v meeting just now :-) My claim is that if anybody knows, they will be in this group.

2 years, 8 months

Re: who invented the link register

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: ron minnich > I know branch and link was in the 360; was it earlier? Well, as I understand it, branch and link (BAL and BALR) did a couple of different things (if I have this wrong, I hope someone will correct me). It was a subroutine call, but it also loaded a base register. (Those were used to deal with the /360's bizarro memory management, which was not 'base and bounds, with a user's virtual address space starting at zero', like a lot of contemporary machines. Rather, a process saw its actual physical memory location, so depending on where in memoty a process was loaded, it would be executing at different addresses visible to it; the base registers were used to deal with that. This made swapping complicated, since it had to be swapped back in to the same location.) Which function of BALR are you enquiring about? The subroutine call part? > From: Angelo Papenhoff > The Whirlwind used the A register for this purpose. ... > Might be earlier than this, I just happen to know the Whirlwind > somewhat well. It's late 40s machine, so you probably won't find > anything *much* older. The only machines older than Whirlwind I know of are the ACE (design; not implemented until later) and EDVAC. I have ACE stuff, but i) the documentation is really wierd, and hard to read, and ii) it's really bizarre (it didn't have opcodes; different registers did different things). There were subroutines written for it, but it's not clear how they were called. The EDVAC, the only thing I have on it is von Neumann's draft, and it's even harder to read than Turing's ACE Report! Noel

2 years, 8 months

Revised v6 Instructions Posted

by Will Senn

All, I have revised my Research Unix Version 6 instructions for 2022, in part to support the change to OpenSSH and also to bring it along into the modern era (I did it on my Monterey instance). I updated the links, cleaned up some lingering issues, and confirmed it working. Please take a look and let me know if you find any issues, misrepresentations, missing pieces, etc. I haven't touch v6 in a while, but it was fun to reminisce. http://decuser.blogspot.com/2022/10/installing-and-using-research-unix.html Regards, Will

2 years, 8 months

Re: Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

>> Looking at net_vdh.h, it seems to be a "VDH-11C" >> ... >> I wasn't able to find anything out about it at all. (I have some >> hardcopy manuals for other ACC IMP interface products, and I was going >> to look in them to see if any of them listed its manual in a 'see >> also', but I can't find them.) > From: Lars Brinkhoff > Noel Chiappa wrote: >> Did VDH PDP-11's have a special VDH interface > Sorry, no idea. That was a semi-rhetorical question; after I typed it, I did some looking, and came up with the answer above, the ACC VDH-11. I did eventually find the hardcopy manuals for other ACC IMP interface products, but none of them mention the VDH11. On a hunch, I looked to see if there was a VDH11 driver for ELF, and sure enough, there was: https://github.com/pdp11/elf-operating-system/blob/master/files/kdvdh.m11%5… (If anyone wants to look at it, ktbl.sml hold the register definitions.) With no manual for the device, and no museum catalog hits to show that someone has one which hasn't been scanned in yet, that's probably a dead end, although with the two drivers, one could probably mock up a rudimentary programmming manual. I'm not sure there's any point, though; using an LH/DH interface is going to work as well, and those device are already supported. > From: Paul Ruizendaal > impio.c: available here: Thanks for chasing those all down; I knew the BBN system was based on the NCP Unix (called in this discussion the 'NOSC' system), so I figured it would have the missing files, in some form. Looking at a diff between the damaged impio.c in the NOSC tree, and the impio.c in the BBN tree, there are some changes (in the section where we have both versions) between the NOSC one and the BBN one, but it will probably be possible to take the missing piece off the bank end of the BBN one and tack it on to the NOSC one. Somewhere in the document scans available online from DOD, there used to be a long thing from the UIUC people who did the original NCP Unix. I don't know if it included source; it might have. Noel

2 years, 8 months

Re: Attempting To Build NOSC and BBN UNIXs + ARPANET code

by Paul Ruizendaal

Maybe I’m dim, but I’ve lost track in this discussion of what is missing / corrupted. sys4.c: I think this is available in BBN V6: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ken <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ken> In this file the only real network addition is Jack Haverty’s user timer variable, I think. What else is missing? imp11a.c: available in two versions here: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/dmr <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/dmr> impio.c: available here: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ncpkernel/impio.c <https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-V6/ncpkernel/impio.c> Maybe the compiler has a different opinion, but they don’t look obviously corrupted [??] Also, the BBN-VAX files may be a solution. BBN sent four tapes with snap shots to CSRG in 1981. The TUHS website has the newest version, but there are 3 older ones (all 4 come from Kirk McKusick’s DVD set). They all have a slightly different set of files. These tapes also have IMP and ACC drivers in them, along with a token ring driver that was apparently based on Noel’s work back in the day. These files may also help filling in blank spots in PDP11 files. Paul

2 years, 8 months

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