10 Dec
2023
10 Dec
'23
9:33 a.m.
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.