6 Jul
2024
6 Jul
'24
5:50 p.m.
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 1:22 PM segaloco <segaloco(a)protonmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, July 4th, 2024 at 1:14 PM, Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
Thank you. The goal is to share the system, virtually and physically,
with interested parties.
On Thu, Jul 4, 2024, 2:02 PM Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com> wrote:
Kudos, I'm quite envious, this is awesome news! I appreciate your writeup, touching
on the odd world this lives in, between computer and telecom appliance. Whether the 3B20
family was liked out in the general computing world or not, the impact on
telecommunications is clear with the long shadow of the 5ESS family of switches. Howdy,
I now have this pictured 3B21D in my facility
http://kev009.com/wp/2024/07/Lucent-5ESS-Rescue/
It will be a moment before I can start work on documentation of the
3B21D and DMERT/UNIX-RTR but wanted to share the news.
Awesome accomplished. Can't wait to see the outcome.
Warner
> Regards,
> Kevin Hopefully Lucent was still keen on providing /usr/src
and /usr/man :)
I'm still holding out hope a WECo-era machine pops up someday...but either way, glad
to finally see something in this lineage in the hands of someone with a keen eye for UNIX
and Bell System history!
I'm not sure myself how similar the 3B20 and 3B2 are and it will be a
topic of inquiry since I now have the ability. My initial impression
is that the 3B20 is a fully custom logic and microcoded minicomputer
specific to the fault tolerant and DMA I/O administrative workload it
was designed for. You can get a flavor of what custom control entails
from Wing N. Toy's books and some of the BSTJ articles on the 5ESS as
this is a forgotten design skill. The 3B2 is a more common
microprocessor minicomputer and not far removed from a VAX of similar
age. I don't believe there is explicit compatibility between the 3B20
and 3B2, although a 3B20S running SysV would offer a high degree of
source compatibility.
I'm sure you've seen it but I will plug Seth Morabito's 3B2 emulator,
you can get a very good feel for what a 3B2 UNIX is like (not that
great :)) from it.
- Matt G.