I'm a little embarrassed to ask, but my curiosity demands I ask.  Who is
that in the framed photograph near the ceiling and between the "Protect
Your Password" and "UNIX International Member" posters?

-Phil

On Sat, Aug 07, 2021 at 07:53:48AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote:
> I sent a picture (actually two at different resolutions; keep reading) to
> the list, but being images they are larger than the address space of a
> PDP-11 so not allowed here.
>
> Is it really necessary to have such a low message size limit in an era when
> I can buy a terabyte of storage for less than a hundred bucks?
>
> Here is a Google Drive link, for the adventurous.
>
>
>  20180123-UnixSkeleton.jpg
> <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aS8ZmzwPUawIa8WXGoXOK9jDiYtJETGG/view?usp=drive_web>
>
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 7:44 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I sent a higher-res version in which you can read all the text but it was
> > "moderated".
> >
> > This is the Unix room as of the year 2000 or so.
> >
> > -rob
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 4:34 AM ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The story of the mice, one of which I gave to John:
> >>
> >> I ran a program called FAST-OS for LANL/Sandia for 6  years starting
> >> 2005. Think of it as "Plan 9 on petaflop supercomputers" -- it may
> >> seem strange now, but in that era when some top end systems ran custom
> >> kernels, there was a strong case to be made that plan 9 was a good
> >> choice. By 2011, of course, the Linux tsunami had swept all before it,
> >> which is why you no longer hear about custom HPC kernels so much --
> >> though in some places they still reign. In any event, this program
> >> gave me 6 years to work with "the Unix room", or what was left of it.
> >> I had been in the Unix Room in 1978, and even met Dennis, so this
> >> prospect was quite a treat.
> >>
> >> We funded Charles Forsyth to write the amd64 compilers for Plan 9,
> >> which if you used early Go you ran into (6c 6a 6l); we also funded the
> >> amd64 port of Plan 9 (a.k.a. k10) as well as the port to Blue Gene.
> >> That amd64 port is still out and about. You can find the Blue Gene
> >> kernel on github.
> >>
> >> I had lots of fun spending time in the Unix room while working with
> >> the late Jim McKie, and others. I saw the tail end of the traditions.
> >> They had cookie day once a week, if memory serves, on Thursday at 3. I
> >> got to see the backwards-running clock, Ken's chess trophies, his
> >> pilot's license, pictures of Peter everywhere, a "Reagan's view of the
> >> world" map, the American Legion award for Telstar (which was rescued
> >> from a dumpster!), and so on. The "Unix room" was more than one room,
> >> all built on a raised floor, as I assume it was former old school
> >> machine room space. If memory serves, it filled the entire width of
> >> the end of the top floor of the building it was in (4th floor?) --
> >> maybe 50 ft x 50 ft -- maybe a bit more. There was a room with desks,
> >> and a similar-sized room with servers, and a smaller room containing a
> >> lab-style sink, a very professional cappucinno machine, decades of old
> >> proceedings, and a sofa. I fixed the heavy-duty coffee grinder one
> >> year; for some reason the Italian company that produced it had seen
> >> fit to switch BOTH hot and neutral, and the fix was to only switch
> >> hot, as the neutral switch had failed; I guess in the EU, with 220v,
> >> things are done differently.
> >>
> >> It was fun being there. A few years later the whole room, and all its
> >> history, was trashed, and replaced with what Jim called a "middle
> >> management wxx dream" (Jim was never at a loss for words); Jim found
> >> some yellow Police crime scene tape and placed it in front of the
> >> doors to the new space. It was redubbed "the innovation space" or some
> >> such, and looked kind of like an ikea showroom. Much was lost. I tried
> >> to find a way to save the contents of the room; I had this dream of
> >> recreating it at Google, much as John Wanamaker's office was preserved
> >> in Philadelphia for so many decades, but I was too late. I have no
> >> idea where the contents are now. Maybe next to the Ark.
> >>
> >> One day in 2008 or so jmk took me for a tour of the buildings, and we
> >> at one point ended up high in the top floor of what I think was
> >> Building One (since torn down?), in what used to be Lab Supply. Nobody
> >> was there, and not much supply was there either. Finally somebody
> >> wandered in, and Jim asked where everyone was. "Oh, they closed lab
> >> supply, maybe 4 years ago?"
> >>
> >> Bell Labs had seen hard times since the Lucent split, and it was clear
> >> it had not quite recovered, and Lab Supply was just one sign of it. I
> >> think the saddest thing was seeing the visitor center, which I first
> >> saw in 1976. In 1976, it was the seat of the Bell System Empire, and
> >> it was huge. There was a map of the US with a light lit for every
> >> switching office in the Bell Labs system. There was all kinds of Bell
> >> Labs history in the visitor center museum.
> >>
> >> The museum had shrunk to a much smaller area, and felt like a closet.
> >> The original transistor was still there in 2010, but little else.The
> >> library was, similarly, changed: it was dark and empty, I was told.
> >> Money was saved. At that time, Bell Labs felt large, strangely quiet,
> >> and emptied of people. It made me think of post-sack Rome, ca. 600,
> >> when its population was estimated to be 500. I have not been back
> >> since 2011 so maybe things are very different. It would be nice if so.
> >>
> >> As part of this tour, Jim gave me 3 depraz mice. I took one, gutted
> >> it, (sorry!), and filled its guts with a USB mouse innards, and gave
> >> it back to Jim. He then had a Depraz USB mouse. jmk's mouse did not
> >> have any lead in it, as John's did, however. The second I gave to
> >> someone at Google who had worked at the labs back in the day. The
> >> third mouse I gave to John, and he made it live again, which is cool.
> >>
> >> In spite of their reputation, I found Depraz mice hard to use. I have
> >> gone through all kinds of mice, and am on an evoluent, and as far as
> >> Depraz go, I guess "you had to be there". I don't recall if jmk used
> >> his "usb depraz" or it ended up on a shelf. Sadly, I can no longer ask
> >> him.
> >>
> >> I'll be interested to see what John thinks of the Depraz.
> >>
> >> ron
> >>
> >> On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 9:52 AM John Floren <john@jfloren.net> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Ah, right. I opened the mouse because one of the encoders didn't seem
> >> to be working (it worked fine again this morning, who knows...) and
> >> discovered that there was something duct taped inside the plastic shell:
> >> >
> >> > http://jfloren.net/content/depraz/inside.jpg
> >> >
> >> > Peeling back the tape, I saw what I first took to be chunks of
> >> flattened beer cans:
> >> >
> >> > http://jfloren.net/content/depraz/reveal.jpg
> >> >
> >> > A closer look showed that they were the wrappers which cover the corks
> >> of wine bottles. Up into the 1980s, these were made out of lead, and by
> >> flattening five of them, a previous owner of the mouse was able to add
> >> quite a bit of extra weight to it:
> >> >
> >> > http://jfloren.net/content/depraz/wrapper.jpg
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > john
> >> >
> >> > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> >> >
> >> > On Friday, August 6th, 2021 at 9:34 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > john, don't forget to mention the beer can
> >> > >
> >> > > On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 9:29 AM John Floren john@jfloren.net wrote:
> >> > >
> >> > > > I stuck an Arduino on it and with surprisingly little code I have
> >> it acting like a 3-button USB mouse.
> >> > > >
> >> > > > The only problem is that the pointer doesn't move smoothly. It does
> >> OK left-to-right, and can move down pretty well, but going up is a problem.
> >> I think pushing the mouse forward tends to move the ball away from the
> >> Y-axis wheel, and the old spring on the tensioner just doesn't have the
> >> gumption to hold that heavy ball bearing in any more.
> >> > > >
> >> > > > john
> >> > > >
> >> > > > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> >> > > >
> >> > > > On Wednesday, August 4th, 2021 at 9:12 PM, ron minnich
> >> rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
> >> > > >
> >> > > > > John, you can see that "stick a bird on it" -> "stick an arduino
> >> on
> >> > > > >
> >> > > > > it" -> "stick a pi on it" has gone as you once predicted :-)
> >> > > > >
> >> > > > > On Wed, Aug 4, 2021 at 8:59 PM John Floren john@jfloren.net
> >> wrote:
> >> > > > >
> >> > > > > > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> >> > > > > >
> >> > > > > > On Wednesday, August 4th, 2021 at 6:12 PM, Henry Bent
> >> henry.r.bent@gmail.com wrote:
> >> > > > > >
> >> > > > > > > On Wed, 4 Aug 2021 at 20:52, John Floren john@jfloren.net
> >> wrote:
> >> > > > > > >
> >> > > > > > > > Having just been given a Depraz mouse, I thought it would
> >> be fun to get it working on my modern computer. Since the DE9 connector is
> >> male rather than female as you usually see with serial mice, and given its
> >> age, I speculate that it might have a custom protocol; in any rate,
> >> plugging it into a USB-serial converter and and firing up picocom has given
> >> me nothing.
> >> > > > > > > >
> >> > > > > > > > Does anyone have a copy of a manual for it, or more
> >> information on how to interface with it? If I knew how it was wired and
> >> what the protocol looked like, I expect I could make an adapter pretty
> >> trivially using a microcontroller.
> >> > > > > > >
> >> > > > > > > This might be of some help?
> >> > > > > > >
> >> > > > > > >
> >> https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/technical-support/vintage-computer-hardware/74403-whitechapel-mg-1-depraz-mouse-grey-pinout#post904391
> >> > > > > > >
> >> > > > > > > -Henry
> >> > > > > >
> >> > > > > > This looks great, thank you!
> >> > > > > >
> >> > > > > > john
> >>
> >