18 Jul
2025
18 Jul
'25
9:03 p.m.
It's not exactly a UNIX artifact but in the late 60s - early 70s when
we wanted a break at night we'd go down to the second floor of building
2 which had a PDP-15/GRIN-2 and play space war. It sticks in my memory
because there was an Etch-A-Sketch hanging on the side of one of the
equipment racks with a sign under it that said "In case of fire, throw
in".
Anyway, I have a hunk of DEC fan-fold paper tape with double-sun space
war on it; the boot address is written on the leader in my teen-age
handwriting.
Somewhere I have a paper tape reader. When I have some spare cycles
I plan to read that tape in and try to get it running as folks have
VMs for that architecture. Probably will have to build a button box
to go with it - I recall that there was an 8 button box, 4 for each
player - turn left, turn right, accelerate, and shoot. And it also
read the front panel console switches to change the game settings
such as limited/unlimited ammo, limited/unlimited fuel, tumble-mode,
etc.
Another non-UNIX artifact that I came across is a 1974 BTL directory.
The departmental index is fascinating - gives a view of what a real
research lab looked like.
Jon
19 Jul
19 Jul
9:20 a.m.
New subject: Your Most Prized UNIX Artifacts?
In terms of unequivocally prized, I’d say the following:
* HP 9050
* IBM 6152 Academic System
* SGI Engineering Sample #3 - multibus CPU & framebuffer - these are early SUN boards
from VLSI Systems who, as I understand it, were trying to commercialize the Stanford
system separately from Sun. Clear genetic link with the Sun-1 CPU and bwone, but not
identical to them. Nor to the 68000 CPU that ultimately shipped with the IRIS 1000/1200
terminals.
* SGI IRIS 1200
* Sun 100U
* Sun 150U
In terms of wanting to mention because rarely seen, missing critical parts, and selfishly
hoping to maybe shake something loose someday:
* Ardent Titan - missing its console and primary graphics board
* Dupont Pixel Systems MacBlitz - missing all the software, both for the Macintosh host
and the Clipper C300 UNIX system itself
* IBM 9377 Model 90 - actually not missing anything, but I’d quite like to hear that
anything related to IX/370 or AIX/370 survived somewhere
* mips RS4230 - The requisite RISC/os v5.01 media did turn up somewhat recently, thanks to
everyone involved in that effort. Now I’m just hoping to eventually stumble over a new
enough version of RISCwindows that will support the console framebuffer (v4.11 IIRC)
* Pixar Image Computer - missing host interface board (SGI, Sun, anything) and pretty much
all the software (Chap-C, etc.)
* Sritek VersaCard - missing the MC68000 Xenix and PC interface software.
* Sun FDDI/DX (VME) - missing the SunOS driver tape
* Sun GT - busted, missing much in the way of hope tracking down the fault, never mind
repairing
* Sun TAAC-1 - missing the software
A goodly measure of IBM RT AOS/4.3 software has been recovered and archived in the last
couple years. Some of it from my own efforts. There are enough of the 6152-specific pieces
that exist in situ to make a usable 6152 system, but they're not complete. It’d be
nice to turn up some of the official distribution media for that. There’d have been a QIC
tape adding the 6152-specific kernel pieces, maybe a floppy or two with the DOS and/or
OS/2 host components (if they weren’t also on the tape).
ok
bear.
3:32 p.m.
New subject: Your Most Prized UNIX Artifacts?
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 3:22 AM r.stricklin <bear(a)typewritten.org> wrote:
* mips RS4230 - The requisite RISC/os v5.01 media did
turn up somewhat recently, thanks to everyone involved in that effort. Now I’m just hoping
to eventually stumble over a new enough version of RISCwindows that will support the
console framebuffer (v4.11 IIRC)
Hmmm, I have the following QIC-150 tapes
o MIPS RISC/os Version 4.52
Binary Software Tape 1 of 2
Part Number 06-00147-002
o MIPS RISC/os Version 4.5.2
Binary Software Tape 2 of 2
Part Number 06-00147-002
o MIPS RISCwindows Version 4.00
Binary Software Tape 1 of 1
Part Number 01-00167
Plus all of it on a hard disk I took out of my MIPS RS4230 that I
still have... It had a color frame buffer and a big honkin monitor. I
don't know if I still have the color card or not. I don't have the
monitor...
Don't know if the tapes would work, but it looks like
http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/MIPS/ already has all this... Including
the sources.... HMMM...
Warner
5:02 p.m.
New subject: Your Most Prized UNIX Artifacts?
FWIW, "VLSI Systems" was Andy Bechtolsheim's company that licensed the
Stanford Sun designs to many companies. When Sun was started, VLSI Systems
was rolled into Sun.
Sun's first revenue products were 3Mb Ethernet cards which still said VLSI
Systems on them.
BTW, if anyone actually has one of these 3Mb board, Robert Garner would
love to get his hands on one. He's working on a detailed history of
Ethernet. Robert's probably not on this list, but I can connect folks to
him.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 2:22 AM r.stricklin <bear(a)typewritten.org> wrote:
In terms of unequivocally prized, I’d say the
following:
* HP 9050
* IBM 6152 Academic System
* SGI Engineering Sample #3 - multibus CPU & framebuffer - these are early
SUN boards from VLSI Systems who, as I understand it, were trying to
commercialize the Stanford system separately from Sun. Clear genetic link
with the Sun-1 CPU and bwone, but not identical to them. Nor to the 68000
CPU that ultimately shipped with the IRIS 1000/1200 terminals.
* SGI IRIS 1200
* Sun 100U
* Sun 150U
In terms of wanting to mention because rarely seen, missing critical
parts, and selfishly hoping to maybe shake something loose someday:
* Ardent Titan - missing its console and primary graphics board
* Dupont Pixel Systems MacBlitz - missing all the software, both for the
Macintosh host and the Clipper C300 UNIX system itself
* IBM 9377 Model 90 - actually not missing anything, but I’d quite like to
hear that anything related to IX/370 or AIX/370 survived somewhere
* mips RS4230 - The requisite RISC/os v5.01 media did turn up somewhat
recently, thanks to everyone involved in that effort. Now I’m just hoping
to eventually stumble over a new enough version of RISCwindows that will
support the console framebuffer (v4.11 IIRC)
* Pixar Image Computer - missing host interface board (SGI, Sun, anything)
and pretty much all the software (Chap-C, etc.)
* Sritek VersaCard - missing the MC68000 Xenix and PC interface software.
* Sun FDDI/DX (VME) - missing the SunOS driver tape
* Sun GT - busted, missing much in the way of hope tracking down the
fault, never mind repairing
* Sun TAAC-1 - missing the software
A goodly measure of IBM RT AOS/4.3 software has been recovered and
archived in the last couple years. Some of it from my own efforts. There
are enough of the 6152-specific pieces that exist in situ to make a usable
6152 system, but they're not complete. It’d be nice to turn up some of the
official distribution media for that. There’d have been a QIC tape adding
the 6152-specific kernel pieces, maybe a floppy or two with the DOS and/or
OS/2 host components (if they weren’t also on the tape).
ok
bear.
5:53 p.m.
New subject: Was artifacts, now ethernet
I'd like to talk to Robert because I'm willing to bet how 100Mb ethernet
came to be is not well known. Feel free to forward this to him.
Somewhere in the early middle-ish 90s, I was working for Ken Okin in the
server hardware division, building Sun's first cluster. It was just a
bunch of small servers behind a modified kalpana ethernet switch (the
mods were my version of VLANs, I didn't know VLANs existed at that time).
The Kalpana switch opened my eyes to what ethernet could do and could
evolve to in the future if we made ethernet faster.
So I wandered over to Sun's networking hardware and asked if they could
build 100Mb ethernet over copper. I was too stupid to realize that they
thought I was asking them to signal at 100Mb the same way they signaled
at 10Mb. Which doesn't work because of crosstalk issues (which I didn't
know about at the time, I'm more software than hardware). So they told
it couldn't be done and I went back to SMCC with my tail between my legs.
It's worth noting that I was sitting one office away from avb and we had
past history. I got him to redesign some memory interconnect because
I had actual memory latency results from all the current hardware
(everyone's not just Suns) and I had a pretty good idea of all the
roadmaps because the processor architects talked to me because they
loved the micro benchmarks in LMbench because they were tiny and ran
fast on their simulators. The design he had was gonna suck and make
us look bad so he stopped the project and designed a lower latency one.
That's a long way of saying that avb had some respect for me.
One day, a company called Crescendo Communications showed up to pitch me
CDDI which was FDDI over copper. That signaled at 100Mb. As soon as I
got it, I asked them to wait, went and told avb he needed to hear this.
Pulled him into the conference room, told them this is Sun employee #1,
can you do the pitch again.
It's worth noting they did not ask us to sign an NDA.
We're walking back to our offices and avb sort of grins and says something
like "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I said "yup, 100Mb
ethernet,
nobody wants FDDI packets if they could have ethernet packets".
Here is why it is unlikely that anyone knows about this. Andy did
something very smart, he said this couldn't be a Sun project, it would
die if it were. Sun had done mmap, vnodes, NFS, RPC, etc, and the rest
of the industry was sick and tired of chasing Sun. The whole OSF thing
was basically "everyone but Sun".
Andy said here is what we're gonna do (I did some but it was mostly him
at this point): we're getting in our cars and we're calling on every
networking company in the value, we're looking for a high up engineer
or their lead architect. And all we're gonna say is "did you know that
you can signal over copper at 100Mb like this? Wouldn't it be nice if
we got 100Mb ethernet?"
And it worked. It wasn't a Sun project, noone remembered that I had
anything to do with it, Andy kept a very low profile, and I believe we
got 100Mb "ethernet" cards trickling out in about 6 months. In quotes
because it wasn't a standard yet.
The funny thing is I've done a lot of other stuff that people know about,
but I'm more proud of the fact that I pushed for 100Mb and it actually
happened, that's a far bigger deal than anything else I've done (and I
know, I didn't do 100Mb ethernet but I saw it before anyone else did
and pushed for it and Andy, and to some extent, I made it happen).
I also did a back of the paper napkin design of the ethernet switch that
Granite built, Andy found me in a bar in San Francisco (or somewhere up
there) and asked me if I could have a perfect ethernet switch what would
it look like. But that's a different story and probably not for here.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 10:02:12AM -0700, Tom Lyon wrote:
FWIW, "VLSI Systems" was Andy
Bechtolsheim's company that licensed the
Stanford Sun designs to many companies. When Sun was started, VLSI Systems
was rolled into Sun.
Sun's first revenue products were 3Mb Ethernet cards which still said VLSI
Systems on them.
BTW, if anyone actually has one of these 3Mb board, Robert Garner would
love to get his hands on one. He's working on a detailed history of
Ethernet. Robert's probably not on this list, but I can connect folks to
him.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 2:22???AM r.stricklin <bear(a)typewritten.org> wrote:
> In terms of unequivocally prized, I???d say the following:
>
> * HP 9050
> * IBM 6152 Academic System
> * SGI Engineering Sample #3 - multibus CPU & framebuffer - these are early
> SUN boards from VLSI Systems who, as I understand it, were trying to
> commercialize the Stanford system separately from Sun. Clear genetic link
> with the Sun-1 CPU and bwone, but not identical to them. Nor to the 68000
> CPU that ultimately shipped with the IRIS 1000/1200 terminals.
> * SGI IRIS 1200
> * Sun 100U
> * Sun 150U
>
> In terms of wanting to mention because rarely seen, missing critical
> parts, and selfishly hoping to maybe shake something loose someday:
>
> * Ardent Titan - missing its console and primary graphics board
> * Dupont Pixel Systems MacBlitz - missing all the software, both for the
> Macintosh host and the Clipper C300 UNIX system itself
> * IBM 9377 Model 90 - actually not missing anything, but I???d quite like to
> hear that anything related to IX/370 or AIX/370 survived somewhere
> * mips RS4230 - The requisite RISC/os v5.01 media did turn up somewhat
> recently, thanks to everyone involved in that effort. Now I???m just hoping
> to eventually stumble over a new enough version of RISCwindows that will
> support the console framebuffer (v4.11 IIRC)
> * Pixar Image Computer - missing host interface board (SGI, Sun, anything)
> and pretty much all the software (Chap-C, etc.)
> * Sritek VersaCard - missing the MC68000 Xenix and PC interface software.
> * Sun FDDI/DX (VME) - missing the SunOS driver tape
> * Sun GT - busted, missing much in the way of hope tracking down the
> fault, never mind repairing
> * Sun TAAC-1 - missing the software
>
> A goodly measure of IBM RT AOS/4.3 software has been recovered and
> archived in the last couple years. Some of it from my own efforts. There
> are enough of the 6152-specific pieces that exist in situ to make a usable
> 6152 system, but they're not complete. It???d be nice to turn up some of the
> official distribution media for that. There???d have been a QIC tape adding
> the 6152-specific kernel pieces, maybe a floppy or two with the DOS and/or
> OS/2 host components (if they weren???t also on the tape).
>
>
> ok
> bear.
>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
6:07 p.m.
New subject: Was artifacts, now ethernet
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 10:53:10AM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
Andy said here is what we're gonna do (I did some
but it was mostly him
at this point): we're getting in our cars and we're calling on every
networking company in the value, we're looking for a high up engineer
s/value/valley/
Sigh.
6:53 p.m.
New subject: Was artifacts, now ethernet
The other bit of this story that I've heard from Andy is that there was
some kind of gentlemen's agreement between the IEEE 802 and ANSI/FDDI
committees - to have Ethernet stick to 10Mb and let FDDI do 100Mb. Seems,
at least in retrospect, to be incredibly stupid.
And then there was HP with 100Base-VG (iirc). Sigh.
You and Andy understood that faster Ethernet was all that was needed.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 11:17 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I'd like to talk to Robert because I'm
willing to bet how 100Mb ethernet
came to be is not well known. Feel free to forward this to him.
Somewhere in the early middle-ish 90s, I was working for Ken Okin in the
server hardware division, building Sun's first cluster. It was just a
bunch of small servers behind a modified kalpana ethernet switch (the
mods were my version of VLANs, I didn't know VLANs existed at that time).
The Kalpana switch opened my eyes to what ethernet could do and could
evolve to in the future if we made ethernet faster.
So I wandered over to Sun's networking hardware and asked if they could
build 100Mb ethernet over copper. I was too stupid to realize that they
thought I was asking them to signal at 100Mb the same way they signaled
at 10Mb. Which doesn't work because of crosstalk issues (which I didn't
know about at the time, I'm more software than hardware). So they told
it couldn't be done and I went back to SMCC with my tail between my legs.
It's worth noting that I was sitting one office away from avb and we had
past history. I got him to redesign some memory interconnect because
I had actual memory latency results from all the current hardware
(everyone's not just Suns) and I had a pretty good idea of all the
roadmaps because the processor architects talked to me because they
loved the micro benchmarks in LMbench because they were tiny and ran
fast on their simulators. The design he had was gonna suck and make
us look bad so he stopped the project and designed a lower latency one.
That's a long way of saying that avb had some respect for me.
One day, a company called Crescendo Communications showed up to pitch me
CDDI which was FDDI over copper. That signaled at 100Mb. As soon as I
got it, I asked them to wait, went and told avb he needed to hear this.
Pulled him into the conference room, told them this is Sun employee #1,
can you do the pitch again.
It's worth noting they did not ask us to sign an NDA.
We're walking back to our offices and avb sort of grins and says something
like "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I said "yup, 100Mb
ethernet,
nobody wants FDDI packets if they could have ethernet packets".
Here is why it is unlikely that anyone knows about this. Andy did
something very smart, he said this couldn't be a Sun project, it would
die if it were. Sun had done mmap, vnodes, NFS, RPC, etc, and the rest
of the industry was sick and tired of chasing Sun. The whole OSF thing
was basically "everyone but Sun".
Andy said here is what we're gonna do (I did some but it was mostly him
at this point): we're getting in our cars and we're calling on every
networking company in the value, we're looking for a high up engineer
or their lead architect. And all we're gonna say is "did you know that
you can signal over copper at 100Mb like this? Wouldn't it be nice if
we got 100Mb ethernet?"
And it worked. It wasn't a Sun project, noone remembered that I had
anything to do with it, Andy kept a very low profile, and I believe we
got 100Mb "ethernet" cards trickling out in about 6 months. In quotes
because it wasn't a standard yet.
The funny thing is I've done a lot of other stuff that people know about,
but I'm more proud of the fact that I pushed for 100Mb and it actually
happened, that's a far bigger deal than anything else I've done (and I
know, I didn't do 100Mb ethernet but I saw it before anyone else did
and pushed for it and Andy, and to some extent, I made it happen).
I also did a back of the paper napkin design of the ethernet switch that
Granite built, Andy found me in a bar in San Francisco (or somewhere up
there) and asked me if I could have a perfect ethernet switch what would
it look like. But that's a different story and probably not for here.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 10:02:12AM -0700, Tom Lyon wrote:
FWIW, "VLSI Systems" was Andy
Bechtolsheim's company that licensed the
Stanford Sun designs to many companies. When Sun was started, VLSI
Systems
was rolled into Sun.
Sun's first revenue products were 3Mb Ethernet cards which still said
VLSI
Systems on them.
BTW, if anyone actually has one of these 3Mb board, Robert Garner would
love to get his hands on one. He's working on a detailed history of
Ethernet. Robert's probably not on this list, but I can connect folks to
him.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 2:22???AM r.stricklin <bear(a)typewritten.org>
wrote:
> In terms of unequivocally prized, I???d say the following:
>
> * HP 9050
> * IBM 6152 Academic System
> * SGI Engineering Sample #3 - multibus CPU & framebuffer - these are
early
> SUN boards from VLSI Systems who, as I
understand it, were trying to
> commercialize the Stanford system separately from Sun. Clear genetic
link
> with the Sun-1 CPU and bwone, but not
identical to them. Nor to the
68000
> CPU that ultimately shipped with the IRIS
1000/1200 terminals.
> * SGI IRIS 1200
> * Sun 100U
> * Sun 150U
>
> In terms of wanting to mention because rarely seen, missing critical
> parts, and selfishly hoping to maybe shake something loose someday:
>
> * Ardent Titan - missing its console and primary graphics board
> * Dupont Pixel Systems MacBlitz - missing all the software, both for
the
> Macintosh host and the Clipper C300 UNIX
system itself
> * IBM 9377 Model 90 - actually not missing anything, but I???d quite
like to
> hear that anything related to IX/370 or
AIX/370 survived somewhere
> * mips RS4230 - The requisite RISC/os v5.01 media did turn up somewhat
> recently, thanks to everyone involved in that effort. Now I???m just
hoping
> to eventually stumble over a new enough
version of RISCwindows that
will
> support the console framebuffer (v4.11 IIRC)
> * Pixar Image Computer - missing host interface board (SGI, Sun,
anything)
> and pretty much all the software (Chap-C,
etc.)
> * Sritek VersaCard - missing the MC68000 Xenix and PC interface
software.
> * Sun FDDI/DX (VME) - missing the SunOS
driver tape
> * Sun GT - busted, missing much in the way of hope tracking down the
> fault, never mind repairing
> * Sun TAAC-1 - missing the software
>
> A goodly measure of IBM RT AOS/4.3 software has been recovered and
> archived in the last couple years. Some of it from my own efforts.
There
> are enough of the 6152-specific pieces that
exist in situ to make a
usable
> 6152 system, but they're not complete.
It???d be nice to turn up some
of the
> official distribution media for that.
There???d have been a QIC tape
adding
> the 6152-specific kernel pieces, maybe a
floppy or two with the DOS
and/or
> OS/2 host components (if they weren???t also
on the tape).
>
>
> ok
> bear.
>
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing
http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
7:11 p.m.
New subject: Was artifacts, now ethernet
On Sat, Jul 19, 2025 at 11:53:20AM -0700, Tom Lyon wrote:
The other bit of this story that I've heard from
Andy is that there was
some kind of gentlemen's agreement between the IEEE 802 and ANSI/FDDI
committees - to have Ethernet stick to 10Mb and let FDDI do 100Mb. Seems,
at least in retrospect, to be incredibly stupid.
Huh, that's the first I've heard of that. My personal experience was
that the issue was signaling at 100Mbit had cross talk issues. Until
it didn't.
And then there was HP with 100Base-VG (iirc). Sigh.
You and Andy understood that faster Ethernet was all that was needed.
What I wanted was ethernet packets. I'd seen switch technology and
realized that you don't really need to store and forward (unless the
outgoing port is busy) so people were starting to talk about sending
the first bits out the outgoing port before the last bits came in the
incoming port. The nay sayers were mumbling about forwarding corrupt
packets but that got shut down because (A) the final destination of
the packet will catch that it is corrupt and (B) corrupt packets are
vanishingly rare so making all the switches slow for something that
doesn't happen often is stupid.
The other thing I realized is that ethernet packets are sized just fine.
I used to want jumbo packets (8K + space for headers) so you could do
SGI's page flip / copy on write. But infinitely large packets means
infinitely large buffers, SGI's numa interconnect educated me on that.
11:06 p.m.
New subject: Your Most Prized UNIX Artifacts?
On 7/19/25 5:20 AM, r.stricklin wrote:
A goodly measure of IBM RT AOS/4.3 software has been
recovered and archived in the last couple years.
I don't have distribution media, but I sent a complete AOS/4.3 source tree
to Warren last year.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
3
days inactive
4
days old
8 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Chet Ramey -
Jon Steinhart -
Larry McVoy -
r.stricklin -
Tom Lyon -
Warner Losh