Re: [TUHS] Early Unix Spider network - TUHS

27 May 2017

...
  From: Paul Ruizendaal 
...
 >> The report I have is: "SPIDER-a data
communication experiment"
>> ...
>> I think it can be public now, but doing some checks. 
OK, that would be great to have online. I _think_ the hardcopy I have
(somewhere! :-) is that report, but my memory should not be trusted.

The people working on TCP/IP did know of the Spider work (like they knew of
the Cambridge ring work), but it didn't really have any impact; it was a
totally different direction than the one we were going in.

...
 >> it turns out that the TIU driver was in
Warren's repo all along: 
V4?! Wow. I'd have never guessed it went that far back.

...
 >> The code calls snstat() 
...
 > The object code for snstat() is in libc.a in the
dmr's V5 image.
> Reconstructed, the source code is here:
> ...
> In short, snstat() is a modified stty call 
Yes, I looked and found the original source, appended below.

...
 >> Could that be the tiu sys call (#45) in the
sysent.c table for V4-V6? 
I wonder if we'll ever be able to find a copy of the kernel code for that
tiu() system call. And I wonder what it did?

...
  [1] Oldest alarm() code I can find is in PWB1
 ...
 Either alarm existed in V5 and V6 .. or is was added after V6 was
 released, perhaps soon after. In the latter case the 'nfs' code that we
 have must be later than 1974 
Remember, that source came from the MIT system, which is a modified PWB1.
So it's not surprising it's using PWB1 system calls.

	Noel

--------

/ C interface to spider status call

.globl  _snstat
.globl  cerror

_snstat:
        mov     r5,-(sp)
        mov     sp,r5
        mov     4(r5),r0
        mov     6(r5),0f
        mov     8(r5),0f+2
        sys     stty; 0f
        bec     1f
        jmp     cerror
1:
        clr     r0
        mov     (sp)+,r5
        rts     pc

.data
0:      .=.+6