23 Aug
2014
23 Aug
'14
9:08 a.m.
Doug McIlroy wrote:
Are you thinking of the cu (call unix) command? But that was included in v7,
and don't think it was part of uucp. The escape was ~ So a ~. to hangup,
~%put to send a file to the remote and ~%take to get one, and ~~ to send a ~
later on, there was a ct (call terminal) command, expecting a terminal at the end
of phone line instead of another machine.
I was
wondering if Unix had any form of networking before uucp
Right from the time Unix came up on the PDP-11 it was
networked in the sense that it had dial-in and dial-out
modems. Fairly early on, when Unixes appeared in other
Bell Labs locations, Charlie Roberts provided a program
for logging into another machine. It had an escape for
file transfer, so it covered the basic functionality
of rsh and ftp. It was not included in distributions,
however, and its name escapes me. Maybe scj can add
further details.
Doug 
24 Aug
24 Aug
12:02 a.m.
New subject: networking on unix before uucp
Doug McIlroy wrote:
Right from the time Unix came up on the PDP-11 it was
networked in the sense that it had dial-in and dial-out
modems. Fairly early on, when Unixes appeared in other
Bell Labs locations, Charlie Roberts provided a program
for logging into another machine. It had an escape for
file transfer, so it covered the basic functionality
of rsh and ftp. It was not included in distributions,
however, and its name escapes me.
That's why you recorded it in this great article
"A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts from the Programmer's
Manual, 1971-1986", www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf
"The members of the research group had no desire to isolate
themselves from the rest of the Bell Labs computing community.
Nor could they at first justify the purchase of equipment such as
line printers and tape drives, which cost more than their whole
computer. Thus, besides dial-up access, which was a sine qua non,
communication with other machines was a necessity. A 2000bps link
provided remote job entry to the GECOS system at the Bell Labs
computer center (opr, Thompson, v2). GECOS guru Charlie Roberts
contributed tss to exploit the link for remote login and interactive
file transfer (v2)."
Sven
1:32 a.m.
New subject: networking on unix before uucp
Years before cu/ct show up in the AT&T distributions, we* at CMU/EE Dept
we created a program called "connect" that had similar functionality.
BEGIN - old guy's memories ....
In the mid 70s the CS Dept "Front End" was two PDP-11's that all the
serial
ports in the CS offices and terminal rooms were connected too, and they
were switched the PDP-10s, C.mmp and CM* over DR-11Bs IIRC. EE & CS were
in a different buildings and we had not yet created the "distributed
front-end" out of LSI11's (we did that in EE actually later when we started
to playing with 3Meg ethernet).
We did have a couple of serial lines to the other building and had to share
them. Since we wanted to use the UNIX system as a our own timesharing
system independent of CS, but still get to the CS machines over those
shared lines, "connect" was created so we could share the very few serial
connections to CS "front-end" and then we expanded it to be what we used to
support the microprocessor lab.
Another thing I remember from those days is that DEC DH11's serial ports
were expensive (DZ's did not exist and Able Computer did not yet exist).
We also had DL/KL11's - which had nasty interrupt behavior. With the
development of the CS Front End CMU had it's own RS-232C interface for the
Unibus called an ASLI - Asynchronous Line Interface - which were similar
too KL11s but had some other improvements (I've forgotten what was
different - should try to find Jim Teetor who I think was the creator).
I have memories of some of first serial driver learnings chasing issues
with the ASLI. I've complete forgotten the details now, but having come
over from the IBM/TSS and CMU's version of TOPS-10, I remember thinking is
was strange but so cool that driver was in a HLL not assembler.
END - old guy's memories ....
* "we" - Dan Klein, Tron McConnell, Ted Kowalski and I all hacked on it at
different times. Frankly, I really do not remember who did what.
Obviously it it ran on V6 and Ted's V6++ system, but I don't think it ever
ran on V5. I'm pretty sure Ted took it back to Summit after his OYOC year,
so I do not think cu had been done there yet.
On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 11:08 PM, Brian Walden <tuhs(a)cuzuco.com> wrote:
Doug McIlroy wrote:
Are you thinking of the cu (call unix) command? But that was included in
v7,
and don't think it was part of uucp. The escape was ~ So a ~. to hangup,
~%put to send a file to the remote and ~%take to get one, and ~~ to send
a ~
later on, there was a ct (call terminal) command, expecting a terminal at
the end
of phone line instead of another machine.
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I was
wondering if Unix had any form of networking before uucp
Right from the time Unix came up on the PDP-11 it was
networked in the sense that it had dial-in and dial-out
modems. Fairly early on, when Unixes appeared in other
Bell Labs locations, Charlie Roberts provided a program
for logging into another machine. It had an escape for
file transfer, so it covered the basic functionality
of rsh and ftp. It was not included in distributions,
however, and its name escapes me. Maybe scj can add
further details.
Doug 
10:59 a.m.
New subject: networking on unix before uucp
On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 03:32:45PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
BEGIN - old guy's memories ....
I see your old guy memories and "raise" my sort of old guy memories.
This is a bell labs blit story. It relies heavily on 7 bit clean stuff.
I'm not entirely sure this ever worked reliably but here is what we did.
I was a grad student at UW Madison and shared an office with another guy. We
had a serial line to the computing center across the street. We had a blit,
loved it. We wanted two.
I found an 8051 (or whatever version had a programable prom and 3
serial ports). I wrote the code that used the 8th bit to say whether
it was my blit or my office mate's blit. Burned the proms into two
of those, convinced the lab to let me put one on the other end and
presto! Two blits running side by side, two happy TA's.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
3772
days inactive
3773
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Brian Walden -
Clem Cole -
Larry McVoy -
Sven Mascheck