4 Mar
2017
4 Mar
'17
9:16 a.m.
Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation of Unix and I've
been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up to
now, there's been little response.
The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold its Annual Technical
Conference on the west coast of the US at this time, so it would make sense
to do something in conjunction with this conference. Some suggestions:
- a terminal room with a bunch of period terminals: ASR-33s, -37s, VT100s,
VT102s, VT220s
- these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either locally or via a
terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
- some graphical terminals: Sun pizza boxes, a Blit would be great
- if possible, some actual real PDP-11s, VAXen
- emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there are
plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.
- Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
systems networked together
- how about an emulated UUCP network with Usenet on top of it, and
some mail/news clients on the emulated systems.
- retro workshops/tutorials: how to edit with ed, using nroff, posting
a Usenet article, dealing with bang paths.
I'm proposing to gather a bunch of people to start the ball rolling on the
technical/demonstration side. We'd need people:
- with terminals, portable PDP-11s and VAXen, Sun boxen
- prepared to set up emulated systems
- who can help bring the networking (UUCP, Usenet, Arpanet) back to life
- willing to write and run workshops that show off this old technology
- to help set up terminal servers and all the RS-232 to telnet stuff
Some of this we can start doing now, e.g. rebuild an emulated Arpanet, UUCP,
Usenet, get emulated systems up, build front-end telnet interfaces.
Is there anybody willing to sign up for this? I think once we have some
momentum, we can tell the Usenix people and get some buy-in from them.
Post back and/or e-mail me if you can help. Thanks, Warren
4 Mar
4 Mar
9:41 a.m.
Remember that Unix is mostly driven by software issues, rather than
hardware. In fact, Usenix folks often complained that the various
computer museums setting up were almost entirely focused on hardware,
and had almost no educational material about how software worked or
was written, and the algorithms under the covers that made it all
work. At one point we offered the Boston computer museum $30,000 if
they would make an exhibit primarily dealing with software, and they
turned us down.
Previous anniversaries have included "Old Farts' BOF" and even some
talks by previous presidents and other contributors. At one such
celebration there were professional fireworks set off at the (outdoor)
banquet in Oregon. I was on the board when that was done --one of
the most interesting board discussions I remember was debating whether
we should go with the $10,000 or the $20,000 fireworks show.
That said, I think the anniversary is worth honoring in some
fashion...
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Warren Toomey" <wkt(a)tuhs.org>
To:<tuhs@tuhs.org>
Cc:
Sent:Sat, 4 Mar 2017 13:16:08 +1000
Subject:[TUHS] Need your help for 2019
Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation of Unix and
I've
been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up
to
now, there's been little response.
The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold its Annual
Technical
Conference on the west coast of the US at this time, so it would make
sense
to do something in conjunction with this conference. Some
suggestions:
- a terminal room with a bunch of period terminals: ASR-33s, -37s,
VT100s,
VT102s, VT220s
- these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either locally or via
a
terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
- some graphical terminals: Sun pizza boxes, a Blit would be great
- if possible, some actual real PDP-11s, VAXen
- emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there
are
plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.
- Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
systems networked together
- how about an emulated UUCP network with Usenet on top of it, and
some mail/news clients on the emulated systems.
- retro workshops/tutorials: how to edit with ed, using nroff,
posting
a Usenet article, dealing with bang paths.
I'm proposing to gather a bunch of people to start the ball rolling
on the
technical/demonstration side. We'd need people:
- with terminals, portable PDP-11s and VAXen, Sun boxen
- prepared to set up emulated systems
- who can help bring the networking (UUCP, Usenet, Arpanet) back to
life
- willing to write and run workshops that show off this old
technology
- to help set up terminal servers and all the RS-232 to telnet stuff
Some of this we can start doing now, e.g. rebuild an emulated
Arpanet, UUCP,
Usenet, get emulated systems up, build front-end telnet interfaces.
Is there anybody willing to sign up for this? I think once we have
some
momentum, we can tell the Usenix people and get some buy-in from
them.
Post back and/or e-mail me if you can help. Thanks, Warren
10:15 a.m.
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017, at 19:16, Warren Toomey wrote:
Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation
of Unix and I've
been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up to
now, there's been little response.
The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold its Annual Technical
Conference on the west coast of the US at this time, so it would make
sense
to do something in conjunction with this conference. Some suggestions:
- a terminal room with a bunch of period terminals: ASR-33s, -37s,
VT100s,
VT102s, VT220s
- these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either locally or via a
terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
- some graphical terminals: Sun pizza boxes, a Blit would be great
- if possible, some actual real PDP-11s, VAXen
- emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there are
plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.
- Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
systems networked together
- how about an emulated UUCP network with Usenet on top of it, and
some mail/news clients on the emulated systems.
- retro workshops/tutorials: how to edit with ed, using nroff, posting
a Usenet article, dealing with bang paths.
I'm proposing to gather a bunch of people to start the ball rolling on
the
technical/demonstration side. We'd need people:
- with terminals, portable PDP-11s and VAXen, Sun boxen
- prepared to set up emulated systems
- who can help bring the networking (UUCP, Usenet, Arpanet) back to life
- willing to write and run workshops that show off this old technology
- to help set up terminal servers and all the RS-232 to telnet stuff
Some of this we can start doing now, e.g. rebuild an emulated Arpanet,
UUCP,
Usenet, get emulated systems up, build front-end telnet interfaces.
Is there anybody willing to sign up for this? I think once we have some
momentum, we can tell the Usenix people and get some buy-in from them.
Post back and/or e-mail me if you can help. Thanks, Warren
Email had 1 attachment:
+ signature.asc
1k (application/pgp-signature)
Where on the west coast?
--
Cory Smelosky
b4(a)gewt.net
10:20 a.m.
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017, at 19:16, Warren Toomey wrote:
The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold
its Annual Technical
Conference on the west coast of the US at this time [ 2019 ]
On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 08:15:57PM -0800, Cory Smelosky wrote:
Where on the west coast?
No idea yet, their web site doesn't say:
https://www.usenix.org/conferences/byname/131
but they seem to alternate east/west coast.
Cheers, Warren
10:49 a.m.
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017, at 20:20, Warren Toomey wrote:
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017, at 19:16, Warren Toomey wrote:
Oh hey! This year is the next city west...now I have no excuses...;)
--
Cory Smelosky
b4(a)gewt.net
The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will
hold its Annual Technical
Conference on the west coast of the US at this time [ 2019 ]
On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 08:15:57PM -0800, Cory Smelosky wrote:
Where on the west coast?
No idea yet, their web site doesn't say:
https://www.usenix.org/conferences/byname/131
but they seem to alternate east/west coast.
Cheers, Warren
Email had 1 attachment:
+ signature.asc
1k (application/pgp-signature) 
2:21 p.m.
The year 2019 is big for retro computing as all of Unix, the Arpanet
and the PDP11 become 50 years old. TENEX as well, but that is off-
topic for this list.
In many ways these technologies are foundational to today's
computing: aren't three-quarters of todays devices built on
top of these technologies?
Maybe Google, Facebook and other "internet" companies are willing
to throw their weight behind some commemoration if it can be made
relevant to a wider audience.
Perhaps emulators for these old systems that can run in a browser
(or as an app) with instructions clear enough for today's web
developer is a good way to pay homage.
It would be a big job though, probably to big to do in 2.5 years.
Paul
On 4 Mar 2017, at 4:16 , Warren Toomey wrote:
Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation
of Unix and I've
been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up to
now, there's been little response.
The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold its Annual Technical
Conference on the west coast of the US at this time, so it would make sense
to do something in conjunction with this conference. Some suggestions:
- a terminal room with a bunch of period terminals: ASR-33s, -37s, VT100s,
VT102s, VT220s
- these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either locally or via a
terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
- some graphical terminals: Sun pizza boxes, a Blit would be great
- if possible, some actual real PDP-11s, VAXen
- emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there are
plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.
- Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
systems networked together
- how about an emulated UUCP network with Usenet on top of it, and
some mail/news clients on the emulated systems.
- retro workshops/tutorials: how to edit with ed, using nroff, posting
a Usenet article, dealing with bang paths.
I'm proposing to gather a bunch of people to start the ball rolling on the
technical/demonstration side. We'd need people:
- with terminals, portable PDP-11s and VAXen, Sun boxen
- prepared to set up emulated systems
- who can help bring the networking (UUCP, Usenet, Arpanet) back to life
- willing to write and run workshops that show off this old technology
- to help set up terminal servers and all the RS-232 to telnet stuff
Some of this we can start doing now, e.g. rebuild an emulated Arpanet, UUCP,
Usenet, get emulated systems up, build front-end telnet interfaces.
Is there anybody willing to sign up for this? I think once we have some
momentum, we can tell the Usenix people and get some buy-in from them.
Post back and/or e-mail me if you can help. Thanks, Warren
2:24 p.m.
Something like this?
http://takahirox.github.io/pdp11-js/unixv6.html
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
From: Paul Ruizendaal
Sent: Saturday, 4 March 2017 4:22 PM
To: TUHS main list
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Need your help for 2019
The year 2019 is big for retro computing as all of Unix, the Arpanet
and the PDP11 become 50 years old. TENEX as well, but that is off-
topic for this list.
In many ways these technologies are foundational to today's
computing: aren't three-quarters of todays devices built on
top of these technologies?
Maybe Google, Facebook and other "internet" companies are willing
to throw their weight behind some commemoration if it can be made
relevant to a wider audience.
Perhaps emulators for these old systems that can run in a browser
(or as an app) with instructions clear enough for today's web
developer is a good way to pay homage.
It would be a big job though, probably to big to do in 2.5 years.
Paul
On 4 Mar 2017, at 4:16 , Warren Toomey wrote:
Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation
of Unix and I've
been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up to
now, there's been little response.
The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold its Annual Technical
Conference on the west coast of the US at this time, so it would make sense
to do something in conjunction with this conference. Some suggestions:
- a terminal room with a bunch of period terminals: ASR-33s, -37s, VT100s,
VT102s, VT220s
- these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either locally or via a
terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
- some graphical terminals: Sun pizza boxes, a Blit would be great
- if possible, some actual real PDP-11s, VAXen
- emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there are
plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.
- Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
systems networked together
- how about an emulated UUCP network with Usenet on top of it, and
some mail/news clients on the emulated systems.
- retro workshops/tutorials: how to edit with ed, using nroff, posting
a Usenet article, dealing with bang paths.
I'm proposing to gather a bunch of people to start the ball rolling on the
technical/demonstration side. We'd need people:
- with terminals, portable PDP-11s and VAXen, Sun boxen
- prepared to set up emulated systems
- who can help bring the networking (UUCP, Usenet, Arpanet) back to life
- willing to write and run workshops that show off this old technology
- to help set up terminal servers and all the RS-232 to telnet stuff
Some of this we can start doing now, e.g. rebuild an emulated Arpanet, UUCP,
Usenet, get emulated systems up, build front-end telnet interfaces.
Is there anybody willing to sign up for this? I think once we have some
momentum, we can tell the Usenix people and get some buy-in from them.
Post back and/or e-mail me if you can help. Thanks, Warren
6 Mar
6 Mar
6:57 a.m.
On 4 Mar 2017, at 9:24 , <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
Something like this?
http://takahirox.github.io/pdp11-js/unixv6.html
Yes. Thank you for reminding me that web emulators already exist. With
some googling I found this one:
http://skn.noip.me/pdp11/pdp11.html
It would seem to have several old Unix systems ready to play with and
a nice emulation of the front panel of a 11/45 and a 11/70. It is released
under a liberal license (quote from source file):
"// This code may be used freely provided the original author name is acknowledged in
any modified source code"
9:44 a.m.
One thing I'd change for starters is the boot block code to just automatically load
the right kernel, and get the system to come up normally on its own.... But it's
cool.
That ooenrisc is pretty cool too!
https://s-macke.github.io/jor1k/demos/main.html
It apparently has network support as well!
On March 6, 2017 8:57:30 AM GMT+08:00, Paul Ruizendaal <pnr(a)planet.nl> wrote:
On 4 Mar 2017, at 9:24 , <jsteve(a)superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
Something like this?
http://takahirox.github.io/pdp11-js/unixv6.html
Yes. Thank you for reminding me that web emulators already exist. With
some googling I found this one:
http://skn.noip.me/pdp11/pdp11.html
It would seem to have several old Unix systems ready to play with and
a nice emulation of the front panel of a 11/45 and a 11/70. It is
released
under a liberal license (quote from source file):
"// This code may be used freely provided the original author name is
acknowledged in any modified source code"
5:16 p.m.
On 6 Mar 2017, at 4:44 , Jason Stevens wrote:
One thing I'd change for starters is the boot
block code to just automatically load the right kernel, and get the system to come up
normally on its own.... But it's cool.
Yes. Thank you for reminding me that web emulators already exist. With
some googling I found this one:
http://skn.noip.me/pdp11/pdp11.html
Yes, agree. The main emulation is 2,000 lines of JS, the I/O devices are 1,500 lines.
That's quite manageable for making a few changes.
Hopefully I will have some time later this year to add 'direct run' emulations
to the TUHS site based on this code (assuming Warren agrees). The idea would be that next
to Archive and the Tree there would be emulation. A visitor would go to e.g. the V5 page
of the Tree and also find a link to run V5 in emulation. From the SIMH and Nankervis sites
images for:
- V5
- V6
- V7
- 2.9BSD
- 2.11BSD
appear to be already available (but the SIMH images may include devices not supported by
the current Nankervis code). I'm not quite sure if and how networking could be
enabled for 2.9BSD and 2.11BSD - at least the network card would need to be emulated and
somehow translated to web socket connections. Same goes for adding live UUCP emulation to
the V7 demo or live Arpanet emulation to a future NCP Unix demo.
8:15 p.m.
New subject: jor1k was:Re: Need your help for 2019
moved.
On 2017-03-06 04:44, Jason Stevens wrote:
That ooenrisc is pretty cool too!
https://s-macke.github.io/jor1k/demos/main.html
Yes, I love it. Unfortunately upstreaming the or1k patches
to GCC failed due to copyright assignment issues or it
would be running debian now. I run a bare minimum static
cross linux from scratch on it.
This builds the toolchain, kernel and a few bits like simh
https://github.com/dugoh/tcb
This continues from above to add more things to sysroot
https://github.com/dugoh/srb
This fork ties it together
https://github.com/dugoh/jor1k
Apologies in advance for the horrendous state of my commit
history. I abuse github as a scratch pad and CD pipeline,
(github -> travis -> gh-pages) and never bothered with any
of the courtesies of open source development.
It apparently has network support as well!
The network back-end is here
https://github.com/benjamincburns/websockproxy
Easy to set up if you do Docker and otherwise not that hard.
4 Mar
4 Mar
5:09 p.m.
On 2017-03-04 04:16, Warren Toomey wrote:
- these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either
locally or via a
terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
Getting Arpanet back up is tricky. I think only KLH10 has decent IMP
support. Not much of UNIX history runs on that.
There is the H316 emulator in simh, but its IMP-host interface would
need to be fleshed out and the corresponding host cards do not exist
yet in the simh VAX/PDP emulators.
- emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc.
In fact there are
plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.
- Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
systems networked together
On 2017-03-04 09:21, Paul Ruizendaal wrote:
Maybe Google, Facebook and other "internet"
companies are willing
to throw their weight behind some commemoration if it can be made
relevant to a wider audience.
Archive.org maybe? Like they have done with piles of games? What
Jason Scott pushed was the emscripten port of MESS/MAME into JSMESS.
Perhaps emulators for these old systems that can run
in a browser
(or as an app) with instructions clear enough for today's web
developer is a good way to pay homage.
It would be a big job though, probably to big to do in 2.5 years.
Yes, they can run in the browser, the whole TUHS archive should
run in the browser, interconnected. There are several routes open.
Simh can be ported to emscripten or PNaCl, I vaguely remember
getting it to boot in the browser with one of those. Subsequent
fixing of the terminal output and websockification of the network
interfaces was way over my head though, so I tossed that route.
There is jor1k and v86, these are javascript emulators capable of
running Linux complete with networking over websockets. You can run
simh in these. I ran into some speed issues and chrome now throttling
it, but the concept works.
Bring a fast machine, recent browser in a separate window and a lot
of patience and watch paint dry, eh, v6 install at
http://oldbsd.org/unixv6install.html I'll try same with pdp7-unix
and a faux KSR-33 to hide the speed issues.
The 3 modern BSDs can boot up in v86, I didn't try the 08./0.9/1.0
versions and daddy 386BSD yet but it looks doable.
Thanks to websockproxy ethernet over websockets is a thing and makes
it possible to tie everything together.
For UUCP style networking there is a modem cable emulator kernel,
module for Linux (nmdm in FreeBSD) that can bridge simh serial devices
to TCPSER. TCPSER then looks like a modem to simh. You can map phone
numbers to sockets where another TCPSER is listening for inbound
"calls".
To develop cool disk images from the material in TUHS there is EXPECT/
SEND in current simh. What's very nice about this, is that it can be
used to make reproducible installations. An EXPECT/SEND simh ini file
fits nicely into your favourite version control software and you don't
have to keep many blobs around.
Another route would be implementing emulators in javascript. I have
seen a few PDP-11/PDP-8 implementations, PCjs is now adding the -10,
but that sounds like a big job indeed.
11:41 p.m.
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 3:09 AM, Jacob Goense <dugo(a)xs4all.nl> wrote:
On 2017-03-04 04:16, Warren Toomey wrote:
I did a bit of the fleshing out; it can be found at:
https://github.com/charlesUnixPro/simh/
on branch dps8m.
The 'ready' bits on the interface needs some work. The "cable" is
implemented as UDP packets; probably the code should periodically send
packets if the interface is enabled and the other end should keep a timeout
counter to detect the other end not ready.
-- Charles
- these connected to real/emulated Unix systems
either locally or via a
terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
Getting Arpanet back up is tricky. I think only KLH10 has decent IMP
support. Not much of UNIX history runs on that.
There is the H316 emulator in simh, but its IMP-host interface would
need to be fleshed out and the corresponding host cards do not exist
yet in the simh VAX/PDP emulators.
6 Mar
6 Mar
11:51 p.m.
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 8:16 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation
of Unix and I've
been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up to
now, there's been little response.
Unix-adjacent, now that Multics is apparently booting in emulation I
think it would be an interesting addition as well. I guess the Living
Computer Museum has it connected to a real front-panel
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jni7wk7bjxA) and hope to get it
networked, so they might be interested.
As for myself, I'd be happy to throw up a node on my end. I no longer
have any real hardware (sold my PDP-11) but depending on the network
theme I can stand up a Unix on an rpi in emulation, I could try to
boot Multics, or set up a Plan 9 server ("son of Unix").
I think a 50th Anniversary UUCP Network would be very cool, be it over
TCP or a bunch of modems.
John
2848
days inactive
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days old
13 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
Charles Anthony -
Cory Smelosky -
Jacob Goense -
Jason Stevens -
John Floren -
jsteve＠superglobalmegacorp.com
-
Paul Ruizendaal -
Steve Johnson -
Warren Toomey