> There was a hacky implementation of TCP/IP which we didn't really use:
> 4.Y BSD (I don't know the value of Y) protocol code, wrapped up to
> work as stream modules* and shoehorned in, with a custom API quite
> different from the BSD one. The work was done by a summer student,
> Robert T. Morris, who later became rather famous for a smaller but
> rather more troublesome bit of network code. Our production network
> was Datakit, which was also implemented as stream devices and modules
> (it was the network whose use inspired the stream design, in fact).
I’d love to hear more about that. So far, the only information I have found about (lowercase) streams and networking - as used at the labs - is the v8 source code and a 1984 message from dmr on a mailing list. The (lower level) v8 networking concepts appear to carry through to v10 and Plan9.
It is my impression that the unix/datakit tradition essentially views a network connection as a special kind of device, whereas the unix/arpanet tradition essentially views a network connection as a special kind of pipe. In both cases this would seem to have been an accidental choice driven by convenience in early implementations (respectively the Spider network drivers and NCP Unix from the UoI).
However, that is an impression formed 35+ years after the fact and the contemporary view may have been very different.
Paul
> From: Norman Wilson
> Quite a while ago, someone asked how multiplexing was handled in the
> stream world. I meant to write a reply but never did. In a sentence,
> by a paired device driver and stream module. If someone wants more
> details I'll be glad to write more about that.
Please. Thanks!
Noel
On Sat, Apr 27, 2019 at 09:38:27AM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
But I find this interesting, since the 8th edition was based on BSD 4.1c I
thought....
`Based on' is an overstatement, except in the kernel.
The system described in the 8th Edition manual (as noted in the
past, there was only sort of a real V8 release) had a kernel
that started as 4.1x BSD. I'm not sure of the value of x.
It had the Joy/Babaolgu paging code and the complicated changes
to signals, and a lot of the gratuitous asms, but not a trace
of the BSD networking API. Neither was the BSD FFS present.
Local additions included Dennis's original stream implementation,
which completely replaced the old tty code and rewrote the drivers
for serial-port devices. The tty driver (responsible for cooked
mode, interrupt and quit signals, and the like) was a stream
module. The BSD-style `new tty line discipline' was a separate
module, for the few people who couldn't live without csh.
Tom Killian's original version of /proc and Peter Weinberger's original
network file system (neta) client were there. These were accessed
through a file system switch, also Peter's work.
Instead of FFS, Peter made a simple speedup to the V7 file system:
adding 64 to the minor device number meant the file system used 4KiB
blocks. The unused space at the end of the now-4KiB superblock was a
bitmap of free blocks, allowing somewhat-smarter block allocation.
There was a hacky implementation of TCP/IP which we didn't really use:
4.Y BSD (I don't know the value of Y) protocol code, wrapped up to
work as stream modules* and shoehorned in, with a custom API quite
different from the BSD one. The work was done by a summer student,
Robert T. Morris, who later became rather famous for a smaller but
rather more troublesome bit of network code. Our production network
was Datakit, which was also implemented as stream devices and modules
(it was the network whose use inspired the stream design, in fact).
[* Quite a while ago, someone asked how multiplexing was handled
in the stream world. I meant to write a reply but never did. In
a sentence, by a paired device driver and stream module. If someone
wants more details I'll be glad to write more about that.]
That's just the kernel, though. The user-mode world was largely
descended from V7 rather than from BSD. Most people used sh, which
had been augmented a bit by Rob Pike (perhaps et al) to add functions
and a simple external history mechanism (Tom Duff's idea, I think).
wc had no uucp-dependent flags, and cat had no flags at all. ls did
sniff at whether standard output was a tty and put things in columns.
Things mutated further as time went on, further diverging from and
discarding aspects of the BSD origin. (I can take credit or blame
for a lot of that, though not all.) But that happened later, and
is reflected in the 9th and especially 10th editions of the manual.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
I never heard about any history/anniversary track at Usenix in summer in
Renton, Washington. It will be an unofficial side event if anything. I
have no details.
I heard about the two Vintage Computer Festival events but probably too
soon for me.
Does anyone know of any other events with a focus on the Unix
anniversary?
Hi! I am releasing 'datekit-1.0' for 4.3BSD-Reno: a couple of free
utilities for setting post-Y2K date and time, plus timezone and DST.
Here's a brief outtake from the README, detailing the archive contents:
[...]
date.c
the 4.3BSD-Quasijarus `date' program, modified to optionally accept
4-digit years, and default to post-2000 for 2-digit years [...]
It can also:
+ set Daylight Saving Time: option -d
[...]
+ set a time zone: -t minutes-West-of-Greenwich.
Negative values for East.
rdate.c
the `rdate' program ported from OpenBSD 2.0: it synchronizes your
machine's clock to that of a remote host, by connecting to the
host's "time" service.
[...]
Man page for `rdate' and a Makefile for both programs are provided.
All of the above made and tested in 4.3BSD-Reno, on an emulated
VAX-11/780.
Archive for download at:
<gopher://darioniedermann.it/1/Computing/sw/datekit>
--
Dario Niedermann. Also on the Internet at:
gopher://darioniedermann.it/ <> https://www.darioniedermann.it/
I just started a project to recreate the B compiler for the PDP-11 as
authentically as possible, given the few fragments that remain and
some educated guesswork. It should be fun (for various definitions of
fun).
Here is the repository https://github.com/rswier/pdp11-B
I have borrowed some tools from Warren's
https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72
I have made a good start at reverse engineering the B run time library
in /usr/lib/libb.a. I have tried to make the source match the same
style as the earliest C library found on the last1120c-bits tape. The
remaining functions in libb.a include printf and printn which appear
to be written in B. This should provide more clues needed to create
the compiler.
I am also tackling the dis-assembly of the threaded code interpreter
/usr/lib/bilib.a (which at the moment is a big mess on my hard-drive)
Later steps will include creating the B compiler itself by carefully
pruning down the last1120c C compiler. The fun here will be to
boot-strap the B compiler without help from any existing modern
compilers. I think TMG will come into play to make that happen.
All are welcome to contribute!
Rob
Hi all, just to let you know that VCF East in May has some Unix anniversary
events. bwk will be interviewing ken as one of the keynotes. Wish I could be
there!
Details at: http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/
Cheers, Warren
So as part of my attempt to remember the names of the folks with who I worked
I just read Joe's wikipedia page which doesn't seem accurate to me. If this
is too off topic let me know.
The page says that Joe "was exposed to UNIX on the Honeywell 516 machines in
the early 1970s." This seems wrong to me. We did have a 516, but it ran an
experimental virtual memory system called 516-TSS. I lived on this system
and still have some of the octal instruction opcodes burned into my brain-ROM.
I seem to recall that the department got a PDP-11/40 that ran UNIX version 3 in
maybe the summer of 1972 which I used for writing up the documentation for my
project.
The page also says that "Condon and Ken Thompson promoted the use of the C
programming language for AT&T’s switching system control programs. Condon
acquired a small AT&T PBX (telephone switch) that handled about 50 phones;
he made the necessary hardware changes and Thompson wrote the necessary software
programs. The PBX code rewrite in C was a success and hastened the adoption of
C for all switching system software within AT&T." This also doesn't match my
recollection.
One of the big projects in the department was what I think was called SS1 for
Slave Switch 1, which was an all-digital telephone exchange. It replaced some
other monstrosity whose details I can't recall except that Joe and Dave Weller
signed the appropriate paperwork allowing me to take a good portion of it home
when it was decommissioned giving me a huge stock of Augat wirewrap boards and
7400-series parts. The SS1 was originally going to use LSI-11s but the stupid
way in which DEC implemented the DRAM refresh made that impossible. I think
that the final thing used a couple of PDP-10s. As part of being all-digital
it used the digital filter work by Jim Kaiser and Hal Alles. I do remember
going into Carl Christensen's office to ask him a question and found him staring
at a huge C listing; it turns out that a bug in the code had caused SS1 to send
KP pulses without their corresponding ST pulses with the result that every single
keypulse sender in the Berkeley Heights telephone exchange was taken off line and
needed to be manually reset to restore long distance service. They were not happy.
Anyway, unless there was something that happened later after I was gone, I'm
thinking that the wikipedia page is incorrect and that this PBX was built, not
acquired. It was, as far as I know, the first use of C to control machinery.
It's actually because of this machine that I'm trying to track down the name
of some folks from down at the end of the hall. I have strong memories of the
Bell System exhibit at the '64 World's Fair, especially the booth where one
could go and talk and they had bar graphs on a monitor showing the spectrum
of your speech and could mess with it. Many years later, while waiting for
some deck of cards to finish loading, I poked my head into the lab down the
hall to see what they were doing in there, and noticed polaroid photos of that
exhibit featuring the guys in the lab. Once they stopped telling stories from
the World's Fair, they taught me a lesson about systems engineering that opened
my eyes. They were developing a circuit that replaced the pound of iron hybrid
transformers that were on every telephone line with a small toroid and an op-amp.
Their circuit would sense when the iron was getting close to saturation and run
current through an additional winding to keep it in the linear region. While
that circuit cost a lot more than a hybrid transformer, it paid for itself by
reducing the amount of concrete needed to build telephone exchanges.
Would love to know who these guys were which is why an org chart would help.
And maybe someone out there like Ken can help me out with the accurate history.
Jon
> From: Jon Steinhart
> OK, well, how do we make this happen?
Is it bound or un-bound, and if the former, are you OK with unbinding it?
If the former, and 'no', we either need to rope in someone with one of those
special rigs for scanning books, or do it by hand.
If not, I have an auto-feed scanner, and volunteer to do it. How large are
the pages?
Noel
