As someone who has been quite attentive to the documentation situation with UNIX, I've managed to build out a pretty appreciable library of historic works. Among my most treasured bits are my 3B20S Release 4.1 manual and Bell Labs copies of the Lions's Commentary.
What do folks have around that you're particularly thrilled to have among your UNIX-y possessions?
- Matt G.
Anyone sitting on piles of old UNIX newsletters? I find they make for
fascinating reading.
I haven't found any online archives.
If you have a pile, I can scan them.
I'm going to scan my 3 copies of commUNIXations, the /usr/group newsletter,
and 4 copies of "UNIQUE - Your independent UNIX and C Advisor" - all from
1983/4.
Warren can hopefully find a home for these.
Hi All.
I found the following files recently:
$ ls -l
total 8748
-rw-r--r-- 1 arnold ftpusers 5661471 Oct 1 2007 openmotif-2.3.0.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 arnold ftpusers 4888 Jan 18 1999 xvfc.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 arnold ftpusers 3281277 Jan 18 1999 xview3.2.tar.gz
They can be retrieved under https://www.skeeve.com/X11/.
I have sent them to Warren, who currently has them in his hidden
archive.
I also have a copy of the OpenLook CDROM, but I notice it's available
from GitHub: https://github.com/IanDarwin/OpenLookCDROM.
Enjoy,
Arnold
This note gets a bit COFF-y; please redirect any replies
to that list.
USENIX Summer 1981, in Austin TX. First USENIX conference I
ever attended, and the first to which I travelled by train--
mostly.
I was somewhat shy about travelling in those days, but my
Caltech colleague Mark Bartelt talked me into going, and
suggested going by train. Except by the time I booked the
trip there was space available only from Los Angeles to
San Antonio and back, not onward from San Antonio to Austin.
But in those days I did a bit of cycle touring, often in
the company of my friend Brian Foster. Brian was also a
co-worker at the time, and was interested in attending too.
So we decided to travel together by train (in coach) to
San Antonio, arriving around 05h30, and spent the rest of
that day cycling, mostly up the frontage roads beside I-35,
to Austin.
After the conference we cycled back, mostly at night, which
was somewhat spooky (I remember seeing a thunderstorm off
on the horizon but we didn't get rained on) but saved us
a second dose of sunburn. They checked into a motel for
a day and a night until the return train came through at
02h55.
I have gone by train to nearly every other conference I've
attended since, but never again have I cycled. It was a
fun ride but a harder one than expected. In those days
of paper mapes, we visited the Caltech geography department
and plotted out what looked like a fairly smooth route,
with a slow but steady climb. The topo map we used had
a resolution of 50' altitude. Evidently the constant,
sometimes steep hills between San Antonio and Austin are
all no more than 49' tall.
It was a good conference too. One memory that sticks in
my head was Jim Joyce using Tinker Toys as a metaphor for
connecting Unix tools together.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
Greg,
a long time a go while still working for Computer Division of Philips
Electronics I used X.25 and X.21 extensively on various proprietary
O.S.-es. X.25/X.21 (or PSDN/CSDN) was used for Teletex (CCITT T series,
TTX, better than telex but lost to FAX which was easier, cheaper and
legally acceptable).
I still have some dedicated boards which Philips used for X.25, X.21 and
SDLC. At a customer side in a test environment with SCO UNIX 3.2V4.2 SDLC
links are still used, X.25 was phased out a few years ago. Same with DEC
Tru64, a multi-port SYNC-2000 with appropriate DEC software could support
both X.25 and SDLC. AlphaServer DS25 with SDLC links still in production.
I still have all the applicable software for SCO UNIX and DEC Tru64.
Cheers,
uncle rubl
--
The more I learn the better I understand I know nothing.
24 x 7 is not enough but my request for 25 x 8 is still under consideration.
24 x 7 is not enough but my request for 25 x 8 is still under consideration
24 x 7 is not enough but my request for 25 x 8 is still under consideration
24 x 7 is not enough but my request for 25 x 8 is still under consideration
I just discovered that this issue of the Australian UNIX User Group
Newsletter contains summaries of all the talks and sessions from the Usenix
Texas UNIX Users Conference - Summer 1981.
https://vtda.org/pubs/AUUGN/AUUGN-V03.4.pdf
In what I believe was my first public speaking role I presented
"UNIX vs Godzilla -- UNIX in an IBM Environment"
Lots of other familiar names in those notes too.
Hi,
I got interested in UI design and often study some historical aspects of it as I work on software. It’s hard not to notice how fast/usable Text User Interfaces are—ncurses and its siblings are still alive and well. From the ergonomy point of view, not needing a mouse in those interfaces if perfect.
Question: where did TUIs come from originally, and what were their earliest instances?
Many pages state that Vi was the first, but I’ve been looking through some old hardware photos, and things capable of more sophisticated interactions existed before Vi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen
Some terminals with block display:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270
^ ’71. Wiki says Vi showed up in ’76, but I suspect IBM mainframes may have had TUIs before.
Question 2: were there any manuals talking about TUIs? I’m thinking some of those spiffy IBM things mandating certain design.
Thanks,
Adam
A TikTok user was asking the history of the touch(1) command: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjgSMyAQ/
Unix history repo let me find the first occurrence in V7: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Research-V7-Snapshot-D…
But looking at ls source in V6, it’s clear that stat(2) had st_mtime so touch would have been useful earlier. I notice make was added at the same time, which cares significantly about mtime. Was that the impetus?
(Also, wow just writing a single char! Compared to present day impls which give fine grained control to modify mtime & atime, the original seems both indirect for the purpose and delightfully literal.)
--
Joseph Holsten
http://josephholsten.com
mailto:joseph@josephholsten.com
tel:+1-360-927-7234
Hello TUHS people!
Someone recently posted a question about your prized UNIX artifacts to
this list, that discussion [1] seems to be about various memorabilia.
What about computers made to run UNIX? Do you have or used to any
interesting historical hardware?
For my part, I have only used UNIX on emulated systems so far but would
like to purchase some hardware. Given that I have little space it would
need to be something small. According to you how does one get into that
specific type of retro computing?
See you around cyberspace,
Vicente
vicente(a)collares.ca
[1] https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-June/032020.html
