With Doug’s permission, I’d like to bring the group’s attention to a recent oral history with him by the Computer History Museum.
You can find the records for the two interviews here, and in them the links to the PDF transcripts:
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/?s=mcilroy
As I am sure you can imagine, it was a great pleasure to interview Doug. I learned a tremendous amount.
Best wishes,
David
..............
David C. Brock
Director and Curator
Software History Center
Computer History Museum
computerhistory.org/softwarehistory<http://computerhistory.org/softwarehistory>
Email: dbrock(a)computerhistory.org
Twitter: @dcbrock
Skype: dcbrock
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94943
(650) 810-1010 main
(650) 810-1886 direct
Pronouns: he, him, his
Apropos of Knuth and me, may I immodestly point to
https://comic.browserling.com/tag/knuth
The second likeness of Don is quite good. And
the screen almost justifies posting to tuhs.
Doug
Arnold wrote:
> Well said. The markup language was clearly inspired by Scribe, which
> was quite popular in Academia (at least) at the time.
>
> As a *markup language*, I personally find it superior to anything
> else currently in use, but that's a whole different discussion that
> on TUHS inevitably degenerates into the current spate of ranting,
> so I won't start on it.
So in other words, you mean:
@Flame(Off)
-Don
While messing around with the '87 release of GCC, I was going through the steps of setting up TME, and I stumbled across this derived emulator that is incredibly simple to setup and run, unlike TME:
https://github.com/lisper/emulator-sun-2
Additional patches adding a BPF backend Ethernet adapter is here:
https://github.com/sigurbjornl
The program itself is only slightly C++ with a few variables being declared inline which was trivial to move to section starting to get it to compile with a picky C compiler (Microsoft C). The IO is SDL based, so making an x86/ARM win32 was really trivial.
Anyway for all the SunOS enthusiasts I figured that you would love to give this one a shot!
For Windows users, or anyone wanting to just run it on some unsuspecting normies I put Win32 x86 binaries here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/SU…
I have to wonder how impossible it would be to integrate it into SIMH...
> From: Jon Steinhart
> When you're looking for the documentation for pdf2svg, for example, and
> there is no man page, how long does it take to figure out that there is
> no documentation at all?
I am _sooo_ tempted to say 'What do you think source is for?' :-)
Noel
> maybe if interest, i have a copy of an article by sandy fraser, “early experiments with time division networks” from ieee networks, jan 1993, pp12-26.
>
> this is a high level paper and describes spider, datakit, incon.
>
> it may have little new but i felt it had a lot of good background and a useful references list.
>
> i am wary of scanning it as its the ieee...
>
> -Steve
Many thanks for the suggestion! Just the other day I bought another Fraser paper on IEEE, "Towards a Universal Data Transport System” from 1983, which is also a high level descriptive overview.
A few people have responded off list and will be looking through their archives for relevant papers.
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/early_unix/
The video of Warner Losh's FOSDEM presentation "The Hidden Early History of Unix" is now available.
Cheers, Warren
--
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
maybe if interest, i have a copy of an article by sandy fraser, “early experiments with time division networks” from ieee networks, jan 1993, pp12-26.
this is a high level paper and describes spider, datakit, incon.
it may have little new but i felt it had a lot of good background and a useful references list.
i am wary of scanning it as its the ieee...
-Steve
> On 15 Feb 2020, at 2:00 am, tuhs-request(a)minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
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> 1. Datakit early end-to-end protocol(s) (Paul Ruizendaal)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:22:37 +0100
> From: Paul Ruizendaal <pnr(a)planet.nl>
> To: TUHS main list <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
> Subject: [TUHS] Datakit early end-to-end protocol(s)
> Message-ID: <7128AB08-C99E-490E-BD81-7D62503FF676(a)planet.nl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
>
> I’m looking for the end-to-end datakit network protocol as it existed in 7th Edition.
>
> Context is as follows:
>
> - The Spider network guaranteed reliable, in-order delivery of packets at the TIU interface. There does not seem to have been a standard host end-to-end protocol, although applications did of course contain sanity checks (see for instance the ‘nfs’ source here: http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/Spider/tree?ci=tip)
>
> - Datakit dropped the reliable delivery part (although it did retain the in-order guarantee) and moved this responsibility to the host. It is the (early) evolution of the related protocol that I’m trying to dig up.
>
> - 7th Edition appears to have had a (serial line based) Datakit connection. Datakit drivers are not in the distributed files, but its tty.h file has defines for several Datakit related constants. Also, as the first Datakit switches became operational at Murray Hill in ’78 or ’79, it seems a reasonable assumption that the Research code base included drivers & protocols for it around that time.
>
> - After that the trail continues with the 8th edition which has a stream filter (dkp.c) for the “New Datakit Protocol”: http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/v8unix/artifact/01b4f6f05733aba5 This suggests that there was an “Old Datakit Protocol” as well - if so, this may have been the protocol in use at the time of 7th Edition.
>
> The “New Datakit Protocol” appears to be (more or less) the same as what was later called URP (Universal Receiver Protocol). At the time of Plan9 its IL/IP protocol appears to have been designed as an equivalent for URP/Datakit. The early protocols where apparently (co-)designed by Greg Chesson and maybe also stood at the base of his later XTP protocol work.
>
> Any recollections about the early history and evolution of this Datakit protocol are much appreciated. Also, if the source to the 7th Edition Datakit network stack survived I’d love to hear.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
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> End of TUHS Digest, Vol 51, Issue 18
> ************************************
I’m looking for the end-to-end datakit network protocol as it existed in 7th Edition.
Context is as follows:
- The Spider network guaranteed reliable, in-order delivery of packets at the TIU interface. There does not seem to have been a standard host end-to-end protocol, although applications did of course contain sanity checks (see for instance the ‘nfs’ source here: http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/Spider/tree?ci=tip)
- Datakit dropped the reliable delivery part (although it did retain the in-order guarantee) and moved this responsibility to the host. It is the (early) evolution of the related protocol that I’m trying to dig up.
- 7th Edition appears to have had a (serial line based) Datakit connection. Datakit drivers are not in the distributed files, but its tty.h file has defines for several Datakit related constants. Also, as the first Datakit switches became operational at Murray Hill in ’78 or ’79, it seems a reasonable assumption that the Research code base included drivers & protocols for it around that time.
- After that the trail continues with the 8th edition which has a stream filter (dkp.c) for the “New Datakit Protocol”: http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/v8unix/artifact/01b4f6f05733aba5 This suggests that there was an “Old Datakit Protocol” as well - if so, this may have been the protocol in use at the time of 7th Edition.
The “New Datakit Protocol” appears to be (more or less) the same as what was later called URP (Universal Receiver Protocol). At the time of Plan9 its IL/IP protocol appears to have been designed as an equivalent for URP/Datakit. The early protocols where apparently (co-)designed by Greg Chesson and maybe also stood at the base of his later XTP protocol work.
Any recollections about the early history and evolution of this Datakit protocol are much appreciated. Also, if the source to the 7th Edition Datakit network stack survived I’d love to hear.
Paul
All, I've also set this up to try out for the video chats:
https://meet.tuhs.org/COFF
Password to join is "unix" at the moment.
I just want to test it to confirm that it works; I'll be heading
out the door to go to the shops soon.
Cheers, Warren
