TUHS

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6536 discussions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warner Losh > this predates everything except Whirlwind which I can't find a paper for. Given the 'Whirlwind is a ringer' comment, I asssume this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind_I< is what they mean. Pretty interesting machine, if you study its instruction set, BTW; with no stack, subroutines are 'interesting'. Noel

5 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] Spacewar at Bell Labs [ really paper tape readers and tangentially related things ]

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > So WD designs and builds a few LSI-11 as a sales demo of what you could > do > ... > he put it on the QBUS which DEC could not lock up because they did not > create it as WD had. Wow! WD created the QBUS? Fascinating. I wonder if DEC made any changes to the QBUS between the original demo WD boards and the first DEC ones? Are there any documents about the WD original still extant, do you know? (FWIW, it seems that whoever did the QBUS interrupt cycle had heard about the metastability issues when using a flop to do the grant-passing arbitrations; see here for more: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Bus_Arbitration_on_the_Unibus_and_QBUS#QBUS_Interr… DEC had previously bent themselves into knots trying to solve it on the UNIBUS: https://gunkies.org/wiki/M782_Interrupt_Control#Revisions so it would be interesting to know if it was WD or DEC who did the DIN thing to get rid of it on the QBUS.) Noel

5 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] man pages, defensive programming, and bibliographic

by Doug McIlroy

> Always use '\&' (a non-printing, zero width character) to > make it clear to the software, that the _function_ of the > character next to it, is neither a sentence-terminating nor > a control one. It is unfortunate that such advice has to be given. One should not have to defend against stupid AI. This is one of only two really unfortunate design choices (in my opinion) in original [nt]roff. (The other is beginning a new page when the vertical position reaches--as distinct from definitively passing--the bottom of a page.) If AI is used, it should be optional. I happen not to like double-width intersentence space, but it keeps getting foisted on me essentially at random. Instead of fattening the manual with annoying duties like that quoted above, I suggest fattening it with a new request, "turn on/off doubling of spaces between apparent sentences", or "put at least the specified space between apparent sentences". One can still use \&, but then it's for a chosen purpose, not just defense against gremlins. Incidentally, "next to" in the quoted advice must be read with care. Sometimes it means before, sometimes after. ------------------------------------------------------------ In this old AI-induced trouble I see a cautionary lesson for paragraph-based line breaking. fmt(1) is an existing program that tries to do this. On unjustified text (i.e. all text handled by fmt) it produces paragraphs of different "optimal" widths, which can be even more distracting than unusually ragged right margins. Doug

5 years, 5 months

Fwd request: Text of Caldera's free licenses for UnixWare/OpenServer

by Warren Toomey

All, I was asked by Max to pass this query on to the TUHS list. Can you e-mail back to Max directly. Thanks, Warren ----- Forwarded message from Maximilian Lorlacks <maxlorlax(a)protonmail.com> ----- Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 19:46:38 +0000 From: Maximilian Lorlacks <maxlorlax(a)protonmail.com> To: "wkt(a)tuhs.org" <wkt(a)tuhs.org> Subject: Fwd request: Text of Caldera's free licenses for UnixWare/OpenServer Hi Warren, Could you please forward this to the TUHS list? I'm not a subscriber to the list, but I perhaps someone there might know something about this. In 2001 and early 2002 (I can't believe it's already been almost two decades), Caldera Systems, Inc. offered non-commercial licenses at no cost for OpenServer 5.0.6, UnixWare 7.1(.1?) and Open UNIX 8. However, the web archive could not to capture the actual agreement hidden behind the entrypoint form. I failed to get a license during that time since I wasn't really interested in UNIX at that point, but in the interest of historical preservation, I'm interested if anyone got those licenses from back then and if so, if they've saved the actual license agreement text. I'm interested in what it reads. I'm also curious about whether the license keys from back then still work with Xinuos's new registration platform, but it's probably too much to ask for people to test that. Please note that I am *not* trying to revive the trainwreck that is the issue of the validity and scope of the Ancient UNIX license. The only way to properly resolve that would be a letter signed from Micro Focus's legal department, but they've made it exceedingly clear that they will persistently ignore any and all attempts to elicit any kind of response regarding Ancient UNIX. Cheers, Max ----- End forwarded message -----

5 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] [TUHS} More Spider

by Doug McIlroy

> It might be worth mentioning that the Cambridge Ring (in the UK) used a very > similar idea: a head end circulated empty frames which stations could fill in. I'm quite sure the similarity is not accidental. Fraser began the Spider project almost immediately upon moving from Cambridge to Bell Labs. Doug

5 years, 5 months

Screen editors

by Paul Ruizendaal

> > On Jan 26, 2020, at 11:28 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: > > > > "Jose R. Valverde via TUHS" <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote: > > > >> Talking of editors... > >> > >> On ancient UNIX, my editor of choice was 's' from Software Tools, its > >> main advantage being that it didn't require curses. > > > > That editor was from "A Software Tools Sampler" by Webb Miller, not > > "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger. > Well, that would explain why I couldn’t find it. Do you have softcopy of the editor source? I’d really like a screen editor for v7…. Adam So do I. Editor source seems to be here: https://github.com/udo-munk/s If you are doing a build for V7, I’d be interested in hearing the results.

5 years, 5 months

More Spider

by Paul Ruizendaal

I noted with much pleasure that the main bitsavers site is back up, and that at some point it has added a full set of scans of “Datamation”. The Feb 1975 issue contains an article from Dr. Fraser about Spider and the network setup in Murray Hill early in 1975: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/datamation/197502.pdf For ease of reference I have also temporarily put the relevant 4 pages of the issue here: https://gitlab.com/pnru/spider/blob/master/spider.pdf I find the graphic that shows how Spider connected machines and departments the most interesting, as it helps understand how the pro’s and con’s of Arpa Unix might have been perceived at that time. The more I read, the more confused I become whether the “Pierce loop” was a precursor to “Spider” or a parallel effort. The facts appear to be that John Pierce (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Pierce) submitted his paper to BSTJ in December 1970, essentially describing a loop network with fixed size short datagrams, suggesting T1 frames. It is quite generic. In February 1971 W.J. Kropfl submits a paper that describes an implementation of the ideas in the Pierce paper with actual line protocols and a TIU. In October 1971 C.H. Coker describes in a 3rd paper how to interact with this TIU from a H516 programming perspective. Several Spider papers mention that the project was started in 1969 and that the first Spider link was operational in 1972. The team appears to be entirely different: the h/w is credited to Condon and Weller, and the s/w to Frazer, Jensen and Plaugher. The Spider TIU is much more complex (200 TTL chips vs. 50 in the Kropfl TIU). The main reason for that - at first glance - appears to be that in the Spider network the TIU handled guaranteed in order delivery (i.e managed time outs and retransmissions), whereas in the Kropfl implementation this was left to the hosts. It would seem logical that the latter was an evolution of the former, having been developed at the same site at the same time. A 1981 book seems to take that view as well: “Local Computer Network Technologies” by Carl Tropper includes the text "Spider Spider is an experimental data communications network which was built at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (Murray Hill, New Jersey) under the direction of A. G. Fraser. A detailed description of the network is given by Fraser [FRAS74]. This network was built with the notion of investigating Pierce's idea of ...” The chapter is titled “The Pierce loop and its derivatives”. This is a much as Google will give me - if somebody has the book please let me know. On the other hand, the Spider papers do not mention the Kropfl network or Pierce’s paper at all. The graphic in Datamation appears to show two Kropfl loops as part of the network setup. Yet, this is described in the accompanying text as "4. Honeywell 5l6: Supports research into comunications techniques and systems. The machine has a serial loop I/O bus threaded through several labs at Murray Hill. Equipment under test is connected either directly to the bus or to a minicomputer which is then connected to the bus. Also avail- able are graphics display terminals and a device that can write read-only memory chips.” Maybe this is a different bus, but if it is the same as the Kropfl loop, to call it a “serial loop I/O bus” suggests it was a parallel effort unrelated to Spider. Does anybody on the list recall whether Spider was a parallel effort or a continuation of the earlier work?

5 years, 5 months

A Dennisism

by Doug McIlroy

The anecdote below came from Nils-Peter Nelson, who as a manager in the computer center bought and installed the Labs' biggest Unix machine, a Cray 2. He also originated the string.h package. Doug Dennis told me he was going to a class reunion at Harvard. Me: "I guess you're the most famous member of your class." dmr: "No, the Unabomber is.

5 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] More Spider

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Ruizendaal > a loop network with fixed size short datagrams It might be worth mentioning that the Cambridge Ring (in the UK) used a very similar idea: a head end circulated empty frames which stations could fill in. I think it started slightly later, though. Material about it is available online. Noel

5 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] Spider

by Paul Ruizendaal

> Ugh. Memory lane has a lot of potholes. This was a really long time ago. Many thanks for that post - really interesting! I had to look up "Pierce Network", and found it described in the Bell Journal: https://ia801903.us.archive.org/31/items/bstj51-6-1133/bstj51-6-1133_text.p… In my reading the Spider network is a type of Pierce network. However, the network that you remember is indeed most likely different from Spider: - it was coax based, whereas the Spider line was a twisted pair - there was more than one, whereas Spider only ever had one (operational) loop Condon and Weller are acknowledged in the report about Spider as having done many of its hardware details. The report discusses learnings from the project and having to tune repeaters is not among them (but another operational issue with its 'line access modules’ is discussed). All in all, maybe these coax loops were pre-cursors to the Spider network, without a switch on the loop (“C” nodes in the Pierce paper). It makes sense to first try out the electrical and line data protocol before starting work on higher level functions. I have no idea what a GLANCE G is...

5 years, 5 months

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