TUHS

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6503 discussions

Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?

by Jon Steinhart

Well, I guess mine is kinda weird. I had messed with a number of computer systems a litle bit and then became proficient with 516-TSS as a result of being part of the explorer scout post at BTL Murray Hill in high school. Interesting note is that one of my advisors who wrote a lot of 516-TSS interviewed Ken for his job at BTL. Ended up with a paid job at BTL starting near the end of my senior year of high school. Needed to document my work. Don't remember why, but my group acquired a PDP-11/40 that was across the hall from the 516 lab in building 2 that was running UNIX version 3. I started using roff on it to do my documentation which meant learning ed and a bunch of other tools. Of course, I took the manual home and read it cover to cover and started messing around with the various cool tools that it had and was hooked. Jon

5 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] Welcome to new TUHS subscribers

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Tony Travis > It's always puzzled me when everyone talks about [the] PDP11 when, in > fact, is says "pdp11" on the system itself: DEC documentation mostly used uppercase in the text; e.g. the "pdp11 peripherals handbook" (to transcribe the cover exactly) uses "PDP-11" several times on pg 1-1. Noel

5 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warren Toomey > What was your "ahah" moment when you first saw that Unix was special, > especially compared to the systems you'd previously used? Sometime in my undergrad sophmore year, IIRC. A friend had a undergrad research thing with DSSR, who I think at that point had the first UNIX at MIT. He showed me the system, and wrote a tiny command in C, compiled it, and executed the binary from the shell. No big deal, right? Well, at that point ('75 or so), the only OS's I had used were RSTS-11, a batch system running on an Interdata (programs were submitted on card decks), the DELPHI system (done by the people in DSSR), and a few similar things. I had never used a system where an ordinary user could 'add' a command to the command interpreter, and was blown away. (At that point in time, not many OS's could do that.) Unix was in a whole different world compared to contemporaneous PDP-11 OS's. It felt like a 'mainframe' OS (background jobs, etc), but on a mini. Noel

5 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?

by Doug McIlroy

For a contrast in aha moments, consider this introduction to an early Apple (Apple II, I think). When my wife got one, my natural curiosity led me to try to make "Hello world". I asked her what to use as an editor and learned it all depends on what you're editing. So I looked in the manual. First thing you do to make a C program is to set up a "project", as if it was a corporate undertaking. I found it easier to write a program in some other editor than the one for C. Bad idea. Every file had a type and that editor produced files of some type other than C program. After succumbing to the Apple straitjacket, I succeeded. Then I found "Hello world" given as an example in the manual. The code took up almost a page; real men make programs that set up their own windows. Aha, Apple! Not intended for programmers. And that didn't change until OS X. Doug

5 years, 7 months

bwk

by Larry McVoy

I miss Brian on this list. I've interacted with him over the years, the one I remember the most was I was trying to do an awk like interface to a key/value "database". I talked to him about it and he sent me ~bwk/awk which had all the original awk source and the troff source to the awk book in english and french. Ken, Doug, Rob, Steve, anyone, could you coax him onto this list? If you want me to try first I will, I don't know if he remembers me or not. But I can try and then maybe one of you follow up?

5 years, 7 months

Welcome to new TUHS subscribers

by Warren Toomey

All, we just had about a dozen new subscribers to the TUHS list. Rather than e-mail you all individually, I thought I'd use the list itself to say "Welcome!". The TUHS list generally has a high signal/noise ratio on the history of Unix, the systems and software, and anecdotes from those who used the various flavours. Occasionally, we drift a bit off-topic and I'll gently nudge the conversation back to Unix history. The list archives are at: https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ and you should browse the last couple of months to get a feel for what we talk about. Cheers, Warren

5 years, 7 months

My case for video footage of the machine Ken would later use to create Unix

by Warner Losh

https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2019/10/video-footage-of-first-pdp-7-to-run-uni… is a blog entry where I step through the evidence that the PDP-7 in The Incredible Machine video that was posted here a while ago is quite likely the PDP-7 Ken used to create Unix after its days of starting in Bell Labs films were over... Warner

5 years, 7 months

History talk in Dallas Texas October 10

by Berny Goodheart

I have “The” original first versions from John signed by him and Ken. Among a lot of other stuff….

5 years, 7 months

Old Unix and DWB manuals seeking scanning and a permanent home

by Rich Kulawiec

I've lugged these around for 35-ish years. I'd like to seem them scanned and stored someplace as permanent as can be found, so if someone/anyone could tell me how to facilitate that, I'll package them for shipping. My apologies if this has already been done and I'm simply not aware of it. I have other stuff that probably needs the same treatment, but excavating the alluvial layers that have accumulated will take time. Single small-format red binder: Unix System User Reference Manual - AT&T Bell Labs Unix System Release 2.0 including Division 452 standard and local commands October 1985 Set of four small format gray binders: Documenter's Workbench 1.0, April 1984 1. Introduction and Reference Manual, 307-150, issue 2 2. Text Formatter Reference, 307-151, issue 2 3. Macro Package Reference, 307-152 issue 2 4. Preprocessor Reference, 307-153, issue 2 Set of two slip-cased small format maroon/gray binders: Unix System V Documenters Workbench Release 2.0 1. Technical Discusion and Reference 310-005, issue 1 2. Product Overview 999-805-007IS, User Guide 999-805-006IS, Reference Card 999-805-008IS, issue 1 ---rsk

5 years, 7 months

Old Unix books

by David

I’ve got a few books I’ve just pulled off the shelf and no longer want/need. I’m hoping someone will give them a good home. UNIX System Labs Inc UNIX(r) System V Release 4 Programmers Guide: System Services and Application Packaging Tools Device Driver Interface/Driver-Kernel Interface (DDI/DKI) Reference Manual (2 copies) AT&T 3B2/3B5/3B15 Computers Assembly Programming Manual Sun Microsystems Inc (Sun Technical Reports) The UNIX System - 1985 Sun 3 Architecture - 1986 I’m willing to split postage on mailing them wherever. If you are local (San Diego) I’m willing to meet you wherever for an exchange and a coffee. David (Also posted on the cctalk mailing list)

5 years, 7 months

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