TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

16 participants
6536 discussions

by Warren Toomey

I fear we're drifting a bit here and the S/N ratio is dropping a bit w.r.t the actual history of Unix. Please no more on the relative merits of version control systems or alternative text processing systems. So I'll try to distract you by saying this. I'm sitting on two artifacts that have recently been given to me: + by two large organisations + of great significance to Unix history + who want me to keep "mum" about them + as they are going to make announcements about them soon * and I am going slowly crazy as I wait for them to be offically released. Now you have a new topic to talk about :-) Cheers, Warren * for some definition of "soon"

5 years, 9 months

PWB vs Unix/TS

by Warner Losh

OK. I'm totally confused, and I see contradictory information around. So I thought I'd ask here. PWB was started to support unix time sharing at bell labs in 1973 (around V4 time). PWB 1.0 was released just after V6 "based on" it. PWB 2.0 was released just after V7, also "based on it". Later Unix TS 3.0 would become System III. We know there was no System I or System II. But was there a Unix TS 1.0 and 2.0? And were they the same thing as PWB 1.0 and 2.0, or somehow just closely related? And I've seen both Unix/TS and Unix TS. Is there a preferred spelling? Thanks for all your help with this topic and sorting things out. It's been quite helpful for my talk in a few weeks. Warner P.S. Would it be inappropriate to solicit feedback on an early version of my talk from this group? I'm sure they would be rather keener on catching errors in my understanding of Unix history than just about any other forum...

5 years, 9 months

cathode

by William Corcoran

Hello TUHS on Tues., Warren Toomey suggested I let the group know about a utility that exists at least for iMacs and IOS devices. It’s called “cathode” and you can find it on the Apple App Store. Please forgive me if this has already been mentioned. This utility provides for an xterm window that looks like the display an old *tube. You can set the curvature of the glass, the glow, various scan techniques, 9600 speed, and so on. It adds that extra dimension to give the look and feel of working on early UNIX with a tube. I would love to see profiles created that match actual ttys. My favorite tube is the Wyse 50. Another, one I remember is a Codex model with “slowopen” set in vi. Remember how early UNIX terminals behaved with slowopen, right? The characters would overtype during insert mode in vi, but when you hit escape, the line you just clobbered reappears shifting the remaining text as appropriate to the right. Cathode adds a little spice, albeit artificially, to the experience of early UNIX. Truly, Bill Corcoran (*) For the uninitiated, we used to call the tty terminal a “tube.” For example, you might hear my boss say, “Corcoran, that cheese you hacked yesterday launched a runaway that’s now soaking the client’s CPU. Go jump on a free tube and fix it now!”

5 years, 9 months

PiDP-11 in action!

by Adam Thornton

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0MKJjk8pRBvkZAEzaobjfOyPQ I start v7 Unix and play "Hunt The Wumpus". (I finally got it put together this weekend, and fixed the last couple dodgy joints tonight). Adam

5 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] block operations in editors, was My EuroBSDcon talk

by Doug McIlroy

Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Doug McIlroy > > > the absence of multidemensional arrays in C. > >?? From the 'C Reference Manual' (no date, but circa 'Typesetter C'), pg. 11: > > "If the unadorned declarator D would specify an n-dimensional array .. then > the declarator D[in+1] yields an (n+1)-dimensional array" > > >I'm not sure if I've _ever_ used one, but they are there. Yes, C allows arrays of arrays, and I've used them aplenty. However an "n-dimensional array" has one favored dimension, out of which you can slice an array of lower dimension. For example, you can pass a row of a 2D array to a function of a 1D variable, but you can't pass a column. That asymmetry underlies my assertion. In Python, by contrast, n-dimensional arrays can be sliced on any dimension. Doug

5 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] earliest Unix roff

by Doug McIlroy

> Excellent - thanks for the pointer. This shows nroff before troff. > FWIW: I guess I was miss informed, but I had been under the impression > that was the other way around. i.e. nroff was done to be compliant with > the new troff, replacing roff, although the suggestion here is that he > wrote it add macros to roff. I'll note that either way, the dates are all > possible of course because the U/L case ASR 37 was introduced 1968 so by > the early 1970's they would have been around the labs. nroff was in v2; troff appeared in v4, which incidentally was typeset in troff. Because of Joe Ossanna's role in designing the model 37, we had 37's in the Labs and even in our homes right from the start of production. But when they went obsolete, they were a chore to get rid of. As Labs property, they had to be returned; and picking them up was nobody's priority. Andy Hall had one on his back porch for a year. Doug

5 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] block operations in editors, was My EuroBSDcon talk

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Doug McIlroy > the absence of multidemensional arrays in C. ?? From the 'C Reference Manual' (no date, but circa 'Typesetter C'), pg. 11: "If the unadorned declarator D would specify an n-dimensional array .. then the declarator D[in+1] yields an (n+1)-dimensional array" I'm not sure if I've _ever_ used one, but they are there. Noel

5 years, 9 months

[tuhs] Computer history preservation

by Nelson H. F. Beebe

A major topic on this list has been the preservation of computer history, through museums that collect and operate old hardware, software emulation of past hardware and software systems, and data recovery from newly discovered, but previously thought to be lost, archives. I came across an article today about another major industry that has been exceedingly careless about preserving its history: Wipe Out: When the BBC Kept Erasing Its Own History https://getpocket.com/explore/item/wipe-out-when-the-bbc-kept-erasing-its-o… It is a must-read for Dr Who fans on this list. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe(a)math.utah.edu - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe(a)acm.org beebe(a)computer.org - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5 years, 9 months

Re: [TUHS] block operations in editors, was My EuroBSDcon talk

by Thomas Paulsen

--------------------------------- > > Though the vi clone with the best name was, indisputably, elvis. > unfortunately unmaintained. elvis has a smaller memory footprint, and a more pleasant (nroff later html) based help support than vim. There are no plugin, vimscript feature sas well as no python/perl support. I'm interested in a vi with syntax coloring and help support, however I don't need scripting features. Therefore I hope someone will take over maintenance, as I'm too old for tha

5 years, 9 months

block operations in editors, was My EuroBSDcon talk

by Doug McIlroy

> The "block copy in an editor" thing is something which has intrigued > me for years. poor old ed/ex/vi just couldn't do it, and for the life > of me, I could not understand why this was "deprecated" by the people > writing that family of editors. One might trace it to the founding tenet that a file is a stream of bytes, reinforced by the absence of multidemensional arrays in C. But it goes deeper than that. Ed imposes a structure, making a (finite) file into an array, aka list, of lines. It's easy to define block moves and copies in a list. But what are the semantics of a block move, wherein one treats the list as a ragged-right 2D array? What gets pushed aside? In what direction? How does a block move into column that not all destination rows reach? How do you cope when the bottom gets ragged? How about the top? Can one move blocks of tab-separated fields? I think everyone has rued the lack of block operations at one time or another. But implementing them in any degree of generality is a stumbling block. What should the semantics be? > Similarly the 'repeat this sequence of commands' thing which emacs had. Ed's g command does that, except the sequence can't contain another g. Sam, barely harder than ed to learn, cures that deficiency and generalizes in other ways, too--but has no block operations. Doug

5 years, 9 months

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TUHS