ken.unix.guy(a)gmail.com:
A company I used to work for was vacating a building. I asked, has anyone
checked under the raised floor tiles?
The answer was no. Well I did and found a lot of history down there. From
component parts from long forgotten
systems to water cooling lines for long gone IBM heavy metal and a ground
window.
===
I bet you didn't find a bowling ball.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
After much saying I would and never getting around to it, I've finally started filling out a bit of documentation on the various UNIX manuals I've been tracking down, fleshing out history around, tracing bibliographic references though, etc etc.
https://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:manuals
Thus far I've got the research and CB pages filled out from available information, and PWB/commercial up through about '85-'86, give or take some things. I apologize in advance if I've omitted your favorite piece of trivia or got something wrong, please suggest corrections in any areas needing them, or even better, a Wiki is a communal resource so with Warren's OK, I'm sure you can also make contributions.
Most of the pictures are from my own library, although I've added a few others from thing around the net. There are links to various documents covered, TUHS content where most appropriate, a few archive.org and bitsavers links here and there. I don't intend to include links to any documents after System V's initial 1983 run, just pictures of covers for ease of identification.
I've already mentioned a few times but I highly encourage contributions. I intend to do another round at this sometime soon and round out at least the BSD stuff and later System V. If anyone else has photographs or documents they think should be in these articles and you don't want to do the Wiki part yourself, feel free to send me stuff and I'll make sure it gets put up there.
Finally, some reflection on the path here. "What was UNIX System IV" was one of those questions that plagued my mind for a long time, much before I knew much else about the history of UNIX. Not a crucial question by any means, but it was one of those little mysteries I always wanted to know more about, which is what then lead me to trying to find Release 4.0 documents and all that. Of course, that then lead to the rabbit hole of continuing to turn stuff up, I never imagined I'd actually be successful in trying to turn up more info on that version, let alone then continuing to find little pieces of history and slot in missing parts of stories. Along the way I've learned more about this darn operating system than I ever intended on learning and now feel net gain in several areas of my study. Plus, all this Bell System proximity is largely responsible for my interests in telephony as of late, and may come full circle in the gear I got for telephone experiments helping me resurrect this poor UNIX PC I've got sitting on the floor right now. I don't know what I would've been doing with so much of my free time the past few years otherwise, especially these colder months.
Hope folks enjoy the commentary!
- Matt G.
P.S. Combing over things for this, I've found a few more pieces of the UNIX/TS puzzle. The details are in the Release 3.0 section of the PWB/Commerial page linked above. Short of it is there are some interesting "leaks" of the name "UNIX/TS" into Release 3.0 documentation, inconsistently between the sources on the UNIX tree and the physical document I recently obtained.
Really sobering is the estimate that it will bring 1000 jobs to New
Brunswick. That's a small fraction of the capacity of Murray Hill. On the
upside is proximity to Rutgers.
Contrary to what the article said, Murray Hill does not date from the Labs'
foundation in 1925. The Labs was in the meat-packing district on West
Street in New York in a building now called Westbeth, said to be the
world's largest artist community. The High Line runs right through it. I
worked there one summer in the penthouse with a fine view of ship traffic
on the Hudson. Murray Hill opened in 1941 and West Street closed in about
1967.
> Goodbye, Unix Room!
The Unix Room was dismantled some time ago, but its quirky contents were
grabbed by the Labs archivist, who had them on display at the Unix50
celebration--pink flamingo, G. R. Emlin, CCW clock and all. I wonder
whether these relics will make the move.
Doug
Spotted this this morning: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/186172178090](https://www.ebay.com/itm/18617217809…
After the link is a "Western Electric 3B2 Model 300 C Programming Language Manual". The manual is from Februrary of 1984 and is of the same visual motif as the System V manuals for the 3B5 as well as DWB documentation released at the time, this motif being a small grey binder with a large orange square in the middle (as opposed to small grey binders with the AT&T death star motif that were contemporary to this time as well.) After these two cover styles, which follow the grid patterns System V original documentation, ATTIS then switches to the red covers that are seen throughout the rest of the 80s until the blue SVR4 books and the kinda criss-crossy grid pattern found on their late 80s stuff (not just UNIX, I've seen a similar motif on documentation shipped with AT&T telephones of the period, but in grey)
Interestingly, despite the date, it is still labeled Western Electric, which is strange because the 3B5 manual I have is from 1983 I'm fairly certain but doesn't have "Western Electric" on the cover. Maybe there were mixed stocks of the professionally printed binder covers from the 1982-1984 timeframe with and without WECo branding at the same time.
In any case, this one is still in the plastic and even has the 5 1/2 floppies with the SGS and other C support bits (and AT&T death star logos.) I don't plan on getting this as it's just a pinch later than where my focus is right now, but figured I'd mention it on list in case someone is looking for something like this. I got everything I needed from the pictures.
- Matt G.
Something seems to have slipped through my recordkeeping, someone on list had spoken up with an interest in a free set of vintage V7 manual binders I got in a set of stuff from MIT Lincoln Labs. If you originally spoke up I'm sorry I've misplaced the email in which you sent me your shipping address. I've still got the binders and am finally in a place I can focus on putting my next post-office trip together. I'm a non-vehiculite so I tend to hold until I've got a few things to mail before packing a bag to carry down to the post-office.
I do intend to make good on sending this to the first person that had spoken up last time (and I think you're the only person that bit) but if it gets to be several weeks out and I haven't heard from you (but have heard from anyone else) it may find a different destination. I'll give a few weeks though, not trying to rescind this and hand it to someone else instead.
By the by just a reminder that this isn't a completely stock V7 manual, the Volume 1 manpages have a few additions such as the RAND editor and some other odds and ends. IIRC the only base page that has been replaced (as opposed to added pages) should be od(1).
- Matt G.
P.S. Just to raise the awareness for the more collector-y types, it looks like there is a relatively thorough SVR4 (blue books) manual set bumping around on eBay right now. The catch, it's going for $1,500, which as an owner of a comparable subset and some they're missing, I feel that is overkill and then some...but I don't understand nor want to understand the collector market. Anywho, if this is something your library is burning to include and you're looking to make a donation to that person's retirement fund...then they're up and ripe for the taking. In any case, this set is not complete, not that they're implying that, but I could only really see selling a truly, verifiably complete collection for that sort of asking price. These are a mismash of 3B and 386 versions and the set is missing some odds and ends like the master index, SVID, and any ABI documents.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/204564417674
The network code in ULTRIX-11 v3.1 dies on me a lot and the scripts to set
it up assume classed subnets still. Would anyone want to work with me to
revamp it? I kind of need a mentor in such things but "used to be" a
decent c programmer. Large ask, I know.
I think the first thing would be to troubleshoot it enough to understand
what's breaking (which I dont know know enough ULTRIX to do myself, but
would probably pick it up quick with the company of an expert), then to
replace the ailing pieces of code. Should be a reasonable scope for
someone here, I bet. Over my head. But I'm happy to do all the
housekeeping / gruntwork / announcing, documenting, etc. and I'm eager to
learn your techniques!
thanks!
jake
P.S. If this belongs not on this list but somewhere like cctalk, please
say so and I'll take it there instead.
I'm finally back to my scan pile and have a few to share:
https://archive.org/details/unix-system-document-processing-guide
First is the UNIX System Document Processing Guide. This is the version of the TROFF et. al. documentation distributed for Release 5.0 as well as the initial release of System V. This contains the expected papers on NROFF/TROFF, MM, Eqn, Tbl, and other bits and pieces like viewgraph macros. These documents appear to be revisions of the various technical memoranda distributed as UNIX papers over time. I think this just leaves the Support Tools Guide as far as unscanned initial System V documents. I have this so just need to get it on my scanner and then the initial System V documentation run should be completely preserved out there on the net.
https://archive.org/details/we-november-december-1981
Second is a copy of WE Magazine from November-December 1981. Distributed to Western Electric employees, this issue of the magazine has a cover story on the installation of the very first central office 5ESS in Seneca, Illinois on July 1st, 1981. The piece goes into some local reactions to installation day, some technical details of 5ESS, and has some nice pictures of the unit being unloaded and moved into place. There are additional articles concerning Nassau Metals, ISSMs, and some goings on around the company.
https://archive.org/details/attached-processor-interface-3b-1a
Finally is the "Attached Processor Interface", a small Western Electric pamphlet detailing an interface for incorporating 3B processors into existing 1A offices such as 4ESS and 1AESS. As with other applications of the 3B to telephony, DMERT features as the operating system, although the pamphlet is mostly concerned with the installation and diagnostic aspects of working with the interface. By the way, the original text is all green, but I scanned all but the covers in B/W.
The last one is interesting in that it's an integration of the 3B into a telephone central office that isn't a 5ESS, rather, you wind up with something more like a 4.5ESS, a 4ESS with a 3B up in it somewhere. However, given the date of November 1981, this postdates the installation of that first 5ESS, making it less likely that this was some embryonic step before the 5ESS and more likely a retrofit designed to get more 3Bs into service in older offices. That this was 1A general was interesting too, that is why a 1AESS could absorb it, meaning there very well could've been frankenstein central offices out there with a 1ESS that got retrofitted with a 1A and then got retrofitted further with an API and a 3B, making one of the monstrosities this pamphlet suggests installing. It's too bad there's a snowball's chance in hell of one of these "API" units popping up out there, much less still mated to its 1A and 3B...but a guy can dream.
Anywho, going to start a slow trickle of scans again now that I've got my office all settled. I'm foraying further and further into telephones so my document hunting these days lands closer to ESS and 1A2 KTS than UNIX, but I'm still keeping an eye out for whatever I can manage to preserve. That all said, that also means my "accepted for scan" circle has gotten larger, as I'm now seeking other 70s-early 80s Bell System stuff generally, not strictly UNIX things, so if you've got some obscure Dimension PBX manual collecting dust I'll happily scan it for ya!
- Matt G.
Hi.
If anyone is interested (*BSD committers, I'm looking at you :-), there have recently
been some updates in the One True Awk (BWK's) which you should pick up. In particular,
regular expression matching performance against Unicode text should now be tolerable.
Feel free to ping me off list if you need more info; let's not spam the list.
Thanks,
Arnold
Damien Wildie:
It is Friday in Australia now
====
Yes, I know that. I was at Caltech, it was one of the
first things they taught us.
I just don't understand why, if Australia had a Thanksgiving
Day, they would choose to have it on the same day as the US.
Does any other country?
On the other hand, if Thanksgiving Day actually mattered to
anyone important, the original ctime(3) would have had a
special table to compute its date, including all the different
a
dates it had in the US before 1942.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON, thankfully
Stuff Received:
> In the U.S., certainly. Do Auzzies celebrate thanksgiving?
Grog:
Not really, but if we did, it would have been yesterday. But we do
get exposed to Black Friday (today).
===
Why yesterday? In Canada we had ours a month and a half ago!
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
