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Documentation Call Numbers and Meanings?

by segaloco

Good afternoon folks, linked is a list of all of the call numbers of UNIX-relevant documentation that I've been able to catalogue lately: https://pastebin.com/DbDAhX3W This isn't exhaustive, I skipped many documents under dept (assuming dept) 305, 306, and 308, focusing mainly on 700, 301, 307, and 320. I was wondering if anyone that has some knowledge of the numbering system used for these documents in Bell might be able to comment on this in any way. What I've been able to make some determination on is: 700-prefixed call numbers appear to be general Western Electric stuff, most of these manuals being related to switching, power, hardware, etc. However, the UNIX 3.0 manual and 4.0 reference guide are both under this series too. I imagine this was simply because the computer systems group hadn't been formally spun off or otherwise received directive to manage UNIX documentation at this point? In any case, I'd be curious what all else may have gotten 700-series call numbers before the 300-series took over UNIX docs. As for the 300 series, as far as I can tell 300 is the umbrella for AT&T Computer Systems, with several sub departments handling slightly different (although overlapping in circumstances) concerns. What I have managed to determine is that 301 series encompasses the original System V version documentation, a few "Level II COBOL" documents, as well as some M68000 and Z8000-specific versions of docs (I didn't know UNIX System V ever hit the Z8000, that's cool). After System V gold, the wealth of UNIX documentation appears to come from code 307-X instead, I'm assuming 307 is whatever permutation of USG/USL happened to exist at the time. However, there are a few other codes that seem to sporadically be involved in UNIX docs as well as other computing docs: 302 - Just a smattering of Writers Workbench docs, very high call number suffixes (950-958). 303 - Bunch of 3B20D (Real-Time-Reliable) docs as well as other 3B20 stuff, mainly hardware manuals but a few SVR2.1-related docs as well for 3B20A, S, and D 304 - Another smattering of 3B20 docs, this time mostly A and S, mix of hardware and UNIX docs 305 - This one is hard to pin down, they've got the basic 3B2 docs, some other guidance docs for non-20 3B computers, and a mishmash of language tools like assemblers, a BASIC interpreter, compilers, and a few odd technical bulletins for products covered in other groups 306 - There wasn't much direct UNIX documentation here, just stuff about 3BNet (3B computer networking?) and the 5620 DOT Mapped terminal 308 - Documentation on a whole mess of software utilities with some odd Sys V manuals sprinkled in. You've got stuff like the "Office Telesystem", Instructional Workbench, more docs on BASIC, Pascal, and COBOL, some Fortran stuff as well, and a few other reference documents 310 - Seems to be entirely related to Documenter's and Writer's Workbenches. Whats odd is there is also a pretty even split of DWB and WWB documents in the 302 and 307 groups, so hard to say why the split, maybe a secondary department producing supplementary literature? Very low call number suffixes, so possibly 302 transitioned into 310 for DWB/WWB support 311 - Might be a "trade book" publishing arm, seems to only contain a few books, including "The C Programming Language" 320 - Might be the "standard systems" trade books arm as opposed to the version/system specific documentation gotten from USL directly. This list contains books like the SVID, Bach's Design of the UNIX Operating System book, some programming guidance books, and the UNIX Programmer's Manual 5 volume series with the metallic alphabet blocks on the cover (echoing the V7 trade release). What's interesting is call number 320-X comes back around with SVR4 as the call code that a number of 386-specific manuals were published under. 341 - This one is very odd, a higher call number than any of the others, but the only docs I could find under this are the System V gold Document, Graphics, Programming, and Support Tools guides, which curiously weren't published under 301 like the rest of the documentation for that version. Finally, some digestion from this research: This gives some compelling version-support information in early SysV I wasn't aware of previously: - System V Gold: - PDP-11 - VAX-11 - 3B - M68000 - Z8000 - System V R2: - VAX-11 - 3B - M68000 - NS32000 - iAPX 286 It appears Bell also opted to have different documentation sets for different processors in SVR2. We kinda see this later on with i386 variants of the SVR3 and SVR4 documents, but I don't think we ever quite see this wide of a spread of docs straight from AT&T after this. Also, among the many documents (one I didn't add to the list yet) is one referring specifically to UNIX Release 5.3, not System V R3 or anything like that, but a Release 5.3. I know I've seen "Release 5.2" listed in a few places, which had me curious, is there a well established record of what happened with internal (non research) UNIX after System V was branched? Whether the development stream simply became System V development, or if there was still a totally separate UNIX 5.x branch for a while that, while borrowed into System V at necessary times, did still constitute a distinct branch of development after the initial System V release. I know there is at least evidence of aspects of System V being put into CB UNIX 2.3, meaning CB 2.3 was post-System V, that would make a compelling argument for there being some more development work between CB and USG folks before they put the final bow on the UNIX/TS project and formally routed all efforts to System V. I'm sure there are other little nuggets of information hiding in there, but that's my digest from this thus far. If anyone knows of any other such efforts to produce a listing of all known UNIX documentation call numbers from AT&T, I'll happily contribute this to their efforts. - Matt G. P.S. SysV Gold scans are still inbound, just likely will be a winter project once the rains start and I can't go play outside.

2 years, 7 months

Strange Reference on Usenix_77 tape

by Warner Losh

Greetings, I was looking at the various Usenix tapes we have in the TUHS archive, trying to sort them all out. In looking at ug091377.tar.gz in Applications/Usenix_77, I found this paragraph at the end of its read_me " Finally, if we have an executed Harvard License on file and if there is room on your tape, the directory "h" contains the newest (July 1977) release of the HRSTS system. We have also in- cluded the old Toronto release in the directory "t" if it was re- quested from a Toronto licensee." This tape had the 'h' directory, so I'll be playing around with the HRSTS system to see if I can get it booting in TUHS (I didn't know we had this til now)... This tape did not have the 't' directory, however. What is 'the old Toronoto release'? I've not seen references to it so far in the other histories of this early period I've encountered. And does anybody have a copy of it? Warner

2 years, 7 months

Early BSD license thread

by Warner Losh

I hate myself a little bit, but I posted an answer to the 'BSD license origin' in this twitter thread https://twitter.com/bsdimp/status/1572521676268802049 that people might find interesting. Please note the caveats at the end of the thread: This is a bare outline hitting the high points taking only data from release files with no behind the scenes confirmation about why things changed, nor in-depth exploration of variations that I know are present, nor do I got into examples from various USENET postings from the time that stole the license for people's own different uses. Nonetheless, I hope it's useful... Warner

2 years, 7 months

The USL Toolchest from the 80s and 90s

by Clem Cole

Mike Haertel's quest for the 5620 tools got me thinking. Does anyone know of an archive of the USL Toolchest at large? It would be cool if someone had the whole thing on a single tape. But, I suspect many of us have pieces of it. I'm not sure I know all the pieces that made it up. But I would like to see the USDL section of Warren's Archive include a sub directory Toolchest with the collected parts - from Korn shell, the final version of Writer workbench, to DMD tools and the like. IIRC the final edition of PCC2 was released as part of it. thoughts? Clem

2 years, 7 months

Unix timelines

by steve jenkin

In 2007 I started entering the contents of Eric Levenez’s “Unix History” diagram into “dot” format to use with Graphviz. It stalled when I was unable to create a diagram I really liked. My recollection is that I talked with Warren about encoding this data and creating diagrams. He compiled the TUHS “Unix Tree”, presumably now the definitive resource, but I haven’t see a diagram linked from there. There’s the github “Unix History” project by TUHS list folk <https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo> I didn’t research producing timelines & relationships automatically from git: this would be a solid solution, if the Repo was considered as permanent as the TUHS site. The “Linux Distribution Timeline” is based on a tool, gnuclad, that takes CSV files and 'computes a cladogram’ in SVG. conversion to PNG is via ImageMagick’s “convert”. By default, timelines are produced ‘left to right’, with claimed ‘right to left’, ’top to bottom’ and ‘bottom to top’ formats - which I haven’t tested. The CSV file can include links which are built into clickable points in the final image, at least for SVG, unsure of PNG. A concern that I have is the creation of the CSV file from Distrowatch is opaque. Possibly built by hand. New diagrams are uploaded 2-3 times a year. The Levenez "fishbone" diagram doesn’t seem to be updated with Warner Losh’s 2020 “Hidden Early History”. Clem Cole’s Big Block diagram shows “low-res” diagrams are also very useful, eliminating distracting detail when appropriate. Groklaw from 2004-2009 tried to collect information about the Unix/Linux Timelines, but the site is gone now & Wayback machine hasn’t picked up many of the detail / comments page. I’ve no contact with PJ & whoever runs Groklaw now. Would that data collection contain anything more than TUHS, as it does try to include both Linux and Unix? Any suggestions? Something extra in the Linux Distro Tree is a notation for people moving between projects and tracking forks. Unsure how that’s accomplished, and not sure how important that is for Unixes. TUHS is “Early Unix”, not about Linux. However, some degree of compatibility between Unix & Linux Timeline diagrams might be useful for others if they ever try to join multiple trees. If a timeline / relationship table is constructed, designing it to be somewhat compatible will help future people. I’m not sure about tracking the many descendants of BSD. Wikipedia has a list without a timeline . <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BSD_operating_systems> Someone may already be being doing this somewhere, I didn’t look. Don’t think modern descendants of BSD should be tracked by a Unix Heritage Society, has to be a boundary somewhere. regards steve jenkin ============ Some Questions: 1. Is there any benefit in developing a canonical “Unix Timeline” dataset containing the relationships, allowing programatic conversion to diagrams? There might be better tools in the future. I’d favour tab-separated text files, because they can be read / written by Spreadsheets and converted to CSV. Warren’s solution of tables & pages is good: there’s simply too much information & complexity to capture in simple file formats The gnuclad solution of providing “Clickable Links” is useful, if like TUHS, the pages are well maintained. 2. How to cater for: - adding extra-fine detail for segments of the timeline (Warner Losh) - ‘zooming out’ and providing an overview (Clem Cole) - some sort of compatibility with known tables, like Linux Distro Timeline 3. No simple representation can, or should try, to be “all things to all people”, there’s too much detail and too many events occurred. Is there a useful subset of detail that can be captured in a simple table? There may be useful subsets of the Unix Timeline that show more or less detail, To support programatic zoom In/Out, an indent or level descriptor is required in the table. Does anyone have a good data model for that? ============ Warner Losh, "Hidden Early History of Unix”, Fosdem 2020 -> "Standard History of Unix, in 3 slides” graphviz, coloured names, landscape format [small] “Simplified family tree” 4th Edition Family Tree 6th Edition Family Tree 7th Edition Family Tree Clem Cole, UNIX, Linux and BSD, USENIX 2009, reexamining "A Short UNIX History”, 2000 talk -> "A UNIX Family History 1st 25 Yrs” [69-93] graphviz ?, landscape, coloured, triangle symbols, thin lines & arrows -> Simplified Linux Family Tree, circa ’09 graphviz ?, landscape, coloured, blocks + text, short thick lines & arrows ============ TUHS, The Unix Tree No diagrams, tarball with all content <https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl> Éric Lévénez’s, "UNIX History” landscape format [very wide], lines & arrows, hand drawn, no source <https://www.levenez.com/unix/> David du Colombier, Unix Diagram portrait format, graphviz, source <http://www.unix-diagram.org> Linux Timeline, Fabio Loli et al landscape format, gnuclad, source (CSV + links to <https://distroware.gitlab.io/>) uses ‘curved’ lines, can be changed <https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline> Images: SVG, PNG <https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline/releases/tag/v21.10> Grokline, UNIX TIMELINE, 2004-2009 [dead site] Lists by Date, Vendor, Product detail pages not archived <https://web.archive.org/web/20091217070631/http://www.grokline.net/time_ind…> ============ -- Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915) PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

2 years, 7 months

The MGR window system and the Macintosh

by John Floren

Today I came across an article about the MGR window system for Unix: https://hack.org/mc/mgr/ One thing that interested me was a note that some versions worked on the Macintosh: > The window system ran on many different hardware platforms, at least > these: Sun 3/xx workstations running SunOS, which was the the original > development platform, Sun SPARCstations (SunOS and then ported by me to > Solaris), Intel x86 based PCs (Coherent, Minix, FreeBSD or Linux), > Atari ST (under MiNT), AT&T UnixPC (SysV) and the Macintosh. As the owner of a Macintosh Plus, I think it would be a very interesting thing to experiment with, but I haven't had much luck finding any more information about it. Does anyone know more about MGR, particularly on the Mac? That page has the source for MGR 0.69, but there's no mention of the Macintosh in it (aside from comments about how it was supported on older versions...) John

2 years, 8 months

Re: "9 skills our grandkids won't have" - Is this a TUHS topic?

by Matthias Bruestle

I know something! On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 04:05:30PM +0300, Ori Idan wrote: > > o why CTRL/S and CTRL/Q are used for flow control in a shell command > > line session > > > Also would be happy to know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_flow_control But I don't know the answer to Ctrl-D. :( And also the bus error and maybe the segmentation fault if it hasn't to do with a segment register. Matthias -- When You Find Out Your Normal Daily Lifestyle Is Called Quarantine

2 years, 8 months

Re: Does anybody know the etymology of the term "word" as in collection of bits?

by Douglas McIlroy

> I heard that the IBM 709 > series had 36 bit words because Arthur Samuel, > then at IBM, needed 32 bits to identify the playable squares on a > checkerboard, plus some bits for color and kinged To be precise, Samuel's checkers program was written for the 701, which originated the architecture that the 709 inherited. Note that IBM punched cards had 72 data columns plus 8 columns typically dedicated to sequence numbers. 700-series machines supported binary IO encoded two words per row, 12 rows per card--a perfect fit to established technology. (I do not know whether the fit was deliberate or accidental.) As to where the byte came from, it was christened for the IBM Stretch, aka 7020. The machine was bit-addressed and the width of a byte was variable. Multidimensional arrays of packed bytes could be streamed at blinding speeds. Eight bits, which synced well with the 7020's 64-bit words, was standardized in the 360 series. The term "byte" was not used in connection with 700-series machines. Doug

2 years, 8 months

Extracting files from various old dump/restore tapes

by Lars Brinkhoff

Hello, I have on my hands many images of tapes that seems to have been written by various implementaions of dump. I see the magic numbers 60011 and 60012 in little and big endian at offsets 18 (16-bit version?) and 24 (32-bit version?). I don't know the dating of the tapes, but around 1980 would be a reasonable guess. Are there some easy to use (ready to run on a modern Unix) tools to extract files from such tape files? I'm not looking to restore a file system on disk, just extract the files.

2 years, 8 months

DMD 5620 simulator

by Seth Morabito

Hello all, I've recently been improving the AT&T/Teletype DMD 5620 simulator I wrote a few years ago. It can now run either the 8;7;3 or 8;7;5 firmware. It also now supports executing a local shell or connecting directly to a physical or virtual tty device. It runs natively on Linux or macOS with X11 or Wayland, but I would love help creating a Windows version if you're a Windows programmer (I am an occasional Windows user, but I am not at all knowledgeable about Windows programming). Full details are available here: https://loomcom.com/3b2/dmd5620_emulator.html The source code is here: https://github.com/sethm/dmd_gtk Many thanks go to my friend Sark (@crtdude on Twitter) for tracking down the 8;7;3 firmware and dumping it for me. I'd also like to thank Mike Haertel for helping find bugs, providing feedback, and inspiring me to get it working with Research Unix in addition to SVR3. Feedback, bug reports, and pull requests are all welcome! -Seth -- Seth Morabito Poulsbo, WA web(a)loomcom.com

2 years, 8 months

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