[TUHS] Russian Ancient UNIX stuff in the Archive

Michael Sokolov msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG
Tue Mar 18 05:18:15 AEST 2003


Hi there,

I remember seeing in the Unix Archive a few years ago (back when the $100
licenses just came out and it was called PUPS Archive) some Russian Ancient
UNIX stuff, some things contributed to the UNIX community by the early Russian
UNIX users (on Soviet PDP-11s). However, I am now looking for it and cannot
find it. Would anyone have a pointer?

I am trying to russify my flagship UNIX (4.3BSD-Quasijarus) and I'm adding/
fixing 8-bit support in various parts of the system, and I got stuck on ex/vi.
The sucker just won't handle 8-bit chars. Since my job is to maintain Ancient
UNIX (my flavor thereof) rather than replace it, replacing the original ex/vi
with one of the modern reimplementations is not an option. I need to massage
8-bit support into the existing original Berkeley ex/vi with as few changes as
possible.

A friend of mine told me that Back in The Days the first UNIX users in the then
USSR were running patched (russified) 2.xBSD on Soviet PDP-11s and had KOI-8
for Russian. Since the flagship editor on <any>BSD is ex/vi, this makes me
think that those early Russian users used it and thus their patches
accomplished just what I need. And so I'm looking for those patches. TIA for
any help,

MS



More information about the TUHS mailing list