[TUHS] Thompson at Berkeley on an 11/70

Jacob Goense dugo at xs4all.nl
Fri Apr 10 08:43:44 AEST 2015


I'm experimenting with adapting Unix history and lore using the new
EXPECT/SEND feature in simh. My favorite guinea pig is the story of Ken
Thompsons sabbatical at Berkeley where he brings up V6 on new 11/70 with
Bob Kridle and Jeff Schriebman. Any details not yet recorded in obvious
places[1] are of course more than welcome!

One of the things I'm trying to get right is what they actually brought
up there initially in 1975. This must have been standard V6 or the
Bell UNIX Ken brought with him, but I can't figure it out.

Salus has Schriebman, Haley and Joy installing the fixes on the 50 bugs
tape late summer 1976. This suggests it was stock V6 initially, but they
might have been playing on a different system or working from a fresh
install in 1976.

If it was stock V6 initially, what were they waiting for? Legal stuff?

If it was 1975 Bell UNIX, can I reconstruct this using the 54 patches
collected by Mike O'Brien[2], or is that going to be way off from what
Thompson left in Urbana-Champaign with Greg Chesson in 1975?

[1] http://www.tuhs.org/books.html minus the Bell journals for example
[2] Hidden in /usr/sys/v6unix/unix_changes in one of the Spencer tapes   
   http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Spencer_Tapes/unsw3.tar.gz



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