[TUHS] Need your help for 2019

Steve Johnson scj at yaccman.com
Sat Mar 4 13:41:18 AEST 2017


Remember that Unix is mostly driven by software issues, rather than
hardware.  In fact, Usenix folks often complained that the various
computer museums setting up were almost entirely focused on hardware,
and had almost no educational material about how software worked or
was written, and the algorithms under the covers that made it all
work.  At one point we offered the Boston computer museum $30,000 if
they would make an exhibit primarily dealing with software, and they
turned us down.

Previous anniversaries have included "Old Farts' BOF" and even some
talks by previous presidents and other contributors.  At one such
celebration there were professional fireworks set off at the (outdoor)
banquet in Oregon.   I was on the board when that was done --one of
the most interesting board discussions I remember was debating whether
we should go with the $10,000 or the $20,000 fireworks show.

That said, I think the anniversary is worth honoring in some
fashion...

Steve

----- Original Message -----
From: "Warren Toomey" <wkt at tuhs.org>
To:<tuhs at tuhs.org>
Cc:
Sent:Sat, 4 Mar 2017 13:16:08 +1000
Subject:[TUHS] Need your help for 2019

 Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation of Unix and
I've
 been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up
to
 now, there's been little response.

 The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold its Annual
Technical
 Conference on the west coast of the US at this time, so it would make
sense
 to do something in conjunction with this conference. Some
suggestions:

 - a terminal room with a bunch of period terminals: ASR-33s, -37s,
VT100s,
 VT102s, VT220s
 - these connected to real/emulated Unix systems either locally or via
a
 terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems
 - some graphical terminals: Sun pizza boxes, a Blit would be great
 - if possible, some actual real PDP-11s, VAXen
 - emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there
are
 plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode.

 - Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet
 protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated
 systems networked together
 - how about an emulated UUCP network with Usenet on top of it, and
 some mail/news clients on the emulated systems.

 - retro workshops/tutorials: how to edit with ed, using nroff,
posting
 a Usenet article, dealing with bang paths.

 I'm proposing to gather a bunch of people to start the ball rolling
on the
 technical/demonstration side. We'd need people:
 - with terminals, portable PDP-11s and VAXen, Sun boxen
 - prepared to set up emulated systems
 - who can help bring the networking (UUCP, Usenet, Arpanet) back to
life
 - willing to write and run workshops that show off this old
technology
 - to help set up terminal servers and all the RS-232 to telnet stuff

 Some of this we can start doing now, e.g. rebuild an emulated
Arpanet, UUCP,
 Usenet, get emulated systems up, build front-end telnet interfaces.

 Is there anybody willing to sign up for this? I think once we have
some
 momentum, we can tell the Usenix people and get some buy-in from
them.

 Post back and/or e-mail me if you can help. Thanks, Warren


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20170303/bbc0a77b/attachment.html>


More information about the TUHS mailing list