[TUHS] Known Specimens of Pre-5ESS UNIX Telephone Switching Software?

[segaloco via TUHS]

Thanks for all the great information everyone. It sounds like I need to start considering a little trip down to Seattle to check out a few of these different computing/technology history organizations. They're a quick train ride down the coast, and my dreams of pulling together some sort of computing/technology history collective up here have been fruitless thus far, maybe I just need to recognize it as a big city thing and get more comfortable with considering little trips for this kind of stuff.

- Matt G.
------- Original Message -------
On Tuesday, September 26th, 2023 at 9:07 AM, Sebastien F4GRX <f4grx at f4grx.net> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> You beat me to it! I was about to reply that the Connections Museum of Seattle would have more info about this, or know people who do.
>
> This video of their channel shows a 3ESS software boot : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k865-VjWUk8
>
> Sebastien
>
> Le 26/09/2023 à 04:20, Kevin Bowling a écrit :
>
>> On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 6:25 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello, my studies lately bring me to the question: Are there any extant examples of telephone switching software, built on UNIX, from the various parts of the Bell System prior to the introduction of the 5ESS and 3B20D? My focus veers earlier as some 5ESS/3B20D/DMERT technology is still in active use, that sleeping dragon can lie.
>>
>> Your best bet may be to contact Sarah Autumn at the Connections Museum, they have a 1ESS and 3ESS.
>> http://www.telcomhistory.org/connections-museum-seattle-exhibits/electronic-switching/
>>
>> I don't remember if they have the 1A variant but they should have the BSPs for all of this which would give you a lot of what you are after.
>>
>>> What's gotten me curious is reading about 1ESS in a BSTJ volume I picked up, noting the particulars on how previous concerns of manual and electro-mechanical systems were abstracted into software. Even without surviving examples, were previous systems such as the 1ESS central control ever ported to or considered for porting to UNIX, or was the hardware interface to the telco lines too specific to consider a future swap-out with, say, a PDP11 running arbitrary software? Columbus's SCCS (switching, not source code) also comes to mind, although all I know that survives of that is the CB-UNIX 2.3 manual descriptions of bits and pieces.
>>>
>>> By the way, it's funny, I have UNIX to thank for my current experiments with telephones and other signalling stuff, what with making me study the Bell System more generally. It's starting to come full circle in that I want to take a crack at reading dialing, at least pulse, into some sort of software abstraction on a SBC that can, among other things, provide a switching service on top of a UNIX-like kernel. I don't know what I'd do with such a thing other than assign work conference call rooms their own phone numbers to dial with a telephone on a serial line...but if I can even get that far I'd call it a success. One less dependency on the mobile...
>>>
>>> - Matt G.
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