[TUHS] BSD talk program?

[Ronald Natalie]

Anybody remember jtalk?   It was a hacked version of talk that ran your 
input through the “jive filter”.

Slap ma fro!



------ Original Message ------
>From "Larry McVoy" <lm at mcvoy.com>
To "Clem Cole" <clemc at ccc.com>
Cc "TUHS" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
Date 12/13/2024 10:53:36 AM
Subject [TUHS] Re: BSD talk program?

>I loved talk when CS was running BSD on a VAX.  You could see who was on
>and talk them.  Very handy and it was sort of social.
>
>It's crazy how things were back then, open ports listening for all sorts
>of things.  I think we were pretty unaware of how nasty the internet would
>get.
>
>On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:22:22AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
>>  As for the motivation -- it was simple.  UCB is on a hill.  I lived at the
>>  base of hill and I only wanted to walk up it once a day.   Our office was a
>>  big pool of about 20 of us next to the CAD machine room on the second floor
>>  of Cory Hall.  Somebody was usually in the office most nights, but not
>>  everyone.   We all had modems and terminals at home, but only one phone
>>  line.  We had 3 Vaxes in the CAD group, plus my Array Processor.   So I
>>  wanted to be able to ask someone like Peter or TQ to reset the AP for me if
>>  I hosed it when I was working from home when I was debugging it. Plus
>>  the obvious social aspects -- "hey you want go get a Pizza/Beer etc..."
>>  But since we might be working on a different system, Kipps' hack was
>>  useless.
>>  ???
>>  ???
>>  ???
>>  ???
>>
>>  On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:14???AM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>>  > Yes -- I can give this history.
>>  > Kipp wrote an early version for 4.1BSD - but it is not the version in the
>>  > releases. It ran on Ernie and did not do as much.
>>  > I had used a different program on the PDP-10's and the ARPANET and I
>>  > started over when Joy added sockets for 4.1A. I also made the infamous use
>>  > of vax integers instead of network integers (and I knew better - but really
>>  > did not think about until a few years later when I was at Masscomp and
>>  > compiled it for the 68000 -- ugh).  That version still had a couple of bugs
>>  > in it (i.e. hung in the 4.1A networking code occasionally), but worked well
>>  > enough on the CAD systems.  I went away to a USENIX conference and while I
>>  > was gone, my officemate  Peter (Moore) took my code and fixed the problem,
>>  > plus he put it into  RCS.  I gave that to Sam and that's the version that
>>  > went out in 4.1C and beyond.
>>  >
>>  > Clem
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > ???
>>  > ???
>>  >
>>  > On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 9:29???AM Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  >
>>  >> I'm curious if anyone has any history they can share about the BSD
>>  >> "talk" program.
>>  >>
>>  >> I was fond of this back when it was still (relatively) common, but
>>  >> given the way it's architected I definitely see why it fell out of use
>>  >> as the Internet grew. Still, does anybody know what the history behind
>>  >> it is?  Initially, I thought it was written by Mike Karels, but that
>>  >> was just my speculation from SCCS spelunking, and looking at the
>>  >> sources from 4.2, I see RCS header strings that indicate it was
>>  >> written by "moore" (Peter Moore?).  talk.c says, "Written by Kipp
>>  >> Hickman".
>>  >>
>>  >> It seems to have arrived pretty early on with respect to the
>>  >> introduction of TCP/IP in BSD: the README alludes to some things
>>  >> coming up in 4.1c. Clem, you seem to have had a hand in it, and are
>>  >> credited (along with Peter Moore) for making it work on 4.1a.
>>  >>
>>  >> So I guess the question is, what was the motivation? Was it just to
>>  >> have a more pleasing user-to-user communications experience, or was
>>  >> discussion across the network an explicit goal? There's a note in
>>  >> talk.c ("Modified to run between hosts by Peter Moore, 8/19/82") that
>>  >> suggests this wasn't the original intent. Who thought up the
>>  >> character-at-a-time display mode?
>>  >>
>>  >> Thanks for any insights.
>>  >>
>>  >>         - Dan C.
>>  >>
>>  >
>
>--
>---
>Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat