[TUHS] pseudo tty history

[Clem Cole]

Right.  What I do not know is what early machines Harvard had from DEC.
MIT had the 18 and 36 bit series which was what I was implying.  The key
point though is that if Harvard was the root of the PTY tree it would have
been on one of those systems not a Unix system because Unix did not come to
Harvard until 1974 and RFC 89 was 1971 and RFC 46 in 1970

Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual


On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 8:50 PM Aron Insinga <aki at insinga.com> wrote:

> The https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc89 mentions a PDP-6 and
> PDP-10s which are 36-bit twos complement machines, and a DEC PDP-1 which
> was an 18-bit one's complement  machine.  The "graphics-oriented" PDP-1
> probably had the well-known Type 30 display which used a large round
> radar-type CRT thanks to the Project SAGE tradition, but there were a
> couple of other graphics display options for the PDP-1.
> https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/graphics/
>
>
> - Aron
>
>
> On 8/15/25 23:35, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> Watch the dates - that's not UNIX.  In 1973, Version 4 Unix is first
> released outside of BTL, so the Harvard system being talked about in RFC 89
> is probably an 18 bit ??PDP6 maybe??.
>
> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 8:24 PM Bakul Shah via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> From RFC 89 (dated 19 January 1971) titled "Some historic moments in
>> networking":
>>
>>    Second, the Harvard system has temporarily implemented this remote
>>    network console interface feature using a DEC style pseudo-teletype
>>    (PTY).
>>
>> From RFC 46 (dated April 1970) titled "'ARPA Network Protocol Notes":
>>
>>    3. A standard way for a newly created process to initiate pseudo-
>>       typewriter communication with the foreign process which requested
>>       its creation.
>>
>>
>> On Aug 15, 2025, at 6:49 PM, ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> was there ever a telnet or other remote access program that predated ptys
>> on Unix? Was telnet the driving force for ptys? Did the folks implementing
>> Unix networking bring in ptys before, or as part of, or after networking,
>> i.e. did folks building networking for Unix realize they needed ptys once
>> they started working on telnet, or did they plan for ptys from the get go?
>> I was an observer for some of this stuff, but as a 20-year-old at UDEL I
>> was also quite out of the loop.
>>
>>  I also realize there were multiple Unix networking efforts, so this
>> question is somewhat simplistic.
>>
>> I'm assuming rsh came a bit later.
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 4:19 PM Tom Lyon <pugs78 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, I was thinking that 4.1c BSD must've had them for rlogin and
>>> telnet.
>>>
>>> Which got me looking for Fabry and Bill Joy's design/planning documents
>>> for 4.2, which are not in the TUHS archives.
>>> Anyone got them??
>>>
>>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 4:15 PM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> At the very least, 4.2BSD had them for telnet and rlogin. They were
>>>> static, though. You had to MAKEDEV enough units.
>>>>
>>>> Warner
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 5:00 PM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> That was my guess. I figured the people who did the work are on this
>>>>> list, and primary sources rule.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 3:56 PM Ron Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I think that wikipedia history is somewhat garbled when it comes to
>>>>>> the UNIX implementations.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>
>
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