[TUHS] Bell-Era UNIX Audio/DSP Interfaces?

[Warner Losh]

On Tue, Jan 7, 2025 at 8:22 AM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson at gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2025-01-07T09:42:14-0500, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > The PDP-7 of Unix v0 was a hand-me-down from Pinson's time in V&A. And
> > the PDP-11 of v1 was supported by a year-end fund surplus from there.
>
> Hi Doug,
>
> This seems to clarify something I'm a bit murky on in early Unix/nroff
> history, because I have read (and repeated, in groff's roff(7), the
> claim that revenue from internal AT&T deployments of nroff were a major
> aid to getting the CSRC on its feet hardware-wise.  But that's in some
> tension with the story of Ossanna being able to deliver to the patent
> application typists a new line numbering feature in the (n)roff
> formatter "by tomorrow" if it was only after nroff's success that these
> revenues showed up.
>
> I also seem to remember from the preface to the v3 or v4 manual that the
> CSRC was trying to get itself and its Unix users everywhere away from
> the PDP-11/20 as fast as possibly, because that model didn't have memory
> protection.
>

Yes. V1 and V2 ran on the 11/20 without an MMU, while V3 and later was the
port to the 11/45 with an MMU. I touch on these transitions in my history
of unix
talk.

And I didn't know the connections that Douglas just relayed before my talk.
It
would have made it more interesting to include. Unix has always been about
making it easier to collaborate and collaboration has a multiplier effect.


> I thus have these questions:
>
> What model of PDP-11 was v1 Unix developed and run on at the CSRC?
>
> What model did the CSRC acquire next?  Specifically, which one did
> (n)roff make possible?
>

I'd love to hear this info first hand too. I've delved and discovered what I
think the answers are, but I have no primary sources for them.

Warner


> Regards,
> Branden
>
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