[TUHS] Old Unix tapes from University of Nottingham

Thu Apr 16 22:15:15 AEST 2026

Hi Matt & Lars,

At 2026-04-16T11:22:41+0000, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
> On Thursday, April 16th, 2026 at 01:18, Lars Brinkhoff via TUHS
> <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> > 23 magtapes found at University of Notthingham, spanning roughly
> > 1985-1993.  Is there anything of interest?
> > 
> > https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/bagley-nottingham-tapes
> 
> I'd certainly be interested in the V8 tapes being archived.

Ditto.  V8 is represented by an unfortunate gap on the software side.
(Thanks to good luck and being in Australia at the right time, I
acquired a hard copy of the V8 manual, which is interesting reading.)

> I understand the current archives we have are original snapshots from
> a BTL server in the Plan9 days, but it'd be cool to have proper images
> of the distro tapes, for instance, for SimH.

Vigorously agree.

> Other than that, lots of font and Sun stuff there, can't speak to the
> value or how much has already been preserved anywhere.

Sounds like it might be too early for MoOLIT.  I really want to see
the sources for that.

At 2026-04-16T11:32:51+0000, Lars Brinkhoff via TUHS wrote:
> Some backstory.  In the 80s, U of Nottingham decided to set up their
> own printing shop.  They purchased the same type of typesetter Bell
> labs had.

An Autologic APS-5?

> They got a PDP-11 to drive it, and contacted the lab for support.
> Brian Kernigman would regularly vacation in the UK, and often make a
> stop to visit the Nottingham faculty.

A copy of the troff sources from V8 or from DWB 2.0 would be valuable.

To have both would be tremendous.

Much of troff history in the gap between Seventh Edition Unix in 1979 on
one side and and DWB 3.3 (~1993) and Plan 9 (mid-1990s) on the other is
a dark tunnel.[1]  I guess because AT&T was trying to monetize it.

Regards,
Branden

[1] The recovery and scan (by Matt?) of "UNIX 4.0"'s version of CSTR #54
    which appears to be a previously unattested revision made,
    presumably by Kernighan, almost immediately after the device-
    independence changes landed, were a breakthrough in the
    reconstruction of troff history, IMO.

    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2022-06/msg00033.html
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