[TUHS] Possible Assembly UNIX Kernel Images (s1-bits cunix/wunix)?

[Briam R via TUHS]

No sir! Any mention is a good mention, I’m just glad to be here amongst such esteemed company! 

— Briam R.
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> On Jan 16, 2026, at 5:29 PM, segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Thank you so much Briam!  I'll be sitting down to look more at the two
> kernels later and will get this merged into v2src as well.  Fittingly I
> have a house call to fix an old WECo phone so have to break from the
> excitement for a few hours.  Do you have a preference on how I credit
> you for this work in the README?
> 
> - Matt G.
> 
>> On Friday, January 16th, 2026 at 14:11, Briam Rodriguez via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Matt,
>> 
>> Saw your post about the v2src restoration project. I took a crack at
>> disassembling the remaining binaries from the s2-bits tape -
>> specifically the bin/ directory utilities.
>> 
>> I've got 26 commands disassembled and formatted to match your existing
>> style conventions:
>> 
>> as, bas, cc, db, dc, ds, du, ed, fc, find, form, ld, maki, mv, nm, od,
>> pr, roff, size, sort, stat, tap, tm, un, wc, who
>> 
>> They're ready as a patch file. Please find it attached. I tried creating
>> a PR on gitlab but it wouldn't let me due to auth issues.
>> 
>> Happy to help with more disassembly work if there are other artifacts
>> worth looking at.
>> 
>> -- Briam R.
>> 
>>> On 1/16/26 5:06 PM, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hello everyone, I've been picking back up on some of my V2/V3 era
>>> reverse engineering efforts, picking through stuff from the Dennis_Tapes
>>> archive, and I came across something I don't think I've seen discussed.
>>> 
>>> On the s1 tape, which we've yoinked a lot of V3 userland sources from,
>>> there are files cunix and wunix. Upon some disassembly and inspection,
>>> I believe these may be assembly UNIX kernels, although I haven't dug
>>> around too much to see what version they match most closely. Here are
>>> some findings that support my suspicions:
>>> 
>>> - Both files begin with a 407 magic number, making them V2 a.out
>>> binaries.
>>> - Both begin with a branch that jumps over a few things then calls a
>>> subroutine. That subroutine matches "copyz" from u3.s in the scanned
>>> V1 kernel description from BTL. Indeed this jump in that kernel is also
>>> to copyz.
>>> 
>>> Of course, this is only the first few bits executed, but I would be
>>> surprised to find such a close match elsewhere in the system. I do this
>>> sort of analysis on old video game code all the time, so I feel pretty
>>> confident in identifying these as possible assembly-era kernels.
>>> 
>>> Anyone dug around in these before? These should be PDP-11/20 kernels as
>>> I'm finding plenty of EAE references, just like the s2-bits V2 binaries.
>>> What I'm hoping to find here are bits that might indicate KS11 support,
>>> what with the recent chit chat about KS11 in the V2 kernel.
>>> 
>>> - Matt G.