From ghisolfo.m at gmail.com  Fri Jan  1 04:20:40 2016
From: ghisolfo.m at gmail.com (Michele Ghisolfo)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 19:20:40 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
Message-ID: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>

Hello all!

While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated Excerpts
from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set of
utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote of this
article:

"CDL (v7 pages 60-63)

Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System, it has long
stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy Fraser and
extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles circuits
expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to create
descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards automatically, to
check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to specify
combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays (Chesson
and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit, the 5620 Blit
terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.  UCDS appeared
in only one manual, v7."


I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found references of
this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS and got no
results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET archives.  In
particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were dedicated to it.
Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and "wrap".  I
also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS descendant
in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/

However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could not find
it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it may
be possible to get hold of an older release at least.

Does anyone have any information?

Thank you in advance!

    --- Michele


From wkt at tuhs.org  Fri Jan  1 07:14:32 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 07:14:32 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Old newsletters
Message-ID: <20151231211432.GA27092@minnie.tuhs.org>

I was going through the old AUUG newsletters at
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/
looking for wiki material. They are a mine of information!

I've sent an e-mail off to the UKUUG folk to see if they have any
on-line newsletters. Does anybody know what happened to EUUG, especialy
if any of their newsletters have been digitised?

And Usenix ;login, are any of their old newsletters available?
If not, who can I lobby to get this done? There's only 3 1/2 years
left before the 50th anniversary!

Cheers, Warren


From clemc at ccc.com  Fri Jan  1 08:52:34 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:52:34 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>

Funny you should ask....

I had the last known virgin copy of that UCDS a few years ago, which we
managed to save.  Dennis declared it part of V7 (just a little late being
distributed), which we promptly sent to Warren, who has the source in his
archives.    Note it uses a tektronix 40xx terminal as the native screen.
It's been years since I used it, but I may be able to answer a few
questions.  I suspect the biggest issue with trying to use with xterm
emulation is that lack of the two wheels that the tek terminals had.

Good luck,
Clem

On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello all!
>
> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated
> Excerpts
> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set of
> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote of this
> article:
>
> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
>
> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System, it
> has long
> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy Fraser
> and
> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles
> circuits
> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to create
> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards automatically,
> to
> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to specify
> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays
> (Chesson
> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit, the
> 5620 Blit
> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.  UCDS
> appeared
> in only one manual, v7."
>
>
> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found references
> of
> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS and
> got no
> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET
> archives.  In
> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were dedicated to
> it.
> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and
> "wrap".  I
> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS
> descendant
> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
>
> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
>
> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could not
> find
> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it may
> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
>
> Does anyone have any information?
>
> Thank you in advance!
>
>     --- Michele
>
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From wkt at tuhs.org  Fri Jan  1 09:13:43 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Fri, 01 Jan 2016 09:13:43 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <AF73280B-EB8B-41D9-9C8B-AE119C3C1CEA@tuhs.org>

Ah, it's in the archive at http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Circuit_Design/

Cheers, Warren

On 1 January 2016 8:52:34 am AEST, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>Funny you should ask....
>
>I had the last known virgin copy of that UCDS a few years ago, which we
>managed to save.  Dennis declared it part of V7 (just a little late
>being
>distributed), which we promptly sent to Warren, who has the source in
>his
>archives.    Note it uses a tektronix 40xx terminal as the native
>screen.
>It's been years since I used it, but I may be able to answer a few
>questions.  I suspect the biggest issue with trying to use with xterm
>emulation is that lack of the two wheels that the tek terminals had.
>
>Good luck,
>Clem
>
>On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michele Ghisolfo
><ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Hello all!
>>
>> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated
>> Excerpts
>> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set
>of
>> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote
>of this
>> article:
>>
>> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
>>
>> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System,
>it
>> has long
>> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy
>Fraser
>> and
>> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles
>> circuits
>> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to
>create
>> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards
>automatically,
>> to
>> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to
>specify
>> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays
>> (Chesson
>> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit,
>the
>> 5620 Blit
>> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built. 
>UCDS
>> appeared
>> in only one manual, v7."
>>
>>
>> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found
>references
>> of
>> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS
>and
>> got no
>> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET
>> archives.  In
>> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were
>dedicated to
>> it.
>> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and
>> "wrap".  I
>> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS
>> descendant
>> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
>>
>> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
>>
>> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could
>not
>> find
>> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it
>may
>> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
>>
>> Does anyone have any information?
>>
>> Thank you in advance!
>>
>>     --- Michele
>>

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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From lm at mcvoy.com  Fri Jan  1 09:28:59 2016
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 15:28:59 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20151231232859.GB8120@mcvoy.com>

Any chance this was code that turned into the Ousterhout stuff, I think it
was called spice?

On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 07:20:40PM +0100, Michele Ghisolfo wrote:
> Hello all!
> 
> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated Excerpts
> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set of
> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote of this
> article:
> 
> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
> 
> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System, it has long
> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy Fraser and
> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles circuits
> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to create
> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards automatically, to
> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to specify
> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays (Chesson
> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit, the 5620 Blit
> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.  UCDS appeared
> in only one manual, v7."
> 
> 
> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found references of
> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS and got no
> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET archives.  In
> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were dedicated to it.
> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and "wrap".  I
> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS descendant
> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
> 
> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
> 
> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could not find
> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it may
> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
> 
> Does anyone have any information?
> 
> Thank you in advance!
> 
>     --- Michele

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 


From reed at reedmedia.net  Fri Jan  1 09:58:41 2016
From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:58:41 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <20151231232859.GB8120@mcvoy.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <20151231232859.GB8120@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1512311751260.3085@t1.m.reedmedia.net>

On Thu, 31 Dec 2015, Larry McVoy wrote:

> Any chance this was code that turned into the Ousterhout stuff, I think it
> was called spice?

While I am not involved with it at all, I did interview a couple 
developers toward my BSD history book. (The following is from my 3BSD 
"Welcome to Virtual Vax/UNIX" chapter.)

\textsc{Spice} 2\index{SPICE}, the Simulation Program with Integrated 
Circuit Emphasis, was another program that benefited from the VAX work. 
This Fortran program predicted the electrical characteristics of an 
integrated circuit.  Spearheaded by professor Donald O. 
Pederson\index{Pederson, Donald O.}, who helped establish a fabrication 
lab --- the first integrated circuit fabrication facility at any 
university\cite{donpederson2005} --- in the 1960's, it was developed by 
the integrated circuits group of the Electronics Research Laboratory and 
the Electrical Engineering department [at University of California at 
Berkeley] in the mid 1970's.

To many it is considered the first significant open source program.
The program was available free of charge, for
not-for-profit uses to any interested party.
% above CITE archives/1970s/3bsd/usr/src/cmd/spice/roots.f
Its source code was distributed for the cost of writing the 
tape and copying the documentation, so it was decided to 
include it on the BSD distribution tape as well.\cite{tom-quarles-1}

\textsc{Spice} was originally developed to run as a batch program in 
punched-card form on the university's CDC 6400 system outputting to a 
132-column line printer, but its default allocation of 400,000 double 
precision numbers in an array wouldn't work with the PDP-11.  It was 
later ported to many operating systems and machines that had adequate 
memory and floating point capabilities, such as VMS and Unix on the 
VAX.\cite{tom-quarles-1}

The program shipped with BSD provided general-purpose circuit
simulation for nonlinear DC, nonlinear transient, and linear AC
analyses.  Circuits could contain resistors, capacitors, inductors,
mutual inductors, independent voltage and current sources, four
types of dependent sources, transmission lines, and the four most
common semiconductor devices: diodes, bjts, jfets, and
mosfets.\cite{spice-vax-guide-1979}
% ALSO same in archives/1970s/3bsd/usr/man/man1/spice.1

Virtually every electronic chip --- even today --- used \textsc{Spice} 
or one of its derivatives at critical stages during its
design.\cite{donpederson2005} In fact, its name has become
a verb in the industry: ``let's \textsc{Spice} that circuit
and see if it works!''



From clemc at ccc.com  Fri Jan  1 14:04:04 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 23:04:04 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1512311751260.3085@t1.m.reedmedia.net>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <20151231232859.GB8120@mcvoy.com>
 <alpine.NEB.2.11.1512311751260.3085@t1.m.reedmedia.net>
Message-ID: <283AFE10-369E-4906-AB0F-52F28E81BA3D@ccc.com>

SPICE is very different than UCSD.    The later is for schematic capture and board design - full components like IC packages.   Think of it's most famous use - the boards that Ken created for the chess machine - Belle.  The former is for low level circuit design - transistor level of a chip.  For instance the standard SPICE benchmark is the internals of the 741 op-amp or the 555 timer. 



BTW at the time, Tom was my housemate. Don Pederson (aka dop) was my second reader as he was for Tom. My thesis was an Array processor for BSD used to run TQ's thesis - SPICE3 (we were both students of Richard Newton who had been one of dop's students years before) 

Anyway SPICE1 was actually started in the late 1960's by dop. Ellis Cohen wrote SPICE2 for the CDC 6400 in the mid 70's, added some new device models and created really novel bit of self modifying Fortran the compiled the inner loop.  

You are correct it was really the first widely available FOSS code - an idea that you correctly note dop created.  He used to say he went in the back door to all the firms in the Bay Area and had there secrets because he helped them and was not selling his research.  If we took money then we would be like any other salesman. 

For SPICE3, Tom pulled the system into modules and made it so different models could be added, made it callable from other tools and rewrote it into C from Fortran. 

It's interesting both versions are still generally available and have different followings. 


In the end spice is basically a program that solves systems of simultaneous differential equations with many many variables using linear algebra.  Very slick system. 

Clem 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 31, 2015, at 6:58 PM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed at reedmedia.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015, Larry McVoy wrote:
>> 
>> Any chance this was code that turned into the Ousterhout stuff, I think it
>> was called spice?
> 
> While I am not involved with it at all, I did interview a couple 
> developers toward my BSD history book. (The following is from my 3BSD 
> "Welcome to Virtual Vax/UNIX" chapter.)
> 
> \textsc{Spice} 2\index{SPICE}, the Simulation Program with Integrated 
> Circuit Emphasis, was another program that benefited from the VAX work. 
> This Fortran program predicted the electrical characteristics of an 
> integrated circuit.  Spearheaded by professor Donald O. 
> Pederson\index{Pederson, Donald O.}, who helped establish a fabrication 
> lab --- the first integrated circuit fabrication facility at any 
> university\cite{donpederson2005} --- in the 1960's, it was developed by 
> the integrated circuits group of the Electronics Research Laboratory and 
> the Electrical Engineering department [at University of California at 
> Berkeley] in the mid 1970's.
> 
> To many it is considered the first significant open source program.
> The program was available free of charge, for
> not-for-profit uses to any interested party.
> % above CITE archives/1970s/3bsd/usr/src/cmd/spice/roots.f
> Its source code was distributed for the cost of writing the 
> tape and copying the documentation, so it was decided to 
> include it on the BSD distribution tape as well.\cite{tom-quarles-1}
> 
> \textsc{Spice} was originally developed to run as a batch program in 
> punched-card form on the university's CDC 6400 system outputting to a 
> 132-column line printer, but its default allocation of 400,000 double 
> precision numbers in an array wouldn't work with the PDP-11.  It was 
> later ported to many operating systems and machines that had adequate 
> memory and floating point capabilities, such as VMS and Unix on the 
> VAX.\cite{tom-quarles-1}
> 
> The program shipped with BSD provided general-purpose circuit
> simulation for nonlinear DC, nonlinear transient, and linear AC
> analyses.  Circuits could contain resistors, capacitors, inductors,
> mutual inductors, independent voltage and current sources, four
> types of dependent sources, transmission lines, and the four most
> common semiconductor devices: diodes, bjts, jfets, and
> mosfets.\cite{spice-vax-guide-1979}
> % ALSO same in archives/1970s/3bsd/usr/man/man1/spice.1
> 
> Virtually every electronic chip --- even today --- used \textsc{Spice} 
> or one of its derivatives at critical stages during its
> design.\cite{donpederson2005} In fact, its name has become
> a verb in the industry: ``let's \textsc{Spice} that circuit
> and see if it works!''
> 


From ghisolfo.m at gmail.com  Fri Jan  1 23:58:57 2016
From: ghisolfo.m at gmail.com (Michele Ghisolfo)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 14:58:57 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <AF73280B-EB8B-41D9-9C8B-AE119C3C1CEA@tuhs.org>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <AF73280B-EB8B-41D9-9C8B-AE119C3C1CEA@tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAOjiD+UT1UUmKqKwoF+vfaQovvRyfstUCv9ZtOb6fD3DKGptSQ@mail.gmail.com>

Thank you!  I think I'll tamper with it a bit, when I have time.  With
regards to
the lack of wheel emulation in xterm, I think it wouldn't be too difficult to
write a terminal emulator with the set of tek functions and codes used
by "draw".

I'll try as soon as possible!

2016-01-01 0:13 GMT+01:00 Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>:
> Ah, it's in the archive at
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Circuit_Design/
>
> Cheers, Warren
>
>
> On 1 January 2016 8:52:34 am AEST, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>> Funny you should ask....
>>
>> I had the last known virgin copy of that UCDS a few years ago, which we
>> managed to save.  Dennis declared it part of V7 (just a little late being
>> distributed), which we promptly sent to Warren, who has the source in his
>> archives.    Note it uses a tektronix 40xx terminal as the native screen.
>> It's been years since I used it, but I may be able to answer a few
>> questions.  I suspect the biggest issue with trying to use with xterm
>> emulation is that lack of the two wheels that the tek terminals had.
>>
>> Good luck,
>> Clem
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello all!
>>>
>>> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated
>>> Excerpts
>>> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set of
>>> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote of
>>> this
>>> article:
>>>
>>> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
>>>
>>> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System, it
>>> has long
>>> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy Fraser
>>> and
>>> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles
>>> circuits
>>> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to
>>> create
>>> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards automatically,
>>> to
>>> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to specify
>>> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays
>>> (Chesson
>>> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit, the
>>> 5620 Blit
>>> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.  UCDS
>>> appeared
>>> in only one manual, v7."
>>>
>>>
>>> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found references
>>> of
>>> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS and
>>> got no
>>> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET
>>> archives.  In
>>> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were dedicated
>>> to it.
>>> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and
>>> "wrap".  I
>>> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS
>>> descendant
>>> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
>>>
>>> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
>>>
>>> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could not
>>> find
>>> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it may
>>> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have any information?
>>>
>>> Thank you in advance!
>>>
>>>     --- Michele
>>
>>
>
> --
> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.


From clemc at ccc.com  Sat Jan  2 00:31:16 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 09:31:16 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <CAOjiD+UT1UUmKqKwoF+vfaQovvRyfstUCv9ZtOb6fD3DKGptSQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <AF73280B-EB8B-41D9-9C8B-AE119C3C1CEA@tuhs.org>
 <CAOjiD+UT1UUmKqKwoF+vfaQovvRyfstUCv9ZtOb6fD3DKGptSQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <FBA61FFF-084A-4AF9-A846-54333928F1DE@ccc.com>

Xterm can emulate a Tek terminal. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 1, 2016, at 8:58 AM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thank you!  I think I'll tamper with it a bit, when I have time.  With
> regards to
> the lack of wheel emulation in xterm, I think it wouldn't be too difficult to
> write a terminal emulator with the set of tek functions and codes used
> by "draw".
> 
> I'll try as soon as possible!
> 
> 2016-01-01 0:13 GMT+01:00 Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>:
>> Ah, it's in the archive at
>> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Circuit_Design/
>> 
>> Cheers, Warren
>> 
>> 
>>> On 1 January 2016 8:52:34 am AEST, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Funny you should ask....
>>> 
>>> I had the last known virgin copy of that UCDS a few years ago, which we
>>> managed to save.  Dennis declared it part of V7 (just a little late being
>>> distributed), which we promptly sent to Warren, who has the source in his
>>> archives.    Note it uses a tektronix 40xx terminal as the native screen.
>>> It's been years since I used it, but I may be able to answer a few
>>> questions.  I suspect the biggest issue with trying to use with xterm
>>> emulation is that lack of the two wheels that the tek terminals had.
>>> 
>>> Good luck,
>>> Clem
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Hello all!
>>>> 
>>>> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated
>>>> Excerpts
>>>> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set of
>>>> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote of
>>>> this
>>>> article:
>>>> 
>>>> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
>>>> 
>>>> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System, it
>>>> has long
>>>> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy Fraser
>>>> and
>>>> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles
>>>> circuits
>>>> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to
>>>> create
>>>> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards automatically,
>>>> to
>>>> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to specify
>>>> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays
>>>> (Chesson
>>>> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit, the
>>>> 5620 Blit
>>>> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.  UCDS
>>>> appeared
>>>> in only one manual, v7."
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found references
>>>> of
>>>> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS and
>>>> got no
>>>> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET
>>>> archives.  In
>>>> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were dedicated
>>>> to it.
>>>> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and
>>>> "wrap".  I
>>>> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS
>>>> descendant
>>>> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
>>>> 
>>>> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
>>>> 
>>>> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could not
>>>> find
>>>> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it may
>>>> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
>>>> 
>>>> Does anyone have any information?
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you in advance!
>>>> 
>>>>    --- Michele
>> 
>> --
>> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.


From ghisolfo.m at gmail.com  Sat Jan  2 01:45:20 2016
From: ghisolfo.m at gmail.com (Michele Ghisolfo)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 16:45:20 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <FBA61FFF-084A-4AF9-A846-54333928F1DE@ccc.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <AF73280B-EB8B-41D9-9C8B-AE119C3C1CEA@tuhs.org>
 <CAOjiD+UT1UUmKqKwoF+vfaQovvRyfstUCv9ZtOb6fD3DKGptSQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <FBA61FFF-084A-4AF9-A846-54333928F1DE@ccc.com>
Message-ID: <CAOjiD+Un7DSpC5BPDkq3Yoi8bLhJy9rOuGO-y6onxLtUuW7JWQ@mail.gmail.com>

Yes, but earlier you pointed out that it does not emulates two wheels
of the terminal.  Since I have never used "draw" nor any Tektronix
terminal I don't know what was the purpose of the wheels and how they
are used by the program.  So I thought that, if "draw" heavily relies
on such feature, xterm might not suffice.

2016-01-01 15:31 GMT+01:00 Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com>:
> Xterm can emulate a Tek terminal.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Jan 1, 2016, at 8:58 AM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Thank you!  I think I'll tamper with it a bit, when I have time.  With
>> regards to
>> the lack of wheel emulation in xterm, I think it wouldn't be too difficult to
>> write a terminal emulator with the set of tek functions and codes used
>> by "draw".
>>
>> I'll try as soon as possible!
>>
>> 2016-01-01 0:13 GMT+01:00 Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>:
>>> Ah, it's in the archive at
>>> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Circuit_Design/
>>>
>>> Cheers, Warren
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 1 January 2016 8:52:34 am AEST, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Funny you should ask....
>>>>
>>>> I had the last known virgin copy of that UCDS a few years ago, which we
>>>> managed to save.  Dennis declared it part of V7 (just a little late being
>>>> distributed), which we promptly sent to Warren, who has the source in his
>>>> archives.    Note it uses a tektronix 40xx terminal as the native screen.
>>>> It's been years since I used it, but I may be able to answer a few
>>>> questions.  I suspect the biggest issue with trying to use with xterm
>>>> emulation is that lack of the two wheels that the tek terminals had.
>>>>
>>>> Good luck,
>>>> Clem
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hello all!
>>>>>
>>>>> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated
>>>>> Excerpts
>>>>> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set of
>>>>> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote of
>>>>> this
>>>>> article:
>>>>>
>>>>> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
>>>>>
>>>>> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System, it
>>>>> has long
>>>>> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy Fraser
>>>>> and
>>>>> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles
>>>>> circuits
>>>>> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to
>>>>> create
>>>>> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards automatically,
>>>>> to
>>>>> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to specify
>>>>> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays
>>>>> (Chesson
>>>>> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit, the
>>>>> 5620 Blit
>>>>> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.  UCDS
>>>>> appeared
>>>>> in only one manual, v7."
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found references
>>>>> of
>>>>> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS and
>>>>> got no
>>>>> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET
>>>>> archives.  In
>>>>> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were dedicated
>>>>> to it.
>>>>> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and
>>>>> "wrap".  I
>>>>> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS
>>>>> descendant
>>>>> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
>>>>>
>>>>> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could not
>>>>> find
>>>>> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it may
>>>>> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone have any information?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you in advance!
>>>>>
>>>>>    --- Michele
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.


From ghisolfo.m at gmail.com  Sat Jan  2 03:42:06 2016
From: ghisolfo.m at gmail.com (Michele Ghisolfo)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 18:42:06 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <CAOjiD+Un7DSpC5BPDkq3Yoi8bLhJy9rOuGO-y6onxLtUuW7JWQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <AF73280B-EB8B-41D9-9C8B-AE119C3C1CEA@tuhs.org>
 <CAOjiD+UT1UUmKqKwoF+vfaQovvRyfstUCv9ZtOb6fD3DKGptSQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <FBA61FFF-084A-4AF9-A846-54333928F1DE@ccc.com>
 <CAOjiD+Un7DSpC5BPDkq3Yoi8bLhJy9rOuGO-y6onxLtUuW7JWQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAOjiD+VocP6Ye+toUJsVra19tasGNHPUgQVb9-Nd4ueBhYqXNA@mail.gmail.com>

It compiled fine in 4.2BSD (inside simh).  I telnetted in with an
xterm in Tektronix mode and draw works like a charm.  I even got the
xterm to graphically display some logic gates.  There's only some
minor fiddling with environment variables to be done.



2016-01-01 16:45 GMT+01:00 Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>:
> Yes, but earlier you pointed out that it does not emulates two wheels
> of the terminal.  Since I have never used "draw" nor any Tektronix
> terminal I don't know what was the purpose of the wheels and how they
> are used by the program.  So I thought that, if "draw" heavily relies
> on such feature, xterm might not suffice.
>
> 2016-01-01 15:31 GMT+01:00 Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com>:
>> Xterm can emulate a Tek terminal.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Jan 1, 2016, at 8:58 AM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thank you!  I think I'll tamper with it a bit, when I have time.  With
>>> regards to
>>> the lack of wheel emulation in xterm, I think it wouldn't be too difficult to
>>> write a terminal emulator with the set of tek functions and codes used
>>> by "draw".
>>>
>>> I'll try as soon as possible!
>>>
>>> 2016-01-01 0:13 GMT+01:00 Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>:
>>>> Ah, it's in the archive at
>>>> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Circuit_Design/
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Warren
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 1 January 2016 8:52:34 am AEST, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Funny you should ask....
>>>>>
>>>>> I had the last known virgin copy of that UCDS a few years ago, which we
>>>>> managed to save.  Dennis declared it part of V7 (just a little late being
>>>>> distributed), which we promptly sent to Warren, who has the source in his
>>>>> archives.    Note it uses a tektronix 40xx terminal as the native screen.
>>>>> It's been years since I used it, but I may be able to answer a few
>>>>> questions.  I suspect the biggest issue with trying to use with xterm
>>>>> emulation is that lack of the two wheels that the tek terminals had.
>>>>>
>>>>> Good luck,
>>>>> Clem
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hello all!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated
>>>>>> Excerpts
>>>>>> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a set of
>>>>>> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote of
>>>>>> this
>>>>>> article:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design System, it
>>>>>> has long
>>>>>> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy Fraser
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles
>>>>>> circuits
>>>>>> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to
>>>>>> create
>>>>>> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards automatically,
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to specify
>>>>>> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays
>>>>>> (Chesson
>>>>>> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit, the
>>>>>> 5620 Blit
>>>>>> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.  UCDS
>>>>>> appeared
>>>>>> in only one manual, v7."
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found references
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from TUHS and
>>>>>> got no
>>>>>> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET
>>>>>> archives.  In
>>>>>> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were dedicated
>>>>>> to it.
>>>>>> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and
>>>>>> "wrap".  I
>>>>>> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS
>>>>>> descendant
>>>>>> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could not
>>>>>> find
>>>>>> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope it may
>>>>>> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does anyone have any information?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thank you in advance!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    --- Michele
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.


From clemc at ccc.com  Sat Jan  2 05:57:20 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 14:57:20 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System
In-Reply-To: <CAOjiD+VocP6Ye+toUJsVra19tasGNHPUgQVb9-Nd4ueBhYqXNA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAOjiD+UfS5ncQxXCveHNboUC5rHjfAv0D+FVPqOXJmOiF6z+Ag@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2P0B5qOEv=P=65bxahor=8B7WVdnMwj5-4qrRyzaxRL+Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <AF73280B-EB8B-41D9-9C8B-AE119C3C1CEA@tuhs.org>
 <CAOjiD+UT1UUmKqKwoF+vfaQovvRyfstUCv9ZtOb6fD3DKGptSQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <FBA61FFF-084A-4AF9-A846-54333928F1DE@ccc.com>
 <CAOjiD+Un7DSpC5BPDkq3Yoi8bLhJy9rOuGO-y6onxLtUuW7JWQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAOjiD+VocP6Ye+toUJsVra19tasGNHPUgQVb9-Nd4ueBhYqXNA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MJV9-qC=Fwz8bPKNP--6fsmaa5egvH3g8ZSAKT+NfoLg@mail.gmail.com>

That makes sense.   That version should have had my changes and should have
been pretty close to that version that was ever released from BTL.  I had
ported it @ Tek to the next generation 4Yxx terminal,.  At the time time, I
ensured it ran on 4.1[ABC] which ever version was current from Evans at the
time.  (those systems were the "beta" system for 4.2BSD).   When I was
done, I had sent the changes back to Ted Kowalski , Ken et al and they had
sent me the final tape -- which is why I had a copy of it in my archives.

I'm not sure if its the in makefile, of that version, but I did have
makefiles for the research Magnolia system.   We used some of USCD to it
and of course brought it up on it when we were done.   I'm not so sure
those deltas went back, they might have.   The one thing that UCSD did not
have was a good board layout program (it creates net-lists), we imported
something I had been familiar with from CMU, who's name I can remember.

BTW:  As part of some other experiments, Tek Labs also had a Lilith system
from CERN, which also had some circuit tools written in Pascal/Modula; but
I've forgotten if we used any of them in the design stream for Magnolia
before it was baked.   IIRC one or two those tools were ported to Magnolia
later when the Modula compiler was brought up by Larry Morandi [I think].
There was a strong anti-C run in many parts of the Tek in those days (there
was by one count in 1980 over 14 different "Tek Pascal's").    So the Labs
folks were always looking for tools that product groups would consider,
since the product teams were so Pascal centric.

On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 12:42 PM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
wrote:

> It compiled fine in 4.2BSD (inside simh).  I telnetted in with an
> xterm in Tektronix mode and draw works like a charm.  I even got the
> xterm to graphically display some logic gates.  There's only some
> minor fiddling with environment variables to be done.
>
>
>
> 2016-01-01 16:45 GMT+01:00 Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>:
> > Yes, but earlier you pointed out that it does not emulates two wheels
> > of the terminal.  Since I have never used "draw" nor any Tektronix
> > terminal I don't know what was the purpose of the wheels and how they
> > are used by the program.  So I thought that, if "draw" heavily relies
> > on such feature, xterm might not suffice.
> >
> > 2016-01-01 15:31 GMT+01:00 Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com>:
> >> Xterm can emulate a Tek terminal.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >>> On Jan 1, 2016, at 8:58 AM, Michele Ghisolfo <ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Thank you!  I think I'll tamper with it a bit, when I have time.  With
> >>> regards to
> >>> the lack of wheel emulation in xterm, I think it wouldn't be too
> difficult to
> >>> write a terminal emulator with the set of tek functions and codes used
> >>> by "draw".
> >>>
> >>> I'll try as soon as possible!
> >>>
> >>> 2016-01-01 0:13 GMT+01:00 Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>:
> >>>> Ah, it's in the archive at
> >>>> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Circuit_Design/
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers, Warren
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On 1 January 2016 8:52:34 am AEST, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Funny you should ask....
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I had the last known virgin copy of that UCDS a few years ago, which
> we
> >>>>> managed to save.  Dennis declared it part of V7 (just a little late
> being
> >>>>> distributed), which we promptly sent to Warren, who has the source
> in his
> >>>>> archives.    Note it uses a tektronix 40xx terminal as the native
> screen.
> >>>>> It's been years since I used it, but I may be able to answer a few
> >>>>> questions.  I suspect the biggest issue with trying to use with xterm
> >>>>> emulation is that lack of the two wheels that the tek terminals had.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Good luck,
> >>>>> Clem
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Michele Ghisolfo <
> ghisolfo.m at gmail.com>
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Hello all!
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> While I was reading the article "A Research UNIX Reader:  Annotated
> >>>>>> Excerpts
> >>>>>> from the Programmer's Manual" from Douglas McIlroy, I learnt of a
> set of
> >>>>>> utilities for designing electronic circuits.  Here is a brief quote
> of
> >>>>>> this
> >>>>>> article:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> "CDL (v7 pages 60-63)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Although most users do not encounter the UNIX Circuit Design
> System, it
> >>>>>> has long
> >>>>>> stood as an important application in the lab.  Originated by Sandy
> Fraser
> >>>>>> and
> >>>>>> extended by Steve Bourne, Joe Condon, and Andrew Hume, UCDS handles
> >>>>>> circuits
> >>>>>> expressed in a common design language, cdl.  It includes programs to
> >>>>>> create
> >>>>>> descriptions using interactive graphics, to lay out boards
> automatically,
> >>>>>> to
> >>>>>> check circuits for consistency, to guide wire-wrap machines, to
> specify
> >>>>>> combinational circuits and optimize them for programmed logic arrays
> >>>>>> (Chesson
> >>>>>> and Thompson).  Without UCDS, significant inventions like Datakit,
> the
> >>>>>> 5620 Blit
> >>>>>> terminal, or the Belle chess machine would never have been built.
> UCDS
> >>>>>> appeared
> >>>>>> in only one manual, v7."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I looked it up on the 7th Edition's Manual and I haven't found
> references
> >>>>>> of
> >>>>>> this system.  I also searched a v7 system image downloaded from
> TUHS and
> >>>>>> got no
> >>>>>> results.  However I got some references of this system in USENET
> >>>>>> archives.  In
> >>>>>> particular, two hierarchies, net.draw and after net.ucds were
> dedicated
> >>>>>> to it.
> >>>>>> Apparently two of the binaries of the system were called "draw" and
> >>>>>> "wrap".  I
> >>>>>> also found a manual of a similar system which I suppose is the UCDS
> >>>>>> descendant
> >>>>>> in the 1st Edition of Plan 9.  This is the link of the document:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/1st_edition/cda/
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> However that edition of Plan 9 is not publicly released and I could
> not
> >>>>>> find
> >>>>>> it in following editions.  But since v7 Unix is available, I hope
> it may
> >>>>>> be possible to get hold of an older release at least.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Does anyone have any information?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Thank you in advance!
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>    --- Michele
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>
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From beebe at math.utah.edu  Sun Jan  3 04:35:08 2016
From: beebe at math.utah.edu (Nelson H. F. Beebe)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 11:35:08 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System [and FOSS]
Message-ID: <CMM.0.95.0.1451759708.beebe@gamma.math.utah.edu>

Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 23:04:04 -0500
about SPICE:

>> ...
>> Anyway SPICE1 was actually started in the late 1960's by dop [Don
>> Pederson]. Ellis Cohen wrote SPICE2 for the CDC 6400 in the mid 70's,
>> added some new device models and created really novel bit of self
>> modifying Fortran the compiled the inner loop.
>>
>> You are correct it was really the first widely available FOSS code -
>> an idea that you correctly note dop created.
>> ...

SPICE wasn't the only such package, or even the earliest!  Still, I'll
be grateful to list readers for pointers off-list (or on) to early
publications about SPICE that I can add to the bibliography archives.

The EISPACK system, which predated LINPACK, and both of which led to
the current LAPACK, and descendants like CLAPACK and ScaLAPACK, has an
older vintage.  It began with Algol routines published in the
German/English journal Numerische Mathematik

	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/nummath.bib
	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/nummath2000.bib
	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/nummath2010.bib

[change .bib to .html for a similar view with live hyperlinks]

The first such routine may have been that in entry Martin:1965:SDPa in
nummath.bib, which appeared in Num. Math. 79(5) 355--361 (October
1965) doi:10.1007/BF01436248.  That journal did not then record
"received" dates, so the best that I can do for now is to claim
"October 1965" as the start of published code for free and open source
software in the area of numerical analysis.

Publication of related algorithms continued for 6 years, and then they
were collected in the famous HACLA (Handbook for Automatic
Computation: Linear Algebra) volume in 1971 (ISBN 0-387-05414-6).

Because Algol was little used in the USA, a project was begun in that
country to translate the Algol code to Fortran.  That project was
called NATS, which originally stood for the groups at (read their
names vertically)

	Northwestern University
	Argonne National Laboratory
	Texas, University of (at Austin)
	Stanford

but as more groups joined in the effort, and EISPACK begat LINPACK,
NATS was changed to mean National Activity to Test Software.

The EISPACK book appeared in two editions in 1976 (ISBN 0-387-06710-8)
and 1977 (0-387-08254-9), volumes 6 and 51, respectively of Springer's
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (now around 9000 published volumes).

The LINPACK book appeared in 1979 (ISBN 0-89871-172-X).

The LAPACK book has three editions, in 1992 (ISBN 0-89871-294-7), 1995
(ISBN 0-89871-345-5), and 1999 (ISBN 0-89871-447-8).  In between them,
the ScaLAPACK book appeared in 1997 (ISBN 0-89871-400-1).

There were several other packages described in the 1984 book

	Sources and Development of Mathematical Software
	ISBN 0-13-823501-5

(entry Cowell:1984:SDM), including FUNPACK, MINPACK, IMSL, SLATEC,
Boeing, AT&T PORT, and NAG.  Some are free, and others are commercial.

The Algol code from Numerische Mathematik, like the ACM Collected
Algorithms, the Applied Statistics algorithms, and the Transactions on
Mathematical Software algorithms, was intended to be freely available
to anyone for any purpose, and no license of any kind was claimed for
it.  That tradition continues with all of its descendants in the *PACK
family.

I have old archives of source code for EISPACK and LINPACK, but
comment documentation in EISPACK does not include revision dates, just
references to page numbers in the HACLA volume from 1971, and rarely,
to journal articles from 1968, 1970 and 1973.  My filesystem dates,
alas, only reflect the copying from distribution tape to disk, and my
oldest file date for EISPACK is 20-Apr-1981.

The LINPACK comments appear be almost entirely without dates: I found
only one:

	snrm2.for:11:C           C.L.LAWSON, 1978 JAN 08

The bibliography on the GNU Project at

	http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/gnu.bib

records most of the books mentioned above, and it also contains as its
first entry, Galler:1960:LEC, a letter published in the April 1960
issue of Communications of the ACM from Bernie Galler, with this
field:

  remark =       "From the letter: ``\ldots{} it is clear that what is
                 being charged for is the development of the program,
                 and while I am particularly unhappy that it comes from
                 a university, I believe it is damaging to the whole
                 profession. There isn't a 704 installation that hasn't
                 directly benefited from the free exchange of programs
                 made possible by the distribution facilities of
                 SHARE. If we start to sell our programs, this will set
                 very undesirable precedents.''",

That is so far the earliest reference that I have found for the notion
that software should be free, long before Richard Stallman, Eric
Raymond, Linus Torvalds, and others became such well-known proponents
of that idea, and we had large and profitable companies like Red Hat
and SUSE devoted to supporting, for a fee, such software.

I was a graduate student in quantum chemistry at the Quantum Theory
Project (QTP) at the University of Florida in Gainesville in the late
1960s and early 1970s, and we had a general practice of sharing of
code among various university research groups, most notably through
the Quantum Chemistry Program Exchange (QCPE) hosted at the University
of Indiana in Bloomington, IN.

A search through my bibliography archives found my earliest recording,
a 6-Apr-1971 publication (by me), with mention of QCPE.  Library
searches found a catalog entry for QCPE Catalog volume 19 (1987), so
perhaps volume 1 appeared in 1968.  But no --- I just found in its
home institution's library catalog

	http://www.iucat.iu.edu/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_field=all_fields&q=QCPE&highlight=n

an entry dated 1963, with details

	Publishing history: 1 (Apr. 1963)- Ceased with 71 (Nov. 1980).

Other widely-distributed programs of that time included Enrico
Clementi's IBM Research group's IBMOL (about 1965), and others named
MOLECULE (pre-1975), POLYATOM (1963), and Gaussian (1970).

The POLYATOM year appears to be the earliest of those: see the paper
by Michael Barnett at

	http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.35.571

It appears in a July 1963 journal issue, again without a "received"
date.  It begins:

	A system of programs is being written by Dr.  Malcolm
	C. Harrison, Dr. Jules W. Moskowitz, Dr. Brian T. Sutcliffe,
	D. E. Ellis, and R. S. Pitzer, to perform nonempirical
	calculations for small molecules.

I have met, or been in the same group as (Don Ellis), most of those,
and it is worth noting their affiliations to emphasize the broad
character of that work:

	Malcolm		Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, NY
	Jules		New York University, NY
	Brian		York University, York, UK
	Don		University of Florida (later, Northwestern University)
	Russ		Harvard, Cambridge, MA (later, Ohio State University)
	Michael		MIT, Cambridge, MA and various UK sites in academia and industry
			(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_P._Barnett)

On the subject of the Gaussian program, developed at Carnegie-Mellon
University, see the two sites

	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_%28software%29
	http://www.bannedbygaussian.org/

The second decries the loss of openness of Gaussian, which remains a
widely-used commercial product.

There is also a book on the subject of mathematics whose use is
encumbered by patents and copyrights:

	Ben Klemens
	Ma$+$h you can't use: patents, copyright, and software
	ISBN 0-8157-4942-2

(entry Klemens:2006:MYC in http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib)

----------------------------------------

P.S. A final sad personal note on computing history:

When our DEC-20/60 (Arpanet node UTAH-SCIENCE, later science.utah.edu
and still later, math.utah.edu) was retired on 31-Oct-1990 (its
predecessor, a DEC-20/40 began operating in March 1978) we were faced
with several cabinets full of 9-track tapes (about 25MB each), several
RP06 (200MB) removable disks (for a picture and description, see

	 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/rp06.html

) and the contents of three washing-machine sized RP07 (600MB) disks,
and were moving to a new machine room in an adjacent building.

We were able to copy over the RP0[67] disk contents, and I still have
them online on my desktop, but the tapes were financially infeasible
for us to copy to disk on the new VAX 8600 server, and we were leaving
9-track tape technology behind.  There were probably 500 to 1000 of
those tapes, and all that we could do was fill a dumpster with them,
because we had no place to store the physical volumes at the new site,
and no money for their bits.  I have deeply regretted that loss of 25
years of my, and our, early computing history ever since.

Computers were for far too long crippled by too little memory and too
little permanent storage, and only post-2000 has that situation been
alleviated with radical reductions in storage costs per byte of data.
My new desktop 8TB drive is 3.6 million times cheaper per byte than an
RP06 drive was.  Had we been able to foresee that dramatic growth in
capacity, we could have archived those tapes in an off-campus
warehouse for later (attempted) data retrieval.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.P.S. Besides VAX VMS, our migration path from TOPS-20 was primarily
to Unix, first on the Wollongong distribution of BSD (3.x, I think)
running on VAX 750 machines in the early 1980s, then on Sun 3
MC68000-based workstations in 1988 that ultimately evolved to an
eclectic mixture of CPUs and vendors.  My software test lab now has
about 70 flavors of Unix on assorted physical and virtual machines,
with ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, x86, and x86-64 processors.  Our last
DEC Alpha CPU died with its power supply 16 months ago, and a
colleague still has a runnable MC68020 box (an old NeXT desktop).





-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rochkind at basepath.com  Sun Jan  3 05:56:35 2016
From: rochkind at basepath.com (Marc Rochkind)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 12:56:35 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>

To update this thread:

The wording from my last edit to the Wikipedia article on cron is still
there, although one of the references has been removed, and the phrase
"better source needed" has been added. That part is OK with me, and I
actually agree with it--a better source *is* needed.

But at least the article at this point no longer says that cron is an
acronym.

[To Greg Lehey: As anyone can edit the article, you could could add a
paragraph about bogus claims as to what cron means if you want, but, in my
opinion, the article is better without this distracting discussion.]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 3:22 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 25 December 2015 at 10:41:54 -0800, David wrote:
> > It has been updated again:
> >
> >  The origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for time,
> > ???????????? (chronos).[2][3] (Ken Thompson, author of cron, has
> > confirmed this in a private communication with Brian Kernighan.)
>
> Yes, but you've removed the reference to the incorrect expansions.  As
> I noted at some length earlier in this thread, that's not appropriate.
> It ignores the fact that people have made these claims, it removes the
> comment that they're unsubstantiated, and it prepares the field for
> somebody else to make the claim again, with possibly even more bizarre
> expmanations.  I won't back it out yet, because I can see further
> changes coming from other directions.  Once again this Tedickey
> character has been very active.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft MUA reports
> problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua
>
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From clemc at ccc.com  Sun Jan  3 07:06:12 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 16:06:12 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PpHAysRAwbuv+v=UT=9NJ1S4AUXVTd7mD0HO1t6APbmA@mail.gmail.com>

Marc - thank you for bird dogging this.  I think the email from Ken to
Brian, and the email from Doug should be enough to close the issue for ever.

This is of course how history gets rewritten - which is a sad statement.
As I a wise man said ( Ben Franklin maybe??), history is often written by
those that were never there.

On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Marc Rochkind <rochkind at basepath.com> wrote:

> To update this thread:
>
> The wording from my last edit to the Wikipedia article on cron is still
> there, although one of the references has been removed, and the phrase
> "better source needed" has been added. That part is OK with me, and I
> actually agree with it--a better source *is* needed.
>
> But at least the article at this point no longer says that cron is an
> acronym.
>
> [To Greg Lehey: As anyone can edit the article, you could could add a
> paragraph about bogus claims as to what cron means if you want, but, in my
> opinion, the article is better without this distracting discussion.]
>
> On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 3:22 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Friday, 25 December 2015 at 10:41:54 -0800, David wrote:
>> > It has been updated again:
>> >
>> >  The origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for time,
>> > ???????????? (chronos).[2][3] (Ken Thompson, author of cron, has
>> > confirmed this in a private communication with Brian Kernighan.)
>>
>> Yes, but you've removed the reference to the incorrect expansions.  As
>> I noted at some length earlier in this thread, that's not appropriate.
>> It ignores the fact that people have made these claims, it removes the
>> comment that they're unsubstantiated, and it prepares the field for
>> somebody else to make the claim again, with possibly even more bizarre
>> expmanations.  I won't back it out yet, because I can see further
>> changes coming from other directions.  Once again this Tedickey
>> character has been very active.
>>
>> Greg
>> --
>> Sent from my desktop computer.
>> Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
>> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
>> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft MUA reports
>> problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua
>>
>
>
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From clemc at ccc.com  Sun Jan  3 07:30:41 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 16:30:41 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System [and FOSS]
In-Reply-To: <CMM.0.95.0.1451759708.beebe@gamma.math.utah.edu>
References: <CMM.0.95.0.1451759708.beebe@gamma.math.utah.edu>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2N41nLk0xH1TxFUKNqPnk4NhdACpbd9vm+1f4tC_x8irA@mail.gmail.com>

You are absolutely correct, they sharing culture was around throughout the
50s and 60s.  In fact the IBM "DECUS" equivalent was (is) called Share.
When I say, dop really was creating the idea of  FOSS, it was different
from the sharing that had occurred previously.

Lots of places, such as my own undergraduate institution - CMU and other
places like MIT and Standard, were notorious for "selling" its research.
Pederson had a real epiphany with his "industrial liaison program."  He
wanted ERL  to "know" what was going on in the "real world."   He very much
felt that cost of fabrication machines were prohibitive for a research team
and yet he wanted to be able to work those that had them.  So his idea was,
he would supply the students, and code - free - and then get back room
access.  In fact if you look at my thesis, you will see reference to a
"proprietary digital circuit."   I knew what it was, but was not allowed to
identify it at the time (its the ALU from the Vax 750 -- a very, very cute
design).

ERL had a lot of things like that that most companies guarded.  But dop and
newton were trusted.   It was once said, there was not a secret in Silicon
Valley that Richard or Don did not know.  They were consulting for all the
majors players.

As an example, BTL was researching the FET, came up with the first model
for it.   What was the first program to have that model in it?  Ellis put
it in SPICE2 for the Bell guys.   Same with the MESFET which Tom added for
Tektronix at one point that I remember.

Anyway, the idea really was more than just what SHARE, DECUS or even the
shared code from places like CERN, LANL et al.

Clem

On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 1:35 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe at math.utah.edu>
wrote:

> Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com> writes on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 23:04:04 -0500
> about SPICE:
>
> >> ...
> >> Anyway SPICE1 was actually started in the late 1960's by dop [Don
> >> Pederson]. Ellis Cohen wrote SPICE2 for the CDC 6400 in the mid 70's,
> >> added some new device models and created really novel bit of self
> >> modifying Fortran the compiled the inner loop.
> >>
> >> You are correct it was really the first widely available FOSS code -
> >> an idea that you correctly note dop created.
> >> ...
>
> SPICE wasn't the only such package, or even the earliest!  Still, I'll
> be grateful to list readers for pointers off-list (or on) to early
> publications about SPICE that I can add to the bibliography archives.
>
> The EISPACK system, which predated LINPACK, and both of which led to
> the current LAPACK, and descendants like CLAPACK and ScaLAPACK, has an
> older vintage.  It began with Algol routines published in the
> German/English journal Numerische Mathematik
>
>         http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/nummath.bib
>         http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/nummath2000.bib
>         http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/nummath2010.bib
>
> [change .bib to .html for a similar view with live hyperlinks]
>
> The first such routine may have been that in entry Martin:1965:SDPa in
> nummath.bib, which appeared in Num. Math. 79(5) 355--361 (October
> 1965) doi:10.1007/BF01436248.  That journal did not then record
> "received" dates, so the best that I can do for now is to claim
> "October 1965" as the start of published code for free and open source
> software in the area of numerical analysis.
>
> Publication of related algorithms continued for 6 years, and then they
> were collected in the famous HACLA (Handbook for Automatic
> Computation: Linear Algebra) volume in 1971 (ISBN 0-387-05414-6).
>
> Because Algol was little used in the USA, a project was begun in that
> country to translate the Algol code to Fortran.  That project was
> called NATS, which originally stood for the groups at (read their
> names vertically)
>
>         Northwestern University
>         Argonne National Laboratory
>         Texas, University of (at Austin)
>         Stanford
>
> but as more groups joined in the effort, and EISPACK begat LINPACK,
> NATS was changed to mean National Activity to Test Software.
>
> The EISPACK book appeared in two editions in 1976 (ISBN 0-387-06710-8)
> and 1977 (0-387-08254-9), volumes 6 and 51, respectively of Springer's
> Lecture Notes in Computer Science (now around 9000 published volumes).
>
> The LINPACK book appeared in 1979 (ISBN 0-89871-172-X).
>
> The LAPACK book has three editions, in 1992 (ISBN 0-89871-294-7), 1995
> (ISBN 0-89871-345-5), and 1999 (ISBN 0-89871-447-8).  In between them,
> the ScaLAPACK book appeared in 1997 (ISBN 0-89871-400-1).
>
> There were several other packages described in the 1984 book
>
>         Sources and Development of Mathematical Software
>         ISBN 0-13-823501-5
>
> (entry Cowell:1984:SDM), including FUNPACK, MINPACK, IMSL, SLATEC,
> Boeing, AT&T PORT, and NAG.  Some are free, and others are commercial.
>
> The Algol code from Numerische Mathematik, like the ACM Collected
> Algorithms, the Applied Statistics algorithms, and the Transactions on
> Mathematical Software algorithms, was intended to be freely available
> to anyone for any purpose, and no license of any kind was claimed for
> it.  That tradition continues with all of its descendants in the *PACK
> family.
>
> I have old archives of source code for EISPACK and LINPACK, but
> comment documentation in EISPACK does not include revision dates, just
> references to page numbers in the HACLA volume from 1971, and rarely,
> to journal articles from 1968, 1970 and 1973.  My filesystem dates,
> alas, only reflect the copying from distribution tape to disk, and my
> oldest file date for EISPACK is 20-Apr-1981.
>
> The LINPACK comments appear be almost entirely without dates: I found
> only one:
>
>         snrm2.for:11:C           C.L.LAWSON, 1978 JAN 08
>
> The bibliography on the GNU Project at
>
>         http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/gnu.bib
>
> records most of the books mentioned above, and it also contains as its
> first entry, Galler:1960:LEC, a letter published in the April 1960
> issue of Communications of the ACM from Bernie Galler, with this
> field:
>
>   remark =       "From the letter: ``\ldots{} it is clear that what is
>                  being charged for is the development of the program,
>                  and while I am particularly unhappy that it comes from
>                  a university, I believe it is damaging to the whole
>                  profession. There isn't a 704 installation that hasn't
>                  directly benefited from the free exchange of programs
>                  made possible by the distribution facilities of
>                  SHARE. If we start to sell our programs, this will set
>                  very undesirable precedents.''",
>
> That is so far the earliest reference that I have found for the notion
> that software should be free, long before Richard Stallman, Eric
> Raymond, Linus Torvalds, and others became such well-known proponents
> of that idea, and we had large and profitable companies like Red Hat
> and SUSE devoted to supporting, for a fee, such software.
>
> I was a graduate student in quantum chemistry at the Quantum Theory
> Project (QTP) at the University of Florida in Gainesville in the late
> 1960s and early 1970s, and we had a general practice of sharing of
> code among various university research groups, most notably through
> the Quantum Chemistry Program Exchange (QCPE) hosted at the University
> of Indiana in Bloomington, IN.
>
> A search through my bibliography archives found my earliest recording,
> a 6-Apr-1971 publication (by me), with mention of QCPE.  Library
> searches found a catalog entry for QCPE Catalog volume 19 (1987), so
> perhaps volume 1 appeared in 1968.  But no --- I just found in its
> home institution's library catalog
>
>
> http://www.iucat.iu.edu/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_field=all_fields&q=QCPE&highlight=n
>
> an entry dated 1963, with details
>
>         Publishing history: 1 (Apr. 1963)- Ceased with 71 (Nov. 1980).
>
> Other widely-distributed programs of that time included Enrico
> Clementi's IBM Research group's IBMOL (about 1965), and others named
> MOLECULE (pre-1975), POLYATOM (1963), and Gaussian (1970).
>
> The POLYATOM year appears to be the earliest of those: see the paper
> by Michael Barnett at
>
>         http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.35.571
>
> It appears in a July 1963 journal issue, again without a "received"
> date.  It begins:
>
>         A system of programs is being written by Dr.  Malcolm
>         C. Harrison, Dr. Jules W. Moskowitz, Dr. Brian T. Sutcliffe,
>         D. E. Ellis, and R. S. Pitzer, to perform nonempirical
>         calculations for small molecules.
>
> I have met, or been in the same group as (Don Ellis), most of those,
> and it is worth noting their affiliations to emphasize the broad
> character of that work:
>
>         Malcolm         Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New
> York University, NY
>         Jules           New York University, NY
>         Brian           York University, York, UK
>         Don             University of Florida (later, Northwestern
> University)
>         Russ            Harvard, Cambridge, MA (later, Ohio State
> University)
>         Michael         MIT, Cambridge, MA and various UK sites in
> academia and industry
>                         (see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_P._Barnett)
>
> On the subject of the Gaussian program, developed at Carnegie-Mellon
> University, see the two sites
>
>         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_%28software%29
>         http://www.bannedbygaussian.org/
>
> The second decries the loss of openness of Gaussian, which remains a
> widely-used commercial product.
>
> There is also a book on the subject of mathematics whose use is
> encumbered by patents and copyrights:
>
>         Ben Klemens
>         Ma$+$h you can't use: patents, copyright, and software
>         ISBN 0-8157-4942-2
>
> (entry Klemens:2006:MYC in http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/master.bib
> )
>
> ----------------------------------------
>
> P.S. A final sad personal note on computing history:
>
> When our DEC-20/60 (Arpanet node UTAH-SCIENCE, later science.utah.edu
> and still later, math.utah.edu) was retired on 31-Oct-1990 (its
> predecessor, a DEC-20/40 began operating in March 1978) we were faced
> with several cabinets full of 9-track tapes (about 25MB each), several
> RP06 (200MB) removable disks (for a picture and description, see
>
>          http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/rp06.html
>
> ) and the contents of three washing-machine sized RP07 (600MB) disks,
> and were moving to a new machine room in an adjacent building.
>
> We were able to copy over the RP0[67] disk contents, and I still have
> them online on my desktop, but the tapes were financially infeasible
> for us to copy to disk on the new VAX 8600 server, and we were leaving
> 9-track tape technology behind.  There were probably 500 to 1000 of
> those tapes, and all that we could do was fill a dumpster with them,
> because we had no place to store the physical volumes at the new site,
> and no money for their bits.  I have deeply regretted that loss of 25
> years of my, and our, early computing history ever since.
>
> Computers were for far too long crippled by too little memory and too
> little permanent storage, and only post-2000 has that situation been
> alleviated with radical reductions in storage costs per byte of data.
> My new desktop 8TB drive is 3.6 million times cheaper per byte than an
> RP06 drive was.  Had we been able to foresee that dramatic growth in
> capacity, we could have archived those tapes in an off-campus
> warehouse for later (attempted) data retrieval.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> P.P.S. Besides VAX VMS, our migration path from TOPS-20 was primarily
> to Unix, first on the Wollongong distribution of BSD (3.x, I think)
> running on VAX 750 machines in the early 1980s, then on Sun 3
> MC68000-based workstations in 1988 that ultimately evolved to an
> eclectic mixture of CPUs and vendors.  My software test lab now has
> about 70 flavors of Unix on assorted physical and virtual machines,
> with ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, x86, and x86-64 processors.  Our last
> DEC Alpha CPU died with its power supply 16 months ago, and a
> colleague still has a runnable MC68020 box (an old NeXT desktop).
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254
>     -
> - University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148
>     -
> - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail:
> beebe at math.utah.edu  -
> - 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org
> beebe at computer.org -
> - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL:
> http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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From grog at lemis.com  Sun Jan  3 08:22:24 2016
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 09:22:24 +1100
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>

On Saturday,  2 January 2016 at 12:56:35 -0700, Marc Rochkind wrote:
>
> [To Greg Lehey: As anyone can edit the article, you could could add
> a paragraph about bogus claims as to what cron means if you want,
> but, in my opinion, the article is better without this distracting
> discussion.]

Yes, I have edited it already.  I'm biding my time in the hope that
TEDickey will go away.  And I still firmly believe that the incorrect
claims need to be mentioned.  I said all this before:

> On Fri, Dec 25, 2015 at 3:22 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, but you've removed the reference to the incorrect expansions.
>> As I noted at some length earlier in this thread, that's not
>> appropriate.  It ignores the fact that people have made these
>> claims, it removes the comment that they're unsubstantiated, and it
>> prepares the field for somebody else to make the claim again, with
>> possibly even more bizarre expmanations.  I won't back it out yet,
>> because I can see further changes coming from other directions.
>> Once again this Tedickey character has been very active.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
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From norman at oclsc.org  Sun Jan  3 09:14:09 2016
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2016 18:14:09 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
Message-ID: <1451776452.16234.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

Personally, I lean away from listing the nine billion debunked
names of cron.  It's like adding a disclaimer to cat(1) to
explain that cat just copies data to standard output, it doesn't
transform it or compute how long it would take to send the data
over UUCP.

But it probably shows that I have been trying to write a couple
of manual pages lately (for some personal stuff, plus some docs
for work that are not technically manual pages but deserve the
same sort of conciseness).

Maybe Wikipedia-page format should admit an optional BUGS section.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

PS: seriously, though I wouldn't bother including the debunking
text myself, save perhaps on the Talk page to encourage editors
to delete any future attempts to revive the un-names, I have no
problem with Grog doing it.  More power to him if he has the
energy!


From grog at lemis.com  Sun Jan  3 09:18:16 2016
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 10:18:16 +1100
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <1451776452.16234.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
References: <1451776452.16234.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <20160102231816.GD14449@eureka.lemis.com>

On Saturday,  2 January 2016 at 18:14:09 -0500, Norman Wilson wrote:
>
> Maybe Wikipedia-page format should admit an optional BUGS section.

:-)

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft MUA reports
problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua
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From ron at ronnatalie.com  Sun Jan  3 11:26:30 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 20:26:30 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>

The same bullpoop exists for the PING program.     I sat next to Mike Muuss while he wrote ping.   We did it a few days before the Arpanet switched over to TCP/IP.   We had just brought up the 11/70 system we had using code backported from 4.1 BSD into our JHU version V6 kernel.     As you can probably expect the machine crashed.   We brought it back up and were working on what went wrong and then it crashed again and immediately my phone rang.   My friend Louis Mamakos who along with Mike Petry was working will Dave Mills on the “FUZZBALL” RT-11 network platform.    They admitted that they had attempted to send ICMP ECHO requests (I.e., PINGS) to our machine.     Sure enough, Mike and I traced through the ICMP code and found that the code used the same mbuf of the incoming request as the data for the outgoing but neglected to suppress freeing it at that point.   It freed it as it did with all incoming requests after processing.   It the dumped it in the send queue and that freed it as well.

Well, Mike thinks.   UNIX needs a ping program as well so we can test things.     He banged it out in about an hour.    Mike joked years later about PING being an acronym for packet inter network groper but he was NEVER serious about it.

Mike did substantial contributions to UNIX, TCP/IP, Computer Graphics, etc… but we always laughed off that it was the (UNIX) ping that he’d be know for.

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From dugo at xs4all.nl  Sun Jan  3 20:30:25 2016
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 05:30:25 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <45f7e64be92340b676f2679ff998c0e8@xs4all.nl>

On 2016-01-02 20:26, Ronald Natalie wrote:
> Well, Mike thinks.   UNIX needs a ping program as well so we can test
> things.     He banged it out in about an hour.    Mike joked years
> later about PING being an acronym for packet inter network groper but
> he was NEVER serious about it.

Well, the source code for the fuzzball version of PING[1a] calls it
"P i n g - packet inter net groper".

The fuzzball manual[1b] calls it:

	The Packet InterNet Groper (PING) is an internet measurement and
	debugging tool.

Mills's 1983 RFC889[2] calls the original PING Packet InterNet Groper.

There is his claim[3] he invented it in 1979.

Where it seems Muus preferred to keep the sonar analogy pure for ping(8)
Mills liked to play with words all the time.

[1a] 
http://web.archive.org/web/20131020063249/http://malarky.udel.edu/~dmills/data/du0/PING.MAC
[1b] 
http://web.archive.org/web/20141108042310/http://malarky.udel.edu/~dmills/data/du0/HELP.TXT
[2]  https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc889
[3]  
http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/misc/tcp_ip/8702.mm.www/0342.html


From dugo at xs4all.nl  Sun Jan  3 22:10:50 2016
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 07:10:50 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <251affe807c70da8983a241ea7ed9c20@xs4all.nl>

On 2016-01-02 20:26, Ronald Natalie wrote:
>     As you can probably expect the machine crashed.   We brought it
> back up and were working on what went wrong and then it crashed again
> and immediately my phone rang.

Awesome to read this story from the ICMP ECHO REPLY side. Thanks!

Thread "[ih] A laugh and a question" at
http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2006-March/thread.html
was what inspired me to bring fuzzballs up in simh.

(No BSDs were harmed during the emulation)



From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Jan  4 00:26:03 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun,  3 Jan 2016 09:26:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
Message-ID: <20160103142603.DF91F18C0A1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Jacob Goense <dugo at xs4all.nl>

    > Mills's 1983 RFC889[2] calls the original PING Packet InterNet Groper.

I have a strong suspicion that Packet-etc is a 'backronym' from Dave Mills.

Note that the use of the term "echo" for a packet returned dates back quite a
while before that, see e.g. IEN 104, "Minutes of the Fault Isolation
Meeting", from March 1979:

  "ability to echo packets off any gateway"

When ICMP was split from GGP (see IEN-109, RFC-777), the functionality
migrated from GGP to ICMP, and was generalized so that all hosts provided the
capability, not just routers.

	Noel


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Mon Jan  4 01:22:21 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 10:22:21 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <251affe807c70da8983a241ea7ed9c20@xs4all.nl>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
 <251affe807c70da8983a241ea7ed9c20@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <948AFCDE-4254-4EA8-900C-77A91C0C8F7A@ronnatalie.com>


> 
> Thread "[ih] A laugh and a question" at
> http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2006-March/thread.html
> was what inspired me to bring fuzzballs up in simh.

There were some inaccuracies in that piece as well which is why history is sometimes fun.   It was definitely December 82 Not 83 because it was a few days before LINK 0 was going to be shut off on the APRANET and we were scrambling to convert our machines to TCP.    As Clem and I have discussed in a side conversation, it was Gurwitz’s contribution to 4.1a rather than 4.2a (was there a 4.2a even)?   I remember pouring over the 4.1a/4.1c/4.2 stuff doing the user mode conversions for our machines.    I really disliked the berknet host table format (alas this has persisted longer than ping) and there was not yet a program that converted the table that the NIC distributed to that format.    I rewrote rhost (and it’s related functions) to read the NIC host tables directly.    I also wrote a program to periodically retrieve the table from the NIC.

Later someone provided a program to build a BSD-style host table from NIC table.    We inadvertantly blew up this program when we added a machine, coincidentally called BRL-ZAP to the table.    It was the first ethernet-connected laser printer (an Imagen Imprint-10) we had.   I just put 68000 as the CPU type without thinking about it.   I got some irate emails from people thinking I’d crashed their program intentionally given the hostname.   Apparently the conversion program used YACC and an incorrect grammer to parse the table.   They had assumed that machine types always began with a letter.    To me the fact that they had used YACC was overkill (my direct reading program didn’t do so), the file was essentially a bunch of fields separated with COLONS (and in some fields subdivided by commas).    There was some file that every UNIX machine was already parsing continually without the need for a grammar similarly formatted (/etc/passwd anybody?).

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From ron at ronnatalie.com  Mon Jan  4 01:32:03 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 10:32:03 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <45f7e64be92340b676f2679ff998c0e8@xs4all.nl>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
 <45f7e64be92340b676f2679ff998c0e8@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <2A40A77D-B3B0-4A27-98ED-3BBBB4F50ED8@ronnatalie.com>

Packet Internet Groper sounds definitely like something Mills would come up, but I’m pretty sure he was fitting words to make the existing word an acronym (by the way history is full of these things like news, golf, posh, etc… are all alleged to be acronyms thought here is no historical justification for any of this).    As others have pointed out that ping existed prior to Mills and the Fuzzballs for other protocols.      If Mills was promulgating that definition prior to 1982, that’s fine, but we hadn’t heard it and it was not the etymology of the UNIX ping program.   In fact, other than the fact that Louis Mamakos was working on the Fuzzballs, we didn’t know much about them.   Louis knew to call me after he crashed our machine because I was the childhood friend of his officemate and had been down to the UMCP computer center on countless occasions to visit.

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From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Mon Jan  4 04:00:58 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 13:00:58 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <2A40A77D-B3B0-4A27-98ED-3BBBB4F50ED8@ronnatalie.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
 <45f7e64be92340b676f2679ff998c0e8@xs4all.nl>
 <2A40A77D-B3B0-4A27-98ED-3BBBB4F50ED8@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <20160103180057.GA1602@mercury.ccil.org>

Ronald Natalie scripsit:

> (by the way history is full of these things like news, golf, posh,
> etc… are all alleged to be acronyms though there is no historical
> justification for any of this).

Indeed, any word older than about 1890 is not an acronym, with a few
Hebrew and Arabic exceptions like Tanakh, Rambam, _abjad_.  POTUS and
SCOTUS were codewords devised in 1879 and meant to be used on the wire
only, but occasionally leaked into print.  Initialisms like SPQR are
much older, with English-language examples like O.K. and N.G. dating to
the 1840s.  It's not clear when A.W.O.L. switched from an initialism to
an acronym proper, probably WWI; the same ambiguity applies to O.U.D.S.

The word _acronym_ itself is first recorded in 1940 (borrowed from
German), and they certainly had taken off by that time.  The oldest ones
consistently written as an ordinary word (no capitals, no periods) are
probably _radar_ and _snafu_ (both 1941), though some older ones lose
their caps at a later date, like the now-obscure MUSA (multiple unit
steerable antenna) and W/Op (wireless operator), later _musa_ and _wop_.
The later _loran_, _fubar_, _jato_ also fall into this category.

"Rip track" (1892) may be the oldest retronym in English; it's a stretch
of railroad track used to repair rolling stock, later reinterpreted as
"Repair In Place".

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
You escaped them by the will-death and the Way of the Black Wheel.
I could not.  --Great-Souled Sam


From wkt at tuhs.org  Mon Jan  4 09:35:43 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 09:35:43 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
Message-ID: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>

I just re-found a quote about Unix processes that I'd "lost". It's by
Steve Johnson:

    Dennis Ritchie encouraged modularity by telling all and sundry that
    function calls were really, really cheap in C. Everybody started
    writing small functions and modularizing. Years later we found out
    that function calls were still expensive on the PDP-11, and VAX code
    was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS instruction. Dennis
    had lied to us! But it was too late; we were all hooked...
    http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/modularitychapter.html

Steve, can you recollect when you said this, was it just a quote for
Eric's book or did it come from elsewhere?

Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
on either platform?

Cheers, Warren


From tfb at tfeb.org  Mon Jan  4 09:53:00 2016
From: tfb at tfeb.org (Tim Bradshaw)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 23:53:00 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>



> On 3 Jan 2016, at 23:35, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
> on either platform?
> 

I don't have the reference to hand, but one of the things Lisp implementations (probably Franz Lisp in particular) did on the VAX was not to use CALLS: they could do this because they didn't need to interoperate with C except at known points (where they would use the C calling conventions).  This change made a really significant difference to function call performance and meant that on call-heavy code Lisp was often very competitive with C.

I can look up the reference (or, really, ask someone who remembers).

The VAX architecture and its performance horrors must have killed DEC, I guess.

From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Mon Jan  4 10:00:20 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 19:00:20 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20160104000017.GC1602@mercury.ccil.org>

Warren Toomey scripsit:

>      VAX code was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS
>      instruction.

>From what I understand, the use of CALLS was abandoned on the VAX
at some point in favor of a cheaper calling convention.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Where the wombat has walked, it will inevitably walk again.
   (even through brick walls!)


From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Mon Jan  4 10:01:13 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 19:01:13 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
Message-ID: <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>

Tim Bradshaw scripsit:

> The VAX architecture and its performance horrors must have killed DEC,
> I guess.

Like most things, it was overdetermined:  the Rainbow and the lack of
insight it represented was another major cause.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
The native charset of SMS messages supports English, French, mainland
Scandinavian languages, German, Italian, Spanish with no accents, and
GREEK SHOUTING.  Everything else has to be Unicode, which means you get
only 70 16-bit characters in a text instead of 160 7-bit characters.


From scj at yaccman.com  Mon Jan  4 10:42:45 2016
From: scj at yaccman.com (scj at yaccman.com)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 16:42:45 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <a3f91e2b1d49d6cc11b78b419a42a455.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>

Well, I certainly said this on several occasions, and the fact that it is
recorded more or less exactly as I remember saying it suggests that I may
have even written it somewhere, but if so, I don't recall where...

As part of the PCC work, I wrote a technical report on how to design a C
calling sequence, but that was before the VAX.  Early calling sequences
had both a stack pointer and a frame pointer, but for most machines it
was possible to get by with just one, so calling sequences got better as
time went on.  Also, RISC machines with many more registers than the
PDP-11 also led to more efficient calls by putting some arguments in
registers.  Later standardizations like varargs were painful on some
architectures (especially those which had different registers for pointers
and integers).

The CALLS instruction was indeed a pig -- a space-time tradeoff in the
wrong direction!  For languages like FORTRAN it might have been justified,
but for C it was awful.  It is my memory too that CALLS was abandoned,
perhaps first at UCB.  But I actually had little hands-on experience with
the VAX C compiler...

Steve




> I just re-found a quote about Unix processes that I'd "lost". It's by
> Steve Johnson:
>
>     Dennis Ritchie encouraged modularity by telling all and sundry that
>     function calls were really, really cheap in C. Everybody started
>     writing small functions and modularizing. Years later we found out
>     that function calls were still expensive on the PDP-11, and VAX code
>     was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS instruction. Dennis
>     had lied to us! But it was too late; we were all hooked...
>     http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/modularitychapter.html
>
> Steve, can you recollect when you said this, was it just a quote for
> Eric's book or did it come from elsewhere?
>
> Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
> on either platform?
>
> Cheers, Warren
>




From scj at yaccman.com  Mon Jan  4 11:05:45 2016
From: scj at yaccman.com (scj at yaccman.com)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 17:05:45 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System [and FOSS]
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2N41nLk0xH1TxFUKNqPnk4NhdACpbd9vm+1f4tC_x8irA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CMM.0.95.0.1451759708.beebe@gamma.math.utah.edu>
 <CAC20D2N41nLk0xH1TxFUKNqPnk4NhdACpbd9vm+1f4tC_x8irA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e7b50bf660a1d2d783608a016b106fb5.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>

> You are absolutely correct, they sharing culture was around throughout the
> 50s and 60s.  In fact the IBM "DECUS" equivalent was (is) called Share.
> When I say, dop really was creating the idea of  FOSS, it was different
> from the sharing that had occurred previously.
>

I had an interesting experience with "open source" in the 1960's.  My
first published paper, called "Hierarchical Clustering Schemes", described
a way of taking non-dimensional data (e.g., "A is more like B than it is
like C") and finding clusters of objects that behave similarly.  I had
written a modest-sized FORTRAN program to carry out the algorithm--it was,
as I recall, between 100 and 200 lines long.  As a postscript to the
paper, readers were invited to write to Bell Labs and a card deck of the
program would we sent at no cost.  We expected a couple of dozen requests,
but in fact sent out, as I recall, nearly 500 card decks.  A couple of
years later I started getting reprints of articles that referenced my
paper, the authors' having analyzed their data with the program.  Many of
the papers were unusual, to say the least (in one, the program was used to
do organize the Latin curriculum in Poland, for example...).  The paper
had over 700 citation, and, the last time I looked, was still my most
cited publication.

Ah, the good old days, when people who used free software actually
acknowledged the original author(s)...



From bqt at update.uu.se  Mon Jan  4 11:08:17 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 02:08:17 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <mailman.3.1451865187.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.3.1451865187.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <5689C601.4080602@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-04 00:53, Tim Bradshaw <tfb at tfeb.org> wrote:
>> >On 3 Jan 2016, at 23:35, Warren Toomey<wkt at tuhs.org>  wrote:
>> >
>> >Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
>> >on either platform?
>> >
> I don't have the reference to hand, but one of the things Lisp implementations (probably Franz Lisp in particular) did on the VAX was not to use CALLS: they could do this because they didn't need to interoperate with C except at known points (where they would use the C calling conventions).  This change made a really significant difference to function call performance and meant that on call-heavy code Lisp was often very competitive with C.
>
> I can look up the reference (or, really, ask someone who remembers).
>
> The VAX architecture and its performance horrors must have killed DEC, I guess.

I don't know if that is a really honest description of the VAX in 
general, nor DEC. DEC thrived in the age of the VAX.
However, the CALLS/CALLG and RET instructions were really horrid for 
performance. Any clever programmer started using JSB and RSB instead. as 
they give you the plain straight forward call and return semantics 
without all the extra stuff that the CALL instructions give.

But, for assembler programmers, the architecture was nice. For 
compilers, it's more difficult to do things optimal, and of course, it 
took quite a while before hardware designers had the tools, skill and 
knowledge how to implement complex instruction sets fast in hardware. 
But nowadays, that is definitely not a problem, and it was more or less 
already solved by the time of the NVAX chip as well, which was actually 
really fast compared to a lot of stuff when it came out.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From lm at mcvoy.com  Mon Jan  4 11:29:48 2016
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 17:29:48 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <5689C601.4080602@update.uu.se>
References: <mailman.3.1451865187.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <5689C601.4080602@update.uu.se>
Message-ID: <20160104012948.GH12305@mcvoy.com>

On Mon, Jan 04, 2016 at 02:08:17AM +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2016-01-04 00:53, Tim Bradshaw <tfb at tfeb.org> wrote:
> >>>On 3 Jan 2016, at 23:35, Warren Toomey<wkt at tuhs.org>  wrote:
> >>>
> >>>Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
> >>>on either platform?
> >>>
> >I don't have the reference to hand, but one of the things Lisp implementations (probably Franz Lisp in particular) did on the VAX was not to use CALLS: they could do this because they didn't need to interoperate with C except at known points (where they would use the C calling conventions).  This change made a really significant difference to function call performance and meant that on call-heavy code Lisp was often very competitive with C.
> >
> >I can look up the reference (or, really, ask someone who remembers).
> >
> >The VAX architecture and its performance horrors must have killed DEC, I guess.
> 
> I don't know if that is a really honest description of the VAX in
> general, nor DEC. DEC thrived in the age of the VAX.
> However, the CALLS/CALLG and RET instructions were really horrid for
> performance. Any clever programmer started using JSB and RSB
> instead. as they give you the plain straight forward call and return
> semantics without all the extra stuff that the CALL instructions
> give.
> 
> But, for assembler programmers, the architecture was nice. For
> compilers, it's more difficult to do things optimal, and of course,
> it took quite a while before hardware designers had the tools, skill
> and knowledge how to implement complex instruction sets fast in
> hardware. But nowadays, that is definitely not a problem, and it was
> more or less already solved by the time of the NVAX chip as well,
> which was actually really fast compared to a lot of stuff when it
> came out.
> 
> 	Johnny

Yeah, I agree.  The VAX was pretty pleasant.  I never warmed up to it as
much as I warmed up to the PDP-11 (has to be the most pleasant working
CPU I've used - I say working because NS320xx seemed like it would be
pleasant).  I wrote a user level thread library that ran on the VAX and
I had to write the assembler for swtch() and it was pretty easy.


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Jan  4 11:31:51 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun,  3 Jan 2016 20:31:51 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
Message-ID: <20160104013151.C296718C0A0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Warren Toomey

    > I just re-found a quote about Unix processes
    > ..
    >  Years later we found out that function calls were still expensive
    >  on the PDP-11
    > ..
    > Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
    > on either platform?

Procedure calls were not cheap on the PDP-11 with the V6/V6 C compiler (which
admittedly was not the most efficient with small routines, since it always
saved all three non-temporary registers, no matter whether the called routine
used them or not).

This was especially true when compared to the code produced by the compiler
with the optimizer turned on, if the programmer was careful about allocating
'register' variables, which was pretty good.

On most PDP-11's, the speed was basically linearly related to the number of
memory references (both instruction fetch, and data), since most -11 CPU's
were memory-bound for most instructions. So for that compiler, a subroutine
call had a fair amount of overhead:

	inst	data

call	4	1
	2	0	if any automatic variables
	1	1	minimum per single-word argument

csv	9	5

cret	9	5

(In V7, someone managed to bum one cycle out of csv, taking it down to 8+5.)

So assume a pair of arguments which were not register variables (i.e.
automatics, or in structures pointed to by register variables), and some
automatics in the called routine, and that's 4+2 for the arguments, plus 6+1,
a subtotal of 10+3; add in csv and cret, that's 28+13 = 41 memory cycles.

On a typical machine like an 11/40 or 11/23, which had roughly 1 megacycle
memory throughput, that meant 40 usec (on a 1 MIP machine) to do a procedure
call, purely in overhead (counting putting the args on the stack as overhead).

We found that, even with the limited memory on the -11, it made sense to run
the time/space tradeoff the other way for short things like queue
insertion/removal, and do them as macros.

A routine had to be pretty lengthy before it was worth paying the overhead, in
order to amortize the calling cost across a fair amount of work (although of
course, getting access to another three register variables could make the
compiled output for the routine somewhat shorter).

	Noel


From norman at oclsc.org  Mon Jan  4 11:59:06 2016
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Sun,  3 Jan 2016 20:59:06 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
Message-ID: <20160104015906.4BF9843F88@lignose.oclsc.org>

As late as 1990, every UNIX I knew of still used the
expensive calls/ret instructions for subroutine calls.
I vaguely remember a consensus (and I certainly shared
the feeling) that in hindsight it would have been better
to use jsb/rsb, but changing everything would have been
so much work that nobody wanted to do it.

1990 was already past peak VAX in the UNIX world, so
I can't imagine anyone bothering to make such a change
to an existing system after then.  Especially a system
that already had many existing installations who would
have to deal with the resulting compatibility problem.

During the latter part of the 1990s, I was actively
supporting a private UNIX system just for myself on
a few MicroVAXes at home.  One of the things I did
was to write a VAX code generator for the then-current
version of lcc (the one around which the book was
written), so as to have an ISO-compatible compiler
and convert all of /usr/src (not so big even in those
days) to ISO.  It was an interesting exercise and I
learned a lot, but even then, I wasn't brave enough to
adopt an incompatible subroutine-calling convention.

Another big time waste in the original VAX UNIX was
the system-call interface: arguments were left on the
stack (where they had been put before calling the
syscall stub routine in libc); the kernel then had
to do a full-fledged copyin to get them.  It occurred
to me more than once to change the convention and have
the syscall stubs copy the arguments into registers
before executing the chmk (syscall) instruction.
That instruction didn't touch the registers; the
kernel saved them early in the chmk trap routine,
in its own address space, so no copying or access
checking would have been required to fetch their
call-time contents.

That would still have been a messy change to make,
because I'd have to be sure every program had been
relinked with the new-style libc before changing the
kernel.  (This was a system without shared libraries.)
But on a personal system it would have been doable.
I never did.

It's possible that current UNIX-descended/cloned systems
that have VAX ports, like Linux or Open/Free/NetBSD,
have had a chance to start over and do better on
subroutine calls and system calls.  Does anyone know?

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON


From clemc at ccc.com  Mon Jan  4 12:21:10 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 21:21:10 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
Message-ID: <CAC20D2NRu-KrDeQG0TpKy1yOF6o2X06oGCAihYHMVtcba=z3-Q@mail.gmail.com>

Folks remember, VAX was not designed with UNIX in mind.  It had two primary
influences, assembly programmers (Cutler et al) and FORTRAN compiler
writers.  The truth is, the Vax was incredibly successful in both UNIX and
its intended OS (VMS) sites, even if a number of the instructions it has
were ignored by the C compiler writers.  The fact the C did not map to it
as well as it would for other architectures later is not surprising given
the design constraints - C and UNIX were not part of the design. But it was
good enough (actually pretty darned good for the time) and was very, very
successful - I certainly stopped running a PDP11 when Vaxen were generally
available.  I would not stop doing that until the 68000 based workstations
came along.

>From my own experience, when Dave (Patterson) was writing the RISC papers
in the early 1980s, a number of us ex-industry grad student types @ USB
were taking his architecture course having just come off some very
successful systems from the Vax, DG Eagle, Pr1me 750, etc.. [I'll leave the
names of said parties off to protect the innocent].  But what I will say is
that the four of used sit in the back of his calls and chuckle.  We used to
remind Dave that a lot of the choices that were made on those machines, we
not for "CS" style reasons.  IMO: Dave really did not "get it" -- all of
those system designers did make architectural choices, but the drivers were
the code base from the customer sites not how how well spell or grep
worked.   And those commercial systems generally did mapped well at what
the designers considered and >>why<< those engineers considered what they
did  [years later a HBS professor Clay Christensen's book explained why].

I've said this in other forums, but I contend that when we used pure CS to
design world's greatest pure computer architecture (Alpha) we ultimately
failed in the market.  The computer architecture was extremely successful
and many of miss it.   Hey, I now work for a company with one of the worst
instruction sets/ISA from a  Computer Science standpoint - INTEL*64 (C),
and like the Vax, it's easy to throw darts at the architecture from a
purity standpoint.   Alpha was great, C and other languages map to it well,
and the designers followed all of the CS knowledge at the time.   But as a
>>system<< it could not compete with the disruption caused by the 386 and
later it's child, INTEL*64.   And like Vaxen, INTEL*64 is ugly, but it
continues to win because of the economics.

At Intel we look at very specific codes and how they map and the choices of
what new things to add, how the system morphs are directly defined by what
we see from customers and in the case of scientific codes, how well the
FORTRAN compiler can exploit it -- because it is the same places (the
national labs and very large end users like weather, automotive, oil/gas or
life sciences) that have the same Fortran code that still need to run ;-)
 This is just want DEC did years ago with the VAX (and Alpha).


As an interesting footnote, the DNA from the old DEC Fortran compiler lives
on "ifort" (and icc).   Some of the same folks are still working on the
code generator, although they are leaving us fairly rapidly as they
approach and pass their 70s.  But that's a different story ;-)

So the question is not a particular calling sequence or set of instructions
is good, you need to look at the entire economics of the system - which to
me begs the question of if the smartphone/tablet and ARM be the disruptor
to INTEL*64 - time will tell.

Clem


On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 7:42 PM, <scj at yaccman.com
<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=scj at yaccman.com>> wrote:

> Well, I certainly said this on several occasions, and the fact that it is
> recorded more or less exactly as I remember saying it suggests that I may
> have even written it somewhere, but if so, I don't recall where...
>
> As part of the PCC work, I wrote a technical report on how to design a C
> calling sequence, but that was before the VAX.  Early calling sequences
> had both a stack pointer and a frame pointer, but for most machines it
> was possible to get by with just one, so calling sequences got better as
> time went on.  Also, RISC machines with many more registers than the
> PDP-11 also led to more efficient calls by putting some arguments in
> registers.  Later standardizations like varargs were painful on some
> architectures (especially those which had different registers for pointers
> and integers).
>
> The CALLS instruction was indeed a pig -- a space-time tradeoff in the
> wrong direction!  For languages like FORTRAN it might have been justified,
> but for C it was awful.  It is my memory too that CALLS was abandoned,
> perhaps first at UCB.  But I actually had little hands-on experience with
> the VAX C compiler...
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> > I just re-found a quote about Unix processes that I'd "lost". It's by
> > Steve Johnson:
> >
> >     Dennis Ritchie encouraged modularity by telling all and sundry that
> >     function calls were really, really cheap in C. Everybody started
> >     writing small functions and modularizing. Years later we found out
> >     that function calls were still expensive on the PDP-11, and VAX code
> >     was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS instruction. Dennis
> >     had lied to us! But it was too late; we were all hooked...
> >     http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/modularitychapter.html
> >
> > Steve, can you recollect when you said this, was it just a quote for
> > Eric's book or did it come from elsewhere?
> >
> > Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
> > on either platform?
> >
> > Cheers, Warren
> >
>
>
>
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From scj at yaccman.com  Mon Jan  4 12:24:55 2016
From: scj at yaccman.com (scj at yaccman.com)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 18:24:55 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160104013151.C296718C0A0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20160104013151.C296718C0A0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <07cc4a0aa17d242be5e26bbcd66c1c55.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>

> A routine had to be pretty lengthy before it was worth paying the
> overhead, in
> order to amortize the calling cost across a fair amount of work (although
> of
> course, getting access to another three register variables could make the
> compiled output for the routine somewhat shorter).
>
>         Noel
>

I remember Dennis Ritchie telling me that the C compiler itself got
smaller and faster when he added register variables (and used them...)

I used to tell people that the time required to make a good optimizing C
compiler grew as the cube of the size of the instruction manual, including
the appendix on instruction execution timing.   These days they don't even
bother to have such an appendix, because timing depends on so many arcane
internal pipe stalls, memory refreshes, cache misses, etc. that it is
effectively uncomputible.  And then people wonder why
compiled code isn't very "good"...

At UC Berkeley, not long after they got their VAX, Prof. Susan Graham
gave a year-long class on optimization.  The first semester, the  students
learned all the relevant algorithms, etc.  The second semester,
they each implemented an optimization and integrated them into the Unix
F77 compiler.  As I recall, they got a 15% speedup on a set of benchmarks.

Then, over the summer, a student who had studied the VAX hardware
realized that the typical FORTRAN expression ( A = B op C ) was dealing
with three 32-bit addresses, and the resulting instruction was too big
to fit into the instruction lookahead buffer.  Allocating a register to
point to the internal (static) variables for each routine and using a
16-bit offset made these instructions fit, and the performance
improvement (for what was a 2-day fix) was 20%.

The moral of the story is that overhead kills you, and unknown or
uncharacterized overhead is especially fatal...






From khm at sciops.net  Mon Jan  4 12:26:19 2016
From: khm at sciops.net (Kurt H Maier)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 21:26:19 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <20160104022619.GA76763@wopr.sciops.net>

On Sat, Jan 02, 2016 at 08:26:30PM -0500, Ronald Natalie wrote:
> Mike did substantial contributions to UNIX, TCP/IP, Computer Graphics, 
> etc… but we always laughed off that it was the (UNIX) ping that he’d 
> be know for.

If it helps, there's a really nice Lotus cruising around with BRLCAD
vanity plates...

khm


From wkt at tuhs.org  Mon Jan  4 13:15:36 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 13:15:36 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] More wiki work: free Unix licenses
Message-ID: <20160104031536.GA1429@minnie.tuhs.org>

All, although I can't contribute to the actual history of Unix, I can at
least document what happened "afterwards". Here's a piece about the
journey to make free Unix source code licenses available:

http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=events:free_licenses

Comments welcome. Cheers, Warren


From lm at mcvoy.com  Mon Jan  4 14:24:39 2016
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 20:24:39 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <07cc4a0aa17d242be5e26bbcd66c1c55.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>
References: <20160104013151.C296718C0A0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <07cc4a0aa17d242be5e26bbcd66c1c55.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>
Message-ID: <20160104042439.GR12305@mcvoy.com>

> I used to tell people that the time required to make a good optimizing C
> compiler grew as the cube of the size of the instruction manual, 

So this has nothing to do with Unix but it triggered this memory.
My dad, physics prof, rhodes scholar, told me this when we started
backpacking together:

The population density drops like 1/r^2 the distance from the parking lot.


From aps at ieee.org  Mon Jan  4 14:40:22 2016
From: aps at ieee.org (Armando Stettner)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 20:40:22 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
Message-ID: <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>

I guess I experienced things a little differently: computer science basis notwithstanding, the VAX was hugely successful for DEC.

   aps.


> On Jan 3, 2016, at 4:01 PM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> 
> Tim Bradshaw scripsit:
> 
>> The VAX architecture and its performance horrors must have killed DEC,
>> I guess.
> 
> Like most things, it was overdetermined:  the Rainbow and the lack of
> insight it represented was another major cause.
> 
> -- 
> John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
> The native charset of SMS messages supports English, French, mainland
> Scandinavian languages, German, Italian, Spanish with no accents, and
> GREEK SHOUTING.  Everything else has to be Unicode, which means you get
> only 70 16-bit characters in a text instead of 160 7-bit characters.
> 



From tfb at tfeb.org  Mon Jan  4 18:52:51 2016
From: tfb at tfeb.org (Tim Bradshaw)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 08:52:51 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
Message-ID: <6CCB0746-0243-4EA5-8171-D06A442D7D36@tfeb.org>

On 4 Jan 2016, at 04:40, Armando Stettner <aps at ieee.org> wrote:

> I guess I experienced things a little differently: computer science basis notwithstanding, the VAX was hugely successful for DEC.

I think it was, too.  What I meant, though, was that, although x86 demonstrates that it's possible to make almost anything fast by the application of sufficient money, the VAX was something which was expensive to keep performance-competitive, especially in the era when RISC could make really easy wins, and the cost of doing that hurt DEC pretty badly, I would expect (and made VAXes increasingly expensive compared to the competition, which I remember them being in the late 80s).  And I guess Alpha was too late.

--tim

From dot at dotat.at  Mon Jan  4 21:35:44 2016
From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 11:35:44 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <a3f91e2b1d49d6cc11b78b419a42a455.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <a3f91e2b1d49d6cc11b78b419a42a455.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1601041128370.25050@hermes-2.csi.cam.ac.uk>

scj at yaccman.com <scj at yaccman.com> wrote:
>
> As part of the PCC work, I wrote a technical report on how to design a C
> calling sequence, but that was before the VAX.  Early calling sequences
> had both a stack pointer and a frame pointer, but for most machines it
> was possible to get by with just one, so calling sequences got better as
> time went on.  Also, RISC machines with many more registers than the
> PDP-11 also led to more efficient calls by putting some arguments in
> registers.  Later standardizations like varargs were painful on some
> architectures (especially those which had different registers for pointers
> and integers).

I had a look for your technical report online but my searches failed me.
Do you have a link to a copy?

Doesn't alloca() get interesting if you have a stack pointer but no frame
pointer? :-)

http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4BSD/usr/src/libc/sys/alloca.s

Nowadays it's usually implemented as a builtin, and given that the
compiler ought to be able to cope in most cases, but if you alloca() a
variable amount things soon get too difficult...

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
Northeast Viking, North Utsire: Southeasterly 5 to 7, occasionally gale 8 in
south. Rough or very rough, occasionally moderate later. Fair. Good.


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Jan  4 22:53:10 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon,  4 Jan 2016 07:53:10 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
Message-ID: <20160104125310.9379718C0A1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > that's 28+13 = 41 memory cycles.
    > ...
    > purely in overhead (counting putting the args on the stack as overhead).

Oh, I missed an instruction for de-stacking the arguments, which was typically
something like 'add #N, sp', so another two instruction word fetches, or 43
cycles.

Ironically, if N=4, the compiler used to emit a 'cmp (sp)+, (sp)+', which is
more efficient space-wise (one word instead of two), but less time-wise
(3 cycles instead of 2).

   Noel


From clemc at ccc.com  Mon Jan  4 23:50:04 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 08:50:04 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PSwB_WtX+GrLdurpd4tFkng3GMSoMBg-gO2FoB9M4=iQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 11:40 PM, Armando Stettner <aps at ieee.org> wrote:

> I guess I experienced things a little differently: computer science basis
> notwithstanding, the VAX was hugely successful for DEC.
>
>    aps.
>

​+1​
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From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Tue Jan  5 01:09:42 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 10:09:42 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160104015906.4BF9843F88@lignose.oclsc.org>
References: <20160104015906.4BF9843F88@lignose.oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <20160104150942.GA17115@mercury.ccil.org>

Norman Wilson scripsit:

> As late as 1990, every UNIX I knew of still used the
> expensive calls/ret instructions for subroutine calls.

Yes, it seems I was thinking of the Lisp calling convention.

> It's possible that current UNIX-descended/cloned systems
> that have VAX ports, like Linux or Open/Free/NetBSD,
> have had a chance to start over and do better on
> subroutine calls and system calls.  Does anyone know?

Easily determined.  The vax.md (machine description) file
uses CALLS, and in any case gcc runs on both Unix and VMS,
so it has to be VMS-compatible, and there is no switch to
use a different calling convention (the VAX port has few
switches at all: there is one to use G-format floats
instead of D-format).

LLVM has no VAX support at all: the llvm-gcc compiler can
compile for the VAX, but only as a cross compiler.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
It's the old, old story.  Droid meets droid.  Droid becomes chameleon.
Droid loses chameleon, chameleon becomes blob, droid gets blob back
again.  It's a classic tale.  --Kryten, Red Dwarf


From david at kdbarto.org  Tue Jan  5 03:07:03 2016
From: david at kdbarto.org (David)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 09:07:03 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 2, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <mailman.1.1451770273.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.1.1451770273.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <7823E3E1-C343-4CA6-A0EC-F3BD6D2B3269@kdbarto.org>

The comments in the rp06 walking across the floor reminds me of a time when I was installing netnews at a very new company and as the data transferred from the tape (we didn’t have a modem yet, that was to happen in a week or so) to the disk the disk got into a walking state. I was standing with my foot against the front of the drive to keep it from moving when a friend walked into the machine room and asked what I was doing. I said ‘keeping it all together’ and he asked about my foot. I moved it, the disk walked out a small amount and I replace my foot. He laughed and walked away. About 15 or 20 minutes later it was all back to ‘normal’ and I never had another problem with it.

	David

> On Jan 2, 2016, at 1:31 PM, tuhs-request at minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
> 
> several
> RP06 (200MB) removable disks (for a picture and description, see
> 
> 	 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/rp06.html



From lm at mcvoy.com  Tue Jan  5 03:29:40 2016
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 09:29:40 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <6CCB0746-0243-4EA5-8171-D06A442D7D36@tfeb.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <6CCB0746-0243-4EA5-8171-D06A442D7D36@tfeb.org>
Message-ID: <20160104172940.GE20207@mcvoy.com>

On Mon, Jan 04, 2016 at 08:52:51AM +0000, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> On 4 Jan 2016, at 04:40, Armando Stettner <aps at ieee.org> wrote:
> 
> > I guess I experienced things a little differently: computer science basis notwithstanding, the VAX was hugely successful for DEC.
> 
> I think it was, too.  What I meant, though, was that, although x86
> demonstrates that it's possible to make almost anything fast by the
> application of sufficient money, the VAX was something which was expensive
> to keep performance-competitive, especially in the era when RISC could
> make really easy wins, and the cost of doing that hurt DEC pretty badly,
> I would expect (and made VAXes increasingly expensive compared to the
> competition, which I remember them being in the late 80s).  And I guess
> Alpha was too late.

Yeah, the 750 was OK [*], the 780 was nice, the 8600 (which UW-Madison
named "speedy.rsch.wisc.edu", such a bad name) was expensive.  They threw
a lot of hardware at the perf problem and it seems, to me at least, they
made a pretty good case for the RISC tradeoffs.  But those tradeoffs made
sense when transistors were expensive; these days x86 has shown you can
get some sweet perf out of that CISCy design (though I believe it's sort
of a RISC under the covers).

And as for Alpha, I never warmed up to it.  It was never fast for the 
workloads I cared about (build, test, file serving, integer stuff).
To me, it was over hyped and it under delivered.  Too bad, I liked 
DEC as a company.

[*] the 750 at the UW CS department was where they kept the BSD sources,
it was called slovax.  It was slow but I had so much fun reading that
code that I've always had a machine named slovax ever since, the current
one is mcvoy.com.


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Tue Jan  5 12:00:09 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 21:00:09 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
Message-ID: <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>

Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on the PDP-11.

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From clemc at ccc.com  Wed Jan  6 01:13:47 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 10:13:47 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>

If I understand it correctly, few if anyone did.

Clem

On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 9:00 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on the
> PDP-11.
>
>
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From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Wed Jan  6 02:46:43 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:46:43 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20160105164642.GA20786@mercury.ccil.org>

Clem Cole scripsit:

> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 9:00 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> 
> > Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on the
> > PDP-11.
> 
> If I understand it correctly, few if anyone did.

My guess would be that it was intended to support the antiquated Fortran
feature of "multiple returns", whereby a caller could pass one or more
labels (defined in the caller) to the callee, which could then choose to
return directly to one of them rather than through the return address.
In gcc this is implemented by wrapping the call in a switch which
does a (local) goto based on the integer returned by the callee.
(Only subroutines, i.e. subprograms that do not return a user-visible
value, supported multiple returns.)

A PDP-11 Fortran compiler could have followed such a subroutine call by
a series of branch instructions and had the callee use MARK rather than
RTS to return to the correct point in the jump table.

This doesn't explain why some sources of instruction-set information
say that MARK "facilitates stack clean-up procedures", though.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
How they ever reached any conclusion at all is starkly unknowable
to the human mind.        --"Backstage Lensman", Randall Garrett


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Wed Jan  6 03:28:16 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 12:28:16 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>


> On Jan 5, 2016, at 10:13 AM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> If I understand it correctly, few if anyone did.
> 
> Clem

I remember going to the T11 (PDP-11 on a single chip) announcement and having them say the complete instruction set was supported with the exception of MARK.
There was me and one other geek going “What?  No MARK Instruction?” in the back of the hall.


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From clemc at ccc.com  Wed Jan  6 03:42:00 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 12:42:00 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160105164642.GA20786@mercury.ccil.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160105164642.GA20786@mercury.ccil.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2O1GY_9QjDwQSNGNbOSkEo0uvK5nYt9qUG6+K1y7HbJOg@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 11:46 AM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:

> A PDP-11 Fortran compiler could have followed such a subroutine call by
> a series of branch instructions and had the callee use MARK rather than
> RTS to return to the correct point in the jump table.
>

Could be - I was not there for that one but, I'll have to try to ask one or
two of the designers of the the 11 FTN compiler back end when I see them
next who was. Rich or Dave might know/remember.   That said, some of the
folks on the simh mailing list might also remember like Tim or Bob.

That said, IIRC the PDP-11 on chip did not support it, so I suspect the FTN
compiler did not use it.  I also know that in the past, when we had talked
about some of the silly instructions that were created in different ISPs
during lunch conversations, I have specific memories of some of the
compiler folks saying they could never figure out PDP-11's MARK either -
hence my comment about few did know how to put it to good use.
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From clemc at ccc.com  Wed Jan  6 03:43:00 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 12:43:00 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2NdctE4cmNQxmjdVG7_eWkyyQ24X3AFBUDDVOoanteO9A@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 12:28 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> I remember going to the T11 (PDP-11 on a single chip) announcement and
> having them say the complete instruction set was supported with the
> exception of MARK.


​right... which is why I don't think FTN use it, or the HW folks would have
been forced to put it in.

Clem​
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From ron at ronnatalie.com  Wed Jan  6 03:46:05 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 12:46:05 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2NdctE4cmNQxmjdVG7_eWkyyQ24X3AFBUDDVOoanteO9A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2NdctE4cmNQxmjdVG7_eWkyyQ24X3AFBUDDVOoanteO9A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2C046974-5E68-416F-9413-2FAD3D3D67EC@ronnatalie.com>

No, to my knowledge NO compiler I ever came across (I worked on the dark side DOS BATCH, RT-11, RSX-11, and RSTS-11 in various languages though primarily MACRO-11 and FORTRAN) ever used this linkage.    Certainly, none of the UNIX products did.   It was goofy.    We played around with it and it just didn’t do anything you couldn’t do better with JSR/RET and some clever stack manipulation with MOV instructions.



> On Jan 5, 2016, at 12:43 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 12:28 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com <mailto:ron at ronnatalie.com>> wrote:
> I remember going to the T11 (PDP-11 on a single chip) announcement and having them say the complete instruction set was supported with the exception of MARK.
> 
> ​right... which is why I don't think FTN use it, or the HW folks would have been forced to put it in.
> 
> Clem​
> 

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From dds at aueb.gr  Wed Jan  6 03:33:24 2016
From: dds at aueb.gr (Diomidis Spinellis)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 19:33:24 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <20160105164642.GA20786@mercury.ccil.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160105164642.GA20786@mercury.ccil.org>
Message-ID: <568BFE64.7080906@aueb.gr>

On 05/01/2016 18:46, John Cowan wrote:
> Clem Cole scripsit:
> 
>> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 9:00 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on the
>>> PDP-11.
>>
>> If I understand it correctly, few if anyone did.
> 
> My guess would be that it was intended to support the antiquated Fortran
> feature of "multiple returns"

Digital's handbook presents a reasonable (if unusual for Unix) calling
convention that uses MARK.  It terms the convention "the standard PDP-11
subroutine return convention".

https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2005/readings/pdp11-40.pdf#page=107

This convention pushes a tailored MARK instruction onto the stack, and
then has the called routine return to the address of the pushed MARK
instruction.  MARK will in turn clean up the stack and restore R5.  If I
understand things correctly, this saves one instruction over doing the
same things through other explicit instructions.

Interestingly, many years before the invention of stack smashing
attacks, we had a calling convention that was based on executing code
placed on the stack.


From imp at bsdimp.com  Wed Jan  6 04:03:35 2016
From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:03:35 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <2C046974-5E68-416F-9413-2FAD3D3D67EC@ronnatalie.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2NdctE4cmNQxmjdVG7_eWkyyQ24X3AFBUDDVOoanteO9A@mail.gmail.com>
 <2C046974-5E68-416F-9413-2FAD3D3D67EC@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <CANCZdfptcCOLy4sLaa2nrd6hg7Ra5JBZdBTvvT9t+PJAD807DA@mail.gmail.com>

Back in the early days of my career, I saw MARK used once in
MACRO-11 to implement a switch statement. It was horrific and super
long compared to the code that replaced it a few months later. It was a
horrible abuse of the instruction, and the person who wrote the code
(not me) was just learning PDP-11 ropes at the time. The replacement
code was also faster. I doubt I'd ever have noticed if this code didn't
wind up in the hot path and attract the attention of the senior engineer
on the project. He was so horrified, he called us all together to go over
what the instruction actually did, and why it was such a bad idea.

Warner


On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 10:46 AM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> No, to my knowledge NO compiler I ever came across (I worked on the dark
> side DOS BATCH, RT-11, RSX-11, and RSTS-11 in various languages though
> primarily MACRO-11 and FORTRAN) ever used this linkage.    Certainly, none
> of the UNIX products did.   It was goofy.    We played around with it and
> it just didn’t do anything you couldn’t do better with JSR/RET and some
> clever stack manipulation with MOV instructions.
>
>
>
> On Jan 5, 2016, at 12:43 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 12:28 PM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I remember going to the T11 (PDP-11 on a single chip) announcement and
>> having them say the complete instruction set was supported with the
>> exception of MARK.
>
>
> ​right... which is why I don't think FTN use it, or the HW folks would
> have been forced to put it in.
>
> Clem​
>
>
>
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From ron at ronnatalie.com  Wed Jan  6 04:24:13 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 13:24:13 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfptcCOLy4sLaa2nrd6hg7Ra5JBZdBTvvT9t+PJAD807DA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2NdctE4cmNQxmjdVG7_eWkyyQ24X3AFBUDDVOoanteO9A@mail.gmail.com>
 <2C046974-5E68-416F-9413-2FAD3D3D67EC@ronnatalie.com>
 <CANCZdfptcCOLy4sLaa2nrd6hg7Ra5JBZdBTvvT9t+PJAD807DA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <96168193-CFB6-433D-8085-4EDBDC0F564B@ronnatalie.com>

Ah, this brings back memories.    We had this MACRO-11 concept called “threaded code” (not threads in the multiprocessing sense).    Essentially we had very small code fragments that were loaded into a table and we’d run them to process data with very light JSR/RET linkage (minimal register saves).

Getting back to Richie’s idea of lightweight functions, it indeed is a more maintainable style and perhaps ahead of it’s time when modern highly optimized inlining compilers came around it made it efficient without the programmer needing to wrap his head around it too much.

> On Jan 5, 2016, at 1:03 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
> Back in the early days of my career, I saw MARK used once in
> MACRO-11 to implement a switch statement.
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From scj at yaccman.com  Wed Jan  6 06:26:44 2016
From: scj at yaccman.com (scj at yaccman.com)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 12:26:44 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <96168193-CFB6-433D-8085-4EDBDC0F564B@ronnatalie.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2NdctE4cmNQxmjdVG7_eWkyyQ24X3AFBUDDVOoanteO9A@mail.gmail.com>
 <2C046974-5E68-416F-9413-2FAD3D3D67EC@ronnatalie.com>
 <CANCZdfptcCOLy4sLaa2nrd6hg7Ra5JBZdBTvvT9t+PJAD807DA@mail.gmail.com>
 <96168193-CFB6-433D-8085-4EDBDC0F564B@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <afab31664ef8e081c99bcf2e3e0b014f.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>

> Ah, this brings back memories.    We had this MACRO-11 concept called
> âthreaded codeâ (not threads in the multiprocessing sense).
> Essentially we had very small code fragments that were loaded into a table
> and weâd run them to process data with very light JSR/RET linkage
> (minimal register saves).
>
> Getting back to Richieâs idea of lightweight functions, it indeed is a
> more maintainable style and perhaps ahead of itâs time when modern
> highly optimized inlining compilers came around it made it efficient
> without the programmer needing to wrap his head around it too much.
>
It brought back memories for me, too.  At Ardent, we had a 4-processor
system with each processor a vector processor.  We wanted to be able to go
between parallel and serial very quickly, and the key to achieving this
was to have all 4 threads share the stack.  So in the parallel sections,
all function calls had to be lightweight (only JSR/RET) and keep their
paws off some of the registers (including the stack pointer).  It worked
beautifully, giving us a 3.99 times speedup with 4 processors when we were
in its sweet spot.



From bqt at update.uu.se  Wed Jan  6 06:35:47 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 21:35:47 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 MARK (was: Early Unix function calls: expensive?)
In-Reply-To: <mailman.7.1452015811.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.7.1452015811.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <568C2923.3040204@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-05 18:43, Ronald Natalie<ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>
> Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on the PDP-11.

Not surprising. As others noted, few ever did. And apparently none 
responding actually do either.

It *is* a stupid instruction in many ways. And it's not for multiple 
returns either.

It's an odd way of handling stack cleanup without a frame pointer.

It's extremely bad, since it actually requires the stack to be in 
instruction space. And yes, you are expected to execute on the stack.

The idea is that the caller pushes arguments on the stack, but the 
cleanup of the stack is implicitly done in the subroutine itself, and at 
the same time you get an argument pointer.

Example:

Calling:

     MOV R5,-(SP)       ; Save old R5
     MOV <argn>,-(SP)
     MOV <argn-1>,-(SP)
     .
     MOV <arg1>,-(SP)
     MOV #MARKN,-(SP)   ; Where the N in MARK N is the number of 
arguments you just pushed.
     MOV SP,R5
     JSR PC,SUB
     .
     .

In the subroutine you then have the arguments available relative to R5. 
So that arg1 is available at 2(R5) for example.

SUB: .
      .
      .
      RTS  R5


There is a lot going on at this point. The trick is to note that the 
code does an RTS R5 to return. If people remember what happens at that 
point, PC gets loaded with R5, while R5 gets loaded with the PC that we 
actually would like to return to (since that's what is at the top of the 
stack).
And R5 is pointing into the stack, at the MARK instruction, so execution 
continues with actually performing the MARK.
MARK, in turn, will case SP <- PC + 2*N, thus restoring the stack 
pointer to point to the place where the original R5 was stored.
Next, it does a PC <- R5, so that we now have the PC point to where we 
actually want to return.
Next it does a R5 <- (SP)+, meaning we actually restored the original R5.

And so we have cleaned up the stack, preserved R5, and returned to the 
caller again.

Also notice that the subroutine could have pushed any amount of data on 
the stack before the return, and I suspect the idea was that the process 
would not have needed to clean that up either. However, that fails, 
since the RTS needs the return address at the top. But you can 
essentially solve that by pushing -2(R5) before returning.

Ugly, isn't it? :-)

	Johnny



From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Wed Jan  6 06:49:40 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 15:49:40 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <96168193-CFB6-433D-8085-4EDBDC0F564B@ronnatalie.com>
References: <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2Mpy3it2jc4TQ6dMRUJPmq7htmoPH1ntOS=in9P5gfo3w@mail.gmail.com>
 <B3896F3F-2B5A-4AA4-96A7-3DCA096BA82C@ronnatalie.com>
 <CAC20D2NdctE4cmNQxmjdVG7_eWkyyQ24X3AFBUDDVOoanteO9A@mail.gmail.com>
 <2C046974-5E68-416F-9413-2FAD3D3D67EC@ronnatalie.com>
 <CANCZdfptcCOLy4sLaa2nrd6hg7Ra5JBZdBTvvT9t+PJAD807DA@mail.gmail.com>
 <96168193-CFB6-433D-8085-4EDBDC0F564B@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <20160105204940.GA22233@mercury.ccil.org>

Ronald Natalie scripsit:

> Ah, this brings back memories.    We had this MACRO-11 concept called
> “threaded code” (not threads in the multiprocessing sense).
> Essentially we had very small code fragments that were loaded into
> a table and we’d run them to process data with very light JSR/RET
> linkage (minimal register saves).

I wrote an interpreter for a Forth-ish language in Macro-11 for RT-11.
The core dispatch loop was just two instructions:

	JSR PC, @(R5)+
	BR .-1

When entered with R5 equal to the beginning of a series of addresses of
routines to be entered, this invoked the routines at the addresses in turn.
If the routine was in machine language, it terminated with RTS PC
(shorter than JMP-ing back to the dispatch loop).  If it was itself
threaded code, it began with JSR R5,DISPATCH, which pushed R5 on the
stack and loaded it up with the next instruction, and terminated with
the address of an POP R5 instruction conveniently placed just before
the dispatch loop.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
You annoy me, Rattray!  You disgust me! You irritate me unspeakably!
Thank Heaven, I am a man of equable temper, or I should scarcely be able
to contain myself before your mocking visage.  --Stalky imitating Macrea


From grog at lemis.com  Wed Jan  6 09:04:40 2016
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 10:04:40 +1100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 MARK (was: Early Unix function calls: expensive?)
In-Reply-To: <568C2923.3040204@update.uu.se>
References: <mailman.7.1452015811.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <568C2923.3040204@update.uu.se>
Message-ID: <20160105230440.GA85978@eureka.lemis.com>

On Tuesday,  5 January 2016 at 21:35:47 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2016-01-05 18:43, Ronald Natalie<ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>>
>> Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on the PDP-11.
>
> Not surprising. As others noted, few ever did. And apparently none
> responding actually do either.
>
> It *is* a stupid instruction in many ways. And it's not for multiple
> returns either.
>
> It's an odd way of handling stack cleanup without a frame pointer.

Thanks for the (omitted) explanation.  At first sight, the instruction
almost seems to make sense for functions with a variable number of
parameters, but of course there are simpler ways to do it.

I wonder if this is a case of "it sounded like a good idea at the
time" (when the instruction set was being designed), and it took a
while for people to realize that it wasn't of any use.

I recall a similar issue with the Siemens 306, their first stack-based
machine, round about 1975.  They had function call and return
instructions which manipulated the stack pointer, but it seemed that
nobody used them: they didn't work.  From memory, the call instruction
incremented the stack pointer and stored PC.  The return call
instruction decemented the stack pointer and loaded PC--from the wrong
location.

I never used the 306 myself, but I often wondered if they modified one
of the instructions to DTRT.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft MUA reports
problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua
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From bqt at update.uu.se  Wed Jan  6 09:20:49 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 00:20:49 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 MARK
In-Reply-To: <20160105230440.GA85978@eureka.lemis.com>
References: <mailman.7.1452015811.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <568C2923.3040204@update.uu.se> <20160105230440.GA85978@eureka.lemis.com>
Message-ID: <568C4FD1.4020108@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-06 00:04, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Tuesday,  5 January 2016 at 21:35:47 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2016-01-05 18:43, Ronald Natalie<ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on the PDP-11.
>>
>> Not surprising. As others noted, few ever did. And apparently none
>> responding actually do either.
>>
>> It *is* a stupid instruction in many ways. And it's not for multiple
>> returns either.
>>
>> It's an odd way of handling stack cleanup without a frame pointer.
>
> Thanks for the (omitted) explanation.  At first sight, the instruction
> almost seems to make sense for functions with a variable number of
> parameters, but of course there are simpler ways to do it.

Definitely. Like how most compilers do - the caller cleans the stack 
afterwards, if we have a system where a variable number of arguments are 
allowed and not indicated in other ways. Not to mention explicit 
cleaning up of the stack in the function before the return as well.

> I wonder if this is a case of "it sounded like a good idea at the
> time" (when the instruction set was being designed), and it took a
> while for people to realize that it wasn't of any use.

Probably not. This ties in with an old (urban) myth about the PDP-11.

The MARK instruction was not in the basic, original instruction set. It 
came about in one of the extensions that were done. And one story behind 
it was that it was "invented" in order to copyright, or somehow protect 
the instruction set for a few years more.
(I think it came at the same time as SOB, and the EIS stuff, but I don't 
remember for sure...)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From dave at horsfall.org  Wed Jan  6 09:24:46 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 10:24:46 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601061023020.36058@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Ronald Natalie wrote:

> Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on 
> the PDP-11.

RSX-11 probably used it, though, as could've RSTS...

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Wed Jan  6 09:55:25 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 18:55:25 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601061023020.36058@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <76BC99D5-A8C4-4F8B-8D7D-C621CBD18238@tfeb.org>
 <20160104000113.GD1602@mercury.ccil.org>
 <328D91D8-FF74-46EE-A281-5432716E6206@ieee.org>
 <418F9945-C1BC-4EA1-85F3-981342A9BDD6@ronnatalie.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601061023020.36058@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <62BE3BE6-EFF9-45F0-9419-EE611A98C2BA@ronnatalie.com>

The only thing we really used on RSTS was Basic Plus so I wouldn’t know, but I spent a lot of time making cross calls between MACRO-11 and FORTRAN on the RSX-11M and there was no MARK-based linkage in anything I saw.    I had the kind of odd misfortunate to spend one summer in college writing a database system in Fortran and Macro-11 on RT and when I graduated the company saw that and set me down to work on FORTRAN/MACRO-based database on their two processor RSX-11M system.



> On Jan 5, 2016, at 6:24 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Ronald Natalie wrote:
> 
>> Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on 
>> the PDP-11.
> 
> RSX-11 probably used it, though, as could've RSTS...
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From ron at ronnatalie.com  Wed Jan  6 10:54:01 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 19:54:01 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 MARK
In-Reply-To: <568C4FD1.4020108@update.uu.se>
References: <mailman.7.1452015811.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <568C2923.3040204@update.uu.se> <20160105230440.GA85978@eureka.lemis.com>
 <568C4FD1.4020108@update.uu.se>
Message-ID: <2B4E27B5-DAEE-4E25-808D-F72D97F801A6@ronnatalie.com>


> 
> The MARK instruction was not in the basic, original instruction set. It came about in one of the extensions that were done. And one story behind it was that it was "invented" in order to copyright, or somehow protect the instruction set for a few years more.
> (I think it came at the same time as SOB, and the EIS stuff, but I don't remember for sure...)


Maybe it was because someone named Mark at DEC was an SOB?

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From bqt at update.uu.se  Wed Jan  6 21:55:21 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 12:55:21 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 MARK (was: Early Unix function calls: expensive?)
In-Reply-To: <mailman.11.1452041647.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.11.1452041647.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <568D00A9.9090108@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-06 01:54, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>  On Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Ronald Natalie wrote:
>> >Just never figured out how to make good use of the MARK instruction on
>> >the PDP-11.
> RSX-11 probably used it, though, as could've RSTS...

Nope. Nothing in RSX uses it. As others said, probably nothing anywhere 
used it.
And, as I pointed out, if you use MARK, then you cannot really use split 
I/D-space, since the stack (data) needs to be in instruction space.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From meillo at marmaro.de  Tue Jan 12 18:12:53 2016
From: meillo at marmaro.de (markus schnalke)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 09:12:53 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
Message-ID: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>

Hoi.

Yesterday, I came across the file Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf on
my disk. It contains scanned articles of UNIX Review January 1985,
October 1985 and January 1986. Searching the web brought up this
online location for the file:
http://simson.net/ref/free_software/Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf

I read the articles for the first time and had a great time doing
so. Especially the ``Berkeley Underground'' article was pure fun!
Here, have some impression:

		We modified the kernel to
	support asynchronous I/O, distri-
	buted files, security traces, "real-
	time" interrupts for subprocess
	multitasking, limited screen
	editing, and various new system
	calls. We wrote compilers, ass-
	emblers, linkers, disassemblers,
	database utilities, cryptographic
	utilities, tutorial help systems,
	games, and screen-oriented ver-
	sions of standard utilities. User
	friendly utilities for new users that
	avoided accidental file deletion,
	libraries to support common
	operations on data structures
	such as lists, strings, trees, sym-
	bol tables, and libraries to perform
	arbitrary precision arithmetic and
	symbolic mathematics were other
	contributions. We suggested im-
	provements to many system calls
	and to most utilities. We offered to
	fix the option flags so that the dif-
	ferent utilities were consistent
	with one another.
		To Us, nothing was sacred,
	and We saw a great deal in UNIX
	that could stand improvement.
	Much of what We implemented, or
	asked to be allowed to implement,
	is now a part of System V and 4.2
	BSD; others of our innovations are
	still missing from all versions of
	UNIX. Despite these accom-
	plishments, it seemed that
	whenever We asked The Powers
	That Be to install Our software
	and make it available to the rest of
	the system's users, We were
	greeted with stony silence.


Unfortunately, the scan is not complete as some pages are
missing. For example, page 43 (the title page of the mentioned
article) is among them.

Does anyone know where to get the full articles?


meillo


From wkt at tuhs.org  Tue Jan 12 18:52:53 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 18:52:53 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
Message-ID: <20160112085253.GA12214@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 09:12:53AM +0100, markus schnalke wrote:
> Yesterday, I came across the file Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf on
> my disk. It contains scanned articles of UNIX Review January 1985,
> October 1985 and January 1986. Searching the web brought up this
> online location for the file:
> http://simson.net/ref/free_software/Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf

Damn, I've got a few issues in the 1984-1985 range, but I'm missing
the January issue. Thanks for pointing out the (incomplete) scan,
anyway.

Cheers, Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Tue Jan 12 18:56:19 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 18:56:19 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
Message-ID: <20160112085619.GA13776@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 09:12:53AM +0100, markus schnalke wrote:
> Yesterday, I came across the file Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf on
> my disk. It contains scanned articles of UNIX Review January 1985,
> October 1985 and January 1986. Searching the web brought up this
> online location for the file:
> http://simson.net/ref/free_software/Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf

pg 43 seems to be here: http://www.mindspring.com/~cavu/85may.html

I can't find the missing pg 117.

Cheers, Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Tue Jan 12 21:39:04 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 21:39:04 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
Message-ID: <20160112113904.GA22175@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 09:12:53AM +0100, markus schnalke wrote:
> Yesterday, I came across the file Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf on
> my disk. It contains scanned articles of UNIX Review January 1985,
> October 1985 and January 1986. Searching the web brought up this
> online location for the file:
> http://simson.net/ref/free_software/Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf

Double argh. When I couldn't find the Jan 1985 copy of the Unix Review
magazine, it caused a tingle in my synapses. They finally reminded me that
I had scanned that issue in, and I've just put it up in the archive at
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Unix_Review/unixreview_1985jan.pdf

pages 43 and 117 are there :-)

Cheers, Warren


From meillo at marmaro.de  Tue Jan 12 22:10:38 2016
From: meillo at marmaro.de (markus schnalke)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 13:10:38 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <20160112113904.GA22175@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de> <20160112113904.GA22175@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <1aIxmY-6lw-00@marmaro.de>

[2016-01-12 21:39] Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org>
> 
> Double argh.

Oh well, I have to utter the same sound!

The missing page 43 in the other file it only ads. I already guessed,
that full-page ads were omitted, but my misunderstanding was a different
thing: The designers of this journal didn't follow nowadays typographic
rules! In UNIX Review, content in boxes is *not* auxiliary stuff but
*real* content!

The beginning of the mentioned article is not missing but can be found
in the big box in the lower half of page 42! It just never crossed my
mind that what looked like an ad could actually be the most important
part of an article -- the title and introduction -- when the rest of
it looked completely different.

What a great example for the need for coherent and common typography!


> I had scanned that issue in, and I've just put it up in the archive at
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Unix_Review/unixreview_1985jan.pdf

Thanks a lot for the (much better) scan and the link to the web
page as well.


meillo


From clemc at ccc.com  Wed Jan 13 01:25:40 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 10:25:40 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <20160112113904.GA22175@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de> <20160112113904.GA22175@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Nx-LXT4EgviESiRpyZhhFWWyTo=zgwY0xYFh5VemtFHw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 6:39 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> They finally reminded me that
> I had scanned that issue in, and I've just put it up in the archive at
>
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Unix_Review/unixreview_1985jan.pdf
>

​Thanks for the reminder....   Loved rereading it,   The ads are almost as
much fun as the articles.
Clem​
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From reed at reedmedia.net  Wed Jan 13 01:53:38 2016
From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 09:53:38 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de>
Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1601120942350.10673@t1.m.reedmedia.net>

On Tue, 12 Jan 2016, markus schnalke wrote:

> Unfortunately, the scan is not complete as some pages are
> missing. For example, page 43 (the title page of the mentioned
> article) is among them.

The title page is on page 42 (PDF page 8). The bottom of page 42 
continues to top of page 44:

"For the most part we stayed out of trouble, although on of our rank 
once had his phone records subpoenaed by the FBI ..."

That same article is at
http://www.mindspring.com/~cavu/85may.html

And yes that Unix Review is fun. Note that the first article was 
expanded or reused in "Berkeley UNIX Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" 
(prior to Sept. 1993, included in lawsuit as Kennedy Aff. Ex.  8) and 
then as a chapter in O'Reilly's "Open Sources: Voices from the Open 
Source Revolution", 1st Edition, January 1999.


From reed at reedmedia.net  Thu Jan 14 05:48:18 2016
From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed)
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 13:48:18 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <948AFCDE-4254-4EA8-900C-77A91C0C8F7A@ronnatalie.com>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
 <251affe807c70da8983a241ea7ed9c20@xs4all.nl>
 <948AFCDE-4254-4EA8-900C-77A91C0C8F7A@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1601131323570.10673@t1.m.reedmedia.net>

On Sun, 3 Jan 2016, Ronald Natalie wrote:

> > Thread "[ih] A laugh and a question" at
> > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2006-March/thread.html
> > was what inspired me to bring fuzzballs up in simh.
> 
> There were some inaccuracies in that piece as well which is why 
> history is sometimes fun.  It was definitely December 82 Not 83 
> because it was a few days before LINK 0 was going to be shut off on 
> the APRANET and we were scrambling to convert our machines to TCP.  
> As Clem and I have discussed in a side conversation, it was Gurwitz?s 
> contribution to 4.1a rather than 4.2a (was there a 4.2a even)?

I also looked at Muuss's own story long ago on his webpage.

And see corresponding bug entry from December 1983 and the same 
unattributed bug fix (revision 6.3)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/net.unix-wizards/Dzh14xPrbiA/XAYJHc7VSgcJ

https://github.com/weiss/original-bsd/commit/195492fc6b05470d246fbedd4d2cf5c77d1d63b9

So his own story says impetus of his ping is a meeting in Norway in July 
1983. This year may be off.  RFC 828 of August 1982, said a planned IFIP 
technical committee meeting would be held in Norway in 1982.

His story says in December 1983 he quickly coded up his Unix ping but 
needed kernel support for it to work and required some hardware fixes 
before his "first" ping packet.

But his bug report (linked above) recorded as bugs/4.2BSD/sys/38 seems 
to suggest he already had a "ping" program that could have been in the 
4.2BSD release (which came out earlier in 1983).  I wonder what 
triggered the 20% packet loss with ping and maybe always was there since 
his year-earlier implementation (or maybe some other kernel change broke 
it or maybe he extended his ping to be able to show that).

His kernel fix was integrated at CSRG the next month (1984) and his ping 
was not added to BSD SCCS until April 1985. That ping revision had the 
comments saying it was December, 1983 and for "4.2".

The confusing thing is why notice the 20% loss even on software loopback 
driver (per bug ticket) when his story says other hardware needed to be 
fixed too before first ping. I think he may have skipped some of the 
history when he wrote his story.

(I tried to write this story up in my BSD history book but now became 
more confused :)


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Thu Jan 14 06:02:42 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 15:02:42 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
In-Reply-To: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1601131323570.10673@t1.m.reedmedia.net>
References: <mailman.1.1451005554.3365.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <D2360769-F089-4AA9-8826-617ACE550FBC@kdbarto.org>
 <20151225222234.GP14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <CAOkr1zWj-hQfJYm6WQykB5HO0aJr+X2LHepL=S4ieL1rQObGOA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160102222224.GA14449@eureka.lemis.com>
 <9D03F404-CABC-4309-97CD-3BF2828B43F6@ronnatalie.com>
 <251affe807c70da8983a241ea7ed9c20@xs4all.nl>
 <948AFCDE-4254-4EA8-900C-77A91C0C8F7A@ronnatalie.com>
 <alpine.NEB.2.11.1601131323570.10673@t1.m.reedmedia.net>
Message-ID: <5A836AE5-685A-4071-B7F5-3AF7DC7769C4@ronnatalie.com>

Alas, Mike was a tale teller and pretty good at it.   It’s not surprising (to me) that there may be some inconsistencies to his stories (especially when recounted in informal settings).

I remember the Norway meeting.    Mike actually wanted to send me in his place.   The reason he was invited was that at the time he was maintaining an e-mail journal called the TCP-IP-DIGEST.    Even though he’d pretty much delegated the IP stuff over to me (he had a ton of irons in the fire:   high performance computing, computer graphics, etc..>), the powers that be decided that they didn’t want a substitute.   The outgrowth of that meeting was that the a new GADS (Gateway Architecture and Data Structures) under Dave Mills’s leadership would form which I attended until they morphed it into the IETF (which technically had its first meeting at the GADS meeting it was formed though I hosted the first REAL meeting at BRL shortly thereafter).

The bugs that you posted aren’t the ones I was referring to.    This may indeed be when Mike offered UCB the ping source, but I’m fairly sure my story of the original version is accurate.    We needed at least a rudimentary ping to verify the system after Louis Mamakos crashed us trying to ping us.    I do know Mike made a number of mods over time to set sizes, etc… but the basic functionality of sending a ping once a second and waiting asynchronously for the responses was there from the start.

Another program called ttcp that he wrote never got immensely popular but we used it for throughput testing as well.
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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Jan 14 06:31:01 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 15:31:01 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
Message-ID: <20160113203101.E01BD18C0F5@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Ronald Natalie

    > a new GADS (Gateway Architecture and Data Structures) under Dave
    > Mills's leadership would form which I attended until they morphed it
    > into the IETF

To give a bit more detail, GADS was not producing needed stuff as fast as was
needed, so it was split into InArc and InEng, with Dave running InArc and
Corrigan (initially, Gross later) in charge.

	Noel


From dave at horsfall.org  Thu Jan 14 08:26:18 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 09:26:18 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Nx-LXT4EgviESiRpyZhhFWWyTo=zgwY0xYFh5VemtFHw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de> <20160112113904.GA22175@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <CAC20D2Nx-LXT4EgviESiRpyZhhFWWyTo=zgwY0xYFh5VemtFHw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601140920260.36058@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Tue, 12 Jan 2016, Clem Cole wrote:

> They finally reminded me that I had scanned that issue in, and I've just 
> put it up in the archive at 
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Unix_Review/unixreview_1985jan.pdf
> 
> Thanks for the reminder....   Loved rereading it,   The ads are almost as
> much fun as the articles.

Ahh...  Unify...  The best DBMS ever.  These days, they're even calling a 
fscking Excel spread-sheet a "database".  Somewhere, I still have the 
source code for Unify.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

From wkt at tuhs.org  Thu Jan 14 08:59:39 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 08:59:39 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <20160112085619.GA13776@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de> <20160112085619.GA13776@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20160113225939.GA31293@minnie.tuhs.org>

> On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 09:12:53AM +0100, markus schnalke wrote:
> > Yesterday, I came across the file Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf on
> > my disk. It contains scanned articles of UNIX Review January 1985,

Compare the "Fear and Loathing" article with the "Unix in a Hostile
Environment" article by Peter Ivanov on page 13 of
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V01.1.pdf

Cheers, Warren


From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Thu Jan 14 08:29:49 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 17:29:49 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Missing pages in Berkeley_Unix_History.pdf
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601140920260.36058@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <1aIu4T-3gt-00@marmaro.de> <20160112113904.GA22175@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <CAC20D2Nx-LXT4EgviESiRpyZhhFWWyTo=zgwY0xYFh5VemtFHw@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601140920260.36058@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20160113222949.GB21789@mercury.ccil.org>

Dave Horsfall scripsit:

> Ahh...  Unify...  The best DBMS ever.  These days, they're even calling a 
> fscking Excel spread-sheet a "database".  Somewhere, I still have the 
> source code for Unify.

Hey, consider the term "password database".

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
My corporate data's a mess!
It's all semi-structured, no less.
But I'll be carefree / Using XSLT
On an XML DBMS.


From tecneeq at tecneeq.de  Sun Jan 10 19:50:48 2016
From: tecneeq at tecneeq.de (Karsten Kruse)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 10:50:48 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] More wiki work: free Unix licenses
In-Reply-To: <20160104031536.GA1429@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160104031536.GA1429@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <p4m9mc-6p3.ln1@nntp.tecneeq.de>

Am 04.01.2016 um 04:15 schrieb Warren Toomey:

> All, although I can't contribute to the actual history of Unix, I can at
> least document what happened "afterwards". Here's a piece about the
> journey to make free Unix source code licenses available:
> 
> http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=events:free_licenses
> 
> Comments welcome. Cheers, Warren

Interesting reading, thanks. That is my comment. :)

MFG,

Karsten


-- 
  ()
 <\/>   Not allowing the wealthy to hunt man for sport
 _/\_   removes all motivation to succeed.



From wkt at tuhs.org  Mon Jan 18 14:24:38 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2016 14:24:38 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] PDF of "A Quarter Century of Unix"
Message-ID: <20160118042438.GA22535@minnie.tuhs.org>

All, I asked Peter Salus if there is an electronic version of his great
book "A Quarter Century of Unix". There isn't one, so I scanned my book
in. Peter has given TUHS the right to distribute the scanned version.

I've just added a link to the PDF of the scan here:
http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:quarter_century_of_unix

But, if you can, buy the paper version as well!

Many thanks to Peter for his generosity.

Cheers, Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Fri Jan 22 06:19:01 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 06:19:01 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Another book
Message-ID: <20160121201901.GB13264@minnie.tuhs.org>

All, Don Libes and Sandy Ressler just donated a PDF of their book
"Life with Unix" to the archive. It's at:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Books/

I've also found PDF copies of a bunch of other books, so look
through http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:books
for links.

Cheers, Warren


From will.senn at gmail.com  Sun Jan 24 02:58:31 2016
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 10:58:31 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
Message-ID: <56A3B137.80505@gmail.com>

All,

I'm finally returning to my study of v6 after digging a bit further into 
assembly language and "other" pdp-11 operating systems. I even managed 
to get hello, world working in assembly in v6 and interestingly enough, 
I actually see how it works... for the most part :). Mini-note here:

http://decuser.blogspot.com/2016/01/hello-world-in-assembly-on-research.html

My question for y'all today is as follows (asked previously with a much 
larger gap in understanding):

How did folks debug assembly routines in Unix v6, back in the day?

I realize that most folks didn't do assembly, but some did and I'm 
curious what their approach might have been.

After having worked with RT-11 for a bit, I can see how I might develop 
using RT-11 and then "port" a program across, but that seems less than 
ideal. Here is my short list of missing features as I see them:

1. No listing file/cross reference list created by as.
2. No map file created by ld.
3. No debugger that I can find.
4. This is not a missing feature, but it deserves inclusion in the list, 
the command as has possibly the most terse error messages I have ever 
seen - B 12? Really? Thankfully, the awesome man command comes to the 
rescue with the list of error codes.

My workarounds include using OD to view the generated machine code and 
adding mesg calls.

Thoughts?

Will


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sun Jan 24 03:18:51 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 12:18:51 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
Message-ID: <20160123171851.F423518C0D3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Will Senn

    > How did folks debug assembly routines in Unix v6, back in the day?

There are three different questions here, although you may not realize it:

 - How did folks debug assembly routines in user programs in Unix v6
 - How did folks debug assembly routines in the kernel in Unix v6
 - How did folks debug assembly routines in PDP-11 standalone code created
   with Unix v6

I did all three, and I used different methods for each.

For user code, there was no source-level debugger, so debugging C programs
and debugging code written in assembler were the same thing. I used 'adb'
(which is, stricly speaking, slightly post-V6 - our system at MIT was
actually sort of an early PWB clone), but V6 itself provides 'db' (and also,
IIRC, 'cdb'); all three are very similar.

For standalone code (in my case, a packet switch that ran on PDP-11's), I
used a version of DDT that was linked in with the rest of the code. The
original version was one in MACRO-11 which I inherited from Jim Mathis at
SRI, but I eventually re-wrote it in portable C, and it was used on the 68K,
uVax and 29K.

For kernel assembler code... I can't remember what I did! Although I wrote a
fair amount of it (I modified m45.s very extensively, to work with the Able
ENABLE card), so I must have done _something_, but I have no idea what. In
theory I could have linked DDT in with the kernel, but I don't think I ever
did so?

Recently I was debugging some kernel code (the splice() system call we were
discussing here), and I debugged it using... printf()'s! It was written in C,
but I don't really differentiate between debugging C code, and assembler.


    > 2. No map file created by ld.

LD normally includes a symbol table in the output file, which 'nm' can dump.

    > 3. No debugger that I can find.

See above.

    > My workarounds include using OD to view the generated machine code

Use db/cdb/adb if you want to look at compiled code. Also, for 'cc', use the
-S flag.

	Noel


From clemc at ccc.com  Sun Jan 24 03:30:23 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 12:30:23 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
In-Reply-To: <56A3B137.80505@gmail.com>
References: <56A3B137.80505@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2N39YsNWsh05CacBt9KR6xGw5Ueb1nGP4wxzBtyHZHuAQ@mail.gmail.com>

below...

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 11:58 AM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:

> All,
>
> I'm finally returning to my study of v6 after digging a bit further into
> assembly language and "other" pdp-11 operating systems. I even managed to
> get hello, world working in assembly in v6 and interestingly enough, I
> actually see how it works... for the most part :). Mini-note here:
>
>
> http://decuser.blogspot.com/2016/01/hello-world-in-assembly-on-research.html
>
> My question for y'all today is as follows (asked previously with a much
> larger gap in understanding):
>
> How did folks debug assembly routines in Unix v6, back in the day?
>

​3 questions here... how did you debug the pre-boot world (aka standalone
system), how to debug the kernel itself and a user program.

​
​Couple of them that I used were:


   1. T.lights&switches in the PMS notation (ie. the front console of the
   processor) - very helpful for kernel debugging.  In fact, certain patterns
   were definitely recognizable.   Plus people wrote programs the ran specific
   patterns in the console during certain times like the idle loop.  For the
   11 this was definitely used to debug the preboot world but it helped on the
   kernel (see below)
   2. printf or equiv
   3. a debugger when possible (adb came from AT&T, there is a ddt clone on
   one of the USENIX tapes - which I liked better and IIRC adb is not around
   with v5).  When I was mostly using v6, we used the ddt program, because I
   was also doing PDP-10 and a little VMS programming at CMU.   When I left
   CMU,went the V7 and later BSD 4.x and became pretty much 100% Unix, the ddt
   program had issues including no Vax port, so instead of fixing it, I learn
   adb and never went back.


In fact to help debug the kernel, we even put adb into the core resident
port of V7 which was tricky - Noel I seem to remember we (probably Steve
Zimmerman or maybe Geoff Peck) stole that from you guys at MIT (Steve
definitely spliced adb into the Masscomp kernel say in '84ish.  But I
remember having had something before that.

Clem

Side bar --- most of the Masscomp HW team came from the 780, 750 or 11/34
teams at DEC.   Dave Cane (Mr. 750), was the HW lead.   I remember a big
argument at Masscomp because the SW team wanted a real console at least as
a option and Dave hated them (for system debugging).  The best we ever got
was a set of macros for a logic analyzer hanging off of system in Eric
Finger's office.






>
> I realize that most folks didn't do assembly, but some did and I'm curious
> what their approach might have been.
>
​Use the USENIX Macro-11 assembler clone.

Funny, we were talking about this at lunch just yesterday!!  Later with the
Vax, post DEC putting the Fortran on BSD, ​you had the VMS linker on BSD.
Its still there and works.




>
> After having worked with RT-11 for a bit, I can see how I might develop
> using RT-11 and then "port" a program across, but that seems less than
> ideal. Here is my short list of missing features as I see them:
>
> 1. No listing file/cross reference list created by as.
>
​Check the USENIX tapes​




> 2. No map file created by ld.
>
​Yup - I never had one for the 11.

I seem to remember somebody (* Goble at Purdue I think) hacked a ld to
generate them.   Check USENIX and Purdue tools.   George's Microprocessor
tools for the Z80, 8080, 6800, 6502 etc... had an ld that did just this.



> 3. No debugger that I can find.
>
​From research, until V7 correct.  But check the USENIX tapes, ​Harvard, CU
or Columbia did a ddt clone that was pretty good.



> 4. This is not a missing feature, but it deserves inclusion in the list,
> the command as has possibly the most terse error messages

​No ed(1) has beats it.   You just get a ? printed.   Google "Brian
Kernightan's dashboard"  ​


​Clem​
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From will.senn at gmail.com  Sun Jan 24 03:38:06 2016
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 11:38:06 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
In-Reply-To: <20160123171851.F423518C0D3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20160123171851.F423518C0D3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <56A3BA7E.5040905@gmail.com>



On 1/23/16 11:18 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>      > From: Will Senn
>
>      > How did folks debug assembly routines in Unix v6, back in the day?
>
> There are three different questions here, although you may not realize it:
>
>   - How did folks debug assembly routines in user programs in Unix v6
>   - How did folks debug assembly routines in the kernel in Unix v6
>   - How did folks debug assembly routines in PDP-11 standalone code created
>     with Unix v6
>
> I did all three, and I used different methods for each.
>
> For user code, there was no source-level debugger, so debugging C programs
> and debugging code written in assembler were the same thing. I used 'adb'
> (which is, stricly speaking, slightly post-V6 - our system at MIT was
> actually sort of an early PWB clone), but V6 itself provides 'db' (and also,
> IIRC, 'cdb'); all three are very similar.
>
> For standalone code (in my case, a packet switch that ran on PDP-11's), I
> used a version of DDT that was linked in with the rest of the code. The
> original version was one in MACRO-11 which I inherited from Jim Mathis at
> SRI, but I eventually re-wrote it in portable C, and it was used on the 68K,
> uVax and 29K.
>
> For kernel assembler code... I can't remember what I did! Although I wrote a
> fair amount of it (I modified m45.s very extensively, to work with the Able
> ENABLE card), so I must have done _something_, but I have no idea what. In
> theory I could have linked DDT in with the kernel, but I don't think I ever
> did so?
>
> Recently I was debugging some kernel code (the splice() system call we were
> discussing here), and I debugged it using... printf()'s! It was written in C,
> but I don't really differentiate between debugging C code, and assembler.
>
>
>      > 2. No map file created by ld.
>
> LD normally includes a symbol table in the output file, which 'nm' can dump.
>
>      > 3. No debugger that I can find.
>
> See above.
>
>      > My workarounds include using OD to view the generated machine code
>
> Use db/cdb/adb if you want to look at compiled code. Also, for 'cc', use the
> -S flag.
>
> 	Noel
I have cdb, it works. How do I exit it. %, CTRL-C, CTRL-D, CTRL-Z, 
Break, CTRL-Break, and so on just result in a ? being displayed. I 
checked the man page, no joy. It is possible to use %r to run the 
program at which point it exits, but I'm hoping there's a magic key 
combination...

db works too and it's exit is simply %.

Thanks,

Will


From clemc at ccc.com  Sun Jan 24 03:39:45 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 12:39:45 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2N39YsNWsh05CacBt9KR6xGw5Ueb1nGP4wxzBtyHZHuAQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <56A3B137.80505@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2N39YsNWsh05CacBt9KR6xGw5Ueb1nGP4wxzBtyHZHuAQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Nfw5MajDE+1QBtDCGMzDbhQMtxiR_Vf31UYZiAgjgLxg@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> 3. No debugger that I can find.
>>
> ​From research, until V7 correct.  But check the USENIX tapes, ​Harvard,
> CU or Columbia did a ddt clone that was pretty good.
>

​Just read Noel's message -- sounds like the ddt came from Stanford and
MIT.   I don't remember the assembler version of it, but we definitely had
a C version for the 11 before V7.

I also had forgotten about db and cdb  - I could not tell you when they
appeared in the source stream without poking at Warren's archives.

BTW: I was thinking that the ddt came from the CU folks because they were
the folks that first got the DEC FTN to run on UNIX.  Since they did not
have access to  PDP-10 to run the BLISS compiler, the simulated it.   They
wrote a number of tools for the 11 and 10 in that project what were much
like the DEC tools from the PDP-10.


Clem​
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From will.senn at gmail.com  Sun Jan 24 03:58:38 2016
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 11:58:38 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Missing Documents for use with the Unix Time-Sharing System,
 Sixth Edition
Message-ID: <56A3BF4E.9020403@gmail.com>

All,

The Unix Sixth edition programmer's manual and other documents for use 
with Unix time-sharing system are available online, in html and 
postscript form from Wolfgang Helbig's site:

http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/v6/doc/index.html

There are papers some missing from the "Documents for use with the Unix 
Time-Sharing System":
RATFOR - A Preprocessor for Rational Fortran
NROFF User's Manual
A Manual for Tmg Compiler-writing Language
On the Security of UNIX
The M6 Macro Processor
A System for Typesetting Mathematics
DC - An Interactive Desk Calculator
BC - An Arbitrary Precision Desk-Calculator Language
The Portable C Library (on UNIX)
UNIX Summary

Some of these are more interesting to me than others, but I tend towards 
shiny objects, so there is no telling when they will be of critical 
interest in the future. I have done quite a bit of searching for the 
NROFF document and the portable C library document and while I have 
found related works, I haven't come across the originals for sixth 
edition. Do any of y'all know where any or all of these documents are 
archived in their original/reproduced form?

Regards,

Will


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sun Jan 24 04:03:57 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 13:03:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
Message-ID: <20160123180357.80D7A18C0D3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Will Senn

    > I have cdb .. How do I exit it. %, CTRL-C, CTRL-D, CTRL-Z, Break,
    > CTRL-Break, and so on just result in a ? being displayed.

CTL-D (EOF on input) works for me? Or maybe the version I have (it was a
binary only that came off the Shoppa disks, IIRC) is slightly different from
the one you have, and that only works in this version (which has a number of
extensions).

I don't think I ever found any other way to exit it. Although looking at the
code, it seems like probably the only way is to generate a 'quit with core
dump' interrupt - I forget what character that is in standard V6.

	Noel


From brantleycoile at me.com  Sun Jan 24 03:25:21 2016
From: brantleycoile at me.com (Brantley Coile)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 12:25:21 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
In-Reply-To: <56A3B137.80505@gmail.com>
References: <56A3B137.80505@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <18C17F2C-480D-425B-8CCD-A007FDE23BDB@me.com>

I had a pdp-11/73 on which I ran 7th Edition. I debugged with print’s out the console. Usually I had a subroutine that would dump the registers including the PC, so I knew where it was. I used adb to get the absolute addresses. 

The ’73 also had a very simple debugger, ODT, built into the microcode. I never used it much, preferring to use printf in the C code and puts, puthex and snap in the assembler code.

I still use this technique working with our Plan 9 system today. 

Brantley

> On Jan 23, 2016, at 11:58 AM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> I'm finally returning to my study of v6 after digging a bit further into assembly language and "other" pdp-11 operating systems. I even managed to get hello, world working in assembly in v6 and interestingly enough, I actually see how it works... for the most part :). Mini-note here:
> 
> http://decuser.blogspot.com/2016/01/hello-world-in-assembly-on-research.html
> 
> My question for y'all today is as follows (asked previously with a much larger gap in understanding):
> 
> How did folks debug assembly routines in Unix v6, back in the day?
> 
> I realize that most folks didn't do assembly, but some did and I'm curious what their approach might have been.
> 
> After having worked with RT-11 for a bit, I can see how I might develop using RT-11 and then "port" a program across, but that seems less than ideal. Here is my short list of missing features as I see them:
> 
> 1. No listing file/cross reference list created by as.
> 2. No map file created by ld.
> 3. No debugger that I can find.
> 4. This is not a missing feature, but it deserves inclusion in the list, the command as has possibly the most terse error messages I have ever seen - B 12? Really? Thankfully, the awesome man command comes to the rescue with the list of error codes.
> 
> My workarounds include using OD to view the generated machine code and adding mesg calls.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Will



From will.senn at gmail.com  Sun Jan 24 04:42:00 2016
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 12:42:00 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
In-Reply-To: <20160123180357.80D7A18C0D3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20160123180357.80D7A18C0D3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <56A3C978.4040009@gmail.com>



On 1/23/16 12:03 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>      > From: Will Senn
>
>      > I have cdb .. How do I exit it. %, CTRL-C, CTRL-D, CTRL-Z, Break,
>      > CTRL-Break, and so on just result in a ? being displayed.
>
> CTL-D (EOF on input) works for me? Or maybe the version I have (it was a
> binary only that came off the Shoppa disks, IIRC) is slightly different from
> the one you have, and that only works in this version (which has a number of
> extensions).
>
> I don't think I ever found any other way to exit it. Although looking at the
> code, it seems like probably the only way is to generate a 'quit with core
> dump' interrupt - I forget what character that is in standard V6.
>
> 	Noel
You are correct, CTL-D works. I must have typed it after I typed another 
key or something.

Thanks,

Will


From clemc at ccc.com  Sun Jan 24 06:00:48 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 15:00:48 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: Missing Documents for use with the Unix Time-Sharing
 System, Sixth Edition
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2OfONSUkeVX_ZorvcUzOydGSHOJmS7oqPRChsHtgHOD+g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <56A3BF4E.9020403@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2OfONSUkeVX_ZorvcUzOydGSHOJmS7oqPRChsHtgHOD+g@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MS7vNHcYpU=-9kTBaCdAegNNn68KQhgaMagc+paB9LxQ@mail.gmail.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Missing Documents for use with the Unix Time-Sharing
System, Sixth Edition
To: Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com>


below....

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:

> All,
>
> The Unix Sixth edition programmer's manual and other documents for use
> with Unix time-sharing system are available online, in html and postscript
> form from Wolfgang Helbig's site:
>
> http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/v6/doc/index.html
>
> There are papers some missing from the "Documents for use with the Unix
> Time-Sharing System":
>
​Hmm - these should be with the v6 distribution   - some of them are coming
with later editions... and except for updates to said system will be go'nuf

That said you are asking about the versions from v6.   I do not seem to
have hardcopies easy to find.   I'll keep looking there is some stuff in my
attic.
​




> RATFOR - A Preprocessor for Rational Fortran
> NROFF User's Manual
> A Manual for Tmg Compiler-writing Language
>
​This is the doc that you might not find in other places, as I think tmg
stopped being distributed at some point.   Doug as one of the authors I
believe may know the story.   ​




> On the Security of UNIX
> The M6 Macro Processor
>
​I think you mean m4 not m6​



> A System for Typesetting Mathematics
> DC - An Interactive Desk Calculator
> BC - An Arbitrary Precision Desk-Calculator Language
> The Portable C Library (on UNIX)
> UNIX Summary
>
> Some of these are more interesting to me than others, but I tend towards
> shiny objects, so there is no telling when they will be of critical
> interest in the future. I have done quite a bit of searching for the NROFF
> document and the portable C library document and while I have found related
> works, I haven't come across the originals for sixth edition. Do any of
> y'all know where any or all of these documents are archived in their
> original/reproduced form?



Warren's V6 seems have many of them in:
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz
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From will.senn at gmail.com  Sun Jan 24 06:36:02 2016
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 14:36:02 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: Missing Documents for use with the Unix
 Time-Sharing System, Sixth Edition
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MS7vNHcYpU=-9kTBaCdAegNNn68KQhgaMagc+paB9LxQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <56A3BF4E.9020403@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2OfONSUkeVX_ZorvcUzOydGSHOJmS7oqPRChsHtgHOD+g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2MS7vNHcYpU=-9kTBaCdAegNNn68KQhgaMagc+paB9LxQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <56A3E432.3090604@gmail.com>



On 1/23/16 2:00 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Clem Cole* <clemc at ccc.com <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>>
> Date: Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 3:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Missing Documents for use with the Unix 
> Time-Sharing System, Sixth Edition
> To: Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com <mailto:will.senn at gmail.com>>
>
>
> below....
>
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com 
> <mailto:will.senn at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     All,
>
>     The Unix Sixth edition programmer's manual and other documents for
>     use with Unix time-sharing system are available online, in html
>     and postscript form from Wolfgang Helbig's site:
>
>     http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/v6/doc/index.html
>     <http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/%7Ehelbig/os/v6/doc/index.html>
>
>     There are papers some missing from the "Documents for use with the
>     Unix Time-Sharing System":
>
> ​ Hmm - these should be with the v6 distribution   - some of them are 
> coming with later editions... and except for updates to said system 
> will be go'nuf
>
> That said you are asking about the versions from v6.   I do not seem 
> to have hardcopies easy to find.   I'll keep looking there is some 
> stuff in my attic.
> ​
>
>
>     RATFOR - A Preprocessor for Rational Fortran
>     NROFF User's Manual
>     A Manual for Tmg Compiler-writing Language
>
> ​ This is the doc that you might not find in other places, as I think 
> tmg stopped being distributed at some point.   Doug as one of the 
> authors I believe may know the story.   ​
>
>
>     On the Security of UNIX
>     The M6 Macro Processor
>
> ​I think you mean m4 not m6​
>
>     A System for Typesetting Mathematics
>     DC - An Interactive Desk Calculator
>     BC - An Arbitrary Precision Desk-Calculator Language
>     The Portable C Library (on UNIX)
>     UNIX Summary
>
>     Some of these are more interesting to me than others, but I tend
>     towards shiny objects, so there is no telling when they will be of
>     critical interest in the future. I have done quite a bit of
>     searching for the NROFF document and the portable C library
>     document and while I have found related works, I haven't come
>     across the originals for sixth edition. Do any of y'all know where
>     any or all of these documents are archived in their
>     original/reproduced form?
>
>
>
> Warren's V6 seems have many of them in: 
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz 
>
>
Thanks for the reply. The nroff source for a lot of these is indeed on 
the distribution tape. So... my followup question is how can I convert 
it to pdf or ps?

In v6:
# cd /usr/doc/iolib
# nroff iolib
The Portable C Library (on UNIX) * M. E. Lesk 1. INTRODUCTION The
C langlage [1] now exists on three operating systems.  * This do-
clment is an abbreviated form of ``The Portable C  Library'',  by
M.  E.  Lesk, describing only the UNIX section of the library.  A
...
pected  to make any sense of it on retlrn.  The first arglment is
...

Mangled. But when I took the source and copied it onto my mac and did this:
groff -t iolib
ps2pdf iolib.ps
open iolib.pdf

The result was ok and is attached, but the format is ugly. Here is the 
first bit of source. Is it roff/nroff? and is my approach to conversion 
reasonable?

.ds s \\s8
.ds S \\s0
.ds * \v'.2m'*\v'-.2m'
.tr ~.
.ds . \s14~\s0
.tr _\(ul
.de sn
.sp
.ft I
.ne 2
..
.de sN
.sp .5
.ft R
..
.TL
The Portable C Library (on \s-2UNIX\s0) *
.AU
M. E. Lesk
.AI
.MH
.SH
1. INTRODUCTION
.PP
The C language [1] now exists on three operating systems.
.FS
* This document is an abbreviated form of
``The Portable C Library'', by M. E. Lesk, describing only
the UNIX section of the library.
.FE
A set of library routines common to

Thanks,

Will

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From clemc at ccc.com  Sun Jan 24 07:23:00 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 16:23:00 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: Missing Documents for use with the Unix
 Time-Sharing System, Sixth Edition
In-Reply-To: <56A3E432.3090604@gmail.com>
References: <56A3BF4E.9020403@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2OfONSUkeVX_ZorvcUzOydGSHOJmS7oqPRChsHtgHOD+g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2MS7vNHcYpU=-9kTBaCdAegNNn68KQhgaMagc+paB9LxQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <56A3E432.3090604@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Mod9Z43k1-ndR4RGeA3kBvVzHPVQdoQT7bdwaUf69LzQ@mail.gmail.com>

Looks like -ms macros - which make sense because Mike Lesk wrote them.

groff -Tps -ms iolib > iolib.ps
ps2pdf iolib



On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 3:36 PM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 1/23/16 2:00 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com>
> Date: Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 3:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Missing Documents for use with the Unix Time-Sharing
> System, Sixth Edition
> To: Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com>
>
>
> below....
>
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Will Senn < <will.senn at gmail.com>
> will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> The Unix Sixth edition programmer's manual and other documents for use
>> with Unix time-sharing system are available online, in html and postscript
>> form from Wolfgang Helbig's site:
>>
>> http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/v6/doc/index.html
>>
>> There are papers some missing from the "Documents for use with the Unix
>> Time-Sharing System":
>>
> ​ Hmm - these should be with the v6 distribution   - some of them are
> coming with later editions... and except for updates to said system will be
> go'nuf
>
> That said you are asking about the versions from v6.   I do not seem to
> have hardcopies easy to find.   I'll keep looking there is some stuff in my
> attic.
> ​
>
>
>
>
>> RATFOR - A Preprocessor for Rational Fortran
>> NROFF User's Manual
>> A Manual for Tmg Compiler-writing Language
>>
> ​ This is the doc that you might not find in other places, as I think tmg
> stopped being distributed at some point.   Doug as one of the authors I
> believe may know the story.   ​
>
>
>
>
>> On the Security of UNIX
>> The M6 Macro Processor
>>
> ​I think you mean m4 not m6​
>
>
>
>> A System for Typesetting Mathematics
>> DC - An Interactive Desk Calculator
>> BC - An Arbitrary Precision Desk-Calculator Language
>> The Portable C Library (on UNIX)
>> UNIX Summary
>>
>> Some of these are more interesting to me than others, but I tend towards
>> shiny objects, so there is no telling when they will be of critical
>> interest in the future. I have done quite a bit of searching for the NROFF
>> document and the portable C library document and while I have found related
>> works, I haven't come across the originals for sixth edition. Do any of
>> y'all know where any or all of these documents are archived in their
>> original/reproduced form?
>
>
>
> Warren's V6 seems have many of them in:
> <http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz>
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz
>
>
> Thanks for the reply. The nroff source for a lot of these is indeed on the
> distribution tape. So... my followup question is how can I convert it to
> pdf or ps?
>
> In v6:
> # cd /usr/doc/iolib
> # nroff iolib
> The Portable C Library (on UNIX) * M. E. Lesk 1. INTRODUCTION The
> C langlage [1] now exists on three operating systems.  * This do-
> clment is an abbreviated form of ``The Portable C  Library'',  by
> M.  E.  Lesk, describing only the UNIX section of the library.  A
> ...
> pected  to make any sense of it on retlrn.  The first arglment is
> ...
>
> Mangled. But when I took the source and copied it onto my mac and did this:
> groff -t iolib
> ps2pdf iolib.ps
> open iolib.pdf
>
> The result was ok and is attached, but the format is ugly. Here is the
> first bit of source. Is it roff/nroff? and is my approach to conversion
> reasonable?
>
> .ds s \\s8
> .ds S \\s0
> .ds * \v'.2m'*\v'-.2m'
> .tr ~.
> .ds . \s14~\s0
> .tr _\(ul
> .de sn
> .sp
> .ft I
> .ne 2
> ..
> .de sN
> .sp .5
> .ft R
> ..
> .TL
> The Portable C Library (on \s-2UNIX\s0) *
> .AU
> M. E. Lesk
> .AI
> .MH
> .SH
> 1. INTRODUCTION
> .PP
> The C language [1] now exists on three operating systems.
> .FS
> * This document is an abbreviated form of
> ``The Portable C Library'', by M. E. Lesk, describing only
> the UNIX section of the library.
> .FE
> A set of library routines common to
>
> Thanks,
>
> Will
>
>
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From clemc at ccc.com  Sun Jan 24 07:28:25 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 16:28:25 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: Missing Documents for use with the Unix
 Time-Sharing System, Sixth Edition
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Mod9Z43k1-ndR4RGeA3kBvVzHPVQdoQT7bdwaUf69LzQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <56A3BF4E.9020403@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2OfONSUkeVX_ZorvcUzOydGSHOJmS7oqPRChsHtgHOD+g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2MS7vNHcYpU=-9kTBaCdAegNNn68KQhgaMagc+paB9LxQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <56A3E432.3090604@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2Mod9Z43k1-ndR4RGeA3kBvVzHPVQdoQT7bdwaUf69LzQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2OGU5iAFSccoeYpn+ypXahyq-4nOeGxDKJBiaUAenb8qQ@mail.gmail.com>

If that fails, go into your v6 file system and look in /usr/lib/tmac and
find the old macros.
Bring them back your mac and you can do:  groff -Tps XXXoldmacrosXXX iolib>
iolib.ps

Clem

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 4:23 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> Looks like -ms macros - which make sense because Mike Lesk wrote them.
>
> groff -Tps -ms iolib > iolib.ps
> ps2pdf iolib
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 3:36 PM, Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 1/23/16 2:00 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com>
>> Date: Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 3:00 PM
>> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Missing Documents for use with the Unix Time-Sharing
>> System, Sixth Edition
>> To: Will Senn <will.senn at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> below....
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Will Senn < <will.senn at gmail.com>
>> will.senn at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> The Unix Sixth edition programmer's manual and other documents for use
>>> with Unix time-sharing system are available online, in html and postscript
>>> form from Wolfgang Helbig's site:
>>>
>>> http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/v6/doc/index.html
>>>
>>> There are papers some missing from the "Documents for use with the Unix
>>> Time-Sharing System":
>>>
>> ​ Hmm - these should be with the v6 distribution   - some of them are
>> coming with later editions... and except for updates to said system will be
>> go'nuf
>>
>> That said you are asking about the versions from v6.   I do not seem to
>> have hardcopies easy to find.   I'll keep looking there is some stuff in my
>> attic.
>> ​
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> RATFOR - A Preprocessor for Rational Fortran
>>> NROFF User's Manual
>>> A Manual for Tmg Compiler-writing Language
>>>
>> ​ This is the doc that you might not find in other places, as I think tmg
>> stopped being distributed at some point.   Doug as one of the authors I
>> believe may know the story.   ​
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On the Security of UNIX
>>> The M6 Macro Processor
>>>
>> ​I think you mean m4 not m6​
>>
>>
>>
>>> A System for Typesetting Mathematics
>>> DC - An Interactive Desk Calculator
>>> BC - An Arbitrary Precision Desk-Calculator Language
>>> The Portable C Library (on UNIX)
>>> UNIX Summary
>>>
>>> Some of these are more interesting to me than others, but I tend towards
>>> shiny objects, so there is no telling when they will be of critical
>>> interest in the future. I have done quite a bit of searching for the NROFF
>>> document and the portable C library document and while I have found related
>>> works, I haven't come across the originals for sixth edition. Do any of
>>> y'all know where any or all of these documents are archived in their
>>> original/reproduced form?
>>
>>
>>
>> Warren's V6 seems have many of them in:
>> <http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz>
>> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.tar.gz
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the reply. The nroff source for a lot of these is indeed on
>> the distribution tape. So... my followup question is how can I convert it
>> to pdf or ps?
>>
>> In v6:
>> # cd /usr/doc/iolib
>> # nroff iolib
>> The Portable C Library (on UNIX) * M. E. Lesk 1. INTRODUCTION The
>> C langlage [1] now exists on three operating systems.  * This do-
>> clment is an abbreviated form of ``The Portable C  Library'',  by
>> M.  E.  Lesk, describing only the UNIX section of the library.  A
>> ...
>> pected  to make any sense of it on retlrn.  The first arglment is
>> ...
>>
>> Mangled. But when I took the source and copied it onto my mac and did
>> this:
>> groff -t iolib
>> ps2pdf iolib.ps
>> open iolib.pdf
>>
>> The result was ok and is attached, but the format is ugly. Here is the
>> first bit of source. Is it roff/nroff? and is my approach to conversion
>> reasonable?
>>
>> .ds s \\s8
>> .ds S \\s0
>> .ds * \v'.2m'*\v'-.2m'
>> .tr ~.
>> .ds . \s14~\s0
>> .tr _\(ul
>> .de sn
>> .sp
>> .ft I
>> .ne 2
>> ..
>> .de sN
>> .sp .5
>> .ft R
>> ..
>> .TL
>> The Portable C Library (on \s-2UNIX\s0) *
>> .AU
>> M. E. Lesk
>> .AI
>> .MH
>> .SH
>> 1. INTRODUCTION
>> .PP
>> The C language [1] now exists on three operating systems.
>> .FS
>> * This document is an abbreviated form of
>> ``The Portable C Library'', by M. E. Lesk, describing only
>> the UNIX section of the library.
>> .FE
>> A set of library routines common to
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Will
>>
>>
>
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From will.senn at gmail.com  Sun Jan 24 08:21:59 2016
From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 16:21:59 -0600
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: Missing Documents for use with the Unix
 Time-Sharing System, Sixth Edition
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2Mod9Z43k1-ndR4RGeA3kBvVzHPVQdoQT7bdwaUf69LzQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <56A3BF4E.9020403@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2OfONSUkeVX_ZorvcUzOydGSHOJmS7oqPRChsHtgHOD+g@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2MS7vNHcYpU=-9kTBaCdAegNNn68KQhgaMagc+paB9LxQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <56A3E432.3090604@gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2Mod9Z43k1-ndR4RGeA3kBvVzHPVQdoQT7bdwaUf69LzQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <56A3FD07.8070706@gmail.com>



On 1/23/16 3:23 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
> Looks like -ms macros - which make sense because Mike Lesk wrote them.
>
> groff -Tps -ms iolib > iolib.ps <http://iolib.ps>
> ps2pdf iolib
>
>
Uhmazing :). Worked like a charm.

Thanks,

Will
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From wkt at tuhs.org  Sun Jan 24 13:56:28 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:56:28 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
Message-ID: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>

Hi all, does anybody know of on-line historical Usenet archives that
I can link to, especially if they have unpacked articles (visible
subject lines would be better)?

What newsgroups are relevant? net.v7bugs, comp.sources.unix,
comp.sources.misc, net.sources, mod.sources, comp.sources.bugs?
What about platform or system-specific newsgroups?

I'll put the links here: http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:newsgroups

Thanks, Warren

P.S A good history of the legal side of Unix is here:
http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:theses


From lm at mcvoy.com  Sun Jan 24 17:06:37 2016
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 23:06:37 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>

So there used to be dejanews or something like that, it was awesome, 
you could search it and find stuff from 1980.  Google bought them
and more or less ruined it from what I can tell.

On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 01:56:28PM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Hi all, does anybody know of on-line historical Usenet archives that
> I can link to, especially if they have unpacked articles (visible
> subject lines would be better)?
> 
> What newsgroups are relevant? net.v7bugs, comp.sources.unix,
> comp.sources.misc, net.sources, mod.sources, comp.sources.bugs?
> What about platform or system-specific newsgroups?
> 
> I'll put the links here: http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:newsgroups
> 
> Thanks, Warren
> 
> P.S A good history of the legal side of Unix is here:
> http://wiki.tuhs.org/doku.php?id=publications:theses

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 


From dds at aueb.gr  Sun Jan 24 18:19:37 2016
From: dds at aueb.gr (Diomidis Spinellis)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 10:19:37 +0200
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <56A48919.5070109@aueb.gr>

Google seems to have folded the Usenet archives into its "Google Groups"
service.  Here links to some relevant groups:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/net.unix
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/mod.unix
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.unix
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.unix.bsd
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.unix.sys5.r4
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.unix.i386
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.unix.programmer
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.unix.wizards
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/net.sources
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/mod.sources
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.sources.unix
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/comp.sources.misc

The articles go way back.  Here is for example Keith Bostic posting a
public domain getopt(3) implementation in mod.sources in 1984.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/mod.sources/2FNKQgL81d0

The browsing interface is an insult to Usenet News (threads are now
"topics", messages are "posts"), the web, and accessibility (topics
magically appear at the bottom of the page as you scroll down).  I also
haven't been able to search by message-id.  However, all the material
seems to be there, and with some effort you can even get it in the
original raw form.  Here is Dennis Ritchie's famous "Noalias must go"
message.

https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.lang.c/K0Cz2s9il3E/YDyo_xaRG5kJ

On 24/01/2016 09:06, Larry McVoy wrote:
> So there used to be dejanews or something like that, it was awesome, 
> you could search it and find stuff from 1980.  Google bought them
> and more or less ruined it from what I can tell.
> 
> On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 01:56:28PM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
>> Hi all, does anybody know of on-line historical Usenet archives that
>> I can link to, especially if they have unpacked articles (visible
>> subject lines would be better)?
>>
>> What newsgroups are relevant? net.v7bugs, comp.sources.unix,
>> comp.sources.misc, net.sources, mod.sources, comp.sources.bugs?
>> What about platform or system-specific newsgroups?



From wkt at tuhs.org  Sun Jan 24 18:39:25 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 18:39:25 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <56A48919.5070109@aueb.gr>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com> <56A48919.5070109@aueb.gr>
Message-ID: <20160124083925.GA14997@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 10:19:37AM +0200, Diomidis Spinellis wrote:
> Google seems to have folded the Usenet archives into its "Google Groups"
> service.  Here links to some relevant groups:

Urgh.

I'm currently unpacking Henry Spencer's Usenet Archive
(from https://archive.org/details/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive)
and repacking it into individual newsgroups. Not sure what I'll do next.

Cheers, Warren


From dugo at xs4all.nl  Sun Jan 24 21:08:23 2016
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 12:08:23 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
Message-ID: <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>

On 2016-01-24 08:06, Larry McVoy wrote:
> So there used to be dejanews or something like that, it was awesome,
> you could search it and find stuff from 1980.  Google bought them
> and more or less ruined it from what I can tell.

They dumped it to archive.org in some mbox format.
https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical

Mere grepping through it beats the monstrocity that is google groups.


From wkt at tuhs.org  Sun Jan 24 21:26:01 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 21:26:01 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
 <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <20160124112601.GA26312@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 12:08:23PM +0100, Jacob Goense wrote:
> They dumped it to archive.org in some mbox format.
> https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical
> 
> Mere grepping through it beats the monstrocity that is google groups.

Thanks. I saw that already, but the messages are infected with new headers:

   X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII
   X-Google-Thread: f569d,66bffadc87a4bfc8
   X-Google-Attributes: gidf569d,public
   X-Google-Thread: 11261f,66bffadc87a4bfc8
   X-Deja-AN: 249307211

so I'll work on the UTZoo stuff for now.

Does anybody know if Henry Spencer is still around? Does he know about
this mailing list? It would be nice to have him here.

Cheers, Warren


From dugo at xs4all.nl  Sun Jan 24 22:34:41 2016
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:34:41 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160124112601.GA26312@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
 <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
 <20160124112601.GA26312@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <3a5faef3e57cfd1c9f14ca30d6266086@xs4all.nl>

On 2016-01-24 12:26, Warren Toomey wrote:
> so I'll work on the UTZoo stuff for now.

For inspiration see http://olduse.net/ and
https://joeyh.name/blog/oldusenet/
Love what he did with it.


From dave at horsfall.org  Sun Jan 24 23:58:06 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 00:58:06 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
 <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601250052000.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Sun, 24 Jan 2016, Jacob Goense wrote:

> > So there used to be dejanews or something like that, it was awesome, 
> > you could search it and find stuff from 1980.  Google bought them and 
> > more or less ruined it from what I can tell.
> 
> Google dumped it to archive.org in some mbox format. 
> https://archive.org/details/usenethistorical
> 
> Mere grepping through it beats the monstrocity that is google groups.

Funny; I can't find unix-wizards there.  Did the suits shut it down, or is 
my ataxia worse than usual?

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Mon Jan 25 01:50:57 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 10:50:57 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160124112601.GA26312@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
 <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
 <20160124112601.GA26312@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20160124155057.GC3618@mercury.ccil.org>

Warren Toomey scripsit:

> Thanks. I saw that already, but the messages are infected with new headers:

Piffle.  What kind of proper Usenet software balks at a few custom headers?
If you don't jib at X-Eric-Conspiracy, certainly these can do no harm.  :-)

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettes of a creatific thinkerizer.
        --Peter da Silva


From dugo at xs4all.nl  Mon Jan 25 02:01:16 2016
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 17:01:16 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601250052000.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
 <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601250052000.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <deb8d20297682601926243ed1c413bfb@xs4all.nl>

On 2016-01-24 14:58, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> Funny; I can't find unix-wizards there.  Did the suits shut it down, or 
> is
> my ataxia worse than usual?

Under usenet-net there is:
https://archive.org/download/usenet-net/net.unix-wizards.mbox.zip



From cubexyz at gmail.com  Mon Jan 25 03:37:25 2016
From: cubexyz at gmail.com (Mark Longridge)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 12:37:25 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>

Ok, I got a few questions about PDP-11.

First, I was wondering when Bell Labs got that first PDP-11/20 what
software (if any) came with it? I assume when one bought a PDP-11/20
you would get some type of OS with it.

According to the folks at alt.sys.pdp11 the PDP-11 computer doesn't
have anything equivalent to a PC's BIOS. But I know a bit about what a
PC's BIOS does and that includes RAM Initialization. Wouldn't the DRAM
on the PDP-11/something need to be initialized too? Perhaps an older
PDP-11 doesn't have DRAM but surely the later models did?

Now the last question has to do with what made the PDP-11 architecture
so great. Part of that had to be the relatively affordablility of the
PDP-11 and of course it was the machine that made Unix possible. It
seems though that there should have been a PDP-11 based desktop and as
far as I can tell that didn't happen. Instead we got a bunch of micros
with 8080, z80 and 6502 cpus, but nothing that could run Unix, at
least not a Unix v7 with source code.

Mark


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Jan 25 04:01:40 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:01:40 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <20160124180140.9986B18C0A4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Mark Longridge

    > when Bell Labs got that first PDP-11/20 what software (if any) came
    > with it?

I have this bit set that they didn't get anything, they wrote a
cross-assembler on another machine. I know that when it came, it didn't have a
disk (wasn't ready yet), so it ran a chess problem (memory only) for quite a
while until the disk came. I think that's in the ACM paper, or if not, one of
the BSTJ Unix history papers.


    > Perhaps an older PDP-11 doesn't have DRAM but surely the later models
    > did?

MOS memory came in starting roughly around the time of the 11/04 and /34.
(Well, that's not quire right - there were bipolar and MOS memory options
for the 11/45, the second PDP-11 model, but they were kind of special.)

But the earliest ROM bootstraps were too small to have space for code to
clear memory, or anything like that. The diode-array BM792 ROM certainly
didn't.

The later M9301 (see disassembly of the contents here:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/M9301-YA.mac

of one variant) didn't clear memory either, although there was probably room
in the ROMs by that point.

I suspect it didn't because nobody bothered with stuff like that back then -
you just wrote over whatever was already there. Properly written code would
never have referenced a location which had not been loaded or written to, that
way you couldn't get a parity error from random gubbish in semi-conductor at
power up (and of course core always had old data in it).


    > Now the last question has to do with what made the PDP-11 architecture
    > so great.

Bang/buck (in the metaphorical sense) ratio.

For a machine with a 16-bit word size (i.e. limited instruction size), it had
remarkable programming capability. Data could be in registers, pushed or
popped with a stack, at fixed addresses, PC-relative, indexed into a table,
etc, etc. And _all_ the instructions (basically) had acceess to _all_ those
modes.

As a result, the code density was probably higher than any similar sized
machine, and back when memory was core (i.e. expensive/limited), code density
was important.

The bus was also extremely flexible, given how simple it was: memory and
devices were all on the same (simple) bus.

    > of course it was the machine that made Unix possible

I'd lay good money that the vast majority of PDP-11's never ran Unix. And
UNIX might have happened on some other machine - it's not crucially tied to
the PDP-11 - in fact, the ease with which it could be used on other machines
was a huge part of its eventual success.

    > It seems though that there should have been a PDP-11 based desktop and
    > as far as I can tell that didn't happen.

Because DEC were a bunch of losers. There's some DEC history book which talks
about DEC's multiple failures (on a variety of platforms, not just PDP-11
based ones) to get into the desktop market, if the title comes to me, I'll
post it.

	Noel


From markwgreen at rogers.com  Mon Jan 25 04:06:40 2016
From: markwgreen at rogers.com (Mark Green)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:06:40 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] [Bulk]  PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <000001d156d1$fb2aba10$f1802e30$@rogers.com>

Whether a PDP11 came with an operating system depended upon how it was purchased, none of the ones that I bought came with an OS.  The PDP11/20 was early in the line, so it may have come with some form of OS.

DRAM on a PDP11/20??  You've got your decades mixed up.  DRAM came much later than the PDP11 architecture.  The PDP11/20 used core memory, no need for initialization.  Core is non-volatile, so it maintained its contents when power was removed.  It was common to keep whatever software you were using in memory, so when you came back you just turned on the power and continued from where you were.  One of the groups that I worked with used to keep all their software libraries on core boards, they would switch the boards between computers between computers whenever they needed to library.

All the early PDP11s had full consoles, so a boot loader could be entered through the console.  There were ROM boards that had some of the common bootstraps.

There were desktop PDP11s, depending upon what you mean by a desktop.  Healthkit produced a low end PDP11 system for hobbyists that would be considered to be a desktop.  DEC was slow getting into that area, there were some desktop like PDP11 systems produced near the end of the architecture, but DEC desktops really didn't appear until the VAX and MIPS era.

-----Original Message-----
From: TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of Mark Longridge
Sent: January 24, 2016 12:37 PM
To: tuhs <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: [Bulk] [TUHS] PDP-11 questions

Ok, I got a few questions about PDP-11.

First, I was wondering when Bell Labs got that first PDP-11/20 what software (if any) came with it? I assume when one bought a PDP-11/20 you would get some type of OS with it.

According to the folks at alt.sys.pdp11 the PDP-11 computer doesn't have anything equivalent to a PC's BIOS. But I know a bit about what a PC's BIOS does and that includes RAM Initialization. Wouldn't the DRAM on the PDP-11/something need to be initialized too? Perhaps an older
PDP-11 doesn't have DRAM but surely the later models did?

Now the last question has to do with what made the PDP-11 architecture so great. Part of that had to be the relatively affordablility of the
PDP-11 and of course it was the machine that made Unix possible. It seems though that there should have been a PDP-11 based desktop and as far as I can tell that didn't happen. Instead we got a bunch of micros with 8080, z80 and 6502 cpus, but nothing that could run Unix, at least not a Unix v7 with source code.

Mark


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Jan 25 04:30:37 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:30:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <20160124183037.9F0C218C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    >> It seems though that there should have been a PDP-11 based desktop

    > Because DEC were a bunch of losers.

OK, that was kind of harsh. (Trying to send email too fast...) DEC had a lot
of really brilliant people, and they produced some awesome machines.

But when it comes to desktops, I think there is a certain amount of
bottom-line truth in that assessment: there was a huge market there
(obviously), and DEC should have been in a pretty good place to capture it,
but it completely failed to do so.

Why not? I put it down to corporate cultural intertia - ironically, the same
thing that allowed DEC to eat so much of IBM's lunch.

Just as IBM took way too long to understand that there was a very large
ecological niche for smaller machines _with customers who didn't want or need
the whole IBM hand-holding routine_, DEC never (or, at least, until way too
late to catch the wave) could change their mentality from producing really,
really well built computers for people who were all technical, to commodity
computers which needed to be made as absolutely cheaply as possible, and for
people who were non-technical.

The company as a whole just couldn't change its mindset that radically, that
quickly. (And a lot of the blame for that has to go to Ken Olsen, of course.
He just didn't grok how the world was changing.)

    > There's some DEC history book which talks about DEC's multiple failures
    > (on a variety of platforms, not just PDP-11 based ones) to get into the
    > desktop market, if the title comes to me, I'll post it.

The best one on this topis, probably, is "Ultimate Entrepreneur", by Glenn
Rifkin and George Harrar, which gives a lot of detail on DEC's attempts to
build personal computers; also good is "DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC", by Edgar
Schein.

	Noel


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Mon Jan 25 04:36:40 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:36:40 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <20160124183037.9F0C218C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20160124183037.9F0C218C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <4E14D2C7-1697-4F8A-A51B-0FA45C1D2FD5@ronnatalie.com>

There were the Dec Professional 325 and 350 desktops which had the F-11 and the 380 had the J-11 (which should make a pretty snazzy little retro UNIX system)

.
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From bqt at update.uu.se  Mon Jan 25 04:34:17 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 19:34:17 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <mailman.25.1453658502.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.25.1453658502.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <56A51929.2070108@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-24 19:01, Mark Longridge<cubexyz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, I got a few questions about PDP-11.
>
> First, I was wondering when Bell Labs got that first PDP-11/20 what
> software (if any) came with it? I assume when one bought a PDP-11/20
> you would get some type of OS with it.

No. You might get diagnostics, but any kind of OS you would have to buy 
separately, and there were several to choose from, depending on your needs.

> According to the folks at alt.sys.pdp11 the PDP-11 computer doesn't
> have anything equivalent to a PC's BIOS. But I know a bit about what a
> PC's BIOS does and that includes RAM Initialization. Wouldn't the DRAM
> on the PDP-11/something need to be initialized too? Perhaps an older
> PDP-11 doesn't have DRAM but surely the later models did?

RAM don't need to be initialized. Maybe you mean clearing it, so it 
don't contain random information?

ECC memory, on the other hand needs to be initialized, but for those 
PDP-11s who has that, the initialization is done in hardware.

> Now the last question has to do with what made the PDP-11 architecture
> so great. Part of that had to be the relatively affordablility of the
> PDP-11 and of course it was the machine that made Unix possible. It
> seems though that there should have been a PDP-11 based desktop and as
> far as I can tell that didn't happen. Instead we got a bunch of micros
> with 8080, z80 and 6502 cpus, but nothing that could run Unix, at
> least not a Unix v7 with source code.

The architecture is very easy to program on, and rather intuitive. You 
have general registers, an orthogonal instruction set, and the machine 
can be programmed as a stack based, a register based, or just plain 
memory-to-memory style equally well.

In addition, I/O is pretty simple, as there are no special I/O 
instructions. Same instructions as for anything else are also used for I/O.

Also, the memory model on the PDP-11 is pretty nice, with a proper MMU 
which allows you to write reasonable OSes.

There were in fact desktop based PDP-11s, but DEC shot themselves in the 
foot there. They were afraid of eating into their own business, so they 
made the desktop PDP-11 incompatible in some ways with all other 
PDP-11s, so you could in general not run much PDP-11 software on the 
desktop, but had to develop specific programs for that platform. That, 
and the fact that it took DEC too long to enter the market, meant that 
the IBM PC had already become the standard by the time DEC came with the 
Professional (the PDP-11 desktop).

DEC also made a couple of other PDP-11 based systems that were sortof 
desktop, such as the VT-103, which was a VT100 with a PDP-11 inside. 
Interesting idea, but the VT103 didn't have good mass storage, and had a 
very slow and limited PDP-11 CPU. The PDT-11 was another attempt, with 
similar issues as the VT-103.

If we were to examine prototype things, DEC did a lot more as well, 
including a portable PDP-11 with an LCD display. Never became a product.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Mon Jan 25 04:44:01 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:44:01 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601250052000.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160124070637.GD7657@mcvoy.com>
 <cab31707ba0b07782885678837e80ec8@xs4all.nl>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601250052000.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <F460D3B3-D8D3-4AF1-BACE-CDD1EE258063@ronnatalie.com>

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.unix.wizards <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.unix.wizards>

Note that it is comp.unix.wizards where as the prior group was net.unix-wizards because it took the name from the gatewayed mailing list UNIX-WIZARDS that we hosted at BRL (Mike maintained that one).
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From clemc at ccc.com  Mon Jan 25 04:49:21 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:49:21 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>

​below​

On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 12:37 PM, Mark Longridge <cubexyz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, I got a few questions about PDP-11.
>
> First, I was wondering when Bell Labs got that first PDP-11/20 what
> software (if any) came with it? I assume when one bought a PDP-11/20
> you would get some type of OS with it.
>
​SW?? We don't need no stinking SW - we do our own..

Seriously, SW was an option you paid for. The system came with paper tapes
to run diagnostics to prove the system worked.   And when they got their
first 11, there is no disk and DOS-11( it's 1st OS) was not yet released
IIRC.  ​

Have to ask Ken, but my guess and I think one or more of the BLTJ articles
back it up, the would have purchased it as it.   Maybe an standalone
assembler running from paper tape or DEC tape.  But whatever it had, it
would have been very, very limited.

But that was not an issue, they had other systems and could write their own
tools and cross assemble or compile them as needed (which is what they
did).




> According to the folks at alt.sys.pdp11 the PDP-11 computer doesn't
> have anything equivalent to a PC's BIOS.
>
​Sigh... Kids these days .... more in a minute....​




> ​... ​
> Wouldn't the DRAM
> ​ ​
> on the PDP-11/something need to be initialized too?
>
​What's DRAM -- early 11's had core.   That said, Intel was selling the
1101 (1k x1 bit) chips which were being consumed at a pretty good rate for
the memory systems for PDP-10s​.    DEC would not release a DRAM board for
the 11 for a few more years.   It was 2K x 16 bits (with ECC IIRC).    And
they were pretty pricy.   I seem to remember the had faster access times
that the core boards, but I'm hazy on that.

When UNIX starts to leak to the Universities in the mid to late 70's many
(??most??) of us are using DRAM on our 11's but we would often by the
minimum config from DEC and the use after market DRAM boards.   We have a
very early serial # 11/34 under 10 IIRC in the EE Dept at CMU (One of my
claims to fame was bring UNIX up on it for the first time - by hacking the
11/40 support - although I think Noel and few others did it in other places
too there after).

Anyway - that system had 24K words (48K bytes) of DRAM memory on it to
start with.  We made some memory board for it ourselves to max it to 128K
words and National Semi memory chips.   I remember the value of the memory
chips was greater than the CPU at that point.

​Anyway - core machine you did not want to init.  You usually left the OS
or whatever in place.
It's going to be interesting to see if this becomes the new norm with the
Crystal Ridge (Xpoint 3D or whatever marketing is calling it).


Perhaps an older
> PDP-11 doesn't have DRAM but surely the later models did?
>
Sure by why the pre-boot have to do it?  Init of the memory system is done
by the OS.   Look at the code in V6 and V7 that is called very early and
prints out the size of the memory it finds.   It's working backwards until
it find memory that responds and clears it out.

There are a few parts/functions to the BIOS rooms and fear you may be
mashing the together.
Init of the memory system is not done in the original PC BIOS the way it is
done now.  There reason is because today we have memory controller chips
with lots and lots of different options.
The firmware BIOS is used to set up that controller (pre-boot).   The 11
(and the Vax for that matter) did not have such an idea.   What we call the
memory controller was just part of the logic in the CPU.
​


> ​... ​
> It
> ​ ​
> seems though that there should have been a PDP-11 based desktop and as
> far as I can tell that didn't happen. Instead we got a bunch of micros
> with 8080, z80 and 6502 cpus, but nothing that could run Unix, at
> least not a Unix v7 with source code.
>
​I can see from an later observers view you might fall into a trap thinking
this, but a bunch of it is actually not true.

1)  There were small form factor PDP-11's that did appear late in the
PDP-11's life.   Some based on the LSI-11 and some even on the F-11/J-11
(single chip 11).   DEC had a line called DEC Processional series.  But
they really were not super popular.  But as other point out, DEC was slow
to recognize this as a market. In fact a professor at Harvard business
explain the problem at DEC and coins a term for the behavior when the 8 bit
and 16 bit micros appear [Clay Christiansen's book "The Innovators'
Dilemma" - the term is call "disruptive technology."]

FWIW:  At this time, Wang Labs (Dr. Wang invented the core memory at IBM
BTW, was selling a system for secretaries / admin that ran originally on an
8080, later a Z80.   It was quite popular for what it could do... which was
allow them to edit letters/documents.   But it was very much focused on a
specific market/task - which interestingly enough was the original task
UNIX had ;-)

Also by the time DEC did try to build a workstation (after Masscomp,
Apollo, Sun et al had taken many of their engineers) it was too little too
late.   The ship had sailed and they never recovered that market.

2) Economics was really the reason.  Please understand in the 1975 dollars,
a 11/34 with 2 RK05's, 24K words of memory and a single serial interface
cost about $45K.​    If you want to a 9-track tape drive that was another
4-8K, 200M RPxx style disk, another $15K, as I said the chips to make the
memory was $45K.  Much less, serial ports, a printer etc....

Using an 11 for "personal" computer was not cost effective.   You would
need to get the prices of memory, large storage, down and size/speed of the
processors in single chip form before you really do it.

That said with birth of the IBM PC, Andy Tannebaum wrote a really good Unix
V7 clone for the 16 bit 8088 - called Minux.   And V& itself began to move
to more capable micro's    But DEC was making a huge amount of money
selling Vaxen.   So the workstations and small capability systems were not
interesting (see Christiansen for why).

3)  Some people actually did get UNIX or close to unix functionality
running on the 8-bit machines.  The Guy who wrote BDS C (Brain Damaged
Software) brought an 8" floppy disk based Z80 system that originally had
been running CP/M to a Usenix in the late 1970's/early 1980s and showed a
couple of us including Dennis his OS.   I remember Dennis being pretty
impressed and stating that was it was fast and as good as he remember early
UNIX.   He was quite encouraging.
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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Jan 25 04:56:15 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:56:15 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <20160124185615.B3E6618C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > The later M9301 (see disassembly of the contents here:
    >   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/M9301-YA.mac
    > of one variant) didn't clear memory either

OK, so _my_ memory is failing! That code does in fact test the memory.

(Although, looking at it, I can't understand how it works; after writing the
contents of R3 into the memory section it it asked to test, it complements the
test value in R3, before comparing it with the memory it just wrote with R3,
to make sure they are the same. Maybe there's an error in the dis-assembly?)

Anyway, it should have left the memory mostly containing all 0's.

	Noel


From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Mon Jan 25 07:10:14 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 16:10:14 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <4E14D2C7-1697-4F8A-A51B-0FA45C1D2FD5@ronnatalie.com>
References: <20160124183037.9F0C218C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <4E14D2C7-1697-4F8A-A51B-0FA45C1D2FD5@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <20160124211014.GG3618@mercury.ccil.org>

Ronald Natalie scripsit:

> There were the Dec Professional 325 and 350 desktops which had the
> F-11 and the 380 had the J-11 (which should make a pretty snazzy little
> retro UNIX system)

As well as the 310, which was not a desk*top* but a whole desk with a
PDP/8-A built into it.  The first regular job I ever had was with a
company that sold these along with their accounting software.

I got involved when they switched to developing for the PDP-11, writing
in Dibol and PDP-11 assembler.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
But you, Wormtongue, you have done what you could for your true master.  Some
reward you have earned at least.  Yet Saruman is apt to overlook his bargains.
I should advise you to go quickly and remind him, lest he forget your faithful
service.  --Gandalf


From norman at oclsc.org  Mon Jan 25 08:40:27 2016
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 17:40:27 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <1453675232.12467.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

Clem Cole:

  Also by the time DEC did try to build a workstation (after Masscomp,
  Apollo, Sun et al had taken many of their engineers) it was too little too
  late.   The ship had sailed and they never recovered that market.

======

There was a window in the early 1990s when I think they could
have recovered.  DEC had some pretty good MIPS-based workstations,
and Alpha was just coming out and was even better.  Ultrix was
a good, solid system, and DEC OSF/1 (later Digital UNIX) was
getting there.

In 1994 or so, the group I worked in needed a new workgroup-sized
central server.  Our existing stuff was mostly DECstations running
Ultrix (with a few SGI IRIX systems for specialized graphics).
We looked at the price and performance of various options:
everything SGI had was too pricey; Sun's was well behind in
performance (this was before UltraSPARC), and their OS was
primitive and required a lot of retrofitting to be usable
(this was also before Solaris 2 even came out, let alone
became stable; also before Sun grew up enough to ship a
decent X11 as part of the system).

So we bought a third-party system with an Alpha motherboard
in a PC-style case.  In burn-in testing I discovered a bug in
the motherboard; the vendor were happy to fix it once they
could reproduce it in their lab (which took some doing, but
that was another story).

We were quite happy with that system, and would have bought
more had our entire department not been shut down in a
mostly-political fuss a couple of years later (that too is
another story).

DEC's desktop MIPS systems were quite good, and the Alpha
followons even better.  Had the company's upper management
not by then lost all sense of how to run a company or to
sell anything ... but that was not to be.

Old-fart footnote: when our department shut down, I bought
some of our DECstations cheap from the university.  I still
have them on a shelf downstairs; I've never done much with
them.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON


From norman at oclsc.org  Mon Jan 25 08:40:41 2016
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 17:40:41 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

Noel Chiappa:

  I'd lay good money that the vast majority of PDP-11's never ran Unix. And
  UNIX might have happened on some other machine - it's not crucially tied to
  the PDP-11 - in fact, the ease with which it could be used on other machines
  was a huge part of its eventual success.

=======

I have to disagree in part: the PDP-11 is a big part of
what made UNIX so widespread, especially in university
departments, in the latter part of the 1970s.

That wasn't due so much to the PDP-11's technical details
as to its pricing.  The PDP-11 was a big sales success
because it was such a powerful machine, with a price that
individual departments could afford.  Without a platform
like that, I don't think UNIX would have spread nearly the
way it did, even before it began to appear in a significant
way on other architectures.  Save for the VAX, which was
really a PDP-11 in a gorilla suit, that didn't really happen
until the early 1980s anyway, and I'm not convinced it
would have happened had UNIX not already spread so much
on the PDP-11.

It worked both ways, of course.  I too suspect that a
majority (though I'm not so sure about `vast') of PDP-11s
never ran UNIX.  But I also suspect that a vast majority
of those that did might not have been purchased without
UNIX as a magnet.  I don't think those who weren't
around in the latter 1970s and early 1980s can appreciate
the ways in which UNIX captured many programmers and
sysadmins (the two were not so distinct back then!) as
no other competing system could.  It felt enormously
more efficient and more pleasant to work on and with
UNIX than with any of the competition, whether from DEC
or elsewhere.  At the very least, none of the other
system vendors had anything to match UNIX; and by the
same token, had UNIX not been there, other hardware
vendors' systems would have had better sales.

Sometime around 1981, the university department I worked
at, which already had a VAX-11/780 and a PDP-11/45 running
UNIX, wanted to get another system.  Data General tried
very hard to convince us to buy their VAX-competitor.
I remember our visiting their local office to run some
FORTRAN benchmarks.  The code needed some tweaking to
work under their OS, which DG claimed was better than
UNIX.  Us UNIX people had trouble restraining our chuckles
as we watched the DG guys, who I truly believe were experts
in their own OS, taking 15 or 20 minutes to do things that
would have taken two or three with a few shell loops and
ed commands.

DG did not get the sale.  We bought a second-hand VAX.
Blame UNIX.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON


From norman at oclsc.org  Mon Jan 25 08:57:04 2016
From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 17:57:04 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
Message-ID: <1453676229.13921.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>

Diomidis Spinellis:

  The articles go way back.

====

They certainly do.  For example, the 1981 origin of a certain
USENET-culture sideshow is there:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/net.suicide/9hh3JbbZm-U

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON


From scj at yaccman.com  Mon Jan 25 10:11:19 2016
From: scj at yaccman.com (scj at yaccman.com)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 16:11:19 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <20160124183037.9F0C218C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20160124183037.9F0C218C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <c5bbed44d050e88257d7306d78edb5e5.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>

>     >> It seems though that there should have been a PDP-11 based desktop
>
>     > Because DEC were a bunch of losers.
>
>
> Why not? I put it down to corporate cultural intertia - ironically, the
> same
> thing that allowed DEC to eat so much of IBM's lunch.
>

Also see the book "The Innovator's Dilemma".  I takes a very insightful
look at why the leader of one generation of technology is rarely the
leader of the next.  In part, it's because customers, for the most part,
want more of the same and cheaper -- the interesting new niches get
overlooked by the current big guys.

Besides, the book is worth reading for a hilarious picture of how the
steam shovel makers tried to make a backhoe to compete with the hydraulic
technology that was eating their lunch...

Steve



From ron at ronnatalie.com  Mon Jan 25 10:23:13 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 19:23:13 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <1453675232.12467.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
References: <1453675232.12467.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <61430E11-5FED-4CA5-BC9B-47E820063ACC@ronnatalie.com>

I worked for Unipress for a brief period and learned portability from them.   I spent a lot of time moving EMACS from Suns (both 68x SUN 3’s to SPARC SUN 4), SGI, Intergraph, and Masscomp, along with some of the minicomputers (Pyramid, Vaxes, Gould SEL).    When I started my own company we ran on Sparcs of various flavors, x86 of various flavors, SGIs, Stellar, Ardent, Oxi (i860), IBM RS/6000, IBM i860, (I think I actually ported once to the 370 running AIX while I was at PASC, but we never really supported that), MIPS, DEC SPIM boxes, Alphas, and a Cray XMP and then some wierd stuff (ARPA hypercubes, Masspars, etc…).


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From clemc at ccc.com  Mon Jan 25 10:36:01 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 19:36:01 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <c5bbed44d050e88257d7306d78edb5e5.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>
References: <20160124183037.9F0C218C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c5bbed44d050e88257d7306d78edb5e5.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com>
Message-ID: <31BE8302-B0A1-4C96-856E-1B671F3F98C0@ccc.com>

Actually the important observation Christiansen makes in the book that is often missed is that the new technology when compared to the old technology is not as good by the definitions made by the market for the original.  (As the original question was raised. How did these crappy 8 bit micros best the PDP11). 

But what happens is that a new set of customers that don't care that's it a lessor item  -  find the new scheme is good enough for them and actually solves the problem they have well.   And is more economical for them. 

So If the new technology has a faster growth curve it will catch up and "disrupt" the incumbent at some point - usually while the incumbent is not realizing it - because as Steve points out, they are focusing on making what the current customers desire - which are overkill (and not economical) for the new market/customer base. 

Ie. What DEC did to IBM.  What the workstation guys did to DEC.  What the PC did to the workstation guys (an open question is the mobile doing that to the PC now- time will tell) . 

Steve you are right and. I Agree that  it is a quick and fun read and all technologist /systems folk should read it and I believe you will say "Ah ha," laugh, and learn something too. 

Clem

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 24, 2016, at 7:11 PM, scj at yaccman.com wrote:
> 
>  In part, it's because customers, for the most part,
> want more of the same and cheaper -- the interesting new niches get
> overlooked by the current big guys.


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Jan 25 11:11:40 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:11:40 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <20160125011140.8235618C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Norman Wilson

    > I have to disagree in part

You make a number of good points. A few comments:

    > the PDP-11 is a big part of what made UNIX so widespread, especially in
    > university departments

That last part was really a big factor, one not to be understated.  That
penetration led to production of a whole generation of people who i) were
familiar with Unix, and ii) liked it, and were not about to put up with the
OS's being turned out by various vendors.

    > I too suspect that a majority (though I'm not so sure about `vast') of
    > PDP-11s never ran UNIX.

'Embedded systems'. The number of PDP-11's running timesharing was a small
share of the total number, I expect.

    > I don't think those who weren't around in the latter 1970s and early
    > 1980s can appreciate the ways in which UNIX captured many programmers
    > ... as no other competing system could.

Very true. My jaw basically hit the floor when I first saw (ca. '75) what Unix
was like. People who didn't live through that transition can't _really_ grok
it, any more than my kids can really fully grok a world without mobile
phones. It wasn't as powerful as Multics, but I was completely blown away that
anyone could get that much capability into a PDP-11 OS.

     Noel


From clemc at ccc.com  Mon Jan 25 11:30:16 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:30:16 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <20160125011140.8235618C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20160125011140.8235618C0A8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <6BDBEFC8-8047-4331-BB75-AC71CDF2829D@ccc.com>

+1

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 24, 2016, at 8:11 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> but I was completely blown away that
> anyone could get that much capability into a PDP-11 OS.


From deritchie at yahoo.com  Mon Jan 25 11:55:46 2016
From: deritchie at yahoo.com (David Ritchie)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:55:46 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
References: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <A0FA0A32-A363-44B2-AE79-D116C39B1A9A@yahoo.com>

But wasn't a big part of the reason that DEC was successful in academia that PDP's were pretty heavily discounted vs. commercial pricing for similar compute power? Likewise with pricing for Unix?

David Ritchie

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 24, 2016, at 17:40, Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:
> 
> Noel Chiappa:
> 
>  I'd lay good money that the vast majority of PDP-11's never ran Unix. And
>  UNIX might have happened on some other machine - it's not crucially tied to
>  the PDP-11 - in fact, the ease with which it could be used on other machines
>  was a huge part of its eventual success.
> 
> =======
> 
> I have to disagree in part: the PDP-11 is a big part of
> what made UNIX so widespread, especially in university
> departments, in the latter part of the 1970s.
> 
> That wasn't due so much to the PDP-11's technical details
> as to its pricing.  The PDP-11 was a big sales success
> because it was such a powerful machine, with a price that
> individual departments could afford.  Without a platform
> like that, I don't think UNIX would have spread nearly the
> way it did, even before it began to appear in a significant
> way on other architectures.  Save for the VAX, which was
> really a PDP-11 in a gorilla suit, that didn't really happen
> until the early 1980s anyway, and I'm not convinced it
> would have happened had UNIX not already spread so much
> on the PDP-11.
> 
> It worked both ways, of course.  I too suspect that a
> majority (though I'm not so sure about `vast') of PDP-11s
> never ran UNIX.  But I also suspect that a vast majority
> of those that did might not have been purchased without
> UNIX as a magnet.  I don't think those who weren't
> around in the latter 1970s and early 1980s can appreciate
> the ways in which UNIX captured many programmers and
> sysadmins (the two were not so distinct back then!) as
> no other competing system could.  It felt enormously
> more efficient and more pleasant to work on and with
> UNIX than with any of the competition, whether from DEC
> or elsewhere.  At the very least, none of the other
> system vendors had anything to match UNIX; and by the
> same token, had UNIX not been there, other hardware
> vendors' systems would have had better sales.
> 
> Sometime around 1981, the university department I worked
> at, which already had a VAX-11/780 and a PDP-11/45 running
> UNIX, wanted to get another system.  Data General tried
> very hard to convince us to buy their VAX-competitor.
> I remember our visiting their local office to run some
> FORTRAN benchmarks.  The code needed some tweaking to
> work under their OS, which DG claimed was better than
> UNIX.  Us UNIX people had trouble restraining our chuckles
> as we watched the DG guys, who I truly believe were experts
> in their own OS, taking 15 or 20 minutes to do things that
> would have taken two or three with a few shell loops and
> ed commands.
> 
> DG did not get the sale.  We bought a second-hand VAX.
> Blame UNIX.
> 
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Mon Jan 25 11:59:55 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 20:59:55 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <A0FA0A32-A363-44B2-AE79-D116C39B1A9A@yahoo.com>
References: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
 <A0FA0A32-A363-44B2-AE79-D116C39B1A9A@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <0F00F232-16D0-43F8-B7EE-E0A45E5FE46C@ronnatalie.com>


> On Jan 24, 2016, at 8:55 PM, David Ritchie <deritchie at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> But wasn't a big part of the reason that DEC was successful in academia that PDP's were pretty heavily discounted vs. commercial pricing for similar compute power? Likewise with pricing for Unix?
> 
> David Ritchie

UNIX was effectively free for Academics and at the beginning there really wasn’t any commercial licensing.

I don’t know if DEC offered a heavy academic discount or not.   I can tell you they were cheaper than some of the options. 
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From clemc at ccc.com  Mon Jan 25 12:14:43 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2016 21:14:43 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <A0FA0A32-A363-44B2-AE79-D116C39B1A9A@yahoo.com>
References: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
 <A0FA0A32-A363-44B2-AE79-D116C39B1A9A@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <22770A9B-7F5D-4FE4-8667-78D326239901@ccc.com>

UNIX was cheap (free with a$100 tape coping fee) but processors were not as discounted as much as you might think. Yes there was a university price sheet but DEC was still making 45% gross margins on them.   And DEC was no different than its competitors

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 24, 2016, at 8:55 PM, David Ritchie <deritchie at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> But wasn't a big part of the reason that DEC was successful in academia that PDP's were pretty heavily discounted vs. commercial pricing for similar compute power? Likewise with pricing for Unix?
> 
> David Ritchie
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On Jan 24, 2016, at 17:40, Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Noel Chiappa:
>> 
>> I'd lay good money that the vast majority of PDP-11's never ran Unix. And
>> UNIX might have happened on some other machine - it's not crucially tied to
>> the PDP-11 - in fact, the ease with which it could be used on other machines
>> was a huge part of its eventual success.
>> 
>> =======
>> 
>> I have to disagree in part: the PDP-11 is a big part of
>> what made UNIX so widespread, especially in university
>> departments, in the latter part of the 1970s.
>> 
>> That wasn't due so much to the PDP-11's technical details
>> as to its pricing.  The PDP-11 was a big sales success
>> because it was such a powerful machine, with a price that
>> individual departments could afford.  Without a platform
>> like that, I don't think UNIX would have spread nearly the
>> way it did, even before it began to appear in a significant
>> way on other architectures.  Save for the VAX, which was
>> really a PDP-11 in a gorilla suit, that didn't really happen
>> until the early 1980s anyway, and I'm not convinced it
>> would have happened had UNIX not already spread so much
>> on the PDP-11.
>> 
>> It worked both ways, of course.  I too suspect that a
>> majority (though I'm not so sure about `vast') of PDP-11s
>> never ran UNIX.  But I also suspect that a vast majority
>> of those that did might not have been purchased without
>> UNIX as a magnet.  I don't think those who weren't
>> around in the latter 1970s and early 1980s can appreciate
>> the ways in which UNIX captured many programmers and
>> sysadmins (the two were not so distinct back then!) as
>> no other competing system could.  It felt enormously
>> more efficient and more pleasant to work on and with
>> UNIX than with any of the competition, whether from DEC
>> or elsewhere.  At the very least, none of the other
>> system vendors had anything to match UNIX; and by the
>> same token, had UNIX not been there, other hardware
>> vendors' systems would have had better sales.
>> 
>> Sometime around 1981, the university department I worked
>> at, which already had a VAX-11/780 and a PDP-11/45 running
>> UNIX, wanted to get another system.  Data General tried
>> very hard to convince us to buy their VAX-competitor.
>> I remember our visiting their local office to run some
>> FORTRAN benchmarks.  The code needed some tweaking to
>> work under their OS, which DG claimed was better than
>> UNIX.  Us UNIX people had trouble restraining our chuckles
>> as we watched the DG guys, who I truly believe were experts
>> in their own OS, taking 15 or 20 minutes to do things that
>> would have taken two or three with a few shell loops and
>> ed commands.
>> 
>> DG did not get the sale.  We bought a second-hand VAX.
>> Blame UNIX.
>> 
>> Norman Wilson
>> Toronto ON


From bqt at update.uu.se  Mon Jan 25 13:07:16 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 04:07:16 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <56A59164.2030806@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-25 02:11, jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  (Noel Chiappa) wrote:
>
>      > The later M9301 (see disassembly of the contents here:
>      >http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/M9301-YA.mac
>      > of one variant) didn't clear memory either
>
> OK, so_my_  memory is failing! That code does in fact test the memory.
>
> (Although, looking at it, I can't understand how it works; after writing the
> contents of R3 into the memory section it it asked to test, it complements the
> test value in R3, before comparing it with the memory it just wrote with R3,
> to make sure they are the same. Maybe there's an error in the dis-assembly?)

Read the code again, you missed it. :-)
The code first writes one value into memory (R3), then complements R3, 
and for each location checks that the memory is *not* equal to R3, and 
then writes R3 and checks that it now matches. Essentially checking that 
it can be changed into a wanted value in time. And it does it two times. 
First zeroing, and then writing ones, and then back to zeroes again, so 
yes, the memory will be left containing all zeros, except for what 
memory isn't tested.

> Anyway, it should have left the memory mostly containing all 0's.

Indeed.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From bqt at update.uu.se  Mon Jan 25 13:09:49 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 04:09:49 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-25 02:11, John Cowan<cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Ronald Natalie scripsit:
>
>> >There were the Dec Professional 325 and 350 desktops which had the
>> >F-11 and the 380 had the J-11 (which should make a pretty snazzy little
>> >retro UNIX system)
> As well as the 310, which was not a desk*top* but a whole desk with a
> PDP/8-A built into it.  The first regular job I ever had was with a
> company that sold these along with their accounting software.

The 310 was not called a Professional, though. It was the EDUsystem if I 
remember right. There was also PDP-11 based EDUsystems, called 350. Not 
the same as the desktop thingy...

Isn't it wonderful how DEC reused different designations sometimes.

There was also a DECstation 88, if I remember right, which was a PDP-8 
based thing.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From dave at horsfall.org  Mon Jan 25 13:16:22 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 14:16:22 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Sun, 24 Jan 2016, Clem Cole wrote:

> We have a very early serial # 11/34 under 10 IIRC in the EE Dept at CMU 
> (One of my claims to fame was bring UNIX up on it for the first time - 
> by hacking the 11/40 support - although I think Noel and few others did 
> it in other places too there after).  

[ Warning: self-promotion ahead ]

I believe that I was the first to port Unix (V6) to the 11/34 in 
Australia; there should be a paper that I wrote, somewhere in the 
archives.  I was not aware of any prior work at the time, although 
subsequently a couple of bods came out to say that they'd beaten me to it 
(then why didn't they publish?).

In the words of the inimitable Tom Lehrer: "I publish first!".

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

From wkt at tuhs.org  Mon Jan 25 15:32:18 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 15:32:18 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <48DE021E-ED07-4E13-826A-25982EE4D29A@tuhs.org>

Implementing Unix on a PDP-11/34, Dave Horsfall, AUUGN 1(6) pg 17, September 1979, see http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V01.6.pdf
Cheers, Warren

On 25 January 2016 1:16:22 pm AEST, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>On Sun, 24 Jan 2016, Clem Cole wrote:
>
>> We have a very early serial # 11/34 under 10 IIRC in the EE Dept at
>CMU 
>> (One of my claims to fame was bring UNIX up on it for the first time
>- 
>> by hacking the 11/40 support - although I think Noel and few others
>did 
>> it in other places too there after).  
>
>[ Warning: self-promotion ahead ]
>
>I believe that I was the first to port Unix (V6) to the 11/34 in 
>Australia; there should be a paper that I wrote, somewhere in the 
>archives.  I was not aware of any prior work at the time, although 
>subsequently a couple of bods came out to say that they'd beaten me to
>it 
>(then why didn't they publish?).
>
>In the words of the inimitable Tom Lehrer: "I publish first!".
>
>-- 
>Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
>suffer."

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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From dot at dotat.at  Mon Jan 25 21:29:55 2016
From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 11:29:55 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
References: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1601251124030.21662@hermes-2.csi.cam.ac.uk>

Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:
>
> It worked both ways, of course.  I too suspect that a
> majority (though I'm not so sure about `vast') of PDP-11s
> never ran UNIX.

A random vaguely off-topic example: in Cambridge a PDP-11 was used as a
terminal multiplexor for the IBM mainframe.

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-5.pdf

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
Bailey: West backing southwest, then becoming cyclonic later, 5 to 7,
occasionally gale 8. Very rough, occasionally high. Rain or wintry showers.
Good, occasionally poor.


From clemc at ccc.com  Mon Jan 25 22:27:41 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem cole)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 07:27:41 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <48DE021E-ED07-4E13-826A-25982EE4D29A@tuhs.org>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <48DE021E-ED07-4E13-826A-25982EE4D29A@tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <97567D49-FEE0-4F31-9FC5-CD63062E788D@ccc.com>

Dave not doubt. Sorry. I didn't  publish.  FWIW Ted took that code back to  the USG though :-).  I've forgotten when the 34 was released. I think it was late 77 maybe early 78 but it was before 79 as the 34/A would have been by then. (I'll have to ask Jeff Mitchell who did the CPU if I see him anytime soon). 


BTW Because Gordon Bell was a CMU prof , we tended to have early DEC product. Urban legend is Bell  would match transistors to make the amplifiers by hand when he designed the for runner to 8 cpu. 

We had serial #1 of the Vax and our EE dept had serial #9 of the 8 and I fairly sure the 34 was under 10 too.  My memory is that was the summer of '77.  Danny Klein and I wrote the original RK07 driver for UNIX a year later because we had a very early one of those.

  Another infamous story of CMU and early processors was the KL10 in late 75/early 76.  DEC's site prep book for the KL series had not been written and CMU wired for a KA10 not know any better.  When DEC first powered up, it blew the main circuit in Science Hall putting us all in the bldg in darkness.  I was in the computer room when it went completely silent and dark - very strange. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 25, 2016, at 12:32 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Implementing Unix on a PDP-11/34, Dave Horsfall, AUUGN 1(6) pg 17, September 1979, see http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V01.6.pdf
> Cheers, Warren
> 
>> On 25 January 2016 1:16:22 pm AEST, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 24 Jan 2016, Clem Cole wrote:
>>> 
>>>  We have a very early serial # 11/34 under 10 IIRC in the EE Dept at CMU 
>>>  (One of my claims to fame was bring UNIX up on it for the first time - 
>>>  by hacking the 11/40 support - although I think Noel and few others did 
>>>  it in other places too there after).  
>> 
>> [ Warning: self-promotion ahead ]
>> 
>> I believe that I was the first to port Unix (V6) to the 11/34 in 
>> Australia; there should be a paper that I wrote, somewhere in the 
>> archives.  I was not aware of any prior work at the time, although 
>> subsequently a couple of bods came out to say that they'd beaten me to it 
>> (then why didn't they publish?).
>> 
>> In the words of the inimitable Tom Lehrer: "I publish first!".
> 
> -- 
> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Mon Jan 25 22:54:28 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 07:54:28 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se>
Message-ID: <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>

Johnny Billquist scripsit:

> The 310 was not called a Professional, though. It was the EDUsystem
> if I remember right. 

I never heard of an EDUsystem built into a desk; they all predated
the 8/A.  This was running COS-310, an offshoot of OS/8.
See Doug Jones's PDP-8 FAQ.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
One Word to write them all / One Access to find them,
One Excel to count them all / And thus to Windows bind them.
                --Mike Champion


From bqt at update.uu.se  Mon Jan 25 23:09:41 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 14:09:41 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se> <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>
Message-ID: <56A61E95.1040105@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-25 13:54, John Cowan wrote:
> Johnny Billquist scripsit:
>
>> The 310 was not called a Professional, though. It was the EDUsystem
>> if I remember right.
>
> I never heard of an EDUsystem built into a desk; they all predated
> the 8/A.  This was running COS-310, an offshoot of OS/8.
> See Doug Jones's PDP-8 FAQ.

COS-310 was the OS for the EDUsystem 310. As far as I can remember, it 
is not based on OS/8. I think you are right that the EDUsystem predated 
the 8/A, but they are not that far apart.

If you are thinking about the 8/A built into a desk, that was not called 
a 310 anything. You could, of course, boot COS-310 on it, though. In 
fact, the 8/A in the desk would have been the DECstation 88, or 
something like that. I need to go and dig up my old DEC handbooks to 
verify that, though. But I was amused when the "DECstation" (MIPS based) 
came out, and remembered thinking that I've seen DECstations before. :-)

I know of Doug Jones FAQ. I probably contributed to it, and I was 
definitely around before it, or Doug, had heard of PDP-8s. :-)

All that said, my memory do sometimes play tricks on me, so if I'm 
wrong, and someone can point at a DEC document that says otherwise, I'll 
happily admit my error.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From ron at ronnatalie.com  Mon Jan 25 23:25:46 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 08:25:46 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1601251124030.21662@hermes-2.csi.cam.ac.uk>
References: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
 <alpine.LSU.2.00.1601251124030.21662@hermes-2.csi.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <BDC31E0B-3A23-4DEC-97E2-BB0583E28D4A@ronnatalie.com>


> A random vaguely off-topic example: in Cambridge a PDP-11 was used as a
> terminal multiplexor for the IBM mainframe.


BRL had a PDP-11/40 that was running software called ANTS (Arpanet Terminal Server) written by the University of Illinois.   It was amusing in that it put the time on every message it printed on the terminal.   It has a “time” command that printed “is the time” (in case you didn’t know what those numbers were).    It also had silkscreened ants on the logo panels (which were orange rather than the original DEC purple and red).     The software became obsolete when the ARPANET went to long leaders.   Mike Muuss’s standard answer was to put UNIX on the machine and so it ran UNIX from December of 1980 up until the TCP/IP cutover.    I kept the ANTS logo’d racks as being kind of cool but had a hard time explaining to the Army what this $65,000 of computer equipment was I was disposing of.

The system I started on at JHU had run RSTS until Mike and friends convinced the EE department that they could get BASIC PLUS to run under UNIX on the PDP-11/45.    This turned out not too be too hard.   Despite what the processor handbook said you were supposed to use, DEC always used EMT for their system calls.    UNIX followed the guidance and used TRAP.   This made it a lot easier.

I had experience around the university running DOS/BATCH (anybody remember that phone book of a manual) and RT-11 on things like 11/20s and the original LSI-11s that really couldn’t run a full up UNIX.    I even worked on this dreadful Heathkit H-11 with it’s awful H-9 terminal (no preprinted keycaps you stuck labels to the blanks for the letters and it’s the only UPPER CASE ONLY terminal I ever saw that you had to run LCASE mode on because if you sent it lower case letters rather than just upshifting them it printed gibberish instead).

My first job after college was writing database for a government project using two connected RSX-11M systems, but we had a third system that I installed PWB UNIX on (OK well it was IS/1) and used that as our source code control system for the RSX system (we also did all our docs in nroff on the system where I had hacked the -mm macro package to handle security classifications).

When UNIX got too bloated for PDP-11s I recycled most of them into internet routers.   I did use one as an IO control processor for the Denelcor HEP system we had.   The HEP had 32 individual UNIBUSes connected to the IO memory and an 11/34 had the job of reflecting the IO requests from the HEP itself back onto those unibuses.
It ran the same “Little Operating System” that the routers did.

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From stewart at serissa.com  Mon Jan 25 23:38:46 2016
From: stewart at serissa.com (Lawrence Stewart)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 08:38:46 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <97567D49-FEE0-4F31-9FC5-CD63062E788D@ccc.com>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <48DE021E-ED07-4E13-826A-25982EE4D29A@tuhs.org>
 <97567D49-FEE0-4F31-9FC5-CD63062E788D@ccc.com>
Message-ID: <03E1D761-B709-4C60-92C3-2604EEB3BE01@serissa.com>

Regarding the 11/34.

We had one at the Stanford Information Systems Lab sometime in 78 or 79, running (I think) V7, and we certainly didn’t do the port ourselves!  We did put it on the Arpanet though, as SU-ISL.  This
was a pretty weird hookup.  The NCP ran on a front-end LSI-11 (or was it an 11/23?) and there was
a Very Distant Host interface home-built by Ron Crane that ran over a copper pair to the IMP at the medical school.  I did the driver work to connect the 11/34 to the smaller 11 running the NCP.

It is kind of funny to say “smaller” when the thing you are smaller than is an 11/34.

The other thing I remember about that system is that we had a version of “ed” with an added command
that was sort of like .-10,.+10p for displaying the local context.

By the time I graduated in 1981 we had an 11/70, which was just awesome.  With the split I and D space you could programs which were (or seemed to be!) enormous.

-L



From bqt at update.uu.se  Mon Jan 25 23:49:32 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 14:49:32 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se> <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>
Message-ID: <56A627EC.60509@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-25 13:54, John Cowan wrote:
> Johnny Billquist scripsit:
>
>> The 310 was not called a Professional, though. It was the EDUsystem
>> if I remember right.
>
> I never heard of an EDUsystem built into a desk; they all predated
> the 8/A.  This was running COS-310, an offshoot of OS/8.
> See Doug Jones's PDP-8 FAQ.

Felt a little bored, so I started digging around some.

In the PDP-8/A mincomputer handbook 
(http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp8/handbooks/MinicomputerHandbook_1976.pdf), 
the desktop models are called MS800A, MS800B, MS880A and MS880B. But I 
know there is some manual that calls them DECsystem as well, but that 
might not be any document that has been scanned. I have paper copies of 
a lot of stuff somewhere in my cellar.

The COS-300/310 system reference manual is on Bitsavers 
(http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp8/cos-300/DEC-08-OCOSA-F_D_COS_300_310_System_Reference_Manual_Jul75.pdf). 
Reading through it, it's very clear that this is not OS/8, or any 
derivative of it. Check the file system details for example, the file 
name syntax (device is added after the filename, with a comma 
separator), various CUSPS like PIP, or the transfer program available to 
transfer files to/from OS/8.

I tried searching around more on COS-310, but only came up with other 
peoples memories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ADIBOL), but which 
also suggested that COS-310 came with the 8/e and later 8/a, including 
in a desktop config.

As for the EDUsystem thing, that must have been my brain. I can't find 
any connections. The EDUsystems were in fact having numbers like 10, 20, 
25, 30, 40 and 50. No 310 or anything close...
But EDUsystems do not really predate the 8/A. They carried on in the 
PDP-11 systems as well, beyond the 8/A era.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From clemc at ccc.com  Tue Jan 26 00:15:30 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 09:15:30 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <03E1D761-B709-4C60-92C3-2604EEB3BE01@serissa.com>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <48DE021E-ED07-4E13-826A-25982EE4D29A@tuhs.org>
 <97567D49-FEE0-4F31-9FC5-CD63062E788D@ccc.com>
 <03E1D761-B709-4C60-92C3-2604EEB3BE01@serissa.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PzuhWqUb+HVydNmvKF44tAnZp6E8uV+1a+kSm5EU392g@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:38 AM, Lawrence Stewart <stewart at serissa.com>
wrote:

> We had one at the Stanford Information Systems Lab sometime in 78 or 79,
> running (I think) V7, and we certainly didn’t do the port ourselves!  We
> did put it on the Arpanet though, as SU-ISL.  This
> was a pretty weird hookup.  The NCP ran on a front-end LSI-11 (or was it
> an 11/23?) and there was
> a Very Distant Host interface home-built by Ron Crane that ran over a
> copper pair to the IMP at the medical school.  I did the driver work to
> connect the 11/34 to the smaller 11 running the NCP.
>

​If it was 78, it was probably v6+ of some sorts running Chesson's Arpanet
NCP from Illinois.​  UNIX/TS (aka V6+++ / pre V7) sorts of oozes out via
the Bell Labs' OYOC like Ted in '78 - that's what we ran at CMU since Ted
brought it with him. Its a heavily hacked V6 kernel and many of what would
become the v7 utilities including the a new compiler and the standard I/O
library.   Same was true of PWB 1.0 - which was based on most of the code.
   Dennis would not formally get V7 (which had an updated kernel) released
until mid '79 (FWIW: The date on a number of the files in the V7
distribution tapes in Warren's archives show Aug 1, '79 - which sounds
about right for when Dennis got it out).
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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Jan 26 01:12:29 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 10:12:29 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
Message-ID: <20160125151229.4B91418C0A6@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>



From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Jan 26 01:12:59 2016
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 10:12:59 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
Message-ID: <20160125151259.D591618C0A4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Clem Cole

    > to help debug the kernel, we even put adb into the core resident port of
    > V7 which was tricky - Noel I seem to remember we .. stole that from you
    > guys at MIT

Well, I certainly don't remember doing such a thing - but I should point out
that the Unix 'community' at MIT was not at all in good touch with each
other. So perhaps someone else at MIT did it? Or perhaps it was done after
I left for Proteon?

Also, the group I was in - CSR - was, during my time with them, not well
connected to other Unix users outside MIT. So even the things we _did_ do seem
not to have made it to many (any?) people. I'm not sure why this was:
probably, since we were working exclusively on early TCP/IP stuff, we were
mostly in touch with other networking people.

The disconnect to the rest of MIT may have been because, in our case, the
technical community at Tech Square didn't have good contacts with the rest of
campus; we were kind of self-sufficient. The AI Lab people had some contacts
with the Plasma fusion group, and later the EE department on campus, but CSR
(and maybe all of LCS - I'm not sure, the groups in LCS were pretty isolated
from each other) didn't.

Also, Tech Sq was mostly about PDP-10's - initially running ITS, later TWENEX
- and only a couple of smaller groups ran Unix. The DSSR group had an 11/70,
and we were quite close to them, but AFAIK we were the only two groups in Tech
Sq running Unix. I don't think anyone else at MIT had a PDP-10, until the EE
department on campus got an TWENEX machine, so there wasn't really anyone on
campus for most of Tech Sq to interact with.

	Noel


From clemc at ccc.com  Tue Jan 26 01:26:51 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 10:26:51 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] v6 debugging
In-Reply-To: <20160125151259.D591618C0A4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20160125151259.D591618C0A4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PtSO9P92u3F5WmYD=bAKxyUUCu0Atd6aMyW5SKc=oO=Q@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 10:12 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

> Also, Tech Sq was mostly about PDP-10's - initially running ITS, later
> TWENEX
> - and only a couple of smaller groups ran Unix.
>

​In those days, I knew / knew of some of Steve Wards' guys in the RTS lab
working on Trix (Wayne Gramlich [late of CMU -- the connection], Jack Test,
Tom Teixeira, Terry Hayes, etc...).
Wayne brought some of the CMU hacks to MIT and sent us some of theirs such
as the Chaos code.   For instance, my >>guess<< is that fsck came to MIT
via that connect, since Ted wrote much of it at CMU.

FYI: I would later do a really crappy job of hacking the Ritchie C compiler
to work with an experimental chip we got from Moto (what would become the
68K) - it generated correct code (just barely) but worked.   It was from
that connect I learned that Ward's guys did a >>much<< better job for Trix
project (and maybe used the Johnson compiler - but could target a couple of
different micros).  I remember I switched to their compiler when I got it
(from Jack I think).  I believe I even still have 9-track tape of it
somewhere in my basement.

Clem
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From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Tue Jan 26 02:00:47 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 11:00:47 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <56A627EC.60509@update.uu.se>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se>
 <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>
 <56A627EC.60509@update.uu.se>
Message-ID: <20160125160044.GA18971@mercury.ccil.org>

Johnny Billquist scripsit:

> the desktop models are called MS800A, MS800B, MS880A and MS880B. 

Good to know.

> Reading through it, it's very clear that this is not OS/8, or any
> derivative of it. 

You're right.  What it did share, however, was the OS/8 file system,
except that the date epoch was 1972 instead of 1970.  I don't know if
COS survived long enough to use extended dates.

> the transfer program
> available to transfer files to/from OS/8.

That didn't actually transfer files, which wasn't necessary; IIRC,
it converted between the COS-310 format for text files (about which
I know nothing) and the OS/8 format (three 8-bit bytes in two 12-bit words,
packed with the first two bytes in the low order bits of the words,
and the third byte split between the four high order bits).

> The EDUsystems were in fact having numbers
> like 10, 20, 25, 30, 40 and 50. No 310 or anything close...

That's what I remember.  My first PDP-8 was running EDU30 on top of
OS/8.

> But EDUsystems do not really predate the 8/A. They carried on in the
> PDP-11 systems as well, beyond the 8/A era.

Sure.  What I mean is that the EDUsystems began before the 8/A, not that
they ended before it.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Why are well-meaning Westerners so concerned that the opening of a
Colonel Sanders in Beijing means the end of Chinese culture? [...]
We have had Chinese restaurants in America for over a century,
and it hasn't made us Chinese.  On the contrary, we obliged the Chinese
to invent chop suey.            --Marshall Sahlins


From bqt at update.uu.se  Tue Jan 26 02:17:23 2016
From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 17:17:23 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <20160125160044.GA18971@mercury.ccil.org>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se> <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>
 <56A627EC.60509@update.uu.se> <20160125160044.GA18971@mercury.ccil.org>
Message-ID: <56A64A93.7020206@update.uu.se>

On 2016-01-25 17:00, John Cowan wrote:
> Johnny Billquist scripsit:
>
>> the desktop models are called MS800A, MS800B, MS880A and MS880B.
>
> Good to know.

I should try and locate whatever document I have that says DECstation as 
well. Fun, if nothing else.

>> Reading through it, it's very clear that this is not OS/8, or any
>> derivative of it.
>
> You're right.  What it did share, however, was the OS/8 file system,
> except that the date epoch was 1972 instead of 1970.  I don't know if
> COS survived long enough to use extended dates.

Sortof. The File system in COS is weird. It do have an sortof OS/8 
compatible file system for the system area, with the different date 
base. But it's not clear if OS/8 would actually be able to read it, as 
the layout of the whole disk is different. COS divide the disk into 
segments, and allocates a bunch of those for the system area, and then 
use the other segments to implement data files.

COS also shares the format of .SV files with OS/8. But I doubt any OS/8 
binary would run under COS. (Well, maybe something that did not use any 
device drivers or USR.)

>> the transfer program
>> available to transfer files to/from OS/8.
>
> That didn't actually transfer files, which wasn't necessary; IIRC,
> it converted between the COS-310 format for text files (about which
> I know nothing) and the OS/8 format (three 8-bit bytes in two 12-bit words,
> packed with the first two bytes in the low order bits of the words,
> and the third byte split between the four high order bits).

Not entirely. Like I said above, COS has a weird layout of mass storage, 
where you have logical files, which are just numbered. And that is how 
most of the mass storage is used. And those files can also be converted, 
and the transfer program deals with that. In addition, I am not sure 
that OS/8 would be able to figure out any COS disk, since I'm not so 
sure the actual location of the directory files and the data is the same 
between them. So even though the directory format itself is the same, 
that is not necessarily enough to be able to exchange disks.

But yes, in addition, text is also encoded in a different way in COS 
text files.

>> The EDUsystems were in fact having numbers
>> like 10, 20, 25, 30, 40 and 50. No 310 or anything close...
>
> That's what I remember.  My first PDP-8 was running EDU30 on top of
> OS/8.

Glad we got that sorted. Sorry for the confusion.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol


From pete at dunnington.plus.com  Tue Jan 26 02:18:06 2016
From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 16:18:06 +0000
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1601251124030.21662@hermes-2.csi.cam.ac.uk>
References: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
 <alpine.LSU.2.00.1601251124030.21662@hermes-2.csi.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <56A64ABE.6070709@dunnington.plus.com>

On 25/01/2016 11:29, Tony Finch wrote:
> Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:
>>
>> It worked both ways, of course.  I too suspect that a
>> majority (though I'm not so sure about `vast') of PDP-11s
>> never ran UNIX.
>
> A random vaguely off-topic example: in Cambridge a PDP-11 was used as a
> terminal multiplexor for the IBM mainframe.

The University of Leeds did something similar - an 11/34 with a lot of 
Emulex serial lines and an RX02 to boot from, was connected to their 
Amdahl. I remember the RX02 particularly because when we decommissioned 
it and took out the floppies, both had completely transparent rings on 
or near track zero, so it obviously had been left running and not 
rebooted in quite some time.  In the same machine room there were two 
third-party cabinets with KDJ11A CPUs, more serial lines and IBM channel 
interfaces. They also had at least one DX11.

The University of Edinburgh used several small PDP-11/23s in BA11-N 
boxes as terminal/network concentrators for EMAS. I can't remember how 
they worked but I remember they had one sync serial interface and a 
bunch of DLV11-Js.

-- 
Pete


From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Tue Jan 26 02:43:41 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 11:43:41 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <56A64A93.7020206@update.uu.se>
References: <mailman.29.1453684304.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56A591FD.6030501@update.uu.se>
 <20160125125428.GM3618@mercury.ccil.org>
 <56A627EC.60509@update.uu.se>
 <20160125160044.GA18971@mercury.ccil.org>
 <56A64A93.7020206@update.uu.se>
Message-ID: <20160125164340.GB18971@mercury.ccil.org>

Johnny Billquist scripsit:

> >That's what I remember.  My first PDP-8 was running EDU30 on top of
> >OS/8.
> 
> Glad we got that sorted. Sorry for the confusion.

Now that I think about it, I think the command to start the EDUsystem
was .R EDU300 rather than .R EDU30, but I don't know why.  The documentation
all said EDUsystem 30.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Original line from The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold:
"Only on Barrayar would pulling a loaded needler start a stampede toward one."
English-to-Russian-to-English mangling thereof: "Only on Barrayar you risk to
lose support instead of finding it when you threat with the charged weapon."


From clemc at ccc.com  Tue Jan 26 05:37:09 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 14:37:09 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <56A64ABE.6070709@dunnington.plus.com>
References: <1453675247.12547.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org>
 <alpine.LSU.2.00.1601251124030.21662@hermes-2.csi.cam.ac.uk>
 <56A64ABE.6070709@dunnington.plus.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Pq+8Gz7DCR1XajYbJZEkG229iPJC+HdzFKGoqZGkVDzg@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 11:18 AM, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com>
wrote:

> The University of Leeds did something similar - an 11/34 with a lot of
> Emulex serial lines and an RX02 to boot from, was connected to their
> Amdahl. I


​Indeed back in the day that was a very popular PDP-11 configuration at a
lot of places (except UCB who had a giant patch board in each building).
Noel, didn't MIT have something running SupDup?

CMU called this configuration the "terminal front end" or just "Front End"
(FE).  I know commercially the Timeshare guys did this with their PDP-10s -
they called them "terminal switches"  but started with CMU EE/CS version.
 I also remember walking into a computer room in one of the big banks in
NYC and the only DEC equipment was PDP-11 running the terminals -
everything else in the room was big blue.

One of my CMU classmates that went to IBM friends told me that the way the
Series-1 finally got funded at IBM was to try to sell against DEC in just
that market.  He said that it was why the S1 was IBMs first pure ASCII
machine and had RS232C ports (when it first came out IBM did not even
make/sell an terminals that talked to it - most customers were buying
VT-100 or clones).

Also, the CMU Front End was originally two system depending if you were
talking to the University's main Computer Center or to the CS/EE Dept
systems.  Both FE's  were 11/20s originally, then later 40e's but not
connected to each other.  CMU had also designed it's own serial port for
them which we called an ASLI or Asynchronous Line Interface because DH-11
and DL11 ports were too expensive at the time.     As more and more "large
systems" systems (read UNIX based 11's and Vaxen) showed up on campus
(around the time as I was leaving) the "Distributed FE" was being developed
in EE, originally using LSI11s and 3Mb Xerox ethernet.  It was then further
cost reduced to 8085s on multibus boards by Andy Bechtolsheim (which he
later redesigned to use a 68k at Stanford - ie. the Sun board traces it
roots to the PDP-11 being used an embed terminal front-end :-)

Anyway - the key point being made is that the DEC sold a large number of
embedded PDP-11 as a popular way to driving terminals and modem pools into
larger systems.  No DEC SW ran on them -- they were "purpose built."  DEC
pretty much owned that business until finally cheap microprocessors and
cheap ethernet connections displaced them for the tasks.   But in truth,
that really was limited because by the the personally computer and
workstations had begun to replace the "glass TTY."

Clem

​
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From arnold at skeeve.com  Tue Jan 26 18:15:35 2016
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 01:15:35 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] PC-bootable PDP-11 Unix
Message-ID: <201601260815.u0Q8FZSi032559@freefriends.org>

FYI folks:

Sanos PDP-11 Simulator with UNIX V7
http://www.jbox.dk/sanos/pdp11.htm

Arnold


From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu  Wed Jan 27 05:36:28 2016
From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 14:36:28 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <201601261936.u0QJaStV027123@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>

> First, I was wondering when Bell Labs got that first PDP-11/20 what
software (if any) came with it? 

> I have this bit set that they didn't get anything, they wrote a
cross-assembler on another machine. I know that when it came, it didn't have a
disk (wasn't ready yet), so it ran a chess problem (memory only) for quite a
while until the disk came.

That is exactly right. Unix was up and running as a time-sharing
system with remote access before a primitive DOS emerged from DEC.
The chess problem was enumeration of closed knight tours.

Doug


From dave at horsfall.org  Wed Jan 27 05:52:33 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 06:52:33 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <97567D49-FEE0-4F31-9FC5-CD63062E788D@ccc.com>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <48DE021E-ED07-4E13-826A-25982EE4D29A@tuhs.org>
 <97567D49-FEE0-4F31-9FC5-CD63062E788D@ccc.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601270644150.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Mon, 25 Jan 2016, Clem cole wrote:

> Dave not doubt. Sorry. I didn't  publish.

Sorry; I wasn't accusing you.  It was a couple of bods at UNSW (if they're 
on this list then they know who they are).

But yeah, had I known of prior work then I certainly would have used it 
(with all due credit) instead of re-inventing that particular wheel.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

From wkt at tuhs.org  Wed Jan 27 05:59:12 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 05:59:12 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <201601261936.u0QJaStV027123@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
References: <201601261936.u0QJaStV027123@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Message-ID: <20160126195912.GA14958@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 02:36:28PM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> That is exactly right. Unix was up and running as a time-sharing
> system with remote access before a primitive DOS emerged from DEC.
> The chess problem was enumeration of closed knight tours.

"The processor arrived at the end of the summer [1970], but the PDP-11
was so new a product that no disk was available until December. In the
meantime, a rudimentary, core-only version of Unix was written using
a cross-assembler on the PDP-7. Most of the time, the machine sat in
a corner, enumerating all the closed Knight's tours on a 6×8 chess
board—a three-month job."
	-- https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html

Cheers, Warren


From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu  Wed Jan 27 06:07:21 2016
From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:07:21 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
Message-ID: <201601262007.u0QK7LvL027562@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>

> Dr. Wang invented the core memory at IBM BTW

Wang did make a magnetic-core storage device (a 2-core-per-bit
shift register) but Jay Forrester's core memory, first installed
on MIT's Whirlwind computer in 1953, is the one that actually
saw use and very quickly dominated the market.

Doug


From clemc at ccc.com  Wed Jan 27 06:41:21 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:41:21 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601270644150.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <CADxT5N5YPmJRM9PC-KGHb6ua7eB4JtKHAfURxm5JsynDgUv8iQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2O-sTv7CBXdQdeLe2XZiB=AFQHEnupH-VLmqL6Xekc_Zw@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601251357480.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <48DE021E-ED07-4E13-826A-25982EE4D29A@tuhs.org>
 <97567D49-FEE0-4F31-9FC5-CD63062E788D@ccc.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601270644150.1065@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2NuK58-X56Kd7yecs5XGssHgfZv4+0LdstZg3NnwSExWw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

>
> Sorry; I wasn't accusing you.
>

​no issues.

​

> But yeah, had I known of prior work then I certainly would have used it
> (with all due credit) instead of re-inventing that particular wheel.

​same here.  The UNIX community has always tended to do what they had to do
and shared as they could and when they knew about it.
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From clemc at ccc.com  Wed Jan 27 06:44:42 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 15:44:42 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] PDP-11 questions
In-Reply-To: <201601262007.u0QK7LvL027562@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
References: <201601262007.u0QK7LvL027562@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2Oan0LChBQyBJcWQQ6i4uafnh3-QSNarBKhChVofmGJOQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> > Dr. Wang invented the core memory at IBM BTW
>
> Wang did make a magnetic-core storage device (a 2-core-per-bit
> shift register) but Jay Forrester's core memory, first installed
> on MIT's Whirlwind computer in 1953, is the one that actually
> saw use and very quickly dominated the market.
>
​Excellent. Nice to know.     Thank you,
Clem​
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From wkt at tuhs.org  Wed Jan 27 09:15:53 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:15:53 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Scan of "Edition 0" manual
In-Reply-To: <20151226140903.GA19847@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <201511240155.tAO1tap2016965@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
 <20151128232413.GA24191@www.oztivo.net>
 <20151226140903.GA19847@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20160126231553.GA29644@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 12:09:03AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/McIlroy_v0/UnixEditionZero.txt
> 
> Doug, page A7 is missing. Could you e-mail in a scan of that page?

Doug reports in a private e-mail that the physical page A7 is missing,
so he is unable to scan it in. Oh well.

Cheers, Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Wed Jan 27 09:18:53 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:18:53 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Working e-mail for Henry Spencer?
Message-ID: <20160126231853.GA30456@minnie.tuhs.org>

Does anybody have a working e-mail address for Henry Spencer? I've
tried his "zoo.utoronto..." address but the box is refusing SMTP
connections (from me, at least). Alternatively, could someone e-mail
him and see if he would be interested in joining the TUHS list?

And ditto for any other old Unix users!

Cheers, Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Wed Jan 27 09:46:48 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:46:48 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Scan of "Edition 0" manual
In-Reply-To: <20160126231553.GA29644@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <201511240155.tAO1tap2016965@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
 <20151128232413.GA24191@www.oztivo.net>
 <20151226140903.GA19847@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160126231553.GA29644@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20160126234648.GA833@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 12:09:03AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> > http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/McIlroy_v0/UnixEditionZero.txt
> > 
> > Doug, page A7 is missing. Could you e-mail in a scan of that page?
> 
> Doug reports in a private e-mail that the physical page A7 is missing,
> so he is unable to scan it in. Oh well.

Actually, we can probably substitute part of the db(1) man page from 1st
Edition Unix for the missing page A7:

             =   When preceded by an expression, the value of the
                 expression is typed in octal. When not preceded by an
                 expression, the value of. "." is indicated. This
                 command does not change the value of ".".

             :   An attempt is made to print the given expression as a
                 symbolic address. If the expression is relocatable,
                 that symbol is found whose value is nearest that of
                 the expression, and the symbol is typed, followed by a
                 sign and the appropriate offset. If the value of the
                 expression is absolute, a symbol with exactly the
                 indicated value is sought and printed if found; if no
                 matching symbol is discovered, the octal value of the
                 expression is given.

          The following command may be used to patch the file being
          debugged.

             !   This command must be preceded by an expression. The
                 value of the expression is stored at the location
                 addressed by the current value of "." . The opcodes do
                 not appear in the symbol table, so the user must
                 assemble them by hand.


          The following command is used after a fault has caused a core
          image file to be produced.

             $   causes the contents of the general registers and
                 several other registers to be printed both in octal
                 and symbolic format. The values are as they were at
                 the time of the fault.

                  The only way to exit from db is to generate an end of file
                  on the typewriter (EOT character).

Cheers, Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Wed Jan 27 11:12:56 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 11:12:56 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] And, contacts in the UK or Europe?
Message-ID: <20160127011256.GA6241@minnie.tuhs.org>

[I feel like I'm spamming my own list]

I've tried to make contact with people in the UK that might have
copies of the UKUUG and EUUG newsletters: Peter Collinson,
Sunil Das, Bruce Anderson. No luck with this.

There are newsletters back to 1992 at http://www.ukuug.org/newsletter/
but I'm after the ones in the 1970s and 1980s. The current secretary
doesn't know about the earlier newsletters.

Who else can I contact?

Cheers, Warren


From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu  Wed Jan 27 13:01:41 2016
From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 22:01:41 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Scan of "Edition 0" manual
Message-ID: <201601270301.u0R31f2Q031351@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>

>  we can probably substitute part of the db(1) man page from 1st
> Edition Unix for the missing page A7

That would be appropriate--properly documented, of course.

doug


From arnold at skeeve.com  Wed Jan 27 18:03:59 2016
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 01:03:59 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] And, contacts in the UK or Europe?
In-Reply-To: <20160127011256.GA6241@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160127011256.GA6241@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <201601270803.u0R83xR4024043@freefriends.org>

Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

> [I feel like I'm spamming my own list]
>
> I've tried to make contact with people in the UK that might have
> copies of the UKUUG and EUUG newsletters: Peter Collinson,
> Sunil Das, Bruce Anderson. No luck with this.
>
> There are newsletters back to 1992 at http://www.ukuug.org/newsletter/
> but I'm after the ones in the 1970s and 1980s. The current secretary
> doesn't know about the earlier newsletters.
>
> Who else can I contact?
>
> Cheers, Warren

David Braidsford (spelling?) who did the troff work with BWK that I pointed
to a while back.

Just a thought.

Arnold


From jaapna at xs4all.nl  Wed Jan 27 23:00:56 2016
From: jaapna at xs4all.nl (Jaap Akkerhuis)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 14:00:56 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] And, contacts in the UK or Europe?
In-Reply-To: <20160127011256.GA6241@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160127011256.GA6241@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <FCB41AC7-6FA1-4143-8356-5F40A8449CFB@xs4all.nl>


> On Jan 27, 2016, at 2:12, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> There are newsletters back to 1992 at http://www.ukuug.org/newsletter/
> but I'm after the ones in the 1970s and 1980s. The current secretary
> doesn't know about the earlier newsletters.
> 
> Who else can I contact?

Wasn't Jim McKie at one time the editor?  If I remember correctly,
his archive was on display during the Usenix Winter Conference
Washington DC, 1987

	jaap
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From clemc at ccc.com  Wed Jan 27 23:44:58 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 08:44:58 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] And, contacts in the UK or Europe?
In-Reply-To: <FCB41AC7-6FA1-4143-8356-5F40A8449CFB@xs4all.nl>
References: <20160127011256.GA6241@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <FCB41AC7-6FA1-4143-8356-5F40A8449CFB@xs4all.nl>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2M4AkwdTqM9K=Bvq=7dW7hB4t0hASr1xMyw=hOB5=FwNw@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 8:00 AM, Jaap Akkerhuis <jaapna at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Wasn't Jim McKie at one time the editor?
>
​If he was not editor, he was certainly heavily involved.   Definitely some
one to chase down.​




>   If I remember correctly,
> ​ ​
> his archive was on display during the Usenix Winter Conference
> Washington DC, 1987
>
​Right.​
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From cym224 at gmail.com  Thu Jan 28 02:05:25 2016
From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 11:05:25 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Working e-mail for Henry Spencer?
In-Reply-To: <20160126231853.GA30456@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160126231853.GA30456@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CAJfiPzwQOoROg9tCzHbR+Fdz52pC6cbUy-puCQUsjSHQrW1Bfg@mail.gmail.com>

On 26 January 2016 at 18:18, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> Does anybody have a working e-mail address for Henry Spencer? I've
> tried his "zoo.utoronto..." address but the box is refusing SMTP
> connections (from me, at least). Alternatively, could someone e-mail
> him and see if he would be interested in joining the TUHS list?

There is a Henry Spencer <henry at spsystems.net>, who about a year ago
or so posted to the IETF TLS list and posted to comp.compilers a
decade ago.  When I saw the name, I wondered if it was Henry at zoo but I
did not enquire.  I never met Henry, despite walking past Zoo almost
daily when I was a grad student.  As such, any email from an unknown
like me may be discarded.

N.


From arnold at skeeve.com  Thu Jan 28 02:56:03 2016
From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:56:03 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Working e-mail for Henry Spencer?
In-Reply-To: <CAJfiPzwQOoROg9tCzHbR+Fdz52pC6cbUy-puCQUsjSHQrW1Bfg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20160126231853.GA30456@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <CAJfiPzwQOoROg9tCzHbR+Fdz52pC6cbUy-puCQUsjSHQrW1Bfg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <201601271656.u0RGu3bO024423@freefriends.org>

Nemo <cym224 at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a Henry Spencer <henry at spsystems.net>,

That's him.

Arnold


From aek at bitsavers.org  Thu Jan 28 03:11:45 2016
From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:11:45 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
Message-ID: <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>


Can someone here ID the mystery person?

Embarrassingly, CHM has the person misidentified as well.


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	[SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
Date: 	Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:46:45 +0000
From: 	Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu>
To: 	members at lists.sigcis.org <members at lists.sigcis.org>



There is a famous photo on Wikimedia commons, of what purports to be Ken
Thompson & Dennis Ritchie in front of a PDP-11, presumably working on
UNIX. The problem is that the seated person doesn’t look like either of
them. And he is clean-shaven. Could it be Bjarne Stroustrup? Does anyone
recall seeing T&R w/o facial hair? Any help in tracking this down would
be much appreciated! The photo has been reprinted in many places, and
I’d like to track this down before I inadvertently propagate an error.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ken_Thompson_(sitting)_and_Dennis_Ritchie_at_PDP-11_(2876612463).jpg

Paul E. Ceruzzi

Curator, Division of Space History

National Air and Space Museum

MRC 311, PO Box 37012

Smithsonian Institution

Washington, DC 20013-7012

www.ceruzzi.com <http://www.ceruzzi.com>

ceruzzip at si.edu <mailto:ceruzzip at si.edu>

202-633-2414



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This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org

From ron at ronnatalie.com  Thu Jan 28 03:26:01 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 12:26:01 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
Message-ID: <DDB7F7D0-9031-45CF-BC53-7BB30D802874@ronnatalie.com>

I’m not sure it isn’t right.   The guy standing up is definitely Dennis.  The hairline looks right for Ken in “the day”.

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From random832 at fastmail.com  Thu Jan 28 03:30:02 2016
From: random832 at fastmail.com (Random832)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 12:30:02 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
Message-ID: <1453915802.1351265.504258842.624C67DA@webmail.messagingengine.com>

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016, at 12:11, Al Kossow wrote:
> 
> Can someone here ID the mystery person?
> 
> Embarrassingly, CHM has the person misidentified as well.

The same picture is at
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/picture.html, with no suggestion
that it's anyone else.


From aek at bitsavers.org  Thu Jan 28 03:52:01 2016
From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:52:01 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <1453915802.1351265.504258842.624C67DA@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
 <1453915802.1351265.504258842.624C67DA@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <56A903C1.6010808@bitsavers.org>

OK, the thing that threw me was KT without glasses.


On 1/27/16 9:30 AM, Random832 wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2016, at 12:11, Al Kossow wrote:
>>
>> Can someone here ID the mystery person?
>>
>> Embarrassingly, CHM has the person misidentified as well.
>
> The same picture is at
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/picture.html, with no suggestion
> that it's anyone else.
>



From ron at ronnatalie.com  Thu Jan 28 03:55:41 2016
From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ronald Natalie)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 12:55:41 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <1453915802.1351265.504258842.624C67DA@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
 <1453915802.1351265.504258842.624C67DA@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <FC9B4DF2-A16E-4151-B538-9529E668EF03@ronnatalie.com>


> On Jan 27, 2016, at 12:30 PM, Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2016, at 12:11, Al Kossow wrote:
>> 
>> Can someone here ID the mystery person?
>> 
>> Embarrassingly, CHM has the person misidentified as well.
> 
> The same picture is at
> https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/picture.html, with no suggestion
> that it's anyone else.

Especially since it seems to be Dennis whose authenticating it.

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From doug at cs.dartmouth.edu  Thu Jan 28 04:17:57 2016
From: doug at cs.dartmouth.edu (Doug McIlroy)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:17:57 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
Message-ID: <201601271817.u0RIHv7d029143@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>


No question about it. That is Ken Thompson. I saw him just like that
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times in that very seat. 

doug


From rochkind at basepath.com  Thu Jan 28 04:23:23 2016
From: rochkind at basepath.com (Marc Rochkind)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 11:23:23 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <FC9B4DF2-A16E-4151-B538-9529E668EF03@ronnatalie.com>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
 <1453915802.1351265.504258842.624C67DA@webmail.messagingengine.com>
 <FC9B4DF2-A16E-4151-B538-9529E668EF03@ronnatalie.com>
Message-ID: <CAOkr1zV-f3ywc1EGHwxv_utbVWj-VRL=pJCMM3Hqwg+uQHp7rg@mail.gmail.com>

That's exactly what Ken looked like in the early 1970s when I first met him.

--Marc Rochkind

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:

>
> > On Jan 27, 2016, at 12:30 PM, Random832 <random832 at fastmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 27, 2016, at 12:11, Al Kossow wrote:
> >>
> >> Can someone here ID the mystery person?
> >>
> >> Embarrassingly, CHM has the person misidentified as well.
> >
> > The same picture is at
> > https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/picture.html, with no suggestion
> > that it's anyone else.
>
> Especially since it seems to be Dennis whose authenticating it.
>
>
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From clemc at ccc.com  Thu Jan 28 04:34:31 2016
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:34:31 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PAW8T=q9ca=-x4hJdy2BbhnUBq+T7ktkYn9yDHpzcx1A@mail.gmail.com>

Certainly looks like Ken without glasses just like first met him many years
ago,

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 12:11 PM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:

>
> Can someone here ID the mystery person?
>
> Embarrassingly, CHM has the person misidentified as well.
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject:        [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
> Date:   Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:46:45 +0000
> From:   Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu>
> To:     members at lists.sigcis.org <members at lists.sigcis.org>
>
>
>
> There is a famous photo on Wikimedia commons, of what purports to be Ken
> Thompson & Dennis Ritchie in front of a PDP-11, presumably working on
> UNIX. The problem is that the seated person doesn’t look like either of
> them. And he is clean-shaven. Could it be Bjarne Stroustrup? Does anyone
> recall seeing T&R w/o facial hair? Any help in tracking this down would
> be much appreciated! The photo has been reprinted in many places, and
> I’d like to track this down before I inadvertently propagate an error.
>
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ken_Thompson_(sitting)_and_Dennis_Ritchie_at_PDP-11_(2876612463).jpg
>
> Paul E. Ceruzzi
>
> Curator, Division of Space History
>
> National Air and Space Museum
>
> MRC 311, PO Box 37012
>
> Smithsonian Institution
>
> Washington, DC 20013-7012
>
> www.ceruzzi.com <http://www.ceruzzi.com>
>
> ceruzzip at si.edu <mailto:ceruzzip at si.edu>
>
> 202-633-2414
>
>
>
>
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From dave at horsfall.org  Thu Jan 28 04:41:23 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 05:41:23 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Working e-mail for Henry Spencer?
In-Reply-To: <CAJfiPzwQOoROg9tCzHbR+Fdz52pC6cbUy-puCQUsjSHQrW1Bfg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20160126231853.GA30456@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <CAJfiPzwQOoROg9tCzHbR+Fdz52pC6cbUy-puCQUsjSHQrW1Bfg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601280529170.72068@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Wed, 27 Jan 2016, Nemo wrote:

> There is a Henry Spencer <henry at spsystems.net>, who about a year ago or 
> so posted to the IETF TLS list and posted to comp.compilers a decade 
> ago.  When I saw the name, I wondered if it was Henry at zoo but I did not 
> enquire.  I never met Henry, despite walking past Zoo almost daily when 
> I was a grad student.  As such, any email from an unknown like me may be 
> discarded.

Sounds like Henry Utzoo; many yonks ago, I actually met him at a private 
party (you had to quote one of his signatures from sci.space etc).

Long story.

I think my pass-phrase was "SUN-ish: requiring 32-bit bug numbers" or 
something.

Great party; I don't remember most of it :-)

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Thu Jan 28 04:47:26 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:47:26 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <56A903C1.6010808@bitsavers.org>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
 <1453915802.1351265.504258842.624C67DA@webmail.messagingengine.com>
 <56A903C1.6010808@bitsavers.org>
Message-ID: <20160127184725.GA22942@mercury.ccil.org>

Al Kossow scripsit:

> OK, the thing that threw me was KT without glasses.

>From Dorothy L. Sayers, _The Five Red Herrings_:

    The ticket-collector on the train was not helpful.
    [...] Certainly he had seen nobody remotely resembling the
    portrait of Gowan [a suspect with a very full black beard].
    Was there anybody at all like what Gowan would be if clean-shaven?
    Well, that was asking something, that was.  Had the Inspector
    any idea what a 'edge-'og would look like without its spikes?
    No, nor he didn't suppose nobody had, neither.  He was a
    ticket-collector, not a puzzle-picture expert. [...]

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Winter:  MIT, / Keio, INRIA, / Issue lots of Drafts.
So much more to understand! / Might simplicity return?
                (A "tanka", or extended haiku)


From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Thu Jan 28 04:52:05 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:52:05 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Working e-mail for Henry Spencer?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601280529170.72068@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160126231853.GA30456@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <CAJfiPzwQOoROg9tCzHbR+Fdz52pC6cbUy-puCQUsjSHQrW1Bfg@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601280529170.72068@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20160127185205.GB22942@mercury.ccil.org>

Dave Horsfall scripsit:

> Sounds like Henry Utzoo; many yonks ago, I actually met him at a private 
> party (you had to quote one of his signatures from sci.space etc).

Like at-parties (now _there's_ an obsolete concept).

Did it count if you knew enough to call him Sandor?  (Or if you knew enough
to _not_ call him Sandor?)

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
The experiences of the past show that there has always been a discrepancy
between plans and performance.        --Emperor Hirohito, August 1945


From aek at bitsavers.org  Thu Jan 28 05:57:31 2016
From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 11:57:31 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <201601271817.u0RIHv7d029143@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
References: <201601271817.u0RIHv7d029143@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Message-ID: <56A9212B.3000908@bitsavers.org>

Thanks for the replies, I've forwarded them to Paul.

On 1/27/16 10:17 AM, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> No question about it. That is Ken Thompson. I saw him just like that
> dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times in that very seat.
>
> doug




From grog at lemis.com  Thu Jan 28 08:10:28 2016
From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 09:10:28 +1100
Subject: [TUHS] Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Need help identifying a photo
In-Reply-To: <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
References: <447612405A15694BAA260AEC80EB05393381B25D@SI-MSEDAG01.US.SINET.SI.EDU>
 <56A8FA51.30805@bitsavers.org>
Message-ID: <20160127221028.GA15256@eureka.lemis.com>

On Wednesday, 27 January 2016 at  9:11:45 -0800, Al Kossow wrote:
>
> On Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:46:45 +0000, Paul Ceruzzi wrote:
>
>> There is a famous photo on Wikimedia commons, of what purports to be Ken
>> Thompson & Dennis Ritchie in front of a PDP-11, presumably working on
>> UNIX. The problem is that the seated person doesn?t look like either of
>> them. And he is clean-shaven. Could it be Bjarne Stroustrup?
>>
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ken_Thompson_(sitting)_and_Dennis_Ritchie_at_PDP-11_(2876612463).jpg

Amusingly, the summary information for that link stated "Ken Thompson
(sitting)-&-Bjarne Stroustrup at PDP-11".  I've corrected it.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft MUA reports
problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua
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From lm at mcvoy.com  Thu Jan 28 08:54:38 2016
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 14:54:38 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Working e-mail for Henry Spencer?
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601280529170.72068@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160126231853.GA30456@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <CAJfiPzwQOoROg9tCzHbR+Fdz52pC6cbUy-puCQUsjSHQrW1Bfg@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601280529170.72068@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20160127225438.GA14006@mcvoy.com>

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 05:41:23AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Jan 2016, Nemo wrote:
> 
> > There is a Henry Spencer <henry at spsystems.net>, who about a year ago or 
> > so posted to the IETF TLS list and posted to comp.compilers a decade 
> > ago.  When I saw the name, I wondered if it was Henry at zoo but I did not 
> > enquire.  I never met Henry, despite walking past Zoo almost daily when 
> > I was a grad student.  As such, any email from an unknown like me may be 
> > discarded.
> 
> Sounds like Henry Utzoo; many yonks ago, I actually met him at a private 
> party (you had to quote one of his signatures from sci.space etc).
> 
> Long story.
> 
> I think my pass-phrase was "SUN-ish: requiring 32-bit bug numbers" or 
> something.

That's the truth, I was there and can assure you that 16 bits were not enough :)


From wkt at tuhs.org  Thu Jan 28 14:25:16 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 14:25:16 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <20160128042516.GA19001@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 01:56:28PM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Hi all, does anybody know of on-line historical Usenet archives that
> I can link to ...

So I've taken the UTZoo Usenet archive from
https://archive.org/download/utzoo-wiseman-usenet-archive, repacked
everything into per-newsgroup files. I've worked out how to use
the Mailman archiver to generate a web-readable archive for each
newsgroup.

Below is a list of newsgroups that I'm concentrating on. Where
can I find a short description of each newsgroup? The ones with
descriptions came from the postings in mod.newslists.

Thanks, Warren

alt.sources
alt.sources.d
alt.sources.patches
alt.sys.sun
clari.nb.unix
comp.bugs.2bsd          Reports of UNIX* version 2BSD related bugs.
comp.bugs.4bsd          Reports of UNIX version 4BSD related bugs.
comp.bugs.4bsd.ucb-fixes
comp.bugs.sys5          Reports of USG (System III, V, etc.) bugs.
comp.lang.c             Discussion about C.
comp.org.uniforum
comp.org.usenix         USENIX Association events and announcements.
comp.org.usrgroup
comp.os.eunice          The SRI Eunice system.
comp.sources.3b1
comp.sources.bugs
comp.sources.misc
comp.sources.reviewed
comp.sources.sun
comp.sources.unix
comp.sources.x
comp.std.c
comp.std.unix
comp.sys.3b1
comp.sys.amiga.unix
comp.sys.att            Discussions about AT&T microcomputers 
comp.sys.pyramid
comp.sys.sgi
comp.sys.sun
comp.sys.tahoe
comp.unix
comp.unix.admin
comp.unix.aix
comp.unix.amiga
comp.unix.aux
comp.unix.cray
comp.unix.i386
comp.unix.internals
comp.unix.large
comp.unix.microport
comp.unix.misc
comp.unix.msdos
comp.unix.programmer
comp.unix.questions     UNIX neophytes group.
comp.unix.shell
comp.unix.sysv286
comp.unix.sysv386
comp.unix.ultrix
comp.unix.wizards       Discussions, bug reports, and fixes on and for UNIX.
comp.unix.xenix         Discussion about the Xenix OS.
comp.unix.xenix.misc
comp.unix.xenix.sco
fa.unix-cpm
fa.unix-wizards
mod.computers.pyramid
mod.computers.sun
mod.os.unix
mod.sources             Moderated postings of public domain sources.
mod.sources.doc
mod.std.c
mod.std.unix
mod.unix                Moderated discussion of Unix features and bugs.
net.2bsd-bugs
net.4bsd-bugs
net.bugs                General bug reports and fixes.
net.bugs.2bsd
net.bugs.4bsd
net.bugs.usg
net.bugs.v7
net.eunice              The SRI Eunice system.
net.lang.c
net.sources             For the posting of software packages & documentation.
net.sources.bugs
net.unix                UNIX neophytes group.
net.unix-wizards        Discussions, bug reports, and fixes on and for UNIX.
net.usenix              USENIX Association events and announcements.
net.v7-bugs
net.v7bugs
net.xbsd
unix-pc.bugs
unix-pc.general
unix-pc.sources
unix-pc.test
unix-pc.uucp
usrgroup.technical
uw.unix


From charles.unix.pro at gmail.com  Thu Jan 28 14:35:04 2016
From: charles.unix.pro at gmail.com (Charles Anthony)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 20:35:04 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160128042516.GA19001@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160128042516.GA19001@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <CANV78LSwWjYhJ4hLH75xKFkXRyJ65KzytsZg1bdsJx+TVTNjag@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 8:25 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:

>
> Below is a list of newsgroups that I'm concentrating on. Where
> can I find a short description of each newsgroup? The ones with
> descriptions came from the postings in mod.newslists.
>
> [Normally I wouldn't send anyone to Google Groups]

If you go to google groups and enter the newsgroup name in the search bar,
the results will include a short description of the group. I don't know the
origin of the descriptions, but they seem correct.

-- Charles
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From dugo at xs4all.nl  Thu Jan 28 16:02:59 2016
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 07:02:59 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160128042516.GA19001@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160128042516.GA19001@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <617fb2ce355c690e2673418eb6bf97eb@xs4all.nl>

On 2016-01-28 05:25, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Below is a list of newsgroups that I'm concentrating on. Where
> can I find a short description of each newsgroup? The ones with
> descriptions came from the postings in mod.newslists.

The most authoritative source would be the active file and control
messages archive at ftp.isc.org.


From random832 at fastmail.com  Fri Jan 29 08:36:45 2016
From: random832 at fastmail.com (Random832)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 17:36:45 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Links to relevant Unix Usenet newgroups?
In-Reply-To: <20160128042516.GA19001@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160124035628.GA27099@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <20160128042516.GA19001@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <1454020605.1740231.505641650.2A3BF963@webmail.messagingengine.com>

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016, at 23:25, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Below is a list of newsgroups that I'm concentrating on. Where
> can I find a short description of each newsgroup?

Try net.news.group or net.announce.newusers (at least, that's what
they're called in the old-names era) Speaking of the great renaming,
would it be worthwhile to merge groups that existed on both sides of the
gap under different names?


From wkt at tuhs.org  Sat Jan 30 12:42:59 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 12:42:59 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] 32V, 3BSD and 4.0BSD on VAX-11/780
In-Reply-To: <200704271001.l3RA1VQn072494@miffy.tom-yam.or.jp>
References: <200704271001.l3RA1VQn072494@miffy.tom-yam.or.jp>
Message-ID: <20160130024130.GA3635@neddie.local.net>

On Fri, Apr 27, 2007 at 07:01:31PM +0900, nao wrote:
> I successfully made SIMH VAX-11/780 emulator run 32V, 3BSD and 4.0BSD.
> Details are  on my web site (thogh rather tarse):
> http://zazie.tom-yam.or.jp/starunix/

Naoki, I am trying to build these systems following your instructions.
I am using SimH 3.8.1 on a 64-bit Ubuntu system. I am seeing these problems:

32V
---
$ vax780 dboot.init 
VAX780 simulator V3.8-1
HALT instruction, PC: 00030040 (HALT)
file : unix
TRAP FROM KERNAL MODE
HALT instruction, PC: 8000043B (HALT)

3BSD
----
$ vax780 dboot.init 
VAX780 simulator V3.8-1
Boot
: hp(0,0)vmunix
61856+61008+70120 start 0x4B4
Trap from kernel mode
HALT instruction, PC: 800004B4 (HALT)

4BSD
----
$ vax780 tboot.init
VAX780 simulator V3.8-1
HALT instruction, PC: 00050033 (HALT)
=boot
Boot
: hp(0,0)vmunix
87844+15464+130300 start 0x530
Process PTE in P0 or P1 space, PC: 80007E43 (XORW3 @-7035(AP), at D0FD2A4A, at -70B0(R1))

Do you have any idea why the three kernels are crashing? I have not modified
your .ini files.

Also, can you tell me how you constructed the three boot tapes? What
files from TUHS and elsewhere did you use?

Many thanks for your help, Warren


From wkt at tuhs.org  Sat Jan 30 13:00:12 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 13:00:12 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
Message-ID: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>

Norman put this link up on twitter:
https://medium.com/@rualthanzauva/grep-was-a-private-command-of-mine-for-quite-a-while-before-i-made-it-public-ken-thompson-a40e24a5ef48#.t94fs3pgx

All good, except I'm not sure I would have written "One guy McIlroy claimed
grep was invented for him." :-)

Cheers, Warren (a lesser guy)



From wkt at tuhs.org  Sat Jan 30 15:49:29 2016
From: wkt at tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 15:49:29 +1000
Subject: [TUHS] 32V, 3BSD and 4.0BSD on VAX-11/780
In-Reply-To: <20160130024130.GA3635@neddie.local.net>
References: <200704271001.l3RA1VQn072494@miffy.tom-yam.or.jp>
 <20160130024130.GA3635@neddie.local.net>
Message-ID: <20160130054929.GA19794@minnie.tuhs.org>

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 12:42:59PM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Naoki, I am trying to build these systems following your instructions.
> I am using SimH 3.8.1 on a 64-bit Ubuntu system. I am seeing these problems:

Jason Stevens pointed out the problem. SimH needs to be compiled with
-O1 to get it to work on 64-bit Ubuntu systems.

Thanks Jason, Warren


From mah at mhorton.net  Sun Jan 31 05:10:47 2016
From: mah at mhorton.net (Mary Ann Horton)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 11:10:47 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
Message-ID: <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>

A great read.  Thanks!

I'm wondering if anyone can confirm the (possibly apocryphal) grep story 
about the meeting at Bell Labs and the person who was late because she 
couldn't find her keys?  Maybe put some names to the characters?

(I can tell the story as I heard it, but I suspect we've all heard it 
before.)

Thanks,

     Mary Ann

On 01/29/2016 07:00 PM, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Norman put this link up on twitter:
> https://medium.com/@rualthanzauva/grep-was-a-private-command-of-mine-for-quite-a-while-before-i-made-it-public-ken-thompson-a40e24a5ef48#.t94fs3pgx
>
> All good, except I'm not sure I would have written "One guy McIlroy claimed
> grep was invented for him." :-)
>
> Cheers, Warren (a lesser guy)
>



From dave at horsfall.org  Sun Jan 31 05:44:06 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 06:44:06 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Sat, 30 Jan 2016, Mary Ann Horton wrote:

> I'm wondering if anyone can confirm the (possibly apocryphal) grep story 
> about the meeting at Bell Labs and the person who was late because she 
> couldn't find her keys?  Maybe put some names to the characters?
> 
> (I can tell the story as I heard it, but I suspect we've all heard it 
> before.)

Please do; I haven't heard it, so others may not have...

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


From mah at mhorton.net  Sun Jan 31 06:20:56 2016
From: mah at mhorton.net (Mary Ann Horton)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 12:20:56 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>

OK, for those who haven't heard it before...

There was a meeting at Bell Labs.  One women came in late, all out of 
breath.  She apologized: "I'm so sorry I'm late, but I was grepping my 
apartment for my keys."

One of the senior UNIX guys in the meeting responded dryly:  "You should 
have used egrep, it's faster."

On 01/30/2016 11:44 AM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Jan 2016, Mary Ann Horton wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering if anyone can confirm the (possibly apocryphal) grep story
>> about the meeting at Bell Labs and the person who was late because she
>> couldn't find her keys?  Maybe put some names to the characters?
>>
>> (I can tell the story as I heard it, but I suspect we've all heard it
>> before.)
> Please do; I haven't heard it, so others may not have...
>



From dave at horsfall.org  Sun Jan 31 06:40:51 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 07:40:51 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>

On Sat, 30 Jan 2016, Mary Ann Horton wrote:

> OK, for those who haven't heard it before...

Hilarious - thanks!

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


From rochkind at basepath.com  Sun Jan 31 07:42:19 2016
From: rochkind at basepath.com (Marc Rochkind)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 14:42:19 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <CAOkr1zUprhZws1WoD+4fuepMZkzNLO9HjNfLp1fGrDnjx4JKtA@mail.gmail.com>

grep is the best-known case of the regular-expression code being extracted
from ed for use elsewhere. Another case is the regex library, created by
me, for use in some PWB code we were working on, probably around 1974. My
recollection is that the code was in assembler, as I think ed remained in
assembler long after UNIX itself went to C. I wrapped it for calling from
C, of course... we didn't code in assembler.

--Marc

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 1:40 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 30 Jan 2016, Mary Ann Horton wrote:
>
> > OK, for those who haven't heard it before...
>
> Hilarious - thanks!
>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."
>
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From dave at horsfall.org  Sun Jan 31 11:41:15 2016
From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall)
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 12:41:15 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <CAOkr1zUprhZws1WoD+4fuepMZkzNLO9HjNfLp1fGrDnjx4JKtA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <CAOkr1zUprhZws1WoD+4fuepMZkzNLO9HjNfLp1fGrDnjx4JKtA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>

I'm still trying to get my around about how a program such as "egrep" 
which handles complex patterns can be faster than one that doesn't...  It 
seems to defeat all logic :-)

Is there a simple explanation, involving small words?  I've never really 
looked at the theory.

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."


From lm at mcvoy.com  Sun Jan 31 11:50:56 2016
From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 17:50:56 -0800
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <CAOkr1zUprhZws1WoD+4fuepMZkzNLO9HjNfLp1fGrDnjx4JKtA@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20160131015056.GB14210@mcvoy.com>

If you really want to see a fast grep then you need to look at gnu
grep by Mike Haertel.  Thread about it here:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-August/019310.html

If you are a performance nerd then that thread and that code is worth
a read.  Mike is extremely good at performance.  He's as good at that
as all the original Unix people were at getting stuff to fit in a small
amount of memory.

I like to think of myself as a performance guy but Mike is better.

On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 12:41:15PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> I'm still trying to get my around about how a program such as "egrep" 
> which handles complex patterns can be faster than one that doesn't...  It 
> seems to defeat all logic :-)
> 
> Is there a simple explanation, involving small words?  I've never really 
> looked at the theory.
> 
> -- 
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 


From jason-tuhs at shalott.net  Sun Jan 31 12:06:17 2016
From: jason-tuhs at shalott.net (jason-tuhs at shalott.net)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 18:06:17 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <CAOkr1zUprhZws1WoD+4fuepMZkzNLO9HjNfLp1fGrDnjx4JKtA@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <alpine.LRH.2.20.1601301802360.8927@waffle.shalott.net>


> I'm still trying to get my around about how a program such as "egrep" 
> which handles complex patterns can be faster than one that doesn't... 
> It seems to defeat all logic :-)
>
> Is there a simple explanation, involving small words?  I've never really 
> looked at the theory.

My assumption when I read it was that it was a typo/braino, that the 
intent was "fgrep" rather than "egrep".


  -Jason



From cowan at mercury.ccil.org  Sun Jan 31 12:37:00 2016
From: cowan at mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 21:37:00 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <CAOkr1zUprhZws1WoD+4fuepMZkzNLO9HjNfLp1fGrDnjx4JKtA@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
Message-ID: <20160131023700.GB7917@mercury.ccil.org>

Dave Horsfall scripsit:

> I'm still trying to get my around about how a program such as "egrep" 
> which handles complex patterns can be faster than one that doesn't...  It 
> seems to defeat all logic :-)

Actually, it just appears to be that way.  Many egrep things like + and ?
are supported in grep too, you just have to enter them as \+ and \?, at
least now that we have Posix regular expressions.  What egrep does not
support that grep does is backreferences, and that allows it to use highly
efficient deterministic (i.e. non-backtracking) finite state automata.
Classic grep uses backtracking, which makes it much slower on problematic
expressions like "a*b" where there is no b in the input.  On the other
hand, creating a deterministic automaton has higher setup costs.

-- 
 John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
               Si hoc legere scis, nimium eruditionis habes.


From random832 at fastmail.com  Sun Jan 31 14:20:41 2016
From: random832 at fastmail.com (Random832)
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 23:20:41 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] Short history of 'grep'
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LRH.2.20.1601301802360.8927@waffle.shalott.net>
References: <20160130030012.GB9762@minnie.tuhs.org>
 <56AD0AB7.40701@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310639150.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <56AD1B28.4010908@mhorton.net>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601310740170.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <CAOkr1zUprhZws1WoD+4fuepMZkzNLO9HjNfLp1fGrDnjx4JKtA@mail.gmail.com>
 <alpine.BSF.2.11.1601311227470.14724@aneurin.horsfall.org>
 <alpine.LRH.2.20.1601301802360.8927@waffle.shalott.net>
Message-ID: <1454214041.3189150.507369794.72DF9332@webmail.messagingengine.com>

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016, at 21:06, jason-tuhs at shalott.net wrote:
> 
> > I'm still trying to get my around about how a program such as "egrep" 
> > which handles complex patterns can be faster than one that doesn't... 
> > It seems to defeat all logic :-)
> >
> > Is there a simple explanation, involving small words?  I've never really 
> > looked at the theory.
> 
> My assumption when I read it was that it was a typo/braino, that the 
> intent was "fgrep" rather than "egrep".

Wouldn't you have to know exactly what your keys look like?


