From lars at nocrew.org Sat Aug 1 01:32:21 2020 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 15:32:21 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix? In-Reply-To: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (Noel Chiappa's message of "Fri, 31 Jul 2020 09:56:37 -0400 (EDT)") References: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <7wlfizk8e2.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Noel Chiappa wrote: > Hmmm. My memory was that it was an -11/05-10 (they are identical, > except for the paint on the front panel; and I don't recall it in > enough detail to say), but perhaps I'm wrong? I couldn't say for sure. I have seen conflicting information in sources dating from the 70s when the TV-11 and XGP-11 were very much in use. For several reasons, I believe the TV-11 was the first machine attached to the 10-11 interface, and the XGP-11 came second. This would lend some weak support for the theory that the first would be a 11/20 and the second a 11/10. > Or maybe it was an -11/20 early, and then it got replaced with an > -11/10? (I have a _very_ vague memory that the XGP's -11 was a /20, > bur I wouldn't put much weight on that.) Replacing or changing machines around would explain the confusion, but I haven't seen anyone remembering such events, or any written record to support that. > Moon or TK or someone might remember better. I did bring it up with TK at some point. He said the TV-11 must have been a 11/20, because at the time there was no other PDP-11 model available. But as far as I can see from file timestamps, the AI lab TV project was started in 1973 or so when the 11/10 would have been shipped. From clemc at ccc.com Sat Aug 1 04:53:38 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 14:53:38 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix? In-Reply-To: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: a little more history about the XGPs of the 70's... On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 10:16 AM Noel Chiappa wrote: > Or maybe it was an -11/20 early, and then it got replaced with an > -11/10? (I > have a _very_ vague memory that the XGP's -11 was a /20, bur I wouldn't put > much weight on that.) > I was not involved when it was stood up, but FWIW the CMU mods to a Xerox 'Long Distance Xerography - LDX' (FAX) system was definitely was an 11/20 on the original one. The XGP as it was called, was the first Xeroxgraphic printer at 200 dpi attached as an 'output device' to the PDP-11/20. A couple of my friends and I did some of the programming of the graphics PDP-11 at one point (you may remember the LDX used rolls of paper, with a razor to cut when the page was complete. The PDP 11 was hacked it to recognize Mike Shamos's PPN and cut his paper every 1.5 inches, giving him strips of output, but work fine if the same job was printed by anyone else - story for another day as to why). BTW, an interesting factoid about the LDX, is that it was not a laser printer. It used a CRT, the same idea Tektronix would use shortly thereafter for their hardcopy printers. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the copies at Stanford (Jan '73), and MIT (was the 3rd in the series and a little later) also used 11/20s or maybe 11/15's which was the OEM version of the 20 as it was March '72 when the CMU XGP was first stood up. PARC made one too for MAXC shortly after that but I think that had a Nova in it originally. That said, Jim Teter might remember but I think that only a handful of them was them stood up, but most used Jim's interface/mod. I think DEC one, as at least the PDP-16/RTM handbook, was set using it/maybe a few others. I also am under the impression that after the original wire-wrapped prototype worked, the DR-11C to Xerox machine driver logic was an early numbered 'Teter Toy" ( My memory is the designers went to PC board quickly because the WW board would not let them close the LDX cabinet or a shelf or something like that ). I also have memories of soldering/assembling some sort interface board for XGP in the summer of '78 under the watchful eye of Teter which we were assembling for some reason (a bunch of us were working as systems operators/programmers and tech's -- *i.e.* grunt work). I do have copies of the pictures of Teter printing CMU diploma replicas on toilet paper with it in the late '70s. Also, another fun XGP story, Chuck Geschke (Wulf’s first PhD student, founder of Adobe) filed the first PhD printed on the XGP but the CMU library would not accept it because they wanted the original ;-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lars at nocrew.org Sat Aug 1 05:38:48 2020 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 19:38:48 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix? In-Reply-To: (Clem Cole's message of "Fri, 31 Jul 2020 14:53:38 -0400") References: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <7wbljvjwzb.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Clem Cole wrote: > Anyway, I'm pretty sure the [XGP] copies at Stanford (Jan '73), and > MIT (was the 3rd in the series and a little later) also used 11/20s or > maybe 11/15's which was the OEM version of the 20 as it was March '72 > when the CMU XGP was first stood up. Thank you. That's one more "vote" in favour of 11/20. In which case the TV-11 ought to be an 11/10 which was our original guess. I don't think it matters to the software; it should run just as well on either model. I have seen MIT files which describe the Stanford hardware, so it seems their inspiration came from there. The earliest timestamp is from February 1973. I got the impression the Stanford XGP had a PDP-6/10 IO bus interface rather than going through a PDP-11. I'm CC'ing Bruce Baumgart. From clemc at ccc.com Sat Aug 1 05:40:12 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 15:40:12 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix? In-Reply-To: <7wbljvjwzb.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <7wbljvjwzb.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: Very possible, I never saw the insides of theirs. On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 3:38 PM Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > Clem Cole wrote: > > Anyway, I'm pretty sure the [XGP] copies at Stanford (Jan '73), and > > MIT (was the 3rd in the series and a little later) also used 11/20s or > > maybe 11/15's which was the OEM version of the 20 as it was March '72 > > when the CMU XGP was first stood up. > > Thank you. That's one more "vote" in favour of 11/20. In which case > the TV-11 ought to be an 11/10 which was our original guess. I don't > think it matters to the software; it should run just as well on either > model. > > I have seen MIT files which describe the Stanford hardware, so it seems > their inspiration came from there. The earliest timestamp is from > February 1973. > > I got the impression the Stanford XGP had a PDP-6/10 IO bus interface > rather than going through a PDP-11. I'm CC'ing Bruce Baumgart. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Sat Aug 1 06:05:45 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 16:05:45 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix? In-Reply-To: References: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <7wbljvjwzb.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: OK, that makes sense. As I said, I thought MAXC was a Nova. So, Stanford used a direct interface to the 10 and the CMU, DEC and MIT ones used an 11/20 I don't know how many others were stood up or how. On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 4:00 PM Bruce Baumgart wrote: > Lars et al > - > Lynn Quam is credited with building the XGP hardware interface to the SAIL > PDP-6. > > > A few lines from > Version #1 of Quam’s file RESUME[DOC,PDQ] say > > < quote > > > Nov. 1972 to > Feb. 1973\jFull-time research associate in computer science. > Received a grant from the NASA Viking Mission thru > Cornell University for the analysis of candidate landing > sites for the Viking mission.\. > > \jDesign and debugging of an interface between a PDP-10 (PDP-6) > and and a Xerox Graphics Printer (XGP).\. > > < Unquote /> > > Prior to the Stanford interface, > Quam built a Nova to XGP interface at Xerox Parc > As a part time employee while also working at SAIL. > - > Bruce > > > > p.s. Lynn Quam’s log in code is PDQ > > > On 31 Jul 2020, at 12:38 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > Clem Cole wrote: > > Anyway, I'm pretty sure the [XGP] copies at Stanford (Jan '73), and > MIT (was the 3rd in the series and a little later) also used 11/20s or > maybe 11/15's which was the OEM version of the 20 as it was March '72 > when the CMU XGP was first stood up. > > > Thank you. That's one more "vote" in favour of 11/20. In which case > the TV-11 ought to be an 11/10 which was our original guess. I don't > think it matters to the software; it should run just as well on either > model. > > I have seen MIT files which describe the Stanford hardware, so it seems > their inspiration came from there. The earliest timestamp is from > February 1973. > > I got the impression the Stanford XGP had a PDP-6/10 IO bus interface > rather than going through a PDP-11. I'm CC'ing Bruce Baumgart. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sat Aug 1 07:26:01 2020 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 17:26:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix? Message-ID: <20200731212601.383EA18C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Lars Brinkhoff > I have seen conflicting information in sources dating from the 70s when > the TV-11 and XGP-11 were very much in use. > For several reasons, I believe the TV-11 was the first machine attached > to the 10-11 interface, and the XGP-11 came second. This would lend > some weak support for the theory that the first would be a 11/20 and the > second a 11/10. Yeah, but Clem's note reinforces my vague memory that the XGP-11 was an -11/20. I wish we had a picture of the Knight TV system (the system, not a terminal). It's a extremely significant system - I believe it my have been the first bit-mapped computer display system ever; and thus the prototype, in some sense, for the display of every single personal compupter (including phones) now extant - and so there _ought_ to be a photo of it. But looking online for a while, I can turn up almost nothing about it! (I guess we should do a page about it on the CHWiki...) (Repeat my prior grump about how the AI Lab did all sorts of ground-breaking stuff, because it was just 'tools', and not their main research focus, it's hard to find out about a lot of it, e.g. the inter-ITS network file system.) But if you can find an image, even a low-res picture of that end of the AI Lab machine room, we can tell what model the TV-11 is - early 11's had inteagrated front panels, which are different for every model: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/PDP-11_Models.html so you don't even need to be able to read anything to tell a /20 from a /10. It was in a dual (I think - maybe triple, it's been a looooooong time :-) rack which IIRC was along the side wall (i.e. the short building side) next to the AI KA10 (which was sort of along the long wall, up in the corner). I don't know if the XGP-11 code is still extant (my copy of the ITS filesystem is offline right at the moment), but even if we look at the code, I'm not sure we could tell; there are some _very minor_ programming differences between the /20 and /10 (e.g. V bit on SWAB) - see the table at thd end of the PDP-11 Architecture Handbook - but I'd be aurprised if the code used any. Surely there has to be _some_ picture of the machine room which shows it, even if in the background. > I did bring it up with TK at some point. Try RG, too. Noel From bgbaumgart at mac.com Sat Aug 1 06:00:05 2020 From: bgbaumgart at mac.com (Bruce Baumgart) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 13:00:05 -0700 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Will pdp 11/04 run unix? In-Reply-To: <7wbljvjwzb.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <20200731135637.8BC2818C0C0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <7wbljvjwzb.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: Lars et al - Lynn Quam is credited with building the XGP hardware interface to the SAIL PDP-6. A few lines from Version #1 of Quam’s file RESUME[DOC,PDQ] say < quote > Nov. 1972 to Feb. 1973\jFull-time research associate in computer science. Received a grant from the NASA Viking Mission thru Cornell University for the analysis of candidate landing sites for the Viking mission.\. \jDesign and debugging of an interface between a PDP-10 (PDP-6) and and a Xerox Graphics Printer (XGP).\. < Unquote /> Prior to the Stanford interface, Quam built a Nova to XGP interface at Xerox Parc As a part time employee while also working at SAIL. - Bruce p.s. Lynn Quam’s log in code is PDQ > On 31 Jul 2020, at 12:38 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > Clem Cole wrote: >> Anyway, I'm pretty sure the [XGP] copies at Stanford (Jan '73), and >> MIT (was the 3rd in the series and a little later) also used 11/20s or >> maybe 11/15's which was the OEM version of the 20 as it was March '72 >> when the CMU XGP was first stood up. > > Thank you. That's one more "vote" in favour of 11/20. In which case > the TV-11 ought to be an 11/10 which was our original guess. I don't > think it matters to the software; it should run just as well on either > model. > > I have seen MIT files which describe the Stanford hardware, so it seems > their inspiration came from there. The earliest timestamp is from > February 1973. > > I got the impression the Stanford XGP had a PDP-6/10 IO bus interface > rather than going through a PDP-11. I'm CC'ing Bruce Baumgart. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From will.senn at gmail.com Sun Aug 2 01:48:34 2020 From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn) Date: Sat, 1 Aug 2020 10:48:34 -0500 Subject: [COFF] was: [TUHS] Dennis Ritchie's Dissertation In-Reply-To: <20200801141310.GQ10778@mcvoy.com> References: <202007310003.06V03OoV073870@chez.mckusick.com> <1k1lj2-7nP-00@marmaro.de> <20200801141310.GQ10778@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <315d71fb-782d-a382-4c06-34b60add5400@gmail.com> On 8/1/20 9:13 AM, Larry McVoy wrote: > My dad wasn't famous, but he had a PhD in physics. He never asked people > to call him Dr McVoy. As we grew up and realized he could be called that > we asked him why not. He said it sounds fancy, the only time he used it > was when he wanted a table at a crowded restaurant (which was very rare, > Madison didn't pay him very well). > > Somehow that stuck with me and I've always been sort of wary of people > who use their title. The people I admire never did. > > Someone on the list said that they thought Dennis wouldn't appreciate > it if we got his PhD official. I couldn't put my finger on it at the > time, but I agreed. And I think it is because the people who are really > great don't need or want the fancy title. I may be over thinking it, > but Dennis does not need the title, it does nothing to make his legacy > better, his legacy is way way more than that title. > > Which is a long ramble to say I agree with Markus. I agree with your dad, completely, it's fancy. I too am uncomfortable with the title. I think it's because I was a street kid and as the saying goes, you can take the kid out of the street, but you can't take the street out of the kid. I work in the academy, so it's prevalent, but I find it pretentious to insist on people calling you doctor. I ask people to just call me Will. It's interesting to watch the reactions. Some folks are glad to, some are fearful to (mostly students), and some outright reject the proposition (mostly those pretentious types). With regards to Dennis and his view on things, I haven't the slightest clue, but if someone were to present him with an honorary degree, it would be their attempt to recognize his exemplary contributions and would not be meant as anything other than highest praise. As someone who loves programming in C, I'm a direct beneficiary of his legacy and would gladly support his being recognized in this manner. I know several people who have been granted honorary doctorates, at least one of who had no prior degree. They accepted and enjoyed telling their close friends about their now having to call them doctor, but otherwise taking it as a compliment and honor and not bothering about the title. Will -- GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF From paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com Sun Aug 2 13:52:44 2020 From: paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com (Paul Palmer) Date: Sat, 1 Aug 2020 22:52:44 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Calculator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Heres the article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html On Sat, Aug 1, 2020, 10:13 PM Paul Palmer From an article on knuth. A corner of an early calculator of his. Can > anyone identify? > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com Mon Aug 3 10:50:52 2020 From: paul.allan.palmer at gmail.com (Paul Palmer) Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2020 19:50:52 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Knuth Message-ID: Nice article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html Near the end, in the picture labelled "a few notes" you can see the corner of what looks like a calculator. Can anybody identify it? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Mon Aug 3 11:02:16 2020 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2020 21:02:16 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Interesting article. I don't believe that's a calculator. Rather, it looks like a normal, if slightly grotty, keyboard. - Dan C. On Sun, Aug 2, 2020, 8:51 PM Paul Palmer wrote: > Nice article > > > https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html > > > Near the end, in the picture labelled "a few notes" you can see the corner > of what looks like a calculator. Can anybody identify it? > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cym224 at gmail.com Mon Aug 3 11:32:40 2020 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2020 21:32:40 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> On 08/02/20 21:02, Dan Cross wrote: > Interesting article. > > I don't believe that's a calculator. Rather, it looks like a normal, > if slightly grotty, keyboard. It does seem like a keyboard, albeit with unusual extra keys around. (A larger image is here: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/12/18/science/18SCI-KNUTH3/merlin_148127301_135dcdcd-2f22-47d1-a749-1b0d997864e5-articleLarge.jpg) N. > > - Dan C. > > > On Sun, Aug 2, 2020, 8:51 PM Paul Palmer > wrote: > > Nice article > > https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html > > > Near the end, in the picture labelled "a few notes" you can see > the corner of what looks like a calculator. Can anybody identify it? > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > > > > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ats at offog.org Mon Aug 3 11:58:43 2020 From: ats at offog.org (Adam Sampson) Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2020 02:58:43 +0100 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> (Nemo Nusquam's message of "Sun, 2 Aug 2020 21:32:40 -0400") References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Nemo Nusquam writes: > It does seem like a keyboard, albeit with unusual extra keys around. It's one of the Logitech gaming keyboards - a G19 or something like that. The extra keys can be programmed with macros. -- Adam Sampson From thomas.paulsen at firemail.de Mon Aug 3 15:21:31 2020 From: thomas.paulsen at firemail.de (Thomas Paulsen) Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2020 07:21:31 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: <11b26b4dfb5318929820bb33c0ec3a3b@firemail.de> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Mon Aug 3 23:25:08 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 09:25:08 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:22 PM Adam Sampson wrote: > Nemo Nusquam writes: > > > It does seem like a keyboard, albeit with unusual extra keys around. > > It's one of the Logitech gaming keyboards - a G19 or something like > that. The extra keys can be programmed with macros. > https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Programmable-Gaming-Keyboard-Display/dp/B001NXDBI6 Indeed, looks like a match. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From crossd at gmail.com Mon Aug 3 23:51:42 2020 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 09:51:42 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Wow. An $800 keyboard! And I thought I was driving the McLaren of keyboards with my Kinesis Advantage2, a mere $360 device (mine has the dual Dvorak/QWERTY layout because I keep telling myself that someday I'll learn Dvorak to save what's left of my poor wrists...). My guess was a Logitech G110: similar layout, but rather less expensive. I just realized I sent my reply about that directly to Nemo and forgot to Cc the list. - Dan C. On Mon, Aug 3, 2020, 9:25 AM Clem Cole wrote: > > > On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:22 PM Adam Sampson wrote: > >> Nemo Nusquam writes: >> >> > It does seem like a keyboard, albeit with unusual extra keys around. >> >> It's one of the Logitech gaming keyboards - a G19 or something like >> that. The extra keys can be programmed with macros. >> > > https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Programmable-Gaming-Keyboard-Display/dp/B001NXDBI6 > > > Indeed, looks like a match. > > _______________________________________________ > COFF mailing list > COFF at minnie.tuhs.org > https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cym224 at gmail.com Tue Aug 4 02:06:02 2020 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 12:06:02 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 08/03/20 09:25, Clem Cole wrote: > On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:22 PM Adam Sampson > wrote: > > Nemo Nusquam > writes: > > > It does seem like a keyboard, albeit with unusual extra keys around. > > It's one of the Logitech gaming keyboards - a G19 or something like > that. The extra keys can be programmed with macros. > > https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Programmable-Gaming-Keyboard-Display/dp/B001NXDBI6 > > > Indeed, looks like a match. This begs the question: What is Knuth doing with a gaming keyboard? (Did he miss his Sail Buckey-bits?) N. From crossd at gmail.com Tue Aug 4 03:13:19 2020 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 13:13:19 -0400 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 12:06 PM Nemo Nusquam wrote: > On 08/03/20 09:25, Clem Cole wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:22 PM Adam Sampson > > wrote: > > > > Nemo Nusquam > writes: > > > > > It does seem like a keyboard, albeit with unusual extra keys > around. > > > > It's one of the Logitech gaming keyboards - a G19 or something like > > that. The extra keys can be programmed with macros. > > > > > https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Programmable-Gaming-Keyboard-Display/dp/B001NXDBI6 > > > > Indeed, looks like a match. > > This begs the question: What is Knuth doing with a gaming keyboard? (Did > he miss his Sail Buckey-bits?) I'll bet the "gaming" aspect is immaterial to him and it's just a proxy for "a high quality keyboard". For many years now, his stated life's goal has been to "finish" TAOCP, which I imagine requires a _lot_ of typing on a daily basis. It's no secret that most consumer keyboards are garbage, so I imagine he opts for the higher-end models that are common among gamers simply for the better ergonomics and usability. This has personal resonance for me: I was having really serious problems with RSI (it was sufficiently uncomfortable that it woke me up at night sometimes) that are greatly attenuated since I invested in a Kinesis keyboard and an Evoluent Vertical Mouse. It took about a week to feel comfortable with the keyboard (and it's unique layout actually improved my typing considerably, so that when I use a "normal" keyboard, such as on my laptop, I'm both faster and make fewer mistakes). When I was in the US Marine Corps, an infantryman once told me that a US$200 pair of boots wasn't just an expensive pair of boots, but an investment in one's feet. I view the HCI equipment of one's computer setup similarly: Excellent displays, keyboards and mice are investments in one's ability to work comfortably and productively. - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net Tue Aug 4 03:32:40 2020 From: gtaylor at tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 11:32:40 -0600 Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: <323ed439-ea73-f3bb-d020-308f1502d8fb@tnetconsulting.net> On 8/3/20 11:13 AM, Dan Cross wrote: > When I was in the US Marine Corps, an infantryman once told me that > a US$200 pair of boots wasn't just an expensive pair of boots, but > an investment in one's feet. A friend of mine said something similar when he spent personal money to put an SSD into his work notebook computer years ago. "It was an investment in myself. I spend 8-12 hours 5 (or more) days a week on my work notebook. So I spent ~150 to make my life better." I ended up doing similar within a couple of months. It was definitely worth it. -- Grant. . . . unix || die -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4013 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature URL: From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Tue Aug 4 17:27:26 2020 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason) Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2020 07:27:26 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [COFF] Knuth In-Reply-To: References: <80119d43-d76b-af34-c4e4-37af5ec723b0@gmail.com> Message-ID: <731EBFEDC769D2B6.9EE92685-BB29-4C67-BF5D-13EB46DBFE7A@mail.outlook.com> You can tell it’s a legit hacker keyboard from the shipping: $ 799 99   No Import Fees Deposit & $13.37 Shipping to Hong Kong On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 9:52 PM +0800, "Dan Cross" wrote: Wow. An $800 keyboard! And I thought I was driving the McLaren of keyboards with my Kinesis Advantage2, a mere $360 device (mine has the dual Dvorak/QWERTY layout because I keep telling myself that someday I'll learn Dvorak to save what's left of my poor wrists...). My guess was a Logitech G110: similar layout, but rather less expensive. I just realized I sent my reply about that directly to Nemo and forgot to Cc the list.       - Dan C. On Mon, Aug 3, 2020, 9:25 AM Clem Cole wrote: On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:22 PM Adam Sampson wrote: Nemo Nusquam writes: > It does seem like a keyboard, albeit with unusual extra keys around. It's one of the Logitech gaming keyboards - a G19 or something like that. The extra keys can be programmed with macros. https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Programmable-Gaming-Keyboard-Display/dp/B001NXDBI6  Indeed, looks like a match.    _______________________________________________ COFF mailing list COFF at minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Fri Aug 7 06:20:54 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 16:20:54 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) Message-ID: This topic is still primarily UNIX but is getting near the edge of COFF, so I'll CC there if people want to follow up. As I mentioned to Will, during the time Research was doing the work/put out their 'editions', the 'releases' were a bit more ephemeral - really a set of bits (binary and hopefully matching source, but maybe not always) that become a point in time. With 4th (and I think 5th) Editions it was a state of disk pack when the bits were copies, but by 6th edition, as Noel points out, there was a 'master tape' that the first site at an institution received upon executing of a signed license, so the people at each institution (MIT, Purdue, CMU, Harvard) passed those bits around inside. But what is more, is what Noel pointed out, we all passed source code and binaries between each other, so DNA was fairly mixed up [sorry Larry - it really was 'Open Source' between the licensees]. Sadly, it means some things that actually were sourced at one location and one system, is credited sometimes credited from some other place the >>wide<< release was in USG or BSD [think Jim Kulp's Job control, which ended up in the kernel and csh(1) as part in 4BSD, our recent discussions on the list about more/pg/less, the different networking changes from all of MIT/UofI/Rand, Goble's FS fixes to make the thing more crash resilient, the early Harvard ar changes - *a.k.a.* newar(1) which became ar(1), CMU fsck, e*tc*.]. Eventually, the AT&T Unix Support Group (USG) was stood up in Summit, as I understand it, originally for the Operating Companies as they wanted to use UNIX (but not for the licenses, originally). Steve Johnson moved from Research over there and can tell you many more of the specifics. Eventually (*i.e.* post-Judge Green), distribution to the world moved from MH's Research and the Patent Licensing teams to USG and AT&T North Carolina business folks. That said, when the distribution of UNIX moved to USG in Summit, things started to a bit more formal. But there were still differences inside, as we have tried to unravel. PWB/TS and eventually System x. FWIW, BSD went through the same thing. The first BSD's are really the binary state of the world on the Cory 11/70, later 'Ernie.' By the time CSRG gets stood up because their official job (like USG) is to support Unix for DARPA, Sam and company are acting a bit more like traditional SW firms with alpha/beta releases and a more formal build process. Note that 2.X never really went through that, so we are all witnessing the wonderful efforts to try to rebuild early 2.X BSD, and see that the ephemeral nature of the bits has become more obvious. As a side story ... the fact is that even for professional SW houses, it was not as pure as it should be. To be honest, knowing the players and processes involved, I highly doubt DEC could rebuild early editions of VMS, particularly since the 'source control' system was a physical flag in Cutler's office. The fact is that the problem of which bits were used to make what other bits was widespread enough throughout the industry that in the mid-late 80s when Masscomp won the bid to build the system that Nasa used to control the space shuttle post-Challenger, a clause of the contract was that we have put an archive of the bits running on the build machine ('Yeti'), a copy of the prints and even microcode/PAL versions so that Ford Aerospace (the prime contractor) could rebuild the exact system we used to build the binaries for them if we went bankrupt. I actually, had a duplicate of that Yeti as my home system ('Xorn') in my basement when I made some money for a couple of years as a contract/on-call person for them every time the shuttle flew. Anyway - the point is that documentation and actual bits being 100% in sync is nothing new. Companies work hard to try to keep it together, but different projects work at different speeds. In fact, the 'train release' model is what is usually what people fall into. You schedule a release of some piece of SW and anything that goes with it, has to be on the train or it must wait for the next one. So developers and marketing people in firms argue what gets to be the 'engine' [hint often its HW releases which are a terrible idea, but that's a topic for COFF]. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Fri Aug 7 09:15:55 2020 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 17:15:55 -0600 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 2:22 PM Clem Cole wrote: > That said, when the distribution of UNIX moved to USG in Summit, things started > to a bit more formal. But there were still differences inside, as we > have tried to unravel. PWB/TS and eventually System x. FWIW, BSD went > through the same thing. The first BSD's are really the binary state of > the world on the Cory 11/70, later 'Ernie.' By the time CSRG gets stood > up because their official job (like USG) is to support Unix for DARPA, Sam > and company are acting a bit more like traditional SW firms with alpha/beta > releases and a more formal build process. Note that 2.X never really > went through that, so we are all witnessing the wonderful efforts to try to > rebuild early 2.X BSD, and see that the ephemeral nature of the bits has > become more obvious. > I'm rebuilding 2.11BSD as released, not any of the early bits... :) 1991 is quite late in the 2BSD timeline (oh, wait, it's still going strong in PiDP-11 land). Having said that, though, 2BSD through at least 2.8BSD gives the feeling of the tape of the day club. If you look closely at what's in the TUHS archive, and what's in Kirk's archive as well as other copies around, you'll likely notice small variations. Or you'll see a dozen or two files having newer dates than the documented release date. And the 2.79BSD tape... I'm more than half convinced it was really the 79th tape that had been made and they said 'nuts to that, for a while we'll do 2.8BSD since we now have a kernel'. This is pure speculation, I've not asked around... 2.9BSD, 2.10BSD and 2.10.1BSD all seem to be a little more controlled, though 2.9BSD has a lot of forks and it's not entirely clear they all started from the same spot. There's references to 2.9-SEISMO and 2.9.1 and 2.9 with patches and it isn't at all clear if these are the same thing or different (I think the same, but there's a 2.9 from princeton that's clearly a rollup release years later in kirk's archives). And even my 2.11BSD reconstruction shows that proper CM wasn't deployed for it. I've found half a dozen missing patches that were not released as real patches, but showed up in the 'catch-up' kit that seems to be hiding these sorts of minor sins in the first couple of years after 2.11BSD was released. I'm down to 10-20 files that I'm unsure about ever recovering. These are clearly local files (different kernel configs, UUCP data, games high score files), and I doubt I'll be able to recover them completely.... Though in the scheme of things, they likely are the least important files since they only had relevance to the site making the tapes and were deleted from later versions (which is why I can't find them :). In a way I've started thinking about this like quantum physics. Why you look at it at the macro level, it's all predictable, orderly and makes sense. But when you zoom in too much to any point on the timeline, you find that things get messy, chaotic and a bit indeterminate. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wobblygong at gmail.com Fri Aug 7 13:41:29 2020 From: wobblygong at gmail.com (Wesley Parish) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 15:41:29 +1200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm trying to get my head around this, in relation to the U of Canterbury, NZ's setup. I know they had had some PDPs, because one was offered for sale c 1992. I expect it would've been running 2.xBSD, because the U of C NZ was by and large a BSD house - when I asked about a suitable OS for my brand-new 486 in 1991 I was told if I could afford the (AT&T) license I could have the source tree of (would've been) 4.3BSD. I know they had VAXes, and from what I recall, though the admin ones were VMS boxen, the Computer Science one/s would've been running Unix. They also had Sun pizza boxes. Am I right in assuming that 2.xBSD was the state of the play on PDP while 4.xBSD was the source tree compatible state of play on the VAXes? That if you had a VAX you got the 4.xBSD tapes, whereas if you had a PDP you got the 2.xBSD tapes? Wesley Parish On 8/7/20, Warner Losh wrote: > On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 2:22 PM Clem Cole wrote: > >> That said, when the distribution of UNIX moved to USG in Summit, things >> started >> to a bit more formal. But there were still differences inside, as we >> have tried to unravel. PWB/TS and eventually System x. FWIW, BSD went >> through the same thing. The first BSD's are really the binary state of >> the world on the Cory 11/70, later 'Ernie.' By the time CSRG gets stood >> up because their official job (like USG) is to support Unix for DARPA, >> Sam >> and company are acting a bit more like traditional SW firms with >> alpha/beta >> releases and a more formal build process. Note that 2.X never really >> went through that, so we are all witnessing the wonderful efforts to try >> to >> rebuild early 2.X BSD, and see that the ephemeral nature of the bits has >> become more obvious. >> > > I'm rebuilding 2.11BSD as released, not any of the early bits... :) 1991 is > quite late in the 2BSD timeline (oh, wait, it's still going strong in > PiDP-11 land). > > Having said that, though, 2BSD through at least 2.8BSD gives the feeling of > the tape of the day club. If you look closely at what's in the TUHS > archive, and what's in Kirk's archive as well as other copies around, > you'll likely notice small variations. Or you'll see a dozen or two files > having newer dates than the documented release date. And the 2.79BSD > tape... I'm more than half convinced it was really the 79th tape that had > been made and they said 'nuts to that, for a while we'll do 2.8BSD since we > now have a kernel'. This is pure speculation, I've not asked around... > > 2.9BSD, 2.10BSD and 2.10.1BSD all seem to be a little more controlled, > though 2.9BSD has a lot of forks and it's not entirely clear they all > started from the same spot. There's references to 2.9-SEISMO and 2.9.1 and > 2.9 with patches and it isn't at all clear if these are the same thing or > different (I think the same, but there's a 2.9 from princeton that's > clearly a rollup release years later in kirk's archives). > > And even my 2.11BSD reconstruction shows that proper CM wasn't deployed for > it. I've found half a dozen missing patches that were not released as real > patches, but showed up in the 'catch-up' kit that seems to be hiding these > sorts of minor sins in the first couple of years after 2.11BSD was > released. I'm down to 10-20 files that I'm unsure about ever recovering. > These are clearly local files (different kernel configs, UUCP data, games > high score files), and I doubt I'll be able to recover them completely.... > Though in the scheme of things, they likely are the least important files > since they only had relevance to the site making the tapes and were deleted > from later versions (which is why I can't find them :). > > In a way I've started thinking about this like quantum physics. Why you > look at it at the macro level, it's all predictable, orderly and makes > sense. But when you zoom in too much to any point on the timeline, you find > that things get messy, chaotic and a bit indeterminate. > > Warner > From clemc at ccc.com Sat Aug 8 01:37:32 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 11:37:32 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 11:41 PM Wesley Parish wrote: > Am I right in assuming that 2.xBSD was the state of the play on PDP while > 4.xBSD was the source tree compatible state of play on the VAXes? Sort of/in theory and all that. 2.XBSD was initially developed by a group of folks that had already invested in PDP-11s (in mainly separate I/D based 11s) and could not afford a new Vax. The 11's are address space-constrained and with the introduction of the Vax, one of the side effects of BSD was much of the Unix 'small is beautiful' / 'do one job well' / 'KISS' ideas started to be lost,* i.e. * Rob's super 'cat -v harmful' became necessary to write (along sadly was often ignored). Since CSRG (EE and CS at EE) abandoned the 11's pretty fast, there was a group (originally lead by Keith Bostic in the Stat Dept) that wanted some of the new code (particularly the networking stack and sendmail) moved to their 11's. In some ways, I was surprised that it has kept going, as the 68000 & later 386 based UNIX systems came to the world, as the economics of running an 11 started to dwindle quickly. > That if you had a VAX you got the 4.xBSD tapes, whereas if you had a PDP > you got the 2.xBSD tapes? > If you were a University or Research type that qualified for a $100 style research license, you would get a pure V7 (PDP-11) or a 32/V(Vax) tape from AT&T patent and license. Once your site had that, you were part of the source 'club' and could whatever you wanted based on the AT&T V7 license. So if you were interested in the BSD releases your team then contacted the 'ILO' (UCB's Industrial Laison Office - BTW CSRG's worked with the ILO for all the BSD tapes) and asked to obtain UCB IP (be it the CAD tools such as SPICE, or the OS work like BSD, IC process technology, *et al*). There probably was some sort tape writing, *i.e.* short fees, associated with the specific IP on the order of $100-$1000 depending on what you requested, and there might be some licensing steps (exchange of AT&T license signature pages). When you had a license from the ILO, you were part of the UCB 'club.' The original BSD and 2BSD tapes themselves were released officially by the ILO, as with 3BSD and 4/4.1BSD. By the time of 4.1a BSD and later, we had CSRG, and those releases were done by them directly after the licensing was set up by the ILO. As part of the funding and creation of CSRG, UC Berekely finally had a C30 IMP in Evans (as opposed to the VDH to LBL), so the releases were also possible via ftp from a hidden location on ucbvax. 4X originally targetted Vaxen, but famously other systems like the 386 we available on that site. By the time of the 2X releases, UC Berekely had the C30 IMP ( *i.e. *direct internet connection). So, once you were licensed, you got the keys to be able to FTP different 'tapes' (which included sources and binaries), be it 2X or 4X base But, since CSRG stopped focusing on 16-bit, the 2X stuff became more of labor of love and was a bit less formal and was done with cooperation with the CSRG team. So ... if you owned a PDP-11 and were still running it and you had a proper UCB license, then yes, you might be tempted to run 2X; but the truth is most people began to turn them off in deference to more cost-effective platforms. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Sat Aug 8 06:17:52 2020 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 14:17:52 -0600 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 8:27 AM John Cowan wrote: > Broadly yes. 2BSD was for the PDP-11, and while it could probably have > been ported to another 16-bit box, I don't think that was ever done by > anyone. > I'm not aware of any 16-but 2BSD ports. In fact, I'm aware of only one 2BSD port, and that's RetroBSD to a 32-bit, though highly constrained, MIPS PIC part. Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Sat Aug 8 06:23:25 2020 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 14:23:25 -0600 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 9:37 AM Clem Cole wrote: > By the time of the 2X releases, UC Berekely had the C30 IMP ( *i.e. *direct > internet connection). So, once you were licensed, you got the keys to be > able to FTP different 'tapes' (which included sources and binaries), be it > 2X or 4X base But, since CSRG stopped focusing on 16-bit, the 2X stuff > became more of labor of love and was a bit less formal and was done with > cooperation with the CSRG team. > 2.8BSD was supposed to be the last PDP-11 release: A final wrapup of everything, according to the release notes. However, there were a lot of PDP-11s in specialized niches that weren't easily replaced by more modern hardware, so 2.9, 2.10 and 2.11 happened as well. The formality of the release seemed to diminish a bit at each step (though that may just be my perceptions). By the time we arrive at 2.11BSD, the tapes were produced by USENIX where you had to send proof of license to get the tape... These releases were driven by Seismo, and the USGS and/or military deployments from everything I've read... Warner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clemc at ccc.com Sat Aug 8 07:07:52 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 17:07:52 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 4:23 PM Warner Losh wrote: > 2.8BSD was supposed to be the last PDP-11 release: A final wrapup of > everything, according to the release notes. > Yeah, that sounds right. Bostic had moved into CSRG and I think he was hacking on it less and less. Also Ultrix/PDP-11 was out by then and Fred Cantor had sort of displaced Keith as the PDP-11/UNIX wizard. > However, there were a lot of PDP-11s in specialized niches that weren't > easily replaced by more modern hardware, so 2.9, 2.10 and 2.11 happened as > well. > You tell me from looking at the sources, do you know if there was any back population to these releases from DEC? The Ultrix team (aps et al) had fed CRSG drivers and some stuff for the Vax. Fred had a goal (took some pride) in trying to make the PDP-11/Ultrix release very much plug and play, but I had personally lost interest in the PDP-11 by then so I was not watching it directly, only socially knowing many of the players. > The formality of the release seemed to diminish a bit at each step (though > that may just be my perceptions). > Well, the formality of anything before that was happenstance. Because CSRG was getting more formal, I think Keith and company were trying to parrot the same schemes. As I said, 4.1 and before like, Research was sort of the state of the world when Joy made the tape. To be fair, disk space was expensive. So keeping a big hunk of space dedicated to the 'release bits' was not really reasonable much less imaginable. It was only with CRSG that for the Vax there was 'enough' hardware to have test machines and dedicated distribution. > By the time we arrive at 2.11BSD, the tapes were produced by USENIX where > you had to send proof of license to get the tape... These releases were > driven by Seismo, and the USGS and/or military deployments from everything > I've read... > That sounds right. By the time of later 2.X versions UCB folks were much less involved and I think you might be that USENIX took over some distribution work (I was not on the board then, Steve might have been). Clem -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From will.senn at gmail.com Sat Aug 8 08:52:43 2020 From: will.senn at gmail.com (Will Senn) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 17:52:43 -0500 Subject: [COFF] BSD 211 Help forum Message-ID: So, where's a good place to pester folks for help in 211BSD, v6, v7 when it's less along the historical interest line and more along the help I can't get this or that working line? As an example, I'm having some challenges with the networking in 211, right now. I finally (after on again off again attempts over 2 years) gotten both a vanilla 211BSD p195 system to be accessible via telnet on my local lan and am able to ping out to the internet, if I so choose, and Andru Luvisi's 211BSD p495 doing networking as well. Thanks to Andru's notes and Warner Losh's blog. In both cases, everything just "works"... well most things work :). In the 195 system, I don't seem to be able to get hostname set correctly: Assuming NETWORKING system ... sparks: bad value add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1 Whereas on the 495 system, it sets fine... Assuming NETWORKING system ... add host sparks: gateway localhost add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1 and on the 195 system, name resolution doesn't seem to function, whereas it does on the 495 system. On neither of the systems do I know how to display the routes (no netstat and route doesn't seem to have a display mode). Anyhow, I'm not really asking the question here (feel free to answer it though, if you feel so inclined), but it's the kind of question that I sit on not knowing where to ask it. I know that I often tread the knife's edge between interesting and annoying on some of my questions in TUHS and SIMH because of my lack of knowledge around these systems, but I really enjoy working in them when they work and have found that everything I learn interacting with these ancient systems significantly enhances my skills in the modern realm at least with regards to FreeBSD/Linux and Mac. Whereas, on the other hand, most of what I know about the modern systems doesn't really have an easily accessible analog in ancient unix. Take the question above, to view the route table in freebsd - it's just netstat -r, easypeasy, what the heck it might be in 211bsd is a complete mystery. Grepping the manual turns up nothing that I recognize, which is more often the case than I'd like to admit. The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? Regards, Will -- GPG Fingerprint: 68F4 B3BD 1730 555A 4462 7D45 3EAA 5B6D A982 BAAF -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cowan at ccil.org Fri Aug 7 12:49:21 2020 From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 22:49:21 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 4:22 PM Clem Cole wrote: > [hint often its HW releases which are a terrible idea, but that's a topic > for COFF]. > Or for a "history of MS-DOS" list, if there is such a thing. DOS 1.0 for floppies, DOS 2.0 for 10 MB hard disks, etc. etc. It was in 2.0 that MS-DOS got all the Unix it was ever going to get. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From usotsuki at buric.co Fri Aug 7 12:56:39 2020 From: usotsuki at buric.co (Steve Nickolas) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 22:56:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 6 Aug 2020, John Cowan wrote: > On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 4:22 PM Clem Cole wrote: > > >> [hint often its HW releases which are a terrible idea, but that's a topic >> for COFF]. >> > > Or for a "history of MS-DOS" list, if there is such a thing. DOS 1.0 for > floppies, DOS 2.0 for 10 MB hard disks, etc. etc. It was in 2.0 that > MS-DOS got all the Unix it was ever going to get. A list like that, I'd dig. -uso. From cowan at ccil.org Sat Aug 8 00:27:07 2020 From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 10:27:07 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Unix and SW Releases (was V7 et al from Will) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 11:42 PM Wesley Parish wrote: > Am I right in assuming that 2.xBSD was the state of the play on PDP > while 4.xBSD was the source tree compatible state of play on the > VAXes? That if you had a VAX you got the 4.xBSD tapes, whereas if you > had a PDP you got the 2.xBSD tapes? > Broadly yes. 2BSD was for the PDP-11, and while it could probably have been ported to another 16-bit box, I don't think that was ever done by anyone. The VAX was the target machine for 3BSD to 4.3BSD. 4.3-Tahoe ran on the Vax and the Power 6/32, though the latter platform died fairly soon (but it was worth it because that release separated out portable and non-portable stuff), and 4.3-Reno on at least HP machines. Then came the Great Legal Mess followed by the BSD Explosion. John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan at ccil.org It was dreary and wearisome. Cold clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers. --LOTR, "The Passage of the Marshes" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sun Aug 9 08:14:22 2020 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2020 18:14:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [COFF] BSD 211 Help forum Message-ID: <20200808221422.E29DF18C087@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Will Senn > So, where's a good place to pester folks for help in 211BSD, v6, v7 when > it's less along the historical interest line and more along the help I > can't get this or that working line? > ... > The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often > arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to > throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? I'd just say TUHS. Your questions would me more on-topic than 1/3 of the posts. Noel From michael at kjorling.se Sun Aug 9 17:58:01 2020 From: michael at kjorling.se (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2020 07:58:01 +0000 Subject: [COFF] BSD 211 Help forum In-Reply-To: <20200808221422.E29DF18C087@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20200808221422.E29DF18C087@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <0adc07f6-f8a9-4f4d-baa7-57acde2fefbc@localhost> On 8 Aug 2020 18:14 -0400, from jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa): >> The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often >> arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to >> throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? > > I'd just say TUHS. Your questions would me more on-topic than 1/3 of the posts. FWIW, I agree. It might not be _UNIX history_, but it would definitely be _historical UNIX_. Close enough for me. -- Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael at kjorling.se “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?” From lm at mcvoy.com Mon Aug 10 01:31:13 2020 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2020 08:31:13 -0700 Subject: [COFF] BSD 211 Help forum In-Reply-To: <0adc07f6-f8a9-4f4d-baa7-57acde2fefbc@localhost> References: <20200808221422.E29DF18C087@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <0adc07f6-f8a9-4f4d-baa7-57acde2fefbc@localhost> Message-ID: <20200809153113.GG21711@mcvoy.com> On Sun, Aug 09, 2020 at 07:58:01AM +0000, Michael Kj??rling wrote: > On 8 Aug 2020 18:14 -0400, from jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa): > >> The question may be 211bsd, but the same type of questions often > >> arise for the research unixes as well. Any suggestions about where to > >> throw these kinds of vintage unix tech support questions? > > > > I'd just say TUHS. Your questions would me more on-topic than 1/3 of the posts. > > FWIW, I agree. It might not be _UNIX history_, but it would definitely > be _historical UNIX_. > > Close enough for me. I'll 3rd this. From grog at lemis.com Mon Aug 10 10:01:26 2020 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2020 10:01:26 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Cheby[cs]hev (was: Regular Expressions) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20200810000126.GB89116@eureka.lemis.com> [Moved to COFF] On Monday, 10 August 2020 at 9:53:14 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: > Interesting; I was taught it was "Chebychev", which as second ranking > doesn't even come close to "Chebyshev"... > > Possibly a cultural thing; I went to an Australian university (UNSW). I don't think so, more like coincidence. I first came across the name as "Chebyshev" at the CSIRO in Melbourne. But the difference in spelling could be attributed to the person doing the transliteration: "ch" in French corresponds in sound to "sh" in English. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dave at horsfall.org Wed Aug 12 11:51:26 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 11:51:26 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] 2bsd tarball -> pdtar, with a side of uuslave In-Reply-To: References: <6a0063f8-128d-751d-114f-a0f811d02098@gmail.com> <26260.1596030165@hop.toad.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 29 Jul 2020, Nemo wrote: > As everyone knows, a lot of Usenet source was released into the public > domain. I have been told, time and again, by IP lawyers never to > release s/w unencumbered. Without an appropriate encumbrance, the > author may be liable for any damage caused by said s/w -- as insane > as that sounds. (I was told that there is even case law but I cannot > remember what.) So your support woes could have been worse. This is the "licence" that I use; I find the GPL to be far too restrictive for my tastes. ----- +---------------------------------------+ |Simplified BSD Licence (patent pending)| +---------------------------------------+ Do what the hell you like with this stuff, but don't pretend that you wrote it or remove this notice, OK? Otherwise I *will* hunt you down and deal with you (and I have done that before). If you modify anything then have the guts to put your name to it so I know who to blame and can deflect complaints accordingly, or email me so I can incorporate your ideas (with due credit) in the next version of this fine suite of software; fame could be yours :-) Continued use of this software may or may not result in the agonising death of all small furry animals within a 100ft radius, so use at own risk; I cannot accept any responsibility for any animal-welfare group kicking down the door in the middle of the night and dragging you off to be vivisected with a rusty razor blade. Copyright (C) 2018, David Ian Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) dave at horsfall.org Don't email me without first reading http:/www.horsfall.org/spam.html -- Dave From dot at dotat.at Sun Aug 16 01:18:52 2020 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 16:18:52 +0100 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] A/UX [was Linux is on-topic] In-Reply-To: References: <202008141739.07EHdn2U1381389@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <4F69D0BB-C6C8-443C-A5A2-0F0C1E5578B0@cfcl.com> <20200815012003.GQ32735@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: moving to COFF ... Thomas Paulsen wrote: > >I'm sure everyone here knows this, but the Cray 1 (I think, the one > that had what looked like a circular bench seat around the bottom) was > designed like that because the clock was at the center and the clock > signal went to all the boards and was right because all the clock lines > to the boards were the same length.< > > you mean that? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Cray-1-deutsches-museum.jpg I found the Cray 1M site planning reference manual very interesting - here's a summary with links to the actual documents http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2012/06/15/they-called-it-big-iron-for-a-reason/ Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ Ardnamurchan Point to Cape Wrath: North or northeast 3 to 5, becoming variable 2 at times. Slight or moderate, becoming smooth or slight between Barra and Canna. Fog patches. Moderate or good, occasionally very poor. From krewat at kilonet.net Sun Aug 16 03:09:03 2020 From: krewat at kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:09:03 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] A/UX [was Linux is on-topic] In-Reply-To: References: <202008141739.07EHdn2U1381389@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <4F69D0BB-C6C8-443C-A5A2-0F0C1E5578B0@cfcl.com> <20200815012003.GQ32735@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60@kilonet.net> After going down that rabbit hole (thanks!)... I love the motor/generator pair(s) they used to power the thing. I immediately thought of a motor-generator set my father had, to turn 60hz into 400hz, so he could test products they built at a defense contractor (and later, NASA contractor). Sure enough, the Cray used 400hz AC input power. On 8/15/2020 11:18 AM, Tony Finch wrote: > moving to COFF ... > > Thomas Paulsen wrote: > >>> I'm sure everyone here knows this, but the Cray 1 (I think, the one >> that had what looked like a circular bench seat around the bottom) was >> designed like that because the clock was at the center and the clock >> signal went to all the boards and was right because all the clock lines >> to the boards were the same length.< >> >> you mean that? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Cray-1-deutsches-museum.jpg > I found the Cray 1M site planning reference manual very interesting - > here's a summary with links to the actual documents > > http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2012/06/15/they-called-it-big-iron-for-a-reason/ > > Tony. From steffen at sdaoden.eu Sun Aug 16 04:01:35 2020 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 20:01:35 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] A/UX [was Linux is on-topic] In-Reply-To: <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60@kilonet.net> References: <202008141739.07EHdn2U1381389@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <4F69D0BB-C6C8-443C-A5A2-0F0C1E5578B0@cfcl.com> <20200815012003.GQ32735@mcvoy.com> <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60@kilonet.net> Message-ID: <20200815180135.-TJSo%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Arthur Krewat wrote in <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60 at kilonet.net>: |After going down that rabbit hole (thanks!)... Yeah dammit, i haven't read Iggy's rider for a decade or so!! Man, the good ones die out and what remains is like that hot yellow water, so to say. Doh! --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) From steffen at sdaoden.eu Sun Aug 16 04:04:16 2020 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 20:04:16 +0200 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] A/UX [was Linux is on-topic] In-Reply-To: <20200815180135.-TJSo%steffen@sdaoden.eu> References: <202008141739.07EHdn2U1381389@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <4F69D0BB-C6C8-443C-A5A2-0F0C1E5578B0@cfcl.com> <20200815012003.GQ32735@mcvoy.com> <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60@kilonet.net> <20200815180135.-TJSo%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: <20200815180416.0gg_M%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Steffen Nurpmeso wrote in <20200815180135.-TJSo%steffen at sdaoden.eu>: |Arthur Krewat wrote in | <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60 at kilonet.net>: ||After going down that rabbit hole (thanks!)... | |Yeah dammit, i haven't read Iggy's rider for a decade or so!! The old, real one, that is to say! |Man, the good ones die out and what remains is like that hot |yellow water, so to say. Doh! --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) From dot at dotat.at Wed Aug 19 09:15:54 2020 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:15:54 +0100 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] A/UX [was Linux is on-topic] In-Reply-To: <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60@kilonet.net> References: <202008141739.07EHdn2U1381389@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <4F69D0BB-C6C8-443C-A5A2-0F0C1E5578B0@cfcl.com> <20200815012003.GQ32735@mcvoy.com> <2e6b32cb-3e8a-a185-854d-e47204240c60@kilonet.net> Message-ID: Arthur Krewat wrote: > After going down that rabbit hole (thanks!)... Share and enjoy :-) [ If you like geeky links there's much more like it at https://dotat.at/:/ ] Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ Gibraltar Point to North Foreland: Southerly or southwesterly 3 or 4, backing southerly or southeasterly 4 to 6. Smooth or slight, becoming slight or moderate later. Fair then rain at times. Good, occasionally poor later. From dot at dotat.at Wed Aug 19 09:48:16 2020 From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:48:16 +0100 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler In-Reply-To: References: <20200817192715.22D9518C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <20200817193050.GC11413@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: --> COFF Paul Winalski wrote: mmap() / $CRETVA > The VMS image activator (runtime loader in Unix-speak) used these > primitives to load program images into virtual memory. More than one > process can map the same region of a file. This is how sharing of > read-only program segments such as .text is implemented. > > I think Burroughs OSes had this concept even before VMS. Did MULTICS work the same way? The Manchester / Ferranti Atlas had virtual memory in 1962 but I don't know how much they used it for multiprogramming (and by implication shared text segments) - it didn't do timesharing until later, but AIUI virtual memory helped it to have an exceptionally good job throughput for the time. Perhaps their motivation was more to do with having a good shared implementation of overlays and paged IO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-level_store Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch http://dotat.at/ reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, gender, or sexual orientation From paul.winalski at gmail.com Thu Aug 20 03:39:38 2020 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 13:39:38 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler In-Reply-To: References: <20200817192715.22D9518C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <20200817193050.GC11413@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On 8/18/20, Tony Finch wrote: > > The Manchester / Ferranti Atlas had virtual memory in 1962 but I don't > know how much they used it for multiprogramming (and by implication shared > text segments) - it didn't do timesharing until later, but AIUI virtual > memory helped it to have an exceptionally good job throughput for the > time. Perhaps their motivation was more to do with having a good shared > implementation of overlays and paged IO. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-level_store I knew the Manchester invented virtual memory in the Atlas system. In the IBM System/360 world, the first machine with Dynamic Address Translation (DAT, the hardware that implements virtual->physical address transiation via page tables) was the S/360 model 67. The only IBM OS to use it was CP/67, the virtual machine forerunner of VM/370. All of the models of System/370 eventually got virtual memory capability. The different OSes implemented virtual memory quite differently: DOS/VS, the OS for smaller machines, had a single, demand-paged virtual address space that could be larger than physical memory.. This could be partitioned into five user program spaces. DOS/VS could run up to five processes (one per partition) simultaneously. Process scheduling was strictly preemptive--the program in P4 got the CPU whenever it needed it. P3 only ran when P4 was stalled; P2 only when P4 and P3 were stalled, etc. At our school we ran the spooling system in P4 since it was almost completely I/O bound. P3 ran the administrative transaction processing system. P2 ran the student time-sharing software. P1 and BG (background; the lowest on the scheuling totem pole) ran batch jobs. OS/VS1 was the successor to OS/MFT (multiprogramming with a fixed number of tasks). Like DOS/VS, it had a single virtual address space divided into partitions, but you could have more than five of them. OS/VS2 SVS (single virtual storage) was the first successor to OS/ MVT (multiprogramming with a variable number of tasks). It, too, had a single virtual address space, but partitioning was done dynamically. OS/VS2 MVS (multiiple virtual storage) was the only one of the lot to handle virtual memory the way that modern OSes do. Each process got its own, independent virtual address space. -Paul W. From clemc at ccc.com Thu Aug 20 06:36:29 2020 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 16:36:29 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler In-Reply-To: References: <20200817192715.22D9518C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <20200817193050.GC11413@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: small update ... see below.. On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 1:39 PM Paul Winalski wrote: > In the IBM System/360 world, the first machine with Dynamic Address > Translation (DAT, the hardware that implements virtual->physical > address transiation via page tables) was the S/360 model 67. Called the Data Address Translator (DAT) box. I still have my 'TILT' deck which is an IPL program that used diagnose instructions to spell TILT in the lights on the DAT box and ring the console bell, which on a 360 was a fire alarm. BTW: the 67 had 8 32 bit TLB entries, built out of ECL flip-flops. > The only > IBM OS to use it was CP/67, the virtual machine forerunner of VM/370. > Careful, TSS used it first actually and shipped before CP/67 - but it had a number of issues. CMU would work to fix them and Michigan would start and rewrite, creating MTS (which was not an IBM product but TSS was and shipped into the early 1980s). I just did a review of a book that I'll find out when it supposed to hit the streets by some tech historians in the UK. I reviewed the chapter where CTSS begets, Multics and TSS, beget UNIX and MTS respectfully. Basically the name of the chapter is the rise of idea of timesharing. [No worries, the DEC world is in the book also, but follows a different thread - this is looking at the fight at IBM and GE between commercial batch and timesharing]. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.winalski at gmail.com Thu Aug 20 08:09:29 2020 From: paul.winalski at gmail.com (Paul Winalski) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 18:09:29 -0400 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler In-Reply-To: References: <20200817192715.22D9518C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <20200817193050.GC11413@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On 8/19/20, Clem Cole wrote: > small update ... see below.. > > On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 1:39 PM Paul Winalski > wrote: > >> In the IBM System/360 world, the first machine with Dynamic Address >> Translation (DAT, the hardware that implements virtual->physical >> address transiation via page tables) was the S/360 model 67. > > Called the Data Address Translator (DAT) box. I still have my 'TILT' deck > which is an IPL program that used diagnose instructions to spell TILT in > the lights on the DAT box and ring the console bell, which on a 360 was a > fire alarm. > > BTW: the 67 had 8 32 bit TLB entries, built out of ECL flip-flops. The various OS/VS variants for S/370 were way late. IBM was forced to release the models 155 and 165 before OS/VS was available. The decided to take the opportunity to stick it to the third-party leasing companies. The S/370 models 155 and 165 were released without DAT boxes. The third-party leasers gobbled them up. The third S/370, the model 145, had to be released with the DAT hardware and microcode because the IBM 1400 emulator needed it. Then OS/VS was finally ready. For the model 145 DAT support just worked. For the 155 and 165, a DAT box could be added to turn them into the 155-II and 165-II. If you leased your machine from IBM, you got the upgrade for free. If you had bought the machine, you had to pay through the nose to get a DAT box. >> The only >> IBM OS to use it was CP/67, the virtual machine forerunner of VM/370. >> > Careful, TSS used it first actually and shipped before CP/67 - but it had a > number of issues. > CMU would work to fix them and Michigan would start and rewrite, creating > MTS (which was not an IBM product but TSS was and shipped into the early > 1980s). I forgot all about TSS. > I just did a review of a book that I'll find out when it supposed to hit > the streets by some tech historians in the UK. I reviewed the chapter > where CTSS begets, Multics and TSS, beget UNIX and MTS respectfully. > Basically the name of the chapter is the rise of idea of timesharing. > [No worries, the DEC world is in the book also, but follows a different > thread - this is looking at the fight at IBM and GE between commercial > batch and timesharing]. GECOS was GE's commercial batch OS, IIRC. Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS) ran on the GE 635. -Paul W. From lars at nocrew.org Fri Aug 21 19:08:41 2020 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2020 09:08:41 +0000 Subject: [COFF] [TUHS] Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler In-Reply-To: <20200817195108.75FED18C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (Noel Chiappa's message of "Mon, 17 Aug 2020 15:51:08 -0400 (EDT)") References: <20200817195108.75FED18C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <7wtuwwe57q.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Noel Chiappa writes: > > From: Larry > > It's possible the concept existed in some other OS but I'm not > > aware of it. > > It's pretty old. Both TENEX and ITS had the ability to map file pages > into a process' address space. I have a date for when this feature was announced for ITS. The previous .CBLK UUO could not access files. RMS 09/30/73 10:13:28 JOBS! BE FIRST IN YOUR TREE TO INSERT A DISK FILE PAGE! SEE .INFO.;CORBLK ORDER FOR DETAILS. (This is now redirected to COFF.) In related news: A rather complete full dump of the MIT-AI PDP-10 from 1971 has been found. It includes full source code and documentation for the system, including ITS version 671, DDT, TECO, MIDAS, (MAC)LISP, CHESS (MacHack), MUDDLE, LOGO, MACSYMA, etc. From grog at lemis.com Sat Aug 22 11:31:26 2020 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2020 11:31:26 +1000 Subject: [COFF] ITS sources (was: Memory management in Dennis Ritchie's C Compiler) In-Reply-To: <7wtuwwe57q.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> References: <20200817195108.75FED18C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <7wtuwwe57q.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Message-ID: <20200822013125.GA61564@eureka.lemis.com> On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 9:08:41 +0000, Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > In related news: A rather complete full dump of the MIT-AI PDP-10 from > 1971 has been found. It includes full source code and documentation for > the system, including ITS version 671, DDT, TECO, MIDAS, (MAC)LISP, > CHESS (MacHack), MUDDLE, LOGO, MACSYMA, etc. Is it (going to be) available online? Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From grog at lemis.com Sat Aug 22 11:49:09 2020 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2020 11:49:09 +1000 Subject: [COFF] Translating Schopenhauer (was: Style command source available?) In-Reply-To: <20200821152311.kvK7n%steffen@sdaoden.eu> References: <5c629889-d4b0-761e-9eb2-76b73ffa097b@case.edu> <7b24cae8-604a-4b0f-d56e-479f32702b84@gmail.com> <20200821152311.kvK7n%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Message-ID: <20200822014909.GB61564@eureka.lemis.com> On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 17:23:11 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: > > It was Schopenhauer who definetely said > > Neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva! How about that, I even understood that. But for the fun of it I put it through Google Translate, and the result is worth showing: Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you are able to: strengthen the faint! Of course, if you drop the !, it changes to: Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you can, help the How I love syntax-independent translation! Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dave at horsfall.org Sat Aug 22 12:01:43 2020 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2020 12:01:43 +1000 (EST) Subject: [COFF] Translating Schopenhauer (was: Style command source available?) In-Reply-To: <20200822014909.GB61564@eureka.lemis.com> References: <5c629889-d4b0-761e-9eb2-76b73ffa097b@case.edu> <7b24cae8-604a-4b0f-d56e-479f32702b84@gmail.com> <20200821152311.kvK7n%steffen@sdaoden.eu> <20200822014909.GB61564@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 22 Aug 2020, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: [...] > How I love syntax-independent translation! You do know how Google "Translate" works, don't you? Hint: it's not a translation as such. -- Dave From lars at nocrew.org Sat Aug 22 15:52:05 2020 From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2020 05:52:05 +0000 Subject: [COFF] ITS sources In-Reply-To: <20200822013125.GA61564@eureka.lemis.com> (Greg Lehey's message of "Sat, 22 Aug 2020 11:31:26 +1000") References: <20200817195108.75FED18C09E@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <7wtuwwe57q.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> <20200822013125.GA61564@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <7wft8fcjne.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > Lars Brinkhoff wrote: >> In related news: A rather complete full dump of the MIT-AI PDP-10 from >> 1971 has been found. It includes full source code and documentation for >> the system, including ITS version 671, DDT, TECO, MIDAS, (MAC)LISP, >> CHESS (MacHack), MUDDLE, LOGO, MACSYMA, etc. > > Is it (going to be) available online? I hope so, eventually. But it may be a lengthy process through MIT's legal departments. From steffen at sdaoden.eu Sun Aug 23 05:10:21 2020 From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2020 21:10:21 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Translating Schopenhauer (was: Style command source available?) In-Reply-To: <20200822014909.GB61564@eureka.lemis.com> References: <5c629889-d4b0-761e-9eb2-76b73ffa097b@case.edu> <7b24cae8-604a-4b0f-d56e-479f32702b84@gmail.com> <20200821152311.kvK7n%steffen@sdaoden.eu> <20200822014909.GB61564@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <20200822191021.mxji3%steffen@sdaoden.eu> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote in <20200822014909.GB61564 at eureka.lemis.com>: |On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 17:23:11 +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: |> |> It was Schopenhauer who definetely said |> |> Neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva! | |How about that, I even understood that. But for the fun of it I put |it through Google Translate, and the result is worth showing: | | Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you are able to: | strengthen the faint! | |Of course, if you drop the !, it changes to: | | Truth injures no one, nay more, all, as much as you can, help the | |How I love syntax-independent translation! To the best of my knowledge he meant Harm noone, instead [to the contrary], help [give] everyone [a hand] as much as you can. I attune Tolstoy's enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, but had to study it much better for my own benefit. --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt) From tih at hamartun.priv.no Sun Aug 23 18:58:19 2020 From: tih at hamartun.priv.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo) Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2020 10:58:19 +0200 Subject: [COFF] Monitoring by loudspeaker In-Reply-To: <20200712145822.GA72854@fuz.su> (Robert Clausecker's message of "Sun, 12 Jul 2020 16:58:22 +0200") References: <20200711203020.GA1884@minnie.tuhs.org> <202007120222.06C2MtdJ140032@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> <738ab925-586b-4921-b891-a4ec20348d4c@localhost> <20200712145822.GA72854@fuz.su> Message-ID: Robert Clausecker writes: > When the computer is in a tight endless loop, the accumulator takes the > same series of values every time it's in the loop. Thus, instead of > white noise you get a sound whose frequency is the clock frequency of > the machine divided by the number of cycles spent by one loop iteration. A buddy and I did something somewhat related back in the early eighties, when we were teaching ourselves programming, using, among other things, his Tandy TRS-80 home computer. We discovered that a cheap "transistor radio", sitting close to the computer, would be affected by the noise generated by it, and then we figured out that if we didn't tune it to a radio station, we'd get only the noise. Leaving that on as we worked on a program, we got familiar with the sound of the code, and became able to follow the execution by the changing patterns -- and if it did get stuck in a loop somewhere, we'd not only hear it, but we would also have a pretty good idea where it happened. -tih -- Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay From sauer at technologists.com Thu Aug 27 01:49:55 2020 From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer) Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2020 10:49:55 -0500 Subject: [COFF] three performance modeling books available again Message-ID: In the early 1970s, when computing capabilities were tiny, tiny, tiny compared to even a cell phone today, and those resources were typically time-shared across multiple users, queueing network models became a primary tool to analyze and improve system performance. Queueing models had been studied for years before regarding communication systems and other systems, but networks of queues seemed especially apropos for understanding time-sharing systems. Computer Systems Performance Modeling, which Professor K.M. Chandy and I wrote in 1978-9, previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. is now out of print. We are making PDF copies of lightly edited versions available under a Creative Commons license. https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/computer-systems-performance-modeling/ Ed MacNair and I published two books based on The Research Queueing Package, RESQ: Simulation of Computer Communication Systems and Elements of Practical Performance Modeling. Those books, previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. are now out of print. We are making PDF copies of lightly edited versions available under a Creative Commons license. Though we have written two prior articles about RESQ history, those did not cover subsequent development, so another recap seems appropriate now. https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/remembering-resq/ (Mainstream Videoconferencing: A Developer’s Guide to Distance Multimedia, which Joe Duran and I wrote from 1994-96, became available again in 2008: https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2008/02/14/mainstream-videoconferencing-available-again/) -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer -- voice: +1.512.784.7526 e-mail: sauer at technologists.com fax: +1.512.346.5240 Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/ Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer