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1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

tuhs.org

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Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#131

Post by kragen »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #53
m4r1k wrote: post #47

I once saw a talk from Brian Kernighan who made a joke about how in three weeks Ken Thompson wrote a text editor, the B compiler, and the skeleton for managing input/output files, which turned out to be UNIX. The joke was that nowadays we're a bit less efficient :-D

A newer joke is that Ken Thompson (along with Rob Pike and Robert Griesemer) designed Go while waiting for C / C++ to compile.

Not C/C++. Specifically C++. C compiles pretty fast. And it's not really a joke, though obviously it wasn't a single build they were waiting for.

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#132

Post by kragen »

xattt wrote: post #68
m4r1k wrote: post #47

I once saw a talk from Brian Kernighan who made a joke about how in three weeks Ken Thompson wrote a text editor, the B compiler, and the skeleton for managing input/output files, which turned out to be UNIX. The joke was that nowadays we're a bit less efficient :-D

I’m wondering what the process was for the early UNIX developers to attain this level of productivity. Did they treat this as a 9-5 effort, or did they go into a “goblin mode” just to get it done while neglecting other aspects of their lives?

We aren't talking about a very large amount of code here. Mainly the process was implementing several similar systems over the previous 10 years. You'd be surprised how much faster it is to write a program the fifth time, now that you know all the stuff you can leave out.

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#133

Post by kragen »

colechristensen wrote: post #8
thequux wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compiling an emulator is quite easy: have a look at simh. It's very portable and should just work out of the box. Once you've got that working, try installing a 2.11BSD distribution. It's well-documented and came after a lot of the churn in early Unix. After that, I've had great fun playing with RT-11, to the point that I've actually written some small apps on it.

From the link: > It's somewhat picky about the environment. So far, aap's PDP-11/20 emulator ( https://github.com/aap/pdp11 ) is the only one capable of booting the kernel. SIMH and Ersatz-11 both hang before reaching the login prompt. This makes installation from the s1/s2 tapes difficult, as aap's emulator does not support the TC11. The intended installation process involves booting from s1 and restoring files from…

Apparently Yufeng got SIMH to run it: https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-February/031427.htm...

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#134

Post by kragen »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #90
bityard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is LOADS of gray area, overlap, and room for one's own philosophical interpretation... But typically simulators attempt to reproduce the details of how a particular machine worked for academic or engineering purposes, while emulators are concerned mainly with only getting the desired output. (Everything else being an implementation detail.) E.g. since the MAME project considers itself living documentation of ar…

I don't want to offend you , but this has made me even wonder more what the difference is. It just feels that one is emulator if its philosophy is "it just works" and simulator if "well sit down kids I am going to give you proper documentation and how it was built back in my days" but I wonder what that means for programs themselves... I wonder if simulator==emulator is more truer than what javascript true conditions…

It's fuzzy.

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#135

Post by ForOldHack »

nyrikki wrote: post #121
markus_zhang wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so. I don't think Ken had zero thought about UNIX and then suddenly came up with a minimum but complete solution in under 3 weeks. Previous experience also tells a lot too. Wozniak was able to quickly design some electronics, but he probably already bagged 10,000 hours (just to borrow the popular metaphor) before he joined HP.

They both had been working on the Multics project for Bell Labs before they pulled out of the project and had written several languages already. While some ideas like hierarchical filesystems were new it was mainly a modernized version of CTSS according to Dennis Ritchie's paper "The UNIX Time-sharing SystemA Retrospective" I was playing with this version on simh way too late last night, taking a break from ITS, and…

"EDIT: This was created to collect everything:" Wow. Amazing. Dennis would have been proud. Thank you, and thank everyone for their work. Thanks.

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#137

Post by kragen »

an-unknown wrote: post #80
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... Sure? Go buy an actual VT* unit ( maybe https://www.ebay.com/itm/176698465415?_skw=vt+terminal&itmme... ?), get the necessary adaptors to plug into a computer, and run simh on it running your choice of *nix. I recommend https://jstn.tumblr.com/post/8692501831 as a reference. Once you have it working, shove the host machine behind a desk or otherwise out of sight, and you can live like it's 1980.

The only problem with real VTs is you have to be careful not to get one where the CRT has severe burn-in, like in the ebay listing. Sure, some VTs (like the VT240 or VT525) are a separate main box + CRT, but then you're missing the "VT aesthetics". The VT525 is probably the easiest one to get which also uses (old) standard interfaces like VGA for the monitor and PS/2 for the keyboard, so you don't need an original ke…

You can also just use the terminal despite the burn-in.

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#138

Post by jefurii »

somat wrote: post #103
m4r1k wrote: post #47

I once saw a talk from Brian Kernighan who made a joke about how in three weeks Ken Thompson wrote a text editor, the B compiler, and the skeleton for managing input/output files, which turned out to be UNIX. The joke was that nowadays we're a bit less efficient :-D

It is also the case that the first 80% of a projects functionality goes really quickly. Especially when you are interested and highly motivated about the project. That remaining 20% though. That is a long tail, it tends to be a huge slog that kills your motivation.

The first 80% of a project takes 80% of the time. The last 20% of the project takes the other 80% of the time.

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#139

Post by kragen »

dboreham wrote: post #25
dataf3l wrote: post #6

I love this! first time I see people use 'ed' for work!!! I wonder who else has to deal with ed also... recently I had to connect to an ancient system where vi was not available, I had to write my own editor, so whoever needs an editor for an ancient system, ping me (it is not too fancy). amazing work by the creators of this software and by the researchers, you have my full respect guys. those are the real engineers!

Hmm. I still use ed now and then. It's an alias to vim I assume these days.

No, vim doesn't implement ed, just ex.

Re: 1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

#140

Post by kragen »

api wrote: post #61
typeofhuman wrote: post #15

Software archeology

One of the many things I dislike about the SaaS era is that this will never happen. Nobody in 2075 will boot up an old version of Notion or Figma for research or nostalgia. Like the culture produced and consumed on social media and many other manifestations of Internet culture it is perfectly ephemeral and disposable. No history, no future. SaaS is not just closed but often effectively tied to a literal single instal…

A lot of software in 01972 was also effectively tied to a literal single installation. Most of the software people ran under Unix at the time was only present on one of the ten Unix installations and has consequently been lost. The shrink-wrapped mass-distribution software epoch was still ten years in the future.
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