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Unix v4 Tape Found

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Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#61

Post by hmstx »

codezero wrote: post #16
accrual wrote: post #9

> It is a '70s 1200ft 3M tape, likely 9 track, which has a pretty good chance of being recoverable. Not old enough to have this kind of knowledge or confidence. I wonder if instead one day I'll be helping some future generation read old floppies, CDs, and IDE/ATA disks *slaps top of AT tower*.

Just anecdata, but I had this concern when I worked in academia and we backed up all our data to writable DVDs. I was there 10 years after the start of the project and I periodically checked the old DVDs to make sure they weren't corrupted. After 10 years, which was longer than the assumed shelf life of writable/rewritable DVDs at the time, I never found a single corrupt file on the disks. They were stored in ideal c…

Most of the CDs we burned at home in the 1998-2005 era were still good in recent years, some DVDs in there too. Luck, I guess. No delamination or rot. Really, my main problems were figuring out file types without extentions (burned on classic Mac OS) and... appropriate programs to open them (old Painter limited edition from 1998 needs... the same thing, pretty much).

OTOH, some 12 years ago I worked IT at a newspaper and we were moving offices. The archivist got an intern in a room in our section of the building and together they spent a month or two scanning, then committing whatever physical media to burned CDs (maybe DVDs) before chucking the former to the bin. Maybe a year after the move, a ticket was opened and I went to check the disks. None of them worked, CRC failures all over. I don't think they even considered testing them, or burning duplicates, or maybe they used a really bad drive which would produce media unreadable by anything else - although I'm only aware that this is a thing with floppies for example.

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#62

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #37
glenstein wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you click on Preferences, it's under Appearance which is the first section you see. You can change the site theme to a light option. At least on Mastodon.social.

There's no Preferences button. If there is, they've either hidden it well, or it's not visible without a login. There should simply be a button -- a conspicuous one -- that toggles the color scheme. It's trivial to add such a button. It doesn't need to be tied to a user ID; it doesn't even need to set a cookie. The fact that no such button exists is a choice someone made, a poor choice that disregards decades of huma…

I'm on two instances and both have a Preferences button.

Is it possible that your instance moved it away from the default place? What instance are you on, I can help you find what you need to click.

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#63

Post by avar »

lproven wrote: post #4

Anyway, since nobody much seems to realise this is quite a big deal, I will share the explainer I wrote yesterday: https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/unix_fourth_edition_t... Unix V4 is otherwise lost. It was the first version in C.

    > This is rare enough that I'm pushing the recovery
    > of it up near the top of my project queue.
The reader is left to wonder what the software librarian at the Computer History Museum could have possibly found recently that warrants a placement ahead of Unix v4 in their project queue. A copy of Atlantian Unix from the ancient Library of Alexandria?

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#64

Post by lproven »

ndiddy wrote: post #6
lproven wrote: post #3

Other posts on this subject, none with discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45846438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45844876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45842643

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857695 has discussion

It does now. :-) It didn't when I posted earlier

I wrote that article, but I no longer post my stories to HN because I am subject to a block and anything of my own I submit is flagged [dead]. I do not know why, and I have written to ask with no reply.

I only write 5-10 articles a week so I don't exactly spam the site at high frequency, and if I don't feel I can add more context or insight to a story, I don't write it -- except at the very slowest times of the year, and I wouldn't post those stories here.

Ah well.

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#65

Post by avar »

whizzter wrote: post #59

Someone in the Mastodon thread mentioned the Andrew Tannenbaum "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." So I wondered about a modern day equivalent, looked up 1tb micro-sd cards (sold locally for Nintendo Switch) and calculated that there'd be roughly space for 400 exabytes of data in a shipping container filled to the brim with SD-cards. (SDcard being 1tb for 1.…

Actually a shipping container full of micro-SD cards hurtling down the highway has lower overall bandwidth than a 56k modem.

That's because whoever's attempting to load an ideal 400 million micro-SD cards into one will take approximately forever carefully trying to line up even one row of them on the floor of a shipping container, before having the whole thing fall over like dominoes.

And even if they manage that, the whole thing will tumble over once they need to deal with the first row of the container's side corrugation. Nobody at the department of Spherical Cows in Vacuums thought to account for those dimensions[1] not lining up with the size of micro-SD cards.

If they do manage some approximation of this it'll take forever just to drive this down the road, let alone get the necessary permits to take the thing on the highway.

Turns out not a lot of semi truck trailers or roads are prepared to deal with a 40 ft container weighing around 100 metric tons (the weight of one packed to the brim with sand, a close approximation).

The good news is that such transportation gets more fuel efficient the longer the trip is.

The bad news is that the container will arrive mostly empty, as it's discovered that shipping container door panel gaps and road vibrations conspire to spread a steady stream of micro-SD cards behind you the entire way there.

Commuters in snowy areas held up behind the slowly moving "OVERSIZED LOAD!" with a mandatory police escort wonder if it's a trial for a new type of road salt that makes a pleasant crunchy sound as you drive over it.

Finally, an attempt to recover the remaining data fails. The sharding strategy chosen didn't account for failure due to road salt ingression into the container, cards at the bottom of the container being crushed to dust by the weight of those above, or that the leased container hadn't been thoroughly cleaned since last transporting, wait, what is that smell?

1. https://www.discovercontainers.com/wp-content/uploads/contai...

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#66

Post by gf000 »

avar wrote: post #65
whizzter wrote: post #59

Someone in the Mastodon thread mentioned the Andrew Tannenbaum "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." So I wondered about a modern day equivalent, looked up 1tb micro-sd cards (sold locally for Nintendo Switch) and calculated that there'd be roughly space for 400 exabytes of data in a shipping container filled to the brim with SD-cards. (SDcard being 1tb for 1.…

Actually a shipping container full of micro-SD cards hurtling down the highway has lower overall bandwidth than a 56k modem. That's because whoever's attempting to load an ideal 400 million micro-SD cards into one will take approximately forever carefully trying to line up even one row of them on the floor of a shipping container, before having the whole thing fall over like dominoes. And even if they manage that, th…

Well, just replace micro-SD card with HDDs and it is pretty much how it works in the real life for absolutely massive data sizes.

Also, packing it up "taking forever" is irrelevant, that's latency, not bandwidth.

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#67

Post by [deleted] »

avar wrote: post #65
whizzter wrote: post #59

Someone in the Mastodon thread mentioned the Andrew Tannenbaum "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." So I wondered about a modern day equivalent, looked up 1tb micro-sd cards (sold locally for Nintendo Switch) and calculated that there'd be roughly space for 400 exabytes of data in a shipping container filled to the brim with SD-cards. (SDcard being 1tb for 1.…

Actually a shipping container full of micro-SD cards hurtling down the highway has lower overall bandwidth than a 56k modem. That's because whoever's attempting to load an ideal 400 million micro-SD cards into one will take approximately forever carefully trying to line up even one row of them on the floor of a shipping container, before having the whole thing fall over like dominoes. And even if they manage that, th…

[deleted]

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#68

Post by avar »

gf000 wrote: post #66
avar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a shipping container full of micro-SD cards hurtling down the highway has lower overall bandwidth than a 56k modem. That's because whoever's attempting to load an ideal 400 million micro-SD cards into one will take approximately forever carefully trying to line up even one row of them on the floor of a shipping container, before having the whole thing fall over like dominoes. And even if they manage that, th…

Well, just replace micro-SD card with HDDs and it is pretty much how it works in the real life for absolutely massive data sizes. Also, packing it up "taking forever" is irrelevant, that's latency, not bandwidth.

I tried setting that up, but now the trucker's union is refusing to talk to me, citing concerns that the platters will all spin up due to road vibration, derailing the truck in a ditch due to the cumulative gyroscopic forces.

They remain unconvinced that chatGPT has told me it "should be fine", and have inquired as to whether I don't have better things to do than trying to win increasingly obscure and contrived arguments on HN. Please advise.

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#69

Post by lewiscollard »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #17

OT - Mastodon is seriously cool. If you haven't yet bothered, I suggest to everyone that you spend a bit of time exploring.

I was on Mastodon for three years. I deleted my account. When I found out that Charlie Kirk was murdered, my second thought was "well, best create yet another filter on Mastodon so I don't have to watch people celebrate Charlie Kirk being murdered" and when I caught myself having that thought I realised that being on Mastodon was a net negative for my wellbeing.

(I didn't like the guy either, by the way, or at least I knew enough about him that I knew I have much better things to do than listen to him. There are more than a few people like that, all of whom I wish find some peace in their hearts, and none of whom I wish to come to any harm.)

Mastodon is packed to the brim with literal psychopaths and people pretending to be psychopaths for imaginary Internet points. It is not an experience I suggest for anyone who is neither of those things.

Re: Unix v4 Tape Found

#70

Post by gregw2 »

avar wrote: post #63
lproven wrote: post #4

Anyway, since nobody much seems to realise this is quite a big deal, I will share the explainer I wrote yesterday: https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/unix_fourth_edition_t... Unix V4 is otherwise lost. It was the first version in C.

> This is rare enough that I'm pushing the recovery > of it up near the top of my project queue. The reader is left to wonder what the software librarian at the Computer History Museum could have possibly found recently that warrants a placement ahead of Unix v4 in their project queue. A copy of Atlantian Unix from the ancient Library of Alexandria?

Perhaps a prior promise to someone else?
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