Saving Unix Heritage, One Kernel At a Time

coondoggie writes "In this, its 40th year of operating system life, some Unix stalwarts are trying to resurrect its past. That is, they are taking on the unenviable and difficult job of restoring to their former glory old Unix software artifacts such as early Unix kernels, compilers and other important historical source code pieces. In a paper to be presented at next week's Usenix show, Warren Toomey of the Bond School of IT is expected to detail restoration work being done on four key Unix software artifacts all from the early 1970s — Nsys, 1st edition Unix kernel, 1st and 2nd edition binaries and early C compilers. In his paper, Toomey states that while the history of Unix has been well-documented, there was a time when the actual artifacts of early Unix development were in danger of being lost forever."

Comments

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can study the path something has taken, you can understand where it's going.

Re:Why?

[Darkness404]

Unix really was one of the few programs to determine the fate of an entire industry. Every modern OS can trace back to Unix in some way or form. Keeping the history of Unix especially the early releases and plans can help better document the historical software.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

VMS? Windows? ReactOS? Plan9? QNX? Tron? zOS?

Worth saving..

[nmrtian]

Not to diminish Unix's importance, it is a link in the chain -- but what a link it is! When MS is bankrupt, Windoze won't fit onto a DVD and no affordable hardware will be able to run it, Unix will be here. I run FreeBSD on my desktop and still enjoy firing up my AT&T 6300+ and playing with SVR2. Amazingly, the two computers, separated by more than 20 years, interact very nicely through a RS232 connection.

Worse is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite what many a slashdot crowd might think, UNIX isn't exactly an elixir from the Gods. UNIX, Microsoft Windows and Intel x86 are living proofs that the best / most innovative technology doesn't necessarily have to win. Check Out: http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html.

Re:Worse is better

[Teckla]

The fact that MS-DOS outsold the Amiga and Atari ST is proof that best doesn't always win. The x86 is a great example as well. The 68k chip was a much better CPU than the 8088,8086, and even the 80286.

The 68000 didn't have a built-in MMU. You could run an OS with process isolation (a requirement for a safe multi-user OS) on the 80286. You could not do that with a 68000 (unless you added a separate MMU; the 68881 maybe?).

Re:Worse is better

[LWATCDR]

The memory protection on the 286 was terrible. It still used segments and wasn't a flat address space.
I think the the 68010 came out around the time of 286 and you could add a real mmu that supported paging and had a flat address space. Also the 68020 came out during the time of the 286 so you could make the jump to true 32 bit.
Of course the vast majority of 286s where used to run DOS so it's memory protection just wasn't that important. BTW the 68881 was an FPU the Motorola 68841 or 68851 where the MMUs.

Re:Worse is better

[Darinbob]

That is a bad comparison, comparing early generation chips to a later one. The 8086, 8088, and 80186 didn't have built-in MMUs either! Compare the 68020 to the 80286 for a more reasonable comparison.

Memory protection was not at all a design factor for DOS or even early versions of Windows. Memory protection didn't really take off in the PC world until the 80386, which was after the 68020 was being used to run UNIX.

The two competing families didn't release new CPUs at the same time, so it's difficult to say which CPU should compare to which; they tended to leap-frog, as in 68020 being better than 80286, then 80386 being better a year or two later, then 68030 being better a year or two after that, etc.

This is in terms of MMU that is, the overall architecture of the 680x0 family was always much cleaner than the 80x86 family in my view. When you're comparing MS-DOS to Atari ST or Amiga, the 68000 is a clear winner. The reason that IBM did not go with that family for the first PC was due to the availability of support chips as I understand it.

SIMH

[wandazulu]

SIMH is a hardware emulator for a lot of the machines Unix ran on (PDP-8, PDP-11, etc.). They also have some original Unix versions along with some other software for the other hardware they support.

I have run Unix V5 on a SIMH-based PDP-11, and it worked well, though it was strange to realize how fast it was running, in emulation, on a machine 1/16 its original size (Mac laptop).

how about curses and text games?

[roc97007]

rogue, sail, wump, search (you have crashed into a planet), battlestar (in the closet is a kingly robe), mazewars, that mazewars-like curses game who's name escapes me, with a variety of weapons (satchel bomb... oooo...) that had destructable maze walls.

There are a variety of Rogue-like games out there that have been ported to current platforms, but the other ones, especially sail, search and mazewars, I haven't seen in years and years. These games were arguably part of our early Unix heritage because they enticed people to get a login and explore the OS, and for many of us (myself included) they were our motivation learn how to write termcaps for obscure terminals and emulators (the acid test was if Rogue would render correctly), learn programming to fix and enhance the games, and earn root access to do installs and fix permission issues.

Multi-user Unix games like sail and mazewars helped spread the Unix word because we were always trying to entice others to get a login so we could play with them. People with early PC experience couldn't even conceive of multi-user games.

Easy to use Windows SIMH packages

[JasonStevens]

I'm glad this is getting some exposure. I know that Warren & co worked hard to get this ancient UNIX not only in a working state, but also he is the one responsible for pushing SCO with the oldSCO source license, and played a hand in getting Research UNIX 1-7 & 32v under a BSD style license, thus setting the foundation of UNIX free. Now SIMH may not be the 'friendliest' software out there for a new user to get used to, so I've done my part in making it a little more accessible. On the sourceforge project https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42 I've created Windows installable versions of the 4BSD stuff, 32v and UNIX v1. I do plan to add all the other research versions, along with a new build of RENO that doesn't need 1.8GB... Anyways try them out! the 4BSD stuff has TCP/IP along with a SLiRP hack it can connect to the internet immediately! IRC/Lynx/GCC work great on the Uwisc 4.3 BSD build. Ok that being said, there is a repository of SIMH binaries on https://sourceforge.net/projects/simh , and the MS-DOS build includes some small 'bootstrap' versions of various OS's including v1 UNIX on the PDP-11 simulator. The bar to trying this stuff is a lot lower then you may have guessed, and I'd encourage any fan of UNIX to really check it out.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SLASHCODE?!?!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

OK seriously, the above post is pretty screwed up in Firefox. I've got floating tab bars or something all over the post as well as throughout the thread and the tt font is coming out at 16 point or in some very large font.

These css screw ups have been happening a lot lately. Then again I am using the older (and better) comment system.

Re:Why?

[david_thornley]

At that time, lots of languages had short variable names. It wasn't seen as all that much of a big deal until later.

It was around this time, BTW, that I thought getting a 24x80 synchronous terminal on my desk was cool. (Synchronous = sends and receives in sort of a batch mode, asynchronous = character by character.)