From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Mon Jul 6 13:58:23 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 13:58:23 +1000 (EST) Subject: More SCO Licenses + Software Tools Message-ID: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> All, The following people now have SCO source licenses for ancient Unix: Bruce Robertson, Erick Delios, Kelwin Wylie, Kirsten McIntyre, Matthew Crosby That brings the numbering scheme up to AU-50, but in fact there are 52 SCO source licenses for ancient Unix. The mailing list has been pretty quiet. Hope you're all well. The only news I have is that Norman Wilson is still slowly scanning in the manuals from 2nd to 5th Edition. He now has most (all?) of 5th edition scanned in. I haven't heard from Kirk McKusick, but he's still planning to sell a 4CD set of all the 4BSD releases from CSRG. The cost is still expected to be around US$100, but if he gets flooded with requests, this may come down. Software Tools -------------- I got some mail last week from Deborah Scherrer: I was one of the people who created the Software Tools project and Software Tools Users Group (Peter Salus mentioned us in his book). If you're interested, you might want to include the Software Tools tapes in your collection. She suggested that I contact Barbera Chase, which I did. Barbera (bc at mrdata.netcetera.com) then wrote: Sorry, we don't actually have any of the files online anymore, nor do we have access to a tape drive. What we have are 9-track tapes, probably in 1600bpi. There are three versions of the tools for PDP machines, one for RSX-11 and two for "generic" Unix. I still happen to have several copies of each, and will be glad to send them to you. Just let me know where to send them, and if you happen to have a shipping account number that would be even better ;-) I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! Cheers all, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA24990 for pups-liszt; Mon, 6 Jul 1998 14:18:43 +1000 (EST) From grog at lemis.com Mon Jul 6 14:18:28 1998 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 13:48:28 +0930 Subject: More SCO Licenses + Software Tools In-Reply-To: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>; from Warren Toomey on Mon, Jul 06, 1998 at 01:58:23PM +1000 References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Message-ID: <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> On Monday, 6 July 1998 at 13:58:23 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote: > Software Tools > -------------- > > I got some mail last week from Deborah Scherrer: > I was one of the people who created the Software > Tools project and Software Tools Users Group (Peter Salus > mentioned us in his book). If you're interested, you might > want to include the Software Tools tapes in your collection. > > She suggested that I contact Barbera Chase, which I did. > Barbera (bc at mrdata.netcetera.com) then wrote: > Sorry, we don't actually have any of the files online anymore, nor do we > have access to a tape drive. What we have are 9-track tapes, probably in > 1600bpi. There are three versions of the tools for PDP machines, one for > RSX-11 and two for "generic" Unix. I still happen to have several copies > of each, and will be glad to send them to you. Just let me know where to > send them, and if you happen to have a shipping account number that would > be even better ;-) > > I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the > US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for > inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! Registrant: Netcetera, Inc. (NETCETERA-DOM) 11950 Anderson Valley Way P.O. Box 939 Boonville, CA 95415 Domain Name: NETCETERA.COM Administrative Contact: Chase, Barbara L. (BC309) bc at NETCETERA.COM 707-895-2691 Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id FAA27259 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 05:16:41 +1000 (EST) From djenner at halcyon.com Tue Jul 7 05:15:30 1998 From: djenner at halcyon.com (David C. Jenner) Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 12:15:30 -0700 Subject: More SCO Licenses + Software Tools References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> Message-ID: <35A12252.EFEFE2B0@halcyon.com> I think having these in the archives would be great. I used the Software Tools extensively back in the late 70's and early 80's. I wish I could read the tapes in, but I'm still working on a tape drive for an 11/73. (see separate mail.) Dave Greg Lehey wrote: > > On Monday, 6 July 1998 at 13:58:23 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote: > > Software Tools > > -------------- > > > > I got some mail last week from Deborah Scherrer: > > I was one of the people who created the Software > > Tools project and Software Tools Users Group (Peter Salus > > mentioned us in his book). If you're interested, you might > > want to include the Software Tools tapes in your collection. > > > > She suggested that I contact Barbera Chase, which I did. > > Barbera (bc at mrdata.netcetera.com) then wrote: > > Sorry, we don't actually have any of the files online anymore, nor do we > > have access to a tape drive. What we have are 9-track tapes, probably in > > 1600bpi. There are three versions of the tools for PDP machines, one for > > RSX-11 and two for "generic" Unix. I still happen to have several copies > > of each, and will be glad to send them to you. Just let me know where to > > send them, and if you happen to have a shipping account number that would > > be even better ;-) > > > > I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the > > US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for > > inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! > > Registrant: > Netcetera, Inc. (NETCETERA-DOM) > 11950 Anderson Valley Way > P.O. Box 939 > Boonville, CA 95415 > > Domain Name: NETCETERA.COM > > Administrative Contact: > Chase, Barbara L. (BC309) bc at NETCETERA.COM > 707-895-2691 > > Greg > -- > See complete headers for address and phone numbers > finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id FAA27294 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 05:31:07 +1000 (EST) From djenner at halcyon.com Tue Jul 7 05:30:18 1998 From: djenner at halcyon.com (David C. Jenner) Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 12:30:18 -0700 Subject: Generating 2.11BSD boot tape References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> Message-ID: <35A125CA.45FB5455@halcyon.com> There hasn't been much traffic here for a while, so maybe I can stir things up a bit. I recently acquired a fabulous 9-track tape drive, an M4 9914, which has both a SCSI and a Pertec interface. This drive is so smart I spent a couple of hours playing with it without it being hooked up to any computer. What's nice is that I can presumably get around the "high-cost" bottleneck of using a tape drive on both a PDP-11 and Intel machines: use the SCSI interface on the PC where the interface is cheap (already exists) and use the Pertec interface on the -11 where the interface is cheap (already exists). Using the opposite interface on each machine could run up to a total of $2000 US. So, what I want to do is read my PUPS archive CD-ROM on an Intel machine and write appropriate 9-track tapes for the -11. The stumbling block seems to be software on the Intel side. SCSI software packages for MS-DOS or Windows 3.1/95/98/NT run $600, $800, even $1500US. There must be a way of doing a CD-to-Tape generation with a simple C-language program using one of the "free" OSes: Linux, FreeBSD, SCO UnixWare, etc. If anyone has any experience or ideas with this, I would appreciate your input. It would be very easy for me to install and use one of these OSs on a spare 486 I have. The question is, which is the most likely to support SCSI on 9-track tape. Thanks, Dave Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA28013 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:13:27 +1000 (EST) From grog at lemis.com Tue Jul 7 10:13:04 1998 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 09:43:04 +0930 Subject: Which PC UNIX for old SCSI tape drive? (was: Generating 2.11BSD boot tape) In-Reply-To: <35A125CA.45FB5455@halcyon.com>; from David C. Jenner on Mon, Jul 06, 1998 at 12:30:18PM -0700 References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> <35A125CA.45FB5455@halcyon.com> Message-ID: <19980707094304.N7792@freebie.lemis.com> On Monday, 6 July 1998 at 12:30:18 -0700, David C. Jenner wrote: > There hasn't been much traffic here for a while, so maybe I can stir > things up a bit. > > I recently acquired a fabulous 9-track tape drive, an M4 9914, which > has both a SCSI and a Pertec interface. This drive is so smart I > spent a couple of hours playing with it without it being hooked up to > any computer. > > What's nice is that I can presumably get around the "high-cost" > bottleneck of using a tape drive on both a PDP-11 and Intel > machines: use the SCSI interface on the PC where the interface is > cheap (already exists) and use the Pertec interface on the -11 where > the interface is cheap (already exists). Using the opposite interface > on each machine could run up to a total of $2000 US. > > So, what I want to do is read my PUPS archive CD-ROM on an Intel > machine and write appropriate 9-track tapes for the -11. The stumbling > block seems to be software on the Intel side. SCSI software packages > for MS-DOS or Windows 3.1/95/98/NT run $600, $800, even $1500US. > There must be a way of doing a CD-to-Tape generation with a simple > C-language program using one of the "free" OSes: Linux, FreeBSD, > SCO UnixWare, etc. Sure, that's the obvious way to go. > If anyone has any experience or ideas with this, I would appreciate > your input. It would be very easy for me to install and use one of > these OSs on a spare 486 I have. The question is, which is the most > likely to support SCSI on 9-track tape. I think you'll find that they all support SCSI. I'd recommend FreeBSD because I'm involved with it and because it's the closest to 2.11BSD. Next, I'd recommend Linux, because you have the sources. You could have trouble with UnixWare, in which case there wouldn't be much you could do about it. If you do have any problems with FreeBSD, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA00657 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 16:24:57 +1000 (EST) From kevin at xpuppy.demon.co.uk Tue Jul 7 16:20:53 1998 From: kevin at xpuppy.demon.co.uk (Kevin Murrell) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 07:20:53 +0100 Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: <01BDA978.2E5F7760@XPUPPY> Can anyone shed any light on a company called Dilog. Having acquired two Dilog machines they appear to actually both be PDP-11s. Dilog seemed to have produced DEC compatible hardware for the UK market. In particular the smaller machine was known as a Vixen. This would appear to be a PDP-11/73 with the DEC M8192 processor card. Indeed the processor card is the only actual DEC product. Colleagues that used this machine described it as the portable PDP-11 - however we are not talking laptop here :) The 'Vixen' has a Dilog disk controller with a Seagate ST251 attached. The machine is currently running DSM-11 and recognises the drive as a RA81. I hope to produce a list relating the Dilog part numbers to original DEC part numbers. Any help or suggestions gratefully received. Kevin Murrell Birmingham, England. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA02684 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 01:48:44 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Wed Jul 8 01:44:14 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 11:44:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Newbie Alert: Which is a ``best'' pdp-11 to look for????? In-Reply-To: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from Warren Toomey at "Jul 6, 98 01:58:23 pm" Message-ID: <199807071544.LAA00178@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > All, > The following people now have SCO source licenses for ancient Unix: Neato.... I am beginning to think it might be a fun thing to do. As the newbie aboard, what pdp-11, vax, or other dec machine would be one to shoot for. Some are largish beasts, but for the Joe Homehobby type that wants to run one in the basement, what would be a reasonable combination of parts or units (or a whole machine) to look for? Occasionally machines float up from the bilges here in central NC, USA, and usually they wind up dumpster fodder. Rather than see that happen, if I had a choice, what should I be looking for? For convenience, if there was something that would fit in half a relay rack or so, that might be nice. Also, if it could run with standard cartridge tapes (DC300/450/600) sized things, that would be advantageous, since I have a number of those things and nil reel to reel drives. > I haven't heard from Kirk McKusick, but he's still planning to sell a 4CD > set of all the 4BSD releases from CSRG. The cost is still expected to be > around US$100, but if he gets flooded with requests, this may come down. That would be something worthwhile to have, just for posterity. > Software Tools > -------------- ...... > I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the > US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for > inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! I just checked our folks.... nil reel-to-reel drives anymore..... shucks. One of the technical high schools has the only one left here in NC. Bob Keys p.s. Are there any USA NC folks on the list, or just me? Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA04090 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:15:13 +1000 (EST) From sms at moe.2bsd.com Wed Jul 8 10:14:47 1998 From: sms at moe.2bsd.com (Steven M. Schultz) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:14:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: <199807080014.RAA05047@moe.2bsd.com> Hi - > From: Kevin Murrell Linebreaks please? 72-80 columns would be nice ;) > Can anyone shed any light on a company called Dilog. Not sure if they're still in the DEC business but at one time they were one of the major 3rd party vendors making Qbus and Unibus controllers. > Having acquired two Dilog machines they appear to actually both be PDP-11s. > Dilog seemed to have produced DEC compatible hardware for the UK market. I never heard of Dilog making entire systems. You'd typically buy the box from DEC (but without any controllers or as few as you could order a system from DEC with) and then stuff it with Emulex or Dilog adaptors. > In particular the smaller machine was known as a Vixen. Sounds like an OEM somewhere was buying bare systems from DEC and placing Dilog cards in them. > This would appear to be a PDP-11/73 with the DEC M8192 processor card. Indeed it is. > Indeed the processor card is the only actual DEC product. > Colleagues that used this machine described it as the portable PDP-11 - >however we are not talking laptop here :) What are the dimensions? It likely is a BA-23 box. "Transportable" would be appropriate - unless you've a *huge* (and sturdy) lap ;) > The 'Vixen' has a Dilog disk controller with a Seagate ST251 attached. > The machine is currently running DSM-11 and recognises the drive as a RA81. > I hope to produce a list relating the Dilog part numbers to original DEC > part numbers. It was/is common for controller cards to call anything over ~150mb an 'ra81' just to give the software a diskid it knew about. On the various Dilog cards you should find (either on the spine/handles or the card's front/back) a name. Something like "DQ696" (a disk controller) or "DQ132" (tape controller). If you can find any numbers at all let us know and we can probably id them for you. Steven Schultz sms at moe.2bsd.com Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA04178 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:52:45 +1000 (EST) From norman at cs.yorku.ca Wed Jul 8 10:52:35 1998 From: norman at cs.yorku.ca (Norman Wilson) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:52:35 -0400 Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: As Steven Schultz says, Dilog used to make a lot of DEC-compatible peripheral gear. The old company has been gone for years, but there is a descendant in Switzerland; see http://www.dilog.ch for details and contacts. There are still people there who can dig up info about old Dilog Qbus interfaces; I have discovered this empirically. Perhaps they know about the Vixen box; certainly they can likely find out about the Dilog disk controller. Norman Wilson Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA04264 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:34:31 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Wed Jul 8 11:34:55 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 98 21:34:55 -0400 Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: <9807080134.AA00916@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Steven M. Schultz wrote: > > Can anyone shed any light on a company called Dilog. > > Not sure if they're still in the DEC business but at one time they > were one of the major 3rd party vendors making Qbus and Unibus > controllers. I don't know if it's their only business, but they still sell (and hopefully make) these controllers. One of their guys was trying to sell me one just a few months ago. Of course, their prices are way off-base compared to the used market. Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.cwru.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA19102 for pups-liszt; Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:59:30 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Sun Jul 12 12:59:31 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:59:31 +1000 (EST) Subject: PUPS In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980710080445.00691374@mammoth.sco.com> from Jim Sullivan at "Jul 10, 98 11:12:48 am" Message-ID: <199807120259.MAA01524@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Jim Sullivan: > Do you know if anyone from PUPS is going to SCO Forum/Usenix in > August in Santa Cruz? > > If so, we'd love to connect, if just to say Hi! > > Also, SCO has a quarterly Developer's newsletter, called CoreDump. > Would anyone within PUPS be interested in submitting an article > for the next edition? 500 words outlining the goals of PUPS > and how to join/participate? Seems like a nice way to quietly > promote your efforts. > > What do you think? Hi Jim, I'll pass this email on to the mailing list. I'll probably take you up on the article. Thanks! I'm in Australia & not likely to get to Santa Cruz in any hurry. :-( Ciao, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA21845 for pups-liszt; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:47:50 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Mon Jul 13 13:47:55 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:47:55 +1000 (EST) Subject: Recovering old UNIX manuals In-Reply-To: from "norman@nose.cs.yorku.ca" at "Jul 12, 98 10:20:04 pm" Message-ID: <199807130347.NAA07263@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> All, I'm forwarding on Norman's e-mail describing his efforts at converting his paper-only copies of the early UNIX manuals back into machine-readable format. Warren norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca writes: > The first pass of markup is all done on chapter I of 5e, which is > all I have scanned so far. It is tempting to forge ahead on the > text extracted from Dennis's 1e, but I hope to discipline myself > to finish some surrounding documentation and tools. On each front, > right now there is: > - a small collection of tools to pre-process what comes out > of the OCR into something that is easy to mark up. > Specifically there are a couple of little filters that > fix up the non-ASCII characters emitted by the Mac, and > that glue hyphenated words back together; and a rather > bigger awk script that does some of the easy grunt work > like spotting and marking up entry titles and section headers. > - a description of the markup language (written in itself, > of course). > - a program (also in awk, and surprisingly long) to render > the markup language into approximately V7 -man. (I have > actually done all the work so far on the MicroVAX in my > basement, which is one of the last remaining V10 systems > in the world, and it won't surprise me to learn that the > renderer has accidentally picked up some V10-specific > assumptions.) > - a collection of advice on style and known OCR botches > and whatnot for those who mark up and proof the manuals > as they go through the pipe. (At the moment `those' means > me and my collaborator in California.) > > The most important missing tools and writings are something to render > into HTML, and something that explains a little more generally just > what it is I am doing (and how it differs from what Dennis did, and > for that matter from just trying to regenerate the original troff > input) and describes the tools and so on. My current hope is to > get those done in odd moments this week; once I have a decent > approximation of each, I want to put copies of all the documents > and all the tools and a few sample pages from 5e up on the web, so > people have something to look at and I can get comments from a wider > group. (Obviously I'll drop a note to the PUPS mailing list when > things are up there.) > > While I'm writing the HTML renderer and the missing document this > week, my colleague in California has already begun an independent > proofreading pass over the stuff I've marked up, which is a damn > good thing because I can't see the errors any more (and she has > already spotted some). > > The other tools I know are missing are > - some sort of structure to allow the old pre-typesetter manuals > to be rendered in a good approximation of their original form. > At the moment I expect this will just be a troff macro package > with the syntax of V7 -man, so I can just use the existing renderer, > though I can see some font issues looming that may cause force the > renderer to change (perhaps in a way general enough that there will > still be only one renderer). > - something to allow V6-era -man (or /usr/man/man0/naa, to name it > properly) macros to work too; the obvious cheap way out is something > that translates V7 -man to V6, presumably with the knowledge that what > it is translating came out of my markto7man renderer (which restricts > the language quite a bit, so the job is a lot simpler). I'm not sure > how important this is--the obvious short-term goal is to be able to > have a man command in the V5 environment, and since the macros probably > aren't in the existing distribution, it's fair game to bring in a copy > of the V7 ones--but it seems worth having in the long run if only for > fun. > > I'd originally thought to write more of the tools before doing so > much markup, but I'm glad I didn't--the markup language mutated more > than I expected as experience showed where it was wrong, and it made > life simpler to have only one renderer to update. I think it is > pretty much stable now, and in any case I am champing at the bit to > be able to display things in HTML. > > A final complication in all this: it is all but certain that I'll > be resigning from York this week, effective in about a month, to > jump back to a position at the University of Toronto (running > computers for the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics). > This is not a surprise to anyone concerned (including the folks here > at York--the real reason for the move is that the eleven-mile commute > to York is just too long for me), but it will certainly have both > short- and long-term effects on the time I can spend on the manuals. > The long-term effects may not be what you think, though: the scanner > and OCR setup I've been using is located at CITA, so once I've settled > in there (and especially once I get the tools sorted out well enough > that it is effectively a pipeline), it should be pretty convenient > to spend the odd hour scanning in a handful of pages. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA23544 for pups-liszt; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 23:49:16 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Mon Jul 13 23:44:42 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:44:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Recovering old UNIX manuals In-Reply-To: <199807130347.NAA07263@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from Warren Toomey at "Jul 13, 98 01:47:55 pm" Message-ID: <199807131344.JAA12765@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > All, > I'm forwarding on Norman's e-mail describing his efforts at > converting his paper-only copies of the early UNIX manuals back into > machine-readable format. > > Warren > > norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca writes: > > The first pass of markup is all done on chapter I of 5e, which is > > all I have scanned so far. It is tempting to forge ahead on the > > text extracted from Dennis's 1e, but I hope to discipline myself > > to finish some surrounding documentation and tools. On each front, > > right now there is: On a similar bent, I have been working on roffing Dennis' V1 manuals, using the earliest roff I could still find some sort of source to. It is one that was popular in the early CP/M days, that also found its way into dos and unix. How true to the original it is, I dunno, but it works. They are about 2/3 done, maybe, but my time to get them done is not as much as I would like. What should I do with them once they are done? I was thinking of just sending the source/output back to Dennis, but if it is OK to put them in in the PUPS archives, I can bounce them to Warren. Thanks to Dennis Ritchie for making them available. Bob Keys p.s. You know, with all this html thingie, whatever happened to just a real roff/nroff/troff output? It is only ascii. Why html? Just curious as to why/wherefore/etc. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id EAA25462 for pups-liszt; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 04:59:08 +1000 (EST) From norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca Tue Jul 14 04:58:18 1998 From: norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca (norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:58:18 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: I hadn't expected Warren to forward my note directly to the list, so perhaps I'd better fill in some of the missing content. What I'm trying to do with the old manuals is a mix of different sorts of historic preservation: it's interesting to be able to produce something reasonably close to the original in appearance, including style differences, but I am also interested just in making the content accessible. That means being able to render the manual pages into troff -man on modern UNIX systems, or into nroff /man/man0/naa in the V5 root image, and roff and whatnot; but also into HTML because that's the right way to make text available on the web (Postscript is not text), and certainly into other forms I haven't thought of yet. To describe it all in utterly pragmatic terms, I want to be able to put all the old manuals up on the web somewhere in readable text form (not just page images or Postscript); and to produce manual data of authentic content and reasonably authentic style for use with the V5 binary distribution; and to be able to to print clear reference copies for myself, so I can pack my old photocopies away in a safe place; and to amuse myself by running style and diction on the different editions; and I want to be able to do that even if I don't have a copy of roff or the appropriate age-authentic macro package. So the idea is to mark up the text in a sufficiently high-level form that it can be rendered into any of the forms above (including the ones I haven't thought of) without undo work. I thought briefly about using the (V7-era) -man macros as the high-level language, and in fact much of the simple language I ended up inventing are obviously drawn from -man (e.g. there are constructs that are exactly .TH, .SH, and .SS spelled differently); but I wanted to avoid the temptation just to toss in more and more troff-specific syntax and semantics whenever some hard-to-represent construct popped up. (There are too many low-level constructs in the resulting language as it is.) I also thought about using some existing document metalanguage like XML or YODL, but those I looked at were far more ornate than seemed appropriate, and far too free-form; I don't mind carrying a few medium-sized awk programs around to render the text, but I object to having to port a language-processing subsystem larger than the V5 kernel just so I can render V5's manual pages. (Never mind how large awk and troff are these days.) There's a name I should also name here: my collaborator in California to whom the earlier message alludes is Jennine Townsend, who has photocopies of my photocopies from a sort of earlier collaboration. More on this in a few days; as I said to Warren, I hope to get a coherent sample of all this work up on the web shortly so people can see what I'm doing in more detail and comment, but I am in the midst of deciding whether to change jobs (it is a coincidence that the likely job change would put me nearer the OCR setup I've been using, but it is convenient), and in getting back into the swing of things at my present job after being out for two weeks to recover from having corrective maintenance on my sinuses, so it may not happen till the weekend. Norman Wilson Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id FAA25486 for pups-liszt; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 05:00:33 +1000 (EST) From norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca Tue Jul 14 04:59:47 1998 From: norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca (norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:59:47 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: A postscript to my note on the old manuyals (typed into the editor but not written out before I sent the mail!): A note on distributing this stuff: I asked Dennis about it before I started my project, and he thought there should be no real problem making the text generally available, but that it would be appropriate for the official repository to be at Bell Labs (now a once-again-visible subsidiary of Lucent Technologies). That seems pretty sensible to me. I doubt there's a problem putting them in the PUPS archive, but it would be politic to check with Dennis first. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA01345 for pups-liszt; Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:55:27 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Wed Jul 29 13:55:36 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:55:36 +1000 (EST) Subject: PUPS: status report Message-ID: <199807290355.NAA05056@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Hi all, Not much has been hapenning in the PDP UNIX Preservation Society. Kirk McKusick is still waiting for the CD pressing company to do his run of 4BSD CDs. I'm urging him to make a web page describing the project, so we can stay informed of the progress. A few people in comp.unix.bsd.misc suggested that another preservation society needs to be formed, to preserve 32-bit UNIXes and other non PDP-11 UNIXes. I've set up a mailing list for them to discuss such a project. If you are interested, then you can join the mailing list by emailing to majordomo at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au, with a line in the body saying: subscribe bups BUPS stands for BIG UNIX Preservation Society. I'm sure they will come up with a better name :-) Cheers all, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA03282 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 01:08:39 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Thu Jul 30 01:03:47 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 11:03:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... In-Reply-To: <199807290355.NAA05056@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from Warren Toomey at "Jul 29, 98 01:55:36 pm" Message-ID: <199807291503.LAA03577@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > Hi all, > Not much has been hapenning in the PDP UNIX Preservation Society. > Kirk McKusick is still waiting for the CD pressing company to do his run > of 4BSD CDs. I'm urging him to make a web page describing the project, so > we can stay informed of the progress. This will be great when it happens. Kudos to Kirk.....and all the unsung heroes along the path to Nirvana. > A few people in comp.unix.bsd.misc suggested that another preservation > society needs to be formed, to preserve 32-bit UNIXes and other non PDP-11 > UNIXes. I've set up a mailing list for them to discuss such a project. > If you are interested, then you can join the mailing list by emailing > to majordomo at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au, with a line in the body saying: > > subscribe bups > > BUPS stands for BIG UNIX Preservation Society. I'm sure they will come > up with a better name :-) PUPS, BUPS, burp! Sounds fine! I will jump in the hotseat and own up to the heat. My idea was very simple. Mainly, I was thinking that there are beginning to surface from the bilges of surplus, a fair number of aging old-time unix toys. Not all of them are PDP-11ish flavor. For instance, there are sometimes found some of the ancient Radio Shack Model 16 things with an odd flavor of Xenix on them. There are maybe some old vaxen going wanting. There are odd bilgewater sloshers like my old IBM RT that once did ply the waters of the great BSD (of the 4.3 style flavor). Also, there are older x86 toys that use to run the very lowendian V7ish, Xenixish, whateverish flavors. From the purely hobby and historical perspective, I find it rather wasteful to let such things just vaporize. It seems we have the PDP11 world, then there is a big black hole until the modern SCOish and Freebieish things. It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with the rush to NT and SCOish things. Thus, there is a need to maybe fill that hole with something like the PUPS, but for 32bitish toys, and all the non-PDP-11 toys. One thing that PUPS has going, is a good working basis with all the unixy world, the big players, the historical saints, etc. So, it was logical to perceive that such a working framework might be expanded slightly to include not just 32V, but all the odd successors, down to where SCO claims rightly its territory on the SysV part of the tree. IF that framework is a BUPS offshoot, so-be-it. But, I still think that both PUPS and the new BUPS share much common cammaraderie and playground. Alas, I am not yet of sufficient rank to be called but a lowly journeyman, in the unixy world. I have run it in earnest for some 10 years, played some with it on a PDP-11, so long ago, that it is mostly forgotten, and still keep a set of 8 inch Xenix floppers around, just in case that mystical Model 16B drops by, again. Thus, there is not a lot I can do. But, I do toss out the idea, would like to see where it goes. Mebbie some heavyweight gurus would like to run with it some..... Let us roll it around a bit, and see where the currents takes us. The 32BitBiggieUPS should not be forgotten. I think it can only be good for all to make it play..... Sincerely R.D. Keys rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu > Cheers all, > Warren Cheers all hands aboard PUPS, BUPS, .... burp!, .... whatever..... RDK Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA03488 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 01:52:41 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Thu Jul 30 01:52:57 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 98 11:52:57 -0400 Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... Message-ID: <9807291552.AA12576@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" wrote: > It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with > the rush to NT and SCOish things. Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing! My office is the largest room in the department, and it's filled with VAXen of all kinds. My goal is to get 4.3BSD-* running on all of them and operate this system in direct competition with other UNIX systems on our campus, which are all Pentiums or SPARCs. Since my system administration skills and friendliness to students surpass those of other campus UNIX systems' admins by many orders of binary magnitude, I plan to urge people to migrate to my VAXen this way. Yes, my plan is total world VAX domination! This is exactly why I want to modify Berkeley VAX UNIX to run on all VAX models from 11/780 to 10000. (An EXTREMELY daring and ambitious goal, needless to say.) I have two strong and radical views: 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run UNIX are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit like that. 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNIX clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any code written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS, which are kosher in the above sense but binary-only for most people. The latter part is why I want to move to 4.3BSD-*. Also my belief in True licensed UNIX(R) is the reason I have joined PUPS, as it seems to be the only remaining group dealing with such UNIX. Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.cwru.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA03595 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 02:31:20 +1000 (EST) From allisonp at world.std.com Thu Jul 30 02:31:06 1998 From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 12:31:06 -0400 Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... Message-ID: <199807291631.AA16185@world.std.com> < Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing Not an undesireable thing. May the best win... for the rest of us any is better than zero. < 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run U < are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit lik < that. That is also wrong, as Interdata 8/32, IBM System/370 and Honeywell 6000 are recognized as ports by K&R in their docs! the latter three systems while interesting are not general collectors fare as they tend to be a bit large. Frankly, why not? Anything that competes with MS is good! < 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNI < clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any cod < written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any < "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS It was God Bell Labs (nee WE) that K&R worked for that put the odious license fees on unix, in 1980 it was a mere $24,000 for the sources which were a must have. People started doing clones to break free of the license and distributions that didn't contain sources. It made possible to get on platforms that were unsupported/unsupportable without source code or at least for the commercial versions at lower cost to the user. Venix for Pro350 is such an example (it's v6 or v7 code!). I'm not saying the clones are good or bad, only born of necessity. Of course they couldn't contain and of said God code due to licenses. Like all gods their feet are of clay. Since the goal is to preserve unix and unix like OSs there is no crime, even if the varients are not direct decendents. So long as people understand the lineage preservation should certainly should proceed. Allison Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id DAA03871 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 03:31:54 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Thu Jul 30 03:27:12 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:27:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... In-Reply-To: <9807291552.AA12576@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> from Michael Sokolov at "Jul 29, 98 11:52:57 am" Message-ID: <199807291727.NAA04034@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" wrote: > > It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with > > the rush to NT and SCOish things. > > Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing! No excuses necessary. But, please relax a bit and don't let the blood boil to much. All of us here, are interested in the preservation of the beast. Granted many may run it for a living, me included, to some extent. But, likewise most or many of us are the same folks that have a vaxen or pdp-11 in the basement (I remember seeing a pix of one of our leader's machines next to the kitchen fridge?). Clearly, the basement/kitchen toys are not competing. They are purely hobby related. My dumpster risc box won't ever compete again, but is fun to spin up a TeX and troff on. > My office is the largest room in the department, and it's filled with VAXen > of all kinds. My goal is to get 4.3BSD-* running on all of them and operate > this system in direct competition with other UNIX systems on our campus, > which are all Pentiums or SPARCs. Since my system administration skills and > friendliness to students surpass those of other campus UNIX systems' admins > by many orders of binary magnitude, I plan to urge people to migrate to my > VAXen this way. Yes, my plan is total world VAX domination! This is exactly > why I want to modify Berkeley VAX UNIX to run on all VAX models from 11/780 > to 10000. (An EXTREMELY daring and ambitious goal, needless to say.) Clearly yours are more mainstream related. Kudos for the sysadmin handholding towards the students. Mentoring, one on one is the best way to handle many computer learning things. Although vaxen may dominate the world (or did at one time, according to Henry Spencer's infamous ten commandments for C programmers), there are many lesser breeds that I sense others of us partake of. Also, there are insufficient numbers of remaining vaxen and pdp-11's for all of us to have one in the home hobbyroom. Because of that, I would suggest that maybe there is interest in the other lines of machines and their related unices, even the 32bitters. > I have two strong and radical views: > > 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run UNIX > are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit like > that. Not so, IMHO. The purist may run a vaxen in the manner of the Bugattis of old, but us garage monkeywrench types may be stuck with even a lowly PC thingie. Don't quite put the PC flavors down, since I can attest to their utility in poverty stricken research projects for at least the past 10 years, courtesy Big Blue and that hybrid PC unix of theirs (AIX 1.x). Also, the freebie BSD's are sufficiently close to the real thing, that most average users would not know the difference. Cat is cat is cat, no matter how it is coded (and they all look remarkably similar). > 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNIX > clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any code > written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any > "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS, > which are kosher in the above sense but binary-only for most people. The > latter part is why I want to move to 4.3BSD-*. Also my belief in True > licensed UNIX(R) is the reason I have joined PUPS, as it seems to be the > only remaining group dealing with such UNIX. Well, yes and no. I consider it a tribute to the likes of Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, Ossanna, and a string of others down the trees, that the wisdom of their reasoning and toiling has had fruition even in the lowly PC's. Why did the freebies catch on like they have? Because the folks wanted something like a BSD, and the corporate bean counters and lawyers missed their chance. As to which flavor to use, I use what I have that will run on whichever box I have on. I prefer a BSDish box, but even a V7 is fun, and with a viish terminal driver and troff, still runs with the best of the big dogs, and even AIX is usable if you get used to its quirks. But, for sure, the point of all this is to preserve the history, code, nuances, and whatever else can be maintained, unless I am sorely amiss of the PUPS goals. I only think it needs to include the castoff 32 bit machines, too, hence the need for a BUPS group, IMHO. > Sincerely, > Michael Sokolov With all due respect. R.D. Keys rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id EAA03980 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 04:02:13 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Thu Jul 30 03:57:22 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:57:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts (what have we started?) In-Reply-To: <199807291631.AA16185@world.std.com> from Allison J Parent at "Jul 29, 98 12:31:06 pm" Message-ID: <199807291757.NAA04109@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > Not an undesireable thing. May the best win... for the rest of us any > is better than zero. Well said, but perhaps we need to frame that with something like, ``all will win, even the least....'' > < 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run U > < are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit lik > < that. > > That is also wrong, as Interdata 8/32, IBM System/370 and Honeywell 6000 > are recognized as ports by K&R in their docs! the latter three systems > while interesting are not general collectors fare as they tend to be a > bit large. Can anyone refresh my memory of what machines specifically were listed in the V7 and 32V and 2/3/4BSD docs? I would like to get that clear, for reference purposes. Also, what specific machines were ported out of these main sources by the odd vendors. The majority was pdp11ish, but about V7 time the 68000 and Z8000 and other oddities pop up. > < 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNI > < clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any cod > < written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any > < "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS > > It was God Bell Labs (nee WE) that K&R worked for that put the odious > license fees on unix, in 1980 it was a mere $24,000 for the sources which > were a must have. People started doing clones to break free of the > license and distributions that didn't contain sources. It made possible > to get on platforms that were unsupported/unsupportable without source > code or at least for the commercial versions at lower cost to the user. > Venix for Pro350 is such an example (it's v6 or v7 code!). I'm not > saying the clones are good or bad, only born of necessity. Of course > they couldn't contain and of said God code due to licenses. I would agree on the necessity. Back in '88 I went shopping for an office machine, and could find nothing under around 25 kilobucks. I opted out for a peanuts budget machine (PS/2 model 80 with AIX) at around 10K bucks and the silly thing is still whirring away as my remote tape dumper. Alas, it is a much maligned PC, but it functions nontheless, and IS a real unix. Alas, these days, its steam is a little underpowered trying to scrape the web, so it idles in the background. Technically, it is a 32 bit abandoned unix, and for hypotheticals, it ought to be something workable in a BUPS sort of archive, with proper Big Blue nodding. The same thing should occur for the RT. It would probably be a nightmare of paperwork between SCO and IBM and us, tho..... > Like all gods their feet are of clay. The gods were hacking away fine.... alas the beanyheads upstairs had their feet stuck, if I am reading my history correctly. > Since the goal is to preserve unix and unix like OSs there is no crime, > even if the varients are not direct decendents. So long as people > understand the lineage preservation should certainly should proceed. The goal is to save it if possible, BEFORE it becomes vaporware, for purely hobby/historical purposes, with the big player's graces and consents. If we don't dream a little and oil some squeeky wheels, it will never get done..... > Allison RDK Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA14668 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 16:18:07 +1000 (EST) From iking at KillTheWabbit.org Thu Jul 30 16:02:39 1998 From: iking at KillTheWabbit.org (Ian King) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 23:02:39 -0700 Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... Message-ID: <199807300606.XAA11564@forbin.killthewabbit.org> I'm glad there are people and codebases that compete with Microsoft -- and I work for Microsoft. It keeps us on our toes. :-) I run NT 4.0 and Linux 2.0.30 side-by-side at home, on the selfsame network -- and all on Intel hardware. I am on this mailing list because I am gaining a PDP 11/34 as a new resident in my home, which will be networked together with the Intel hardware (so I don't have to run downstairs all the time -- the PDP is too large for my computer room upstairs). Why? Call it a sense of history.... Why shouldn't UNIX run on everything? The beauty of the UNIX idea -- which has been cloned and transported and transliterated and transmogrified a myriad times a myriad times -- is that it expresses a rich metaphor for computation, which allows us to make use of these metal monsters. I have the greatest respect for "true" UNIX and its parents and godparents. I also have a lot of respect for Linus Torvalds and the incredible piece of work he birthed -- a true UNIX version that makes excellent use of the PC architecture. The PC architecture has commoditized significant computing power in a manner that Digital could never have done (or at least, never did), and placed that into the hands of many people who would be otherwise financially barred from playing this game. IMHO it's specious to demonize a particular machine architecture and declare that UNIXes running on it are somehow illegitimate. Cheers -- Ian King NOTE: this is strictly my personal ramblings, and does not in any way represent the official position of the Microsoft Corporation. ---------- > From: User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys > To: Michael Sokolov > Cc: bups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au; pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au > Subject: Re: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... > Date: Wednesday, July 29, 1998 10:27 AM > > > "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" wrote: > > > It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with > > > the rush to NT and SCOish things. > > > > Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing! > > No excuses necessary. But, please relax a bit and don't let the blood > boil to much. All of us here, are interested in the preservation of the > beast. Granted many may run it for a living, me included, to some extent. > But, likewise most or many of us are the same folks that have a vaxen > or pdp-11 in the basement (I remember seeing a pix of one of our leader's > machines next to the kitchen fridge?). Clearly, the basement/kitchen toys > are not competing. They are purely hobby related. My dumpster risc box > won't ever compete again, but is fun to spin up a TeX and troff on. > > > My office is the largest room in the department, and it's filled with VAXen > > of all kinds. My goal is to get 4.3BSD-* running on all of them and operate > > this system in direct competition with other UNIX systems on our campus, > > which are all Pentiums or SPARCs. Since my system administration skills and > > friendliness to students surpass those of other campus UNIX systems' admins > > by many orders of binary magnitude, I plan to urge people to migrate to my > > VAXen this way. Yes, my plan is total world VAX domination! This is exactly > > why I want to modify Berkeley VAX UNIX to run on all VAX models from 11/780 > > to 10000. (An EXTREMELY daring and ambitious goal, needless to say.) > > Clearly yours are more mainstream related. > > Kudos for the sysadmin handholding towards the students. Mentoring, one > on one is the best way to handle many computer learning things. > > Although vaxen may dominate the world (or did at one time, according to > Henry Spencer's infamous ten commandments for C programmers), there are > many lesser breeds that I sense others of us partake of. Also, there > are insufficient numbers of remaining vaxen and pdp-11's for all of us > to have one in the home hobbyroom. Because of that, I would suggest > that maybe there is interest in the other lines of machines and their > related unices, even the 32bitters. > > > I have two strong and radical views: > > > > 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run UNIX > > are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit like > > that. > > Not so, IMHO. The purist may run a vaxen in the manner of the Bugattis > of old, but us garage monkeywrench types may be stuck with even a lowly > PC thingie. Don't quite put the PC flavors down, since I can attest to > their utility in poverty stricken research projects for at least the past > 10 years, courtesy Big Blue and that hybrid PC unix of theirs (AIX 1.x). > Also, the freebie BSD's are sufficiently close to the real thing, that > most average users would not know the difference. Cat is cat is cat, > no matter how it is coded (and they all look remarkably similar). > > > 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNIX > > clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any code > > written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any > > "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS, > > which are kosher in the above sense but binary-only for most people. The > > latter part is why I want to move to 4.3BSD-*. Also my belief in True > > licensed UNIX(R) is the reason I have joined PUPS, as it seems to be the > > only remaining group dealing with such UNIX. > > Well, yes and no. > > I consider it a tribute to the likes of Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, > Ossanna, and a string of others down the trees, that the wisdom of their > reasoning and toiling has had fruition even in the lowly PC's. Why did > the freebies catch on like they have? Because the folks wanted something > like a BSD, and the corporate bean counters and lawyers missed their chance. > As to which flavor to use, I use what I have that will run on whichever > box I have on. I prefer a BSDish box, but even a V7 is fun, and with > a viish terminal driver and troff, still runs with the best of the big > dogs, and even AIX is usable if you get used to its quirks. > > But, for sure, the point of all this is to preserve the history, code, > nuances, and whatever else can be maintained, unless I am sorely amiss > of the PUPS goals. I only think it needs to include the castoff 32 > bit machines, too, hence the need for a BUPS group, IMHO. > > > Sincerely, > > Michael Sokolov > > With all due respect. > > R.D. Keys > rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA00214 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 11:22:06 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Fri Jul 31 11:20:35 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 11:20:35 +1000 (EST) Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) In-Reply-To: <19980731094513.U7830@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Jul 31, 98 09:45:13 am" Message-ID: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Greg Lehey: > Are we really so many disparate people that we need two lists? I'd > guess that most people would be on both lists. How about just a name > change, to "Old UNIX Preservation Society"? > > Greg I don't know, I thought that it would give people more flexibility, and shield people from stuff they didn't want to see. So lets ask: If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. Cheers all, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA00743 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:25:22 +1000 (EST) From djenner at halcyon.com Fri Jul 31 13:24:43 1998 From: djenner at halcyon.com (David C. Jenner) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 20:24:43 -0700 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) References: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Message-ID: <35C138FB.A77E57E3@halcyon.com> I vote for one list. Leave it PUPS, and call it the Past/Prehistoric/Perpetual Unix Preservation Society or something like that. Or think up a "P" adjective that glorifies the olden Unix. Almost everything has been cross-posted up to this point, and I get two copies anyway! Dave Warren Toomey wrote: > > In article by Greg Lehey: > > Are we really so many disparate people that we need two lists? I'd > > guess that most people would be on both lists. How about just a name > > change, to "Old UNIX Preservation Society"? > > > > Greg > > I don't know, I thought that it would give people more flexibility, > and shield people from stuff they didn't want to see. So lets ask: > > If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? > > If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. > > Cheers all, > > Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA01084 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:32:13 +1000 (EST) From stacy at asia.uznet.net Fri Jul 31 15:29:46 1998 From: stacy at asia.uznet.net (Stacy Minkin) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:29:46 +0500 Subject: Let'em be one! Message-ID: <199807310529.KAA01933@harrier.Uznet.NET> I also vote for one list. Stacy. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA01162 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:53:58 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Fri Jul 31 15:54:00 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:54:00 +1000 (EST) Subject: Let'em be one! In-Reply-To: <199807310529.KAA01933@harrier.Uznet.NET> from Stacy Minkin at "Jul 31, 98 10:29:46 am" Message-ID: <199807310554.PAA09629@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Stacy Minkin: > > I also vote for one list [about old UNIX]. > Stacy. Looks like most people would like a common list, so I have merged the two lists. The PUPS list is now for Prehistoric UNIX :-) I'll keep the PUPS web page about PDP-11 stuff for now, though. The bups at minnie list is gone, and all mail for the list should now go to pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au. What next? Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA02057 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 20:08:38 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Fri Jul 31 20:09:02 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 98 06:09:02 -0400 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) Message-ID: <9807311009.AA16586@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Warren Toomey wrote: > I don't know, I thought that it would give people more flexibility, > and shield people from stuff they didn't want to see. So lets ask: > > If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? Yes! > If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. Yes! Personally, I think it's a bad idea to have two separate societies/lists. After all, in many case PDP-11 UNIX and VAX UNIX are the same code compiled for different CPUs, and these lists are not about binary-only OSes, are they? If it's all fundamentally the same code, it should be on one list, regardless of what CPUs people want to compile it for. I'm also a little troubled by the word "preservation". This word suggests the group acknowledges that these systems are "old" or "historical". 4.3BSD is being _ACTIVELY WORKED ON_ (by me) as I type, and I have been under the impression that 2.11BSD is also being actively worked on by Steven M. Schults. Sure, these systems WILL be "old" or "historical" if we just sit and "preserve" them, but IMHO this is NOT what we should do. We should look and act and behave AS IF these systems were brand new. I.e, run them in production on the net competing with Pentiums and SPARCs, and actually MAKE thse systems new by doing active development work on the sources just like the dev teams for "new" OSes do. If we can't build a time machine, let's shut all doors and windows and create a 1980s world inside! So, with these ideas in mind, why not call ourselves TUUDS, True UNIX User and Developer Society? Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA02203 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:13:34 +1000 (EST) From stacy at asia.uznet.net Fri Jul 31 21:12:16 1998 From: stacy at asia.uznet.net (Stacy Minkin) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 16:12:16 +0500 Subject: Thoughts... Message-ID: <199807311112.QAA03207@harrier.Uznet.NET> Hi All! > From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) >I'm also a little troubled by the word "preservation". This word suggests the >group acknowledges that these systems are "old" or "historical". 4.3BSD is >being _ACTIVELY WORKED ON_ (by me) as I type, and I have been under the >impression that 2.11BSD is also being actively worked on by Steven M. Schults. >Sure, these systems WILL be "old" or "historical" if we just sit and "preserve" >them, but IMHO this is NOT what we should do. We should look and act and behave >AS IF these systems were brand new. I.e, run them in production on the net >competing with Pentiums and SPARCs, and actually MAKE thse systems new by doing >active development work on the sources just like the dev teams for "new" OSes >do. If we can't build a time machine, let's shut all doors and windows and >create a 1980s world inside! Absolutely right! The only problem with it that old CPUs are seems to be slowly vaporizing... I spent about ten years searching until I finally got original Digital PDP-11 here in Uzbekistan (xUSSR) ! And I succeeded only because I started working for Digital here. Stacy. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA02334 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:58:54 +1000 (EST) From tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk Fri Jul 31 21:54:50 1998 From: tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:54:50 +0100 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) In-Reply-To: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> References: <19980731094513.U7830@freebie.lemis.com> <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Message-ID: <199807311154.MAA03301@dubh.aiai.ed.ac.uk> > If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? > If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. I'm on both, I'm interested in stuff about both. I would have thought that the overlap is fairly large. --tim Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA02319 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:56:18 +1000 (EST) From tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk Fri Jul 31 21:55:32 1998 From: tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:55:32 +0100 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) In-Reply-To: <35C138FB.A77E57E3@halcyon.com> References: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <35C138FB.A77E57E3@halcyon.com> Message-ID: <199807311155.MAA03303@dubh.aiai.ed.ac.uk> * David C Jenner wrote: > I vote for one list. Leave it PUPS, and call it the > Past/Prehistoric/Perpetual Unix Preservation Society > or something like that. Or think up a "P" adjective > that glorifies the olden Unix. Proper Unix Preservation Society! Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA02386 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 22:19:42 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Fri Jul 31 22:20:09 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 98 08:20:09 -0400 Subject: Thoughts... Message-ID: <9807311220.AA16681@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Stacy Minkin wrote: > Absolutely right! The only problem with it that old CPUs are > seems to be slowly vaporizing... Then start MAKING them! Our great nation of Workers and Peasants has the best military technology in the world! Let's show those bloodsucking capitalists that we can make PDP-11s and VAXen better than they ever could! Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.CWRU.Edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA02441 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 22:25:32 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Fri Jul 31 22:25:59 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 98 08:25:59 -0400 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) Message-ID: <9807311225.AA16689@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Tim Bradshaw wrote: > Proper Unix Preservation Society! Yes! I vote for this! Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.CWRU.Edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA02735 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 23:45:09 +1000 (EST) From allisonp at world.std.com Fri Jul 31 23:44:51 1998 From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 09:44:51 -0400 Subject: Thoughts... Message-ID: <199807311344.AA23930@world.std.com> < Then start MAKING them! Our great nation of Workers and Peasants has the < military technology in the world! Let's show those bloodsucking capitali < that we can make PDP-11s and VAXen better than they ever could! They never stopped making them. Mentec has some really fast 11s. Mike, take a prozac and chill. It's all that capitalism that is making all of those old PDP-11s and such available in the first place. This place is for unix and it's heirs and relations not political ranting. We can argue better, first, cleanest, purity after we have captured the code and preserved it from loss. Allison Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA03203 for pups-liszt; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 02:28:37 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Mon Jul 6 13:58:23 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 13:58:23 +1000 (EST) Subject: More SCO Licenses + Software Tools Message-ID: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> All, The following people now have SCO source licenses for ancient Unix: Bruce Robertson, Erick Delios, Kelwin Wylie, Kirsten McIntyre, Matthew Crosby That brings the numbering scheme up to AU-50, but in fact there are 52 SCO source licenses for ancient Unix. The mailing list has been pretty quiet. Hope you're all well. The only news I have is that Norman Wilson is still slowly scanning in the manuals from 2nd to 5th Edition. He now has most (all?) of 5th edition scanned in. I haven't heard from Kirk McKusick, but he's still planning to sell a 4CD set of all the 4BSD releases from CSRG. The cost is still expected to be around US$100, but if he gets flooded with requests, this may come down. Software Tools -------------- I got some mail last week from Deborah Scherrer: I was one of the people who created the Software Tools project and Software Tools Users Group (Peter Salus mentioned us in his book). If you're interested, you might want to include the Software Tools tapes in your collection. She suggested that I contact Barbera Chase, which I did. Barbera (bc at mrdata.netcetera.com) then wrote: Sorry, we don't actually have any of the files online anymore, nor do we have access to a tape drive. What we have are 9-track tapes, probably in 1600bpi. There are three versions of the tools for PDP machines, one for RSX-11 and two for "generic" Unix. I still happen to have several copies of each, and will be glad to send them to you. Just let me know where to send them, and if you happen to have a shipping account number that would be even better ;-) I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! Cheers all, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA24990 for pups-liszt; Mon, 6 Jul 1998 14:18:43 +1000 (EST) From grog at lemis.com Mon Jul 6 14:18:28 1998 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 13:48:28 +0930 Subject: More SCO Licenses + Software Tools In-Reply-To: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au>; from Warren Toomey on Mon, Jul 06, 1998 at 01:58:23PM +1000 References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Message-ID: <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> On Monday, 6 July 1998 at 13:58:23 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote: > Software Tools > -------------- > > I got some mail last week from Deborah Scherrer: > I was one of the people who created the Software > Tools project and Software Tools Users Group (Peter Salus > mentioned us in his book). If you're interested, you might > want to include the Software Tools tapes in your collection. > > She suggested that I contact Barbera Chase, which I did. > Barbera (bc at mrdata.netcetera.com) then wrote: > Sorry, we don't actually have any of the files online anymore, nor do we > have access to a tape drive. What we have are 9-track tapes, probably in > 1600bpi. There are three versions of the tools for PDP machines, one for > RSX-11 and two for "generic" Unix. I still happen to have several copies > of each, and will be glad to send them to you. Just let me know where to > send them, and if you happen to have a shipping account number that would > be even better ;-) > > I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the > US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for > inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! Registrant: Netcetera, Inc. (NETCETERA-DOM) 11950 Anderson Valley Way P.O. Box 939 Boonville, CA 95415 Domain Name: NETCETERA.COM Administrative Contact: Chase, Barbara L. (BC309) bc at NETCETERA.COM 707-895-2691 Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id FAA27259 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 05:16:41 +1000 (EST) From djenner at halcyon.com Tue Jul 7 05:15:30 1998 From: djenner at halcyon.com (David C. Jenner) Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 12:15:30 -0700 Subject: More SCO Licenses + Software Tools References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> Message-ID: <35A12252.EFEFE2B0@halcyon.com> I think having these in the archives would be great. I used the Software Tools extensively back in the late 70's and early 80's. I wish I could read the tapes in, but I'm still working on a tape drive for an 11/73. (see separate mail.) Dave Greg Lehey wrote: > > On Monday, 6 July 1998 at 13:58:23 +1000, Warren Toomey wrote: > > Software Tools > > -------------- > > > > I got some mail last week from Deborah Scherrer: > > I was one of the people who created the Software > > Tools project and Software Tools Users Group (Peter Salus > > mentioned us in his book). If you're interested, you might > > want to include the Software Tools tapes in your collection. > > > > She suggested that I contact Barbera Chase, which I did. > > Barbera (bc at mrdata.netcetera.com) then wrote: > > Sorry, we don't actually have any of the files online anymore, nor do we > > have access to a tape drive. What we have are 9-track tapes, probably in > > 1600bpi. There are three versions of the tools for PDP machines, one for > > RSX-11 and two for "generic" Unix. I still happen to have several copies > > of each, and will be glad to send them to you. Just let me know where to > > send them, and if you happen to have a shipping account number that would > > be even better ;-) > > > > I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the > > US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for > > inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! > > Registrant: > Netcetera, Inc. (NETCETERA-DOM) > 11950 Anderson Valley Way > P.O. Box 939 > Boonville, CA 95415 > > Domain Name: NETCETERA.COM > > Administrative Contact: > Chase, Barbara L. (BC309) bc at NETCETERA.COM > 707-895-2691 > > Greg > -- > See complete headers for address and phone numbers > finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id FAA27294 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 05:31:07 +1000 (EST) From djenner at halcyon.com Tue Jul 7 05:30:18 1998 From: djenner at halcyon.com (David C. Jenner) Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 12:30:18 -0700 Subject: Generating 2.11BSD boot tape References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> Message-ID: <35A125CA.45FB5455@halcyon.com> There hasn't been much traffic here for a while, so maybe I can stir things up a bit. I recently acquired a fabulous 9-track tape drive, an M4 9914, which has both a SCSI and a Pertec interface. This drive is so smart I spent a couple of hours playing with it without it being hooked up to any computer. What's nice is that I can presumably get around the "high-cost" bottleneck of using a tape drive on both a PDP-11 and Intel machines: use the SCSI interface on the PC where the interface is cheap (already exists) and use the Pertec interface on the -11 where the interface is cheap (already exists). Using the opposite interface on each machine could run up to a total of $2000 US. So, what I want to do is read my PUPS archive CD-ROM on an Intel machine and write appropriate 9-track tapes for the -11. The stumbling block seems to be software on the Intel side. SCSI software packages for MS-DOS or Windows 3.1/95/98/NT run $600, $800, even $1500US. There must be a way of doing a CD-to-Tape generation with a simple C-language program using one of the "free" OSes: Linux, FreeBSD, SCO UnixWare, etc. If anyone has any experience or ideas with this, I would appreciate your input. It would be very easy for me to install and use one of these OSs on a spare 486 I have. The question is, which is the most likely to support SCSI on 9-track tape. Thanks, Dave Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA28013 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:13:27 +1000 (EST) From grog at lemis.com Tue Jul 7 10:13:04 1998 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 09:43:04 +0930 Subject: Which PC UNIX for old SCSI tape drive? (was: Generating 2.11BSD boot tape) In-Reply-To: <35A125CA.45FB5455@halcyon.com>; from David C. Jenner on Mon, Jul 06, 1998 at 12:30:18PM -0700 References: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <19980706134828.B6528@freebie.lemis.com> <35A125CA.45FB5455@halcyon.com> Message-ID: <19980707094304.N7792@freebie.lemis.com> On Monday, 6 July 1998 at 12:30:18 -0700, David C. Jenner wrote: > There hasn't been much traffic here for a while, so maybe I can stir > things up a bit. > > I recently acquired a fabulous 9-track tape drive, an M4 9914, which > has both a SCSI and a Pertec interface. This drive is so smart I > spent a couple of hours playing with it without it being hooked up to > any computer. > > What's nice is that I can presumably get around the "high-cost" > bottleneck of using a tape drive on both a PDP-11 and Intel > machines: use the SCSI interface on the PC where the interface is > cheap (already exists) and use the Pertec interface on the -11 where > the interface is cheap (already exists). Using the opposite interface > on each machine could run up to a total of $2000 US. > > So, what I want to do is read my PUPS archive CD-ROM on an Intel > machine and write appropriate 9-track tapes for the -11. The stumbling > block seems to be software on the Intel side. SCSI software packages > for MS-DOS or Windows 3.1/95/98/NT run $600, $800, even $1500US. > There must be a way of doing a CD-to-Tape generation with a simple > C-language program using one of the "free" OSes: Linux, FreeBSD, > SCO UnixWare, etc. Sure, that's the obvious way to go. > If anyone has any experience or ideas with this, I would appreciate > your input. It would be very easy for me to install and use one of > these OSs on a spare 486 I have. The question is, which is the most > likely to support SCSI on 9-track tape. I think you'll find that they all support SCSI. I'd recommend FreeBSD because I'm involved with it and because it's the closest to 2.11BSD. Next, I'd recommend Linux, because you have the sources. You could have trouble with UnixWare, in which case there wouldn't be much you could do about it. If you do have any problems with FreeBSD, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA00657 for pups-liszt; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 16:24:57 +1000 (EST) From kevin at xpuppy.demon.co.uk Tue Jul 7 16:20:53 1998 From: kevin at xpuppy.demon.co.uk (Kevin Murrell) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 07:20:53 +0100 Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: <01BDA978.2E5F7760@XPUPPY> Can anyone shed any light on a company called Dilog. Having acquired two Dilog machines they appear to actually both be PDP-11s. Dilog seemed to have produced DEC compatible hardware for the UK market. In particular the smaller machine was known as a Vixen. This would appear to be a PDP-11/73 with the DEC M8192 processor card. Indeed the processor card is the only actual DEC product. Colleagues that used this machine described it as the portable PDP-11 - however we are not talking laptop here :) The 'Vixen' has a Dilog disk controller with a Seagate ST251 attached. The machine is currently running DSM-11 and recognises the drive as a RA81. I hope to produce a list relating the Dilog part numbers to original DEC part numbers. Any help or suggestions gratefully received. Kevin Murrell Birmingham, England. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA02684 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 01:48:44 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Wed Jul 8 01:44:14 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 11:44:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Newbie Alert: Which is a ``best'' pdp-11 to look for????? In-Reply-To: <199807060358.NAA07988@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from Warren Toomey at "Jul 6, 98 01:58:23 pm" Message-ID: <199807071544.LAA00178@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > All, > The following people now have SCO source licenses for ancient Unix: Neato.... I am beginning to think it might be a fun thing to do. As the newbie aboard, what pdp-11, vax, or other dec machine would be one to shoot for. Some are largish beasts, but for the Joe Homehobby type that wants to run one in the basement, what would be a reasonable combination of parts or units (or a whole machine) to look for? Occasionally machines float up from the bilges here in central NC, USA, and usually they wind up dumpster fodder. Rather than see that happen, if I had a choice, what should I be looking for? For convenience, if there was something that would fit in half a relay rack or so, that might be nice. Also, if it could run with standard cartridge tapes (DC300/450/600) sized things, that would be advantageous, since I have a number of those things and nil reel to reel drives. > I haven't heard from Kirk McKusick, but he's still planning to sell a 4CD > set of all the 4BSD releases from CSRG. The cost is still expected to be > around US$100, but if he gets flooded with requests, this may come down. That would be something worthwhile to have, just for posterity. > Software Tools > -------------- ...... > I don't know Barbera's geographic location. However, would anybody in the > US be prepared to read these tapes for us, and pass the contents to me for > inclusion in the PUPS Archive??! I just checked our folks.... nil reel-to-reel drives anymore..... shucks. One of the technical high schools has the only one left here in NC. Bob Keys p.s. Are there any USA NC folks on the list, or just me? Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA04090 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:15:13 +1000 (EST) From sms at moe.2bsd.com Wed Jul 8 10:14:47 1998 From: sms at moe.2bsd.com (Steven M. Schultz) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:14:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: <199807080014.RAA05047@moe.2bsd.com> Hi - > From: Kevin Murrell Linebreaks please? 72-80 columns would be nice ;) > Can anyone shed any light on a company called Dilog. Not sure if they're still in the DEC business but at one time they were one of the major 3rd party vendors making Qbus and Unibus controllers. > Having acquired two Dilog machines they appear to actually both be PDP-11s. > Dilog seemed to have produced DEC compatible hardware for the UK market. I never heard of Dilog making entire systems. You'd typically buy the box from DEC (but without any controllers or as few as you could order a system from DEC with) and then stuff it with Emulex or Dilog adaptors. > In particular the smaller machine was known as a Vixen. Sounds like an OEM somewhere was buying bare systems from DEC and placing Dilog cards in them. > This would appear to be a PDP-11/73 with the DEC M8192 processor card. Indeed it is. > Indeed the processor card is the only actual DEC product. > Colleagues that used this machine described it as the portable PDP-11 - >however we are not talking laptop here :) What are the dimensions? It likely is a BA-23 box. "Transportable" would be appropriate - unless you've a *huge* (and sturdy) lap ;) > The 'Vixen' has a Dilog disk controller with a Seagate ST251 attached. > The machine is currently running DSM-11 and recognises the drive as a RA81. > I hope to produce a list relating the Dilog part numbers to original DEC > part numbers. It was/is common for controller cards to call anything over ~150mb an 'ra81' just to give the software a diskid it knew about. On the various Dilog cards you should find (either on the spine/handles or the card's front/back) a name. Something like "DQ696" (a disk controller) or "DQ132" (tape controller). If you can find any numbers at all let us know and we can probably id them for you. Steven Schultz sms at moe.2bsd.com Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA04178 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:52:45 +1000 (EST) From norman at cs.yorku.ca Wed Jul 8 10:52:35 1998 From: norman at cs.yorku.ca (Norman Wilson) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:52:35 -0400 Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: As Steven Schultz says, Dilog used to make a lot of DEC-compatible peripheral gear. The old company has been gone for years, but there is a descendant in Switzerland; see http://www.dilog.ch for details and contacts. There are still people there who can dig up info about old Dilog Qbus interfaces; I have discovered this empirically. Perhaps they know about the Vixen box; certainly they can likely find out about the Dilog disk controller. Norman Wilson Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA04264 for pups-liszt; Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:34:31 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Wed Jul 8 11:34:55 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 98 21:34:55 -0400 Subject: DEC in the UK and Dilog Message-ID: <9807080134.AA00916@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Steven M. Schultz wrote: > > Can anyone shed any light on a company called Dilog. > > Not sure if they're still in the DEC business but at one time they > were one of the major 3rd party vendors making Qbus and Unibus > controllers. I don't know if it's their only business, but they still sell (and hopefully make) these controllers. One of their guys was trying to sell me one just a few months ago. Of course, their prices are way off-base compared to the used market. Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.cwru.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA19102 for pups-liszt; Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:59:30 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Sun Jul 12 12:59:31 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:59:31 +1000 (EST) Subject: PUPS In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980710080445.00691374@mammoth.sco.com> from Jim Sullivan at "Jul 10, 98 11:12:48 am" Message-ID: <199807120259.MAA01524@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Jim Sullivan: > Do you know if anyone from PUPS is going to SCO Forum/Usenix in > August in Santa Cruz? > > If so, we'd love to connect, if just to say Hi! > > Also, SCO has a quarterly Developer's newsletter, called CoreDump. > Would anyone within PUPS be interested in submitting an article > for the next edition? 500 words outlining the goals of PUPS > and how to join/participate? Seems like a nice way to quietly > promote your efforts. > > What do you think? Hi Jim, I'll pass this email on to the mailing list. I'll probably take you up on the article. Thanks! I'm in Australia & not likely to get to Santa Cruz in any hurry. :-( Ciao, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA21845 for pups-liszt; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:47:50 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Mon Jul 13 13:47:55 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:47:55 +1000 (EST) Subject: Recovering old UNIX manuals In-Reply-To: from "norman@nose.cs.yorku.ca" at "Jul 12, 98 10:20:04 pm" Message-ID: <199807130347.NAA07263@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> All, I'm forwarding on Norman's e-mail describing his efforts at converting his paper-only copies of the early UNIX manuals back into machine-readable format. Warren norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca writes: > The first pass of markup is all done on chapter I of 5e, which is > all I have scanned so far. It is tempting to forge ahead on the > text extracted from Dennis's 1e, but I hope to discipline myself > to finish some surrounding documentation and tools. On each front, > right now there is: > - a small collection of tools to pre-process what comes out > of the OCR into something that is easy to mark up. > Specifically there are a couple of little filters that > fix up the non-ASCII characters emitted by the Mac, and > that glue hyphenated words back together; and a rather > bigger awk script that does some of the easy grunt work > like spotting and marking up entry titles and section headers. > - a description of the markup language (written in itself, > of course). > - a program (also in awk, and surprisingly long) to render > the markup language into approximately V7 -man. (I have > actually done all the work so far on the MicroVAX in my > basement, which is one of the last remaining V10 systems > in the world, and it won't surprise me to learn that the > renderer has accidentally picked up some V10-specific > assumptions.) > - a collection of advice on style and known OCR botches > and whatnot for those who mark up and proof the manuals > as they go through the pipe. (At the moment `those' means > me and my collaborator in California.) > > The most important missing tools and writings are something to render > into HTML, and something that explains a little more generally just > what it is I am doing (and how it differs from what Dennis did, and > for that matter from just trying to regenerate the original troff > input) and describes the tools and so on. My current hope is to > get those done in odd moments this week; once I have a decent > approximation of each, I want to put copies of all the documents > and all the tools and a few sample pages from 5e up on the web, so > people have something to look at and I can get comments from a wider > group. (Obviously I'll drop a note to the PUPS mailing list when > things are up there.) > > While I'm writing the HTML renderer and the missing document this > week, my colleague in California has already begun an independent > proofreading pass over the stuff I've marked up, which is a damn > good thing because I can't see the errors any more (and she has > already spotted some). > > The other tools I know are missing are > - some sort of structure to allow the old pre-typesetter manuals > to be rendered in a good approximation of their original form. > At the moment I expect this will just be a troff macro package > with the syntax of V7 -man, so I can just use the existing renderer, > though I can see some font issues looming that may cause force the > renderer to change (perhaps in a way general enough that there will > still be only one renderer). > - something to allow V6-era -man (or /usr/man/man0/naa, to name it > properly) macros to work too; the obvious cheap way out is something > that translates V7 -man to V6, presumably with the knowledge that what > it is translating came out of my markto7man renderer (which restricts > the language quite a bit, so the job is a lot simpler). I'm not sure > how important this is--the obvious short-term goal is to be able to > have a man command in the V5 environment, and since the macros probably > aren't in the existing distribution, it's fair game to bring in a copy > of the V7 ones--but it seems worth having in the long run if only for > fun. > > I'd originally thought to write more of the tools before doing so > much markup, but I'm glad I didn't--the markup language mutated more > than I expected as experience showed where it was wrong, and it made > life simpler to have only one renderer to update. I think it is > pretty much stable now, and in any case I am champing at the bit to > be able to display things in HTML. > > A final complication in all this: it is all but certain that I'll > be resigning from York this week, effective in about a month, to > jump back to a position at the University of Toronto (running > computers for the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics). > This is not a surprise to anyone concerned (including the folks here > at York--the real reason for the move is that the eleven-mile commute > to York is just too long for me), but it will certainly have both > short- and long-term effects on the time I can spend on the manuals. > The long-term effects may not be what you think, though: the scanner > and OCR setup I've been using is located at CITA, so once I've settled > in there (and especially once I get the tools sorted out well enough > that it is effectively a pipeline), it should be pretty convenient > to spend the odd hour scanning in a handful of pages. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA23544 for pups-liszt; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 23:49:16 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Mon Jul 13 23:44:42 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:44:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Recovering old UNIX manuals In-Reply-To: <199807130347.NAA07263@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from Warren Toomey at "Jul 13, 98 01:47:55 pm" Message-ID: <199807131344.JAA12765@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > All, > I'm forwarding on Norman's e-mail describing his efforts at > converting his paper-only copies of the early UNIX manuals back into > machine-readable format. > > Warren > > norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca writes: > > The first pass of markup is all done on chapter I of 5e, which is > > all I have scanned so far. It is tempting to forge ahead on the > > text extracted from Dennis's 1e, but I hope to discipline myself > > to finish some surrounding documentation and tools. On each front, > > right now there is: On a similar bent, I have been working on roffing Dennis' V1 manuals, using the earliest roff I could still find some sort of source to. It is one that was popular in the early CP/M days, that also found its way into dos and unix. How true to the original it is, I dunno, but it works. They are about 2/3 done, maybe, but my time to get them done is not as much as I would like. What should I do with them once they are done? I was thinking of just sending the source/output back to Dennis, but if it is OK to put them in in the PUPS archives, I can bounce them to Warren. Thanks to Dennis Ritchie for making them available. Bob Keys p.s. You know, with all this html thingie, whatever happened to just a real roff/nroff/troff output? It is only ascii. Why html? Just curious as to why/wherefore/etc. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id EAA25462 for pups-liszt; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 04:59:08 +1000 (EST) From norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca Tue Jul 14 04:58:18 1998 From: norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca (norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:58:18 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: I hadn't expected Warren to forward my note directly to the list, so perhaps I'd better fill in some of the missing content. What I'm trying to do with the old manuals is a mix of different sorts of historic preservation: it's interesting to be able to produce something reasonably close to the original in appearance, including style differences, but I am also interested just in making the content accessible. That means being able to render the manual pages into troff -man on modern UNIX systems, or into nroff /man/man0/naa in the V5 root image, and roff and whatnot; but also into HTML because that's the right way to make text available on the web (Postscript is not text), and certainly into other forms I haven't thought of yet. To describe it all in utterly pragmatic terms, I want to be able to put all the old manuals up on the web somewhere in readable text form (not just page images or Postscript); and to produce manual data of authentic content and reasonably authentic style for use with the V5 binary distribution; and to be able to to print clear reference copies for myself, so I can pack my old photocopies away in a safe place; and to amuse myself by running style and diction on the different editions; and I want to be able to do that even if I don't have a copy of roff or the appropriate age-authentic macro package. So the idea is to mark up the text in a sufficiently high-level form that it can be rendered into any of the forms above (including the ones I haven't thought of) without undo work. I thought briefly about using the (V7-era) -man macros as the high-level language, and in fact much of the simple language I ended up inventing are obviously drawn from -man (e.g. there are constructs that are exactly .TH, .SH, and .SS spelled differently); but I wanted to avoid the temptation just to toss in more and more troff-specific syntax and semantics whenever some hard-to-represent construct popped up. (There are too many low-level constructs in the resulting language as it is.) I also thought about using some existing document metalanguage like XML or YODL, but those I looked at were far more ornate than seemed appropriate, and far too free-form; I don't mind carrying a few medium-sized awk programs around to render the text, but I object to having to port a language-processing subsystem larger than the V5 kernel just so I can render V5's manual pages. (Never mind how large awk and troff are these days.) There's a name I should also name here: my collaborator in California to whom the earlier message alludes is Jennine Townsend, who has photocopies of my photocopies from a sort of earlier collaboration. More on this in a few days; as I said to Warren, I hope to get a coherent sample of all this work up on the web shortly so people can see what I'm doing in more detail and comment, but I am in the midst of deciding whether to change jobs (it is a coincidence that the likely job change would put me nearer the OCR setup I've been using, but it is convenient), and in getting back into the swing of things at my present job after being out for two weeks to recover from having corrective maintenance on my sinuses, so it may not happen till the weekend. Norman Wilson Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id FAA25486 for pups-liszt; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 05:00:33 +1000 (EST) From norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca Tue Jul 14 04:59:47 1998 From: norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca (norman at nose.cs.yorku.ca) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:59:47 -0400 Subject: No subject Message-ID: A postscript to my note on the old manuyals (typed into the editor but not written out before I sent the mail!): A note on distributing this stuff: I asked Dennis about it before I started my project, and he thought there should be no real problem making the text generally available, but that it would be appropriate for the official repository to be at Bell Labs (now a once-again-visible subsidiary of Lucent Technologies). That seems pretty sensible to me. I doubt there's a problem putting them in the PUPS archive, but it would be politic to check with Dennis first. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA01345 for pups-liszt; Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:55:27 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Wed Jul 29 13:55:36 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:55:36 +1000 (EST) Subject: PUPS: status report Message-ID: <199807290355.NAA05056@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Hi all, Not much has been hapenning in the PDP UNIX Preservation Society. Kirk McKusick is still waiting for the CD pressing company to do his run of 4BSD CDs. I'm urging him to make a web page describing the project, so we can stay informed of the progress. A few people in comp.unix.bsd.misc suggested that another preservation society needs to be formed, to preserve 32-bit UNIXes and other non PDP-11 UNIXes. I've set up a mailing list for them to discuss such a project. If you are interested, then you can join the mailing list by emailing to majordomo at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au, with a line in the body saying: subscribe bups BUPS stands for BIG UNIX Preservation Society. I'm sure they will come up with a better name :-) Cheers all, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA03282 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 01:08:39 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Thu Jul 30 01:03:47 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 11:03:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... In-Reply-To: <199807290355.NAA05056@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> from Warren Toomey at "Jul 29, 98 01:55:36 pm" Message-ID: <199807291503.LAA03577@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > Hi all, > Not much has been hapenning in the PDP UNIX Preservation Society. > Kirk McKusick is still waiting for the CD pressing company to do his run > of 4BSD CDs. I'm urging him to make a web page describing the project, so > we can stay informed of the progress. This will be great when it happens. Kudos to Kirk.....and all the unsung heroes along the path to Nirvana. > A few people in comp.unix.bsd.misc suggested that another preservation > society needs to be formed, to preserve 32-bit UNIXes and other non PDP-11 > UNIXes. I've set up a mailing list for them to discuss such a project. > If you are interested, then you can join the mailing list by emailing > to majordomo at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au, with a line in the body saying: > > subscribe bups > > BUPS stands for BIG UNIX Preservation Society. I'm sure they will come > up with a better name :-) PUPS, BUPS, burp! Sounds fine! I will jump in the hotseat and own up to the heat. My idea was very simple. Mainly, I was thinking that there are beginning to surface from the bilges of surplus, a fair number of aging old-time unix toys. Not all of them are PDP-11ish flavor. For instance, there are sometimes found some of the ancient Radio Shack Model 16 things with an odd flavor of Xenix on them. There are maybe some old vaxen going wanting. There are odd bilgewater sloshers like my old IBM RT that once did ply the waters of the great BSD (of the 4.3 style flavor). Also, there are older x86 toys that use to run the very lowendian V7ish, Xenixish, whateverish flavors. From the purely hobby and historical perspective, I find it rather wasteful to let such things just vaporize. It seems we have the PDP11 world, then there is a big black hole until the modern SCOish and Freebieish things. It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with the rush to NT and SCOish things. Thus, there is a need to maybe fill that hole with something like the PUPS, but for 32bitish toys, and all the non-PDP-11 toys. One thing that PUPS has going, is a good working basis with all the unixy world, the big players, the historical saints, etc. So, it was logical to perceive that such a working framework might be expanded slightly to include not just 32V, but all the odd successors, down to where SCO claims rightly its territory on the SysV part of the tree. IF that framework is a BUPS offshoot, so-be-it. But, I still think that both PUPS and the new BUPS share much common cammaraderie and playground. Alas, I am not yet of sufficient rank to be called but a lowly journeyman, in the unixy world. I have run it in earnest for some 10 years, played some with it on a PDP-11, so long ago, that it is mostly forgotten, and still keep a set of 8 inch Xenix floppers around, just in case that mystical Model 16B drops by, again. Thus, there is not a lot I can do. But, I do toss out the idea, would like to see where it goes. Mebbie some heavyweight gurus would like to run with it some..... Let us roll it around a bit, and see where the currents takes us. The 32BitBiggieUPS should not be forgotten. I think it can only be good for all to make it play..... Sincerely R.D. Keys rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu > Cheers all, > Warren Cheers all hands aboard PUPS, BUPS, .... burp!, .... whatever..... RDK Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA03488 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 01:52:41 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Thu Jul 30 01:52:57 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 98 11:52:57 -0400 Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... Message-ID: <9807291552.AA12576@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" wrote: > It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with > the rush to NT and SCOish things. Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing! My office is the largest room in the department, and it's filled with VAXen of all kinds. My goal is to get 4.3BSD-* running on all of them and operate this system in direct competition with other UNIX systems on our campus, which are all Pentiums or SPARCs. Since my system administration skills and friendliness to students surpass those of other campus UNIX systems' admins by many orders of binary magnitude, I plan to urge people to migrate to my VAXen this way. Yes, my plan is total world VAX domination! This is exactly why I want to modify Berkeley VAX UNIX to run on all VAX models from 11/780 to 10000. (An EXTREMELY daring and ambitious goal, needless to say.) I have two strong and radical views: 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run UNIX are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit like that. 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNIX clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any code written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS, which are kosher in the above sense but binary-only for most people. The latter part is why I want to move to 4.3BSD-*. Also my belief in True licensed UNIX(R) is the reason I have joined PUPS, as it seems to be the only remaining group dealing with such UNIX. Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.cwru.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA03595 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 02:31:20 +1000 (EST) From allisonp at world.std.com Thu Jul 30 02:31:06 1998 From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 12:31:06 -0400 Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... Message-ID: <199807291631.AA16185@world.std.com> < Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing Not an undesireable thing. May the best win... for the rest of us any is better than zero. < 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run U < are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit lik < that. That is also wrong, as Interdata 8/32, IBM System/370 and Honeywell 6000 are recognized as ports by K&R in their docs! the latter three systems while interesting are not general collectors fare as they tend to be a bit large. Frankly, why not? Anything that competes with MS is good! < 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNI < clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any cod < written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any < "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS It was God Bell Labs (nee WE) that K&R worked for that put the odious license fees on unix, in 1980 it was a mere $24,000 for the sources which were a must have. People started doing clones to break free of the license and distributions that didn't contain sources. It made possible to get on platforms that were unsupported/unsupportable without source code or at least for the commercial versions at lower cost to the user. Venix for Pro350 is such an example (it's v6 or v7 code!). I'm not saying the clones are good or bad, only born of necessity. Of course they couldn't contain and of said God code due to licenses. Like all gods their feet are of clay. Since the goal is to preserve unix and unix like OSs there is no crime, even if the varients are not direct decendents. So long as people understand the lineage preservation should certainly should proceed. Allison Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id DAA03871 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 03:31:54 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Thu Jul 30 03:27:12 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:27:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... In-Reply-To: <9807291552.AA12576@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> from Michael Sokolov at "Jul 29, 98 11:52:57 am" Message-ID: <199807291727.NAA04034@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" wrote: > > It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with > > the rush to NT and SCOish things. > > Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing! No excuses necessary. But, please relax a bit and don't let the blood boil to much. All of us here, are interested in the preservation of the beast. Granted many may run it for a living, me included, to some extent. But, likewise most or many of us are the same folks that have a vaxen or pdp-11 in the basement (I remember seeing a pix of one of our leader's machines next to the kitchen fridge?). Clearly, the basement/kitchen toys are not competing. They are purely hobby related. My dumpster risc box won't ever compete again, but is fun to spin up a TeX and troff on. > My office is the largest room in the department, and it's filled with VAXen > of all kinds. My goal is to get 4.3BSD-* running on all of them and operate > this system in direct competition with other UNIX systems on our campus, > which are all Pentiums or SPARCs. Since my system administration skills and > friendliness to students surpass those of other campus UNIX systems' admins > by many orders of binary magnitude, I plan to urge people to migrate to my > VAXen this way. Yes, my plan is total world VAX domination! This is exactly > why I want to modify Berkeley VAX UNIX to run on all VAX models from 11/780 > to 10000. (An EXTREMELY daring and ambitious goal, needless to say.) Clearly yours are more mainstream related. Kudos for the sysadmin handholding towards the students. Mentoring, one on one is the best way to handle many computer learning things. Although vaxen may dominate the world (or did at one time, according to Henry Spencer's infamous ten commandments for C programmers), there are many lesser breeds that I sense others of us partake of. Also, there are insufficient numbers of remaining vaxen and pdp-11's for all of us to have one in the home hobbyroom. Because of that, I would suggest that maybe there is interest in the other lines of machines and their related unices, even the 32bitters. > I have two strong and radical views: > > 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run UNIX > are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit like > that. Not so, IMHO. The purist may run a vaxen in the manner of the Bugattis of old, but us garage monkeywrench types may be stuck with even a lowly PC thingie. Don't quite put the PC flavors down, since I can attest to their utility in poverty stricken research projects for at least the past 10 years, courtesy Big Blue and that hybrid PC unix of theirs (AIX 1.x). Also, the freebie BSD's are sufficiently close to the real thing, that most average users would not know the difference. Cat is cat is cat, no matter how it is coded (and they all look remarkably similar). > 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNIX > clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any code > written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any > "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS, > which are kosher in the above sense but binary-only for most people. The > latter part is why I want to move to 4.3BSD-*. Also my belief in True > licensed UNIX(R) is the reason I have joined PUPS, as it seems to be the > only remaining group dealing with such UNIX. Well, yes and no. I consider it a tribute to the likes of Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, Ossanna, and a string of others down the trees, that the wisdom of their reasoning and toiling has had fruition even in the lowly PC's. Why did the freebies catch on like they have? Because the folks wanted something like a BSD, and the corporate bean counters and lawyers missed their chance. As to which flavor to use, I use what I have that will run on whichever box I have on. I prefer a BSDish box, but even a V7 is fun, and with a viish terminal driver and troff, still runs with the best of the big dogs, and even AIX is usable if you get used to its quirks. But, for sure, the point of all this is to preserve the history, code, nuances, and whatever else can be maintained, unless I am sorely amiss of the PUPS goals. I only think it needs to include the castoff 32 bit machines, too, hence the need for a BUPS group, IMHO. > Sincerely, > Michael Sokolov With all due respect. R.D. Keys rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id EAA03980 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 04:02:13 +1000 (EST) From rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Thu Jul 30 03:57:22 1998 From: rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu (User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:57:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts (what have we started?) In-Reply-To: <199807291631.AA16185@world.std.com> from Allison J Parent at "Jul 29, 98 12:31:06 pm" Message-ID: <199807291757.NAA04109@seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu> > Not an undesireable thing. May the best win... for the rest of us any > is better than zero. Well said, but perhaps we need to frame that with something like, ``all will win, even the least....'' > < 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run U > < are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit lik > < that. > > That is also wrong, as Interdata 8/32, IBM System/370 and Honeywell 6000 > are recognized as ports by K&R in their docs! the latter three systems > while interesting are not general collectors fare as they tend to be a > bit large. Can anyone refresh my memory of what machines specifically were listed in the V7 and 32V and 2/3/4BSD docs? I would like to get that clear, for reference purposes. Also, what specific machines were ported out of these main sources by the odd vendors. The majority was pdp11ish, but about V7 time the 68000 and Z8000 and other oddities pop up. > < 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNI > < clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any cod > < written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any > < "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS > > It was God Bell Labs (nee WE) that K&R worked for that put the odious > license fees on unix, in 1980 it was a mere $24,000 for the sources which > were a must have. People started doing clones to break free of the > license and distributions that didn't contain sources. It made possible > to get on platforms that were unsupported/unsupportable without source > code or at least for the commercial versions at lower cost to the user. > Venix for Pro350 is such an example (it's v6 or v7 code!). I'm not > saying the clones are good or bad, only born of necessity. Of course > they couldn't contain and of said God code due to licenses. I would agree on the necessity. Back in '88 I went shopping for an office machine, and could find nothing under around 25 kilobucks. I opted out for a peanuts budget machine (PS/2 model 80 with AIX) at around 10K bucks and the silly thing is still whirring away as my remote tape dumper. Alas, it is a much maligned PC, but it functions nontheless, and IS a real unix. Alas, these days, its steam is a little underpowered trying to scrape the web, so it idles in the background. Technically, it is a 32 bit abandoned unix, and for hypotheticals, it ought to be something workable in a BUPS sort of archive, with proper Big Blue nodding. The same thing should occur for the RT. It would probably be a nightmare of paperwork between SCO and IBM and us, tho..... > Like all gods their feet are of clay. The gods were hacking away fine.... alas the beanyheads upstairs had their feet stuck, if I am reading my history correctly. > Since the goal is to preserve unix and unix like OSs there is no crime, > even if the varients are not direct decendents. So long as people > understand the lineage preservation should certainly should proceed. The goal is to save it if possible, BEFORE it becomes vaporware, for purely hobby/historical purposes, with the big player's graces and consents. If we don't dream a little and oil some squeeky wheels, it will never get done..... > Allison RDK Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA14668 for pups-liszt; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 16:18:07 +1000 (EST) From iking at KillTheWabbit.org Thu Jul 30 16:02:39 1998 From: iking at KillTheWabbit.org (Ian King) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 23:02:39 -0700 Subject: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... Message-ID: <199807300606.XAA11564@forbin.killthewabbit.org> I'm glad there are people and codebases that compete with Microsoft -- and I work for Microsoft. It keeps us on our toes. :-) I run NT 4.0 and Linux 2.0.30 side-by-side at home, on the selfsame network -- and all on Intel hardware. I am on this mailing list because I am gaining a PDP 11/34 as a new resident in my home, which will be networked together with the Intel hardware (so I don't have to run downstairs all the time -- the PDP is too large for my computer room upstairs). Why? Call it a sense of history.... Why shouldn't UNIX run on everything? The beauty of the UNIX idea -- which has been cloned and transported and transliterated and transmogrified a myriad times a myriad times -- is that it expresses a rich metaphor for computation, which allows us to make use of these metal monsters. I have the greatest respect for "true" UNIX and its parents and godparents. I also have a lot of respect for Linus Torvalds and the incredible piece of work he birthed -- a true UNIX version that makes excellent use of the PC architecture. The PC architecture has commoditized significant computing power in a manner that Digital could never have done (or at least, never did), and placed that into the hands of many people who would be otherwise financially barred from playing this game. IMHO it's specious to demonize a particular machine architecture and declare that UNIXes running on it are somehow illegitimate. Cheers -- Ian King NOTE: this is strictly my personal ramblings, and does not in any way represent the official position of the Microsoft Corporation. ---------- > From: User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys > To: Michael Sokolov > Cc: bups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au; pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au > Subject: Re: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts..... > Date: Wednesday, July 29, 1998 10:27 AM > > > "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" wrote: > > > It is obvious that none of the old toys are going to be competing with > > > the rush to NT and SCOish things. > > > > Excuse me, sir, but I have to make a point here. They _ARE_ competing! > > No excuses necessary. But, please relax a bit and don't let the blood > boil to much. All of us here, are interested in the preservation of the > beast. Granted many may run it for a living, me included, to some extent. > But, likewise most or many of us are the same folks that have a vaxen > or pdp-11 in the basement (I remember seeing a pix of one of our leader's > machines next to the kitchen fridge?). Clearly, the basement/kitchen toys > are not competing. They are purely hobby related. My dumpster risc box > won't ever compete again, but is fun to spin up a TeX and troff on. > > > My office is the largest room in the department, and it's filled with VAXen > > of all kinds. My goal is to get 4.3BSD-* running on all of them and operate > > this system in direct competition with other UNIX systems on our campus, > > which are all Pentiums or SPARCs. Since my system administration skills and > > friendliness to students surpass those of other campus UNIX systems' admins > > by many orders of binary magnitude, I plan to urge people to migrate to my > > VAXen this way. Yes, my plan is total world VAX domination! This is exactly > > why I want to modify Berkeley VAX UNIX to run on all VAX models from 11/780 > > to 10000. (An EXTREMELY daring and ambitious goal, needless to say.) > > Clearly yours are more mainstream related. > > Kudos for the sysadmin handholding towards the students. Mentoring, one > on one is the best way to handle many computer learning things. > > Although vaxen may dominate the world (or did at one time, according to > Henry Spencer's infamous ten commandments for C programmers), there are > many lesser breeds that I sense others of us partake of. Also, there > are insufficient numbers of remaining vaxen and pdp-11's for all of us > to have one in the home hobbyroom. Because of that, I would suggest > that maybe there is interest in the other lines of machines and their > related unices, even the 32bitters. > > > I have two strong and radical views: > > > > 0. The only higher-than-PDP-11 computers that can be allowed to run UNIX > > are DEC VAXen. I oppose the idea of running UNIX on PeeCees and shit like > > that. > > Not so, IMHO. The purist may run a vaxen in the manner of the Bugattis > of old, but us garage monkeywrench types may be stuck with even a lowly > PC thingie. Don't quite put the PC flavors down, since I can attest to > their utility in poverty stricken research projects for at least the past > 10 years, courtesy Big Blue and that hybrid PC unix of theirs (AIX 1.x). > Also, the freebie BSD's are sufficiently close to the real thing, that > most average users would not know the difference. Cat is cat is cat, > no matter how it is coded (and they all look remarkably similar). > > > 1. I consider it the ultimate in blasphemy to attempt to create "UNIX > > clones" that people dare to call "Unix" but don't really contain any code > > written by God Ritchie, God Thompson, or God Kernighan. I never use any > > "free Unices" like FreeBSD and NetBSD. Right now I use Ultrix and SunOS, > > which are kosher in the above sense but binary-only for most people. The > > latter part is why I want to move to 4.3BSD-*. Also my belief in True > > licensed UNIX(R) is the reason I have joined PUPS, as it seems to be the > > only remaining group dealing with such UNIX. > > Well, yes and no. > > I consider it a tribute to the likes of Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, > Ossanna, and a string of others down the trees, that the wisdom of their > reasoning and toiling has had fruition even in the lowly PC's. Why did > the freebies catch on like they have? Because the folks wanted something > like a BSD, and the corporate bean counters and lawyers missed their chance. > As to which flavor to use, I use what I have that will run on whichever > box I have on. I prefer a BSDish box, but even a V7 is fun, and with > a viish terminal driver and troff, still runs with the best of the big > dogs, and even AIX is usable if you get used to its quirks. > > But, for sure, the point of all this is to preserve the history, code, > nuances, and whatever else can be maintained, unless I am sorely amiss > of the PUPS goals. I only think it needs to include the castoff 32 > bit machines, too, hence the need for a BUPS group, IMHO. > > > Sincerely, > > Michael Sokolov > > With all due respect. > > R.D. Keys > rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA00214 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 11:22:06 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Fri Jul 31 11:20:35 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 11:20:35 +1000 (EST) Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) In-Reply-To: <19980731094513.U7830@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Jul 31, 98 09:45:13 am" Message-ID: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Greg Lehey: > Are we really so many disparate people that we need two lists? I'd > guess that most people would be on both lists. How about just a name > change, to "Old UNIX Preservation Society"? > > Greg I don't know, I thought that it would give people more flexibility, and shield people from stuff they didn't want to see. So lets ask: If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. Cheers all, Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA00743 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:25:22 +1000 (EST) From djenner at halcyon.com Fri Jul 31 13:24:43 1998 From: djenner at halcyon.com (David C. Jenner) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 20:24:43 -0700 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) References: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Message-ID: <35C138FB.A77E57E3@halcyon.com> I vote for one list. Leave it PUPS, and call it the Past/Prehistoric/Perpetual Unix Preservation Society or something like that. Or think up a "P" adjective that glorifies the olden Unix. Almost everything has been cross-posted up to this point, and I get two copies anyway! Dave Warren Toomey wrote: > > In article by Greg Lehey: > > Are we really so many disparate people that we need two lists? I'd > > guess that most people would be on both lists. How about just a name > > change, to "Old UNIX Preservation Society"? > > > > Greg > > I don't know, I thought that it would give people more flexibility, > and shield people from stuff they didn't want to see. So lets ask: > > If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? > > If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. > > Cheers all, > > Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA01084 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:32:13 +1000 (EST) From stacy at asia.uznet.net Fri Jul 31 15:29:46 1998 From: stacy at asia.uznet.net (Stacy Minkin) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:29:46 +0500 Subject: Let'em be one! Message-ID: <199807310529.KAA01933@harrier.Uznet.NET> I also vote for one list. Stacy. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA01162 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:53:58 +1000 (EST) From wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au Fri Jul 31 15:54:00 1998 From: wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:54:00 +1000 (EST) Subject: Let'em be one! In-Reply-To: <199807310529.KAA01933@harrier.Uznet.NET> from Stacy Minkin at "Jul 31, 98 10:29:46 am" Message-ID: <199807310554.PAA09629@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> In article by Stacy Minkin: > > I also vote for one list [about old UNIX]. > Stacy. Looks like most people would like a common list, so I have merged the two lists. The PUPS list is now for Prehistoric UNIX :-) I'll keep the PUPS web page about PDP-11 stuff for now, though. The bups at minnie list is gone, and all mail for the list should now go to pups at minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au. What next? Warren Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA02057 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 20:08:38 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Fri Jul 31 20:09:02 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 98 06:09:02 -0400 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) Message-ID: <9807311009.AA16586@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Warren Toomey wrote: > I don't know, I thought that it would give people more flexibility, > and shield people from stuff they didn't want to see. So lets ask: > > If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? Yes! > If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. Yes! Personally, I think it's a bad idea to have two separate societies/lists. After all, in many case PDP-11 UNIX and VAX UNIX are the same code compiled for different CPUs, and these lists are not about binary-only OSes, are they? If it's all fundamentally the same code, it should be on one list, regardless of what CPUs people want to compile it for. I'm also a little troubled by the word "preservation". This word suggests the group acknowledges that these systems are "old" or "historical". 4.3BSD is being _ACTIVELY WORKED ON_ (by me) as I type, and I have been under the impression that 2.11BSD is also being actively worked on by Steven M. Schults. Sure, these systems WILL be "old" or "historical" if we just sit and "preserve" them, but IMHO this is NOT what we should do. We should look and act and behave AS IF these systems were brand new. I.e, run them in production on the net competing with Pentiums and SPARCs, and actually MAKE thse systems new by doing active development work on the sources just like the dev teams for "new" OSes do. If we can't build a time machine, let's shut all doors and windows and create a 1980s world inside! So, with these ideas in mind, why not call ourselves TUUDS, True UNIX User and Developer Society? Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA02203 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:13:34 +1000 (EST) From stacy at asia.uznet.net Fri Jul 31 21:12:16 1998 From: stacy at asia.uznet.net (Stacy Minkin) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 16:12:16 +0500 Subject: Thoughts... Message-ID: <199807311112.QAA03207@harrier.Uznet.NET> Hi All! > From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) >I'm also a little troubled by the word "preservation". This word suggests the >group acknowledges that these systems are "old" or "historical". 4.3BSD is >being _ACTIVELY WORKED ON_ (by me) as I type, and I have been under the >impression that 2.11BSD is also being actively worked on by Steven M. Schults. >Sure, these systems WILL be "old" or "historical" if we just sit and "preserve" >them, but IMHO this is NOT what we should do. We should look and act and behave >AS IF these systems were brand new. I.e, run them in production on the net >competing with Pentiums and SPARCs, and actually MAKE thse systems new by doing >active development work on the sources just like the dev teams for "new" OSes >do. If we can't build a time machine, let's shut all doors and windows and >create a 1980s world inside! Absolutely right! The only problem with it that old CPUs are seems to be slowly vaporizing... I spent about ten years searching until I finally got original Digital PDP-11 here in Uzbekistan (xUSSR) ! And I succeeded only because I started working for Digital here. Stacy. Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA02334 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:58:54 +1000 (EST) From tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk Fri Jul 31 21:54:50 1998 From: tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:54:50 +0100 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) In-Reply-To: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> References: <19980731094513.U7830@freebie.lemis.com> <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> Message-ID: <199807311154.MAA03301@dubh.aiai.ed.ac.uk> > If you're on the PUPS list, do you want to see stuff about non PDP-11 Unixes? > If you're on the BUPS list, do you want to see stuff about PDP-11 Unixes. I'm on both, I'm interested in stuff about both. I would have thought that the overlap is fairly large. --tim Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA02319 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 21:56:18 +1000 (EST) From tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk Fri Jul 31 21:55:32 1998 From: tfb at aiai.ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:55:32 +0100 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) In-Reply-To: <35C138FB.A77E57E3@halcyon.com> References: <199807310120.LAA08798@henry.cs.adfa.oz.au> <35C138FB.A77E57E3@halcyon.com> Message-ID: <199807311155.MAA03303@dubh.aiai.ed.ac.uk> * David C Jenner wrote: > I vote for one list. Leave it PUPS, and call it the > Past/Prehistoric/Perpetual Unix Preservation Society > or something like that. Or think up a "P" adjective > that glorifies the olden Unix. Proper Unix Preservation Society! Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA02386 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 22:19:42 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Fri Jul 31 22:20:09 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 98 08:20:09 -0400 Subject: Thoughts... Message-ID: <9807311220.AA16681@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Stacy Minkin wrote: > Absolutely right! The only problem with it that old CPUs are > seems to be slowly vaporizing... Then start MAKING them! Our great nation of Workers and Peasants has the best military technology in the world! Let's show those bloodsucking capitalists that we can make PDP-11s and VAXen better than they ever could! Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.CWRU.Edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA02441 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 22:25:32 +1000 (EST) From msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu Fri Jul 31 22:25:59 1998 From: msokolov at blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu (Michael Sokolov) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 98 08:25:59 -0400 Subject: OUPS (was: PUPS and BUPS (burp!) thoughts.....) Message-ID: <9807311225.AA16689@blackwidow.SOML.CWRU.Edu> Tim Bradshaw wrote: > Proper Unix Preservation Society! Yes! I vote for this! Sincerely, Michael Sokolov Phone: 216-368-6888 (Office) 440-449-0299 (Home) 216-217-2579 (Cellular) ARPA Internet SMTP mail: msokolov at blackwidow.CWRU.Edu Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA02735 for pups-liszt; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 23:45:09 +1000 (EST) From allisonp at world.std.com Fri Jul 31 23:44:51 1998 From: allisonp at world.std.com (Allison J Parent) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 09:44:51 -0400 Subject: Thoughts... Message-ID: <199807311344.AA23930@world.std.com> < Then start MAKING them! Our great nation of Workers and Peasants has the < military technology in the world! Let's show those bloodsucking capitali < that we can make PDP-11s and VAXen better than they ever could! They never stopped making them. Mentec has some really fast 11s. Mike, take a prozac and chill. It's all that capitalism that is making all of those old PDP-11s and such available in the first place. This place is for unix and it's heirs and relations not political ranting. We can argue better, first, cleanest, purity after we have captured the code and preserved it from loss. Allison Received: (from major at localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA03203 for pups-liszt; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 02:28:37 +1000 (EST)