From pao at mogwog.org Thu Oct 13 15:43:19 2016 From: pao at mogwog.org (Paul Osborne) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 06:43:19 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie Message-ID: Wired is reporting this morning that Dennis has passed away. :( Paul -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From imp at bsdimp.com Thu Oct 13 16:04:22 2016 From: imp at bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:04:22 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie says this is from 2011... Warner On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 11:43 PM, Paul Osborne wrote: > Wired is reporting this morning that Dennis has passed away. > > :( > > Paul From dds at aueb.gr Thu Oct 13 16:04:35 2016 From: dds at aueb.gr (Diomidis Spinellis) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 09:04:35 +0300 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9c9edf8b-b7bc-0d81-576b-1dafac1d816a@aueb.gr> Wired is currently listing the 2011 article reporting the death of Dennis Ritchie as the second most popular one. dmr left this world of transient bits exactly five years ago. On 13/10/2016 08:43, Paul Osborne wrote: > Wired is reporting this morning that Dennis has passed away. > > :( > > Paul > From dave at horsfall.org Thu Oct 13 15:51:54 2016 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 16:51:54 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 13 Oct 2016, Paul Osborne wrote: > Wired is reporting this morning that Dennis has passed away. Five years ago, actually. -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer." From paosborne at gmail.com Thu Oct 13 17:28:08 2016 From: paosborne at gmail.com (Paul Osborne) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 08:28:08 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes. I should have double checked. Apologies top all who entered a second stage of grieving. Paul On 13 Oct 2016 07:11, "Dave Horsfall" wrote: > On Thu, 13 Oct 2016, Paul Osborne wrote: > > > Wired is reporting this morning that Dennis has passed away. > > Five years ago, actually. > > -- > Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will > suffer." > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From norman at oclsc.org Thu Oct 13 22:51:35 2016 From: norman at oclsc.org (Norman Wilson) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 08:51:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie Message-ID: <20161013125135.1F91F4422E@lignose.oclsc.org> The news of Dennis's demise is indeed an echo from five years ago. Dennis would have been amused. Think of it is a day to think about Dennis and what he gave us, instead of Trump and what he threatens. I suspect many of us could use that. Norman Wilson Toronto ON From clemc at ccc.com Thu Oct 13 23:36:25 2016 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 09:36:25 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Paul, As you now realize, Dennis left us 5 years ago after a long illness. The Labs had a wonderful memorial that I was lucky enough to be able to participate. The theme of the event was "Simply Genius." My words are that he was a remarkable person and I'm so glad to have known him. BTW: I suspect your mistaking of the timing of his demise as being more recent would have made him smile. Just as he did when he discussed Harvard never actually conferring his PhD due to a bureaucratic issue (a number of people have tried to get this corrected even after setting up a chair in honor but so far I do not believe the administration has relented). Anyway - I agree that he was simply a genius. We all lost a great man and magnificent human being when he left us, and I miss talking to him. Clem On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 1:43 AM, Paul Osborne wrote: > Wired is reporting this morning that Dennis has passed away. > > :( > > Paul > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aps at ieee.org Thu Oct 13 23:50:36 2016 From: aps at ieee.org (Armando Stettner) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 06:50:36 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie In-Reply-To: <20161013125135.1F91F4422E@lignose.oclsc.org> References: <20161013125135.1F91F4422E@lignose.oclsc.org> Message-ID: Nicely said, Norman. aps > On Oct 13, 2016, at 05:51, Norman Wilson wrote: > > The news of Dennis's demise is indeed an echo from five > years ago. > > Dennis would have been amused. > > Think of it is a day to think about Dennis and what he > gave us, instead of Trump and what he threatens. I > suspect many of us could use that. > > Norman Wilson > Toronto ON > From brantleycoile at me.com Fri Oct 14 00:54:27 2016 From: brantleycoile at me.com (Brantley Coile) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 10:54:27 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] RIP Dennis Ritchie In-Reply-To: <9c9edf8b-b7bc-0d81-576b-1dafac1d816a@aueb.gr> References: <9c9edf8b-b7bc-0d81-576b-1dafac1d816a@aueb.gr> Message-ID: <7AC7EB62-C6C6-42CA-99F0-4FD321170950@me.com> I think of Dennis almost daily, maybe because I program in C daily. I miss him. I would always seek him out at conferences for a chat and get his opinion on things. The power of his mind and his creative powers were exceeded only by his gentlemanliness. He was that rare combination of qualities, high functioning theoretical and practical, architect and builder, designer and coder. I learned to truly program from a combination of reading Dennis and Ken’s code (I can tell them apart) and reading Brian’s prose. At SouthSuite our Plan 9 authentication server is named “dmr.” Brantley Coile http://coraid.com > On Oct 13, 2016, at 2:04 AM, Diomidis Spinellis wrote: > > Wired is currently listing the 2011 article reporting the death of Dennis Ritchie as the second most popular one. dmr left this world of transient bits exactly five years ago. > > On 13/10/2016 08:43, Paul Osborne wrote: >> Wired is reporting this morning that Dennis has passed away. >> >> :( >> >> Paul >> > From dave at horsfall.org Wed Oct 19 09:05:37 2016 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 10:05:37 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places Message-ID: Time to post this again; warning: you need to uderstand the obscure references... I've actually worked in places like this. ----- VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places. In my business, I am frequently called by small sites and startups having VAX problems. So when a friend of mine in an Extremely Large Financial Institution (ELFI) called me one day to ask for help, I was intrigued because this outfit is a really major VAX user - they have several large herds of VAXen - and plenty of sharp VAXherds to take care of them. So I went to see what sort of an ELFI mess they had gotten into. It seems they had shoved a small 750 with two RA60's running a single application, PC style, into a data center with two IBM 3090's and just about all the rest of the disk drives in the world. The computer room was so big it had three street addresses. The operators had only IBM experience and, to quote my friend, they were having "a little trouble adjusting to the VAX", were a bit hostile towards it and probably needed some help with system management. Hmmm, Hostility... Sigh. Well, I thought it was pretty ridiculous for an outfit with all that VAX muscle elsewhere to isolate a dinky old 750 in their Big Blue Country, and said so bluntly. But my friend patiently explained that although small, it was an "extremely sensitive and confidential application." It seems that the 750 had originally been properly clustered with the rest of a herd and in the care of one of their best VAXherds. But the trouble started when the Chief User went to visit his computer and its VAXherd. He came away visibly disturbed and immediately complained to the ELFI's Director of Data Processing that, "There are some very strange people in there with the computers." Now since this user person was the Comptroller of this Extremely Large Financial Institution, the 750 had been promptly hustled over to the IBM data center which the Comptroller said, "was a more suitable place." The people there wore shirts and ties and didn't wear head bands or cowboy hats. So my friend introduced me to the Comptroller, who turned out to be five feet tall, 85 and a former gnome of Zurich. He had a young apprentice gnome who was about 65. The two gnomes interviewed me in whispers for about an hour before they decided my modes of dress and speech were suitable for managing their system and I got the assignment. There was some confusion, understandably, when I explained that I would immediately establish a procedure for nightly backups. The senior gnome seemed to think I was going to put the computer in reverse, but the apprentice's son had an IBM PC and he quickly whispered that "backup" meant making a copy of a program borrowed from a friend and why was I doing that? Sigh. I was shortly introduced to the manager of the IBM data center, who greeted me with joy and anything but hostility. And the operators really weren't hostile - it just seemed that way. It's like the driver of a Mack 18 wheeler, with a condo behind the cab, who was doing 75 when he ran over a moped doing its best to get away at 45. He explained sadly, "I really warn't mad at mopeds but to keep from runnin' over that'n, I'da had to slow down or change lanes!" Now the only operation they had figured out how to do on the 750 was reboot it. This was their universal cure for any and all problems. After all it works on a PC, why not a VAX? Was there a difference? Sigh. But I smiled and said, "No sweat, I'll train you. The first command you learn is HELP" and proceeded to type it in on the console terminal. So the data center manager, the shift supervisor and the eight day operators watched the LA100 buzz out the usual introductory text. When it finished they turned to me with expectant faces and I said in an avuncular manner, "This is your most important command!" The shift supervisor stepped forward and studied the text for about a minute. He then turned with a very puzzled expression on his face and asked, "What do you use it for?" Sigh. Well, I tried everything. I trained and I put the doc set on shelves by the 750 and I wrote a special 40 page doc set and then a four page doc set. I designed all kinds of command files to make complex operations into simple foreign commands and I taped a list of these simplified commands to the top of the VAX. The most successful move was adding my home phone number. The cheat sheets taped on the top of the CPU cabinet needed continual maintenance, however. It seems the VAX was in the quietest part of the data center, over behind the scratch tape racks. The operators ate lunch on the CPU cabinet and the sheets quickly became coated with pizza drippings, etc. But still the most used solution to hangups was a reboot and I gradually got things organized so that during the day when the gnomes were using the system, the operators didn't have to touch it. This smoothed things out a lot. Meanwhile, the data center was getting new TV security cameras, a halon gas fire extinguisher system and an immortal power source. The data center manager apologized because the VAX had not been foreseen in the plan and so could not be connected to immortal power. The VAX and I felt a little rejected but I made sure that booting on power recovery was working right. At least it would get going again quickly when power came back. Anyway, as a consolation prize, the data center manager said he would have one of the security cameras adjusted to cover the VAX. I thought to myself, "Great, now we can have 24 hour video tapes of the operators eating Chinese takeout on the CPU." I resolved to get a piece of plastic to cover the cheat sheets. One day, the apprentice gnome called to whisper that the senior was going to give an extremely important demonstration. Now I must explain that what the 750 was really doing was holding our National Debt. The Reagan administration had decided to privatize it and had quietly put it out for bid. My Extreme Large Financial Institution had won the bid for it and was, as ELFIs are wont to do, making an absolute bundle on the float. On Monday the Comptroller was going to demonstrate to the board of directors how he could move a trillion dollars from Switzerland to the Bahamas. The apprentice whispered, "Would you please look in on our computer? I'm sure everything will be fine, sir, but we will feel better if you are present. I'm sure you understand?" I did. Monday morning, I got there about five hours before the scheduled demo to check things over. Everything was cool. I was chatting with the shift supervisor and about to go upstairs to the Comptroller's office. Suddenly there was a power failure. The emergency lighting came on and the immortal power system took over the load of the IBM 3090s. They continued smoothly, but of course the VAX, still on city power, died. Everyone smiled and the dead 750 was no big deal because it was 7 AM and gnomes don't work before 10 AM. I began worrying about whether I could beg some immortal power from the data center manager in case this was a long outage. Immortal power in this system comes from storage batteries for the first five minutes of an outage. Promptly at one minute into the outage we hear the gas turbine powered generator in the sub-basement under us automatically start up getting ready to take the load on the fifth minute. We all beam at each other. At two minutes into the outage we hear the whine of the backup gas turbine generator starting. The 3090s and all those disk drives are doing just fine. Business as usual. The VAX is dead as a door nail but what the hell. At precisely five minutes into the outage, just as the gas turbine is taking the load, city power comes back on and the immortal power source commits suicide. Actually it was a double murder and suicide because it took both 3090s with it. So now the whole data center was dead, sort of. The fire alarm system had its own battery backup and was still alive. The lead acid storage batteries of the immortal power system had been discharging at a furious rate keeping all those big blue boxes running and there was a significant amount of sulfuric acid vapor. Nothing actually caught fire but the smoke detectors were convinced it had. The fire alarm klaxon went off and the siren warning of imminent halon gas release was screaming. We started to panic but the data center manager shouted over the din, "Don't worry, the halon system failed its acceptance test last week. It's disabled and nothing will happen." He was half right, the primary halon system indeed failed to discharge. But the secondary halon system observed that the primary had conked and instantly did its duty, which was to deal with Dire Disasters. It had twice the capacity and six times the discharge rate. Now the ear splitting gas discharge under the raised floor was so massive and fast, it blew about half of the floor tiles up out of their framework. It came up through the floor into a communications rack and blew the cover panels off, decking an operator. Looking out across that vast computer room, we could see the air shimmering as the halon mixed with it. We stampeded for exits to the dying whine of 175 IBM disks. As I was escaping I glanced back at the VAX, on city power, and noticed the usual flickering of the unit select light on its system disk indicating it was happily rebooting. Twelve firemen with air tanks and axes invaded. There were frantic phone calls to the local IBM Field Service office because both the live and backup 3090s were down. About twenty minutes later, seventeen IBM CEs arrived with dozens of boxes and, so help me, a barrel. It seems they knew what to expect when an immortal power source commits murder. In the midst of absolute pandemonium, I crept off to the gnome office and logged on. After extensive checking it was clear that everything was just fine with the VAX and I began to calm down. I called the data center manager's office to tell him the good news. His secretary answered with, "He isn't expected to be available for some time. May I take a message?" I left a slightly smug note to the effect that, unlike some other computers, the VAX was intact and functioning normally. Several hours later, the gnome was whispering his way into a demonstration of how to flick a trillion dollars from country 2 to country 5. He was just coming to the tricky part, where the money had been withdrawn from Switzerland but not yet deposited in the Bahamas. He was proceeding very slowly and the directors were spellbound. I decided I had better check up on the data center. Most of the floor tiles were back in place. IBM had resurrected one of the 3090s and was running tests. What looked like a bucket brigade was working on the other one. The communication rack was still naked and a fireman was standing guard over the immortal power corpse. Life was returning to normal, but the Big Blue Country crew was still pretty shaky. Smiling proudly, I headed back toward the triumphant VAX behind the tape racks where one of the operators was eating a plump jelly bun on the 750 CPU. He saw me coming, turned pale and screamed to the shift supervisor, "Oh my God, we forgot about the VAX!" Then, before I could open my mouth, he rebooted it. It was Monday, 19-Oct-1987. VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places. -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer." _______________________________________________ Applix 1616 mailing list Applix-L at object-craft.com.au https://www.object-craft.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/applix-l From akosela at andykosela.com Wed Oct 19 13:35:28 2016 From: akosela at andykosela.com (Andy Kosela) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2016 22:35:28 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 6:05 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: What operating system was installed on that VAX? VMS or UNIX? --Andy From crossd at gmail.com Wed Oct 19 21:49:48 2016 From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 07:49:48 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 18, 2016 11:36 PM, "Andy Kosela" wrote: > On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 6:05 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > > > What operating system was installed on that VAX? VMS or UNIX? Based on his description of the 'HELP' command, mention of command procedures, and talk about the manual set, I'd say VMS. VMS also had a strong presence on Wall Street around that time. I've always loved this story, but surely it's apocryphal? If Black Monday had been due to an operator rebooting a VAX that would have certainly made the news.... - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mj at mjturner.net Thu Oct 20 06:53:42 2016 From: mj at mjturner.net (Michael-John Turner) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 21:53:42 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Of login names In-Reply-To: <87wpkhhkan.fsf@finger.aaronsplace.co.uk> References: <7E906B78-BBA7-4D15-95AD-F89E22EC8F44@kdbarto.org> <87wpkhhkan.fsf@finger.aaronsplace.co.uk> Message-ID: <20161019205341.22ogpyp6wcsicks6@tesla.turnde.net> On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 01:41:36PM +0100, Aaron Jackson wrote: >When it comes to setting up UUCP today (purely for the fun of it), what >choices do you have? Is it limited to SDF Public Unix? Another option is UUHEC - http://www.uuhec.net. Apologies for digging up such an old thread... Cheers, MJ -- Michael-John Turner * mj at mjturner.net * http://mjturner.net/ From aaron at aaronsplace.co.uk Thu Oct 20 08:35:28 2016 From: aaron at aaronsplace.co.uk (Aaron Jackson) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 23:35:28 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Of login names In-Reply-To: <20161019205341.22ogpyp6wcsicks6@tesla.turnde.net> Message-ID: <87oa2g9dcf.fsf@walrus.rhwyd.co.uk> Thanks Michael, that looks interesting. Michael-John Turner writes: > On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 01:41:36PM +0100, Aaron Jackson wrote: >>When it comes to setting up UUCP today (purely for the fun of it), what >>choices do you have? Is it limited to SDF Public Unix? > > Another option is UUHEC - http://www.uuhec.net. > > Apologies for digging up such an old thread... > > Cheers, MJ From grog at lemis.com Thu Oct 20 11:18:41 2016 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 12:18:41 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> On Wednesday, 19 October 2016 at 7:49:48 -0400, Dan Cross wrote: > On Oct 18, 2016 11:36 PM, "Andy Kosela" wrote: >> On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 6:05 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: >> >> >> >> What operating system was installed on that VAX? VMS or UNIX? > > > I've always loved this story, but surely it's apocryphal? If Black > Monday had been due to an operator rebooting a VAX that would have > certainly made the news.... Clearly some of the details are fictional or strongly exaggerated, but could the story not be based on fact? Ten years before this event I was in a big company in Germany with IBM (3080) and UNIVAC (494) computer systems, and we installed a little Tandem/16 machine in the middle of it. The IBM operators had to tend to the Tandem too, and it's clear they didn't consider it a Real Computer. But the details? Sure, different shops have different cultures, but backups, for example, went without saying. In the days where tapes were bigger than disks, we made a complete backup of the system every night, which occasionally came in handy (see http://www.lemis.com/grog/warstories/fuppurgestar.php for one example). And reboots? The IBM systems did an IPL (Initial Program Load, their word for boot) every Monday morning. All morning, if I recall correctly. The UNIVAC people and we smiled sympathetically and carried on running. But then, in our case the IBM people didn't come closer to the system than to change tapes, and they didn't know how to reboot it. If they had done, there would have been hell to pay. But as I say, different cultures. And the transfer itself? This was 1987! People didn't transfer that much money. By this time I was OS support manager for Tandem Europe, and our customers included all large banks in Europe. With the exception of one large British bank (who used trained monkeys), all banks had reasonably responsible operators. The CHAPS system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAPS) had just gone live on our platform, and the average transfer was "only" £5,000 million. And of course it used modern databases. A failure of a machine in the network could not have resulted in any loss of data integrity. Finally, of course, the real reasons for Black Monday (1987) are known. They have nothing to do with (computer) operator error. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From random832 at fastmail.com Thu Oct 20 15:24:20 2016 From: random832 at fastmail.com (Random832) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 01:24:20 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: <1476941060.1129501.761635617.09F711C6@webmail.messagingengine.com> On Wed, Oct 19, 2016, at 21:18, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > But the details? Sure, different shops have different cultures, but > backups, for example, went without saying. In the days where tapes > were bigger than disks Tapes are still bigger than disks, to my understanding. The state of the art is 185 TB according to a quick google. From dave at horsfall.org Thu Oct 20 15:46:39 2016 From: dave at horsfall.org (Dave Horsfall) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 16:46:39 +1100 (EST) Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: <1476941060.1129501.761635617.09F711C6@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> <1476941060.1129501.761635617.09F711C6@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 20 Oct 2016, Random832 wrote: > Tapes are still bigger than disks, to my understanding. The state of the > art is 185 TB according to a quick google. As the old saying went, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon full of mag tapes... -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer." From b4 at gewt.net Thu Oct 20 16:30:36 2016 From: b4 at gewt.net (Cory Smelosky) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 23:30:36 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: References: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> <1476941060.1129501.761635617.09F711C6@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <10A216EB-F29C-4313-A32B-C3FD31A27B19@gewt.net> The bandwidth of a bandwagon? Sent from my iPhone > On Oct 19, 2016, at 22:46, Dave Horsfall wrote: > >> On Thu, 20 Oct 2016, Random832 wrote: >> >> Tapes are still bigger than disks, to my understanding. The state of the >> art is 185 TB according to a quick google. > > As the old saying went, never underestimate the bandwidth of a > station-wagon full of mag tapes... > > -- > Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer." From peter at rulingia.com Thu Oct 20 17:06:12 2016 From: peter at rulingia.com (Peter Jeremy) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 18:06:12 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: References: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> <1476941060.1129501.761635617.09F711C6@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20161020070612.GH62187@server.rulingia.com> On 2016-Oct-20 16:46:39 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: >On Thu, 20 Oct 2016, Random832 wrote: > >> Tapes are still bigger than disks, to my understanding. The state of the >> art is 185 TB according to a quick google. > >As the old saying went, never underestimate the bandwidth of a >station-wagon full of mag tapes... Actually, I think they've been eclipsed by microSD cards. A microSD card weighs ~0.25g and you can fit ~6000/l, with 256GB on each. (And, unlike the 185TB tapes, you can actually buy 256GB cards and readers). -- Peter Jeremy -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 949 bytes Desc: not available URL: From arnold at skeeve.com Thu Oct 20 17:44:24 2016 From: arnold at skeeve.com (arnold at skeeve.com) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 01:44:24 -0600 Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places In-Reply-To: <20161020070612.GH62187@server.rulingia.com> References: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> <1476941060.1129501.761635617.09F711C6@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20161020070612.GH62187@server.rulingia.com> Message-ID: <201610200744.u9K7iO4Q023131@freefriends.org> Peter Jeremy wrote: > On 2016-Oct-20 16:46:39 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: > >On Thu, 20 Oct 2016, Random832 wrote: > > > >> Tapes are still bigger than disks, to my understanding. The state of the > >> art is 185 TB according to a quick google. > > > >As the old saying went, never underestimate the bandwidth of a > >station-wagon full of mag tapes... > > Actually, I think they've been eclipsed by microSD cards. A microSD > card weighs ~0.25g and you can fit ~6000/l, with 256GB on each. (And, > unlike the 185TB tapes, you can actually buy 256GB cards and readers). > > -- > Peter Jeremy Indeed. This is well covered in https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ :-) Arnold From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Oct 20 23:42:21 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:42:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] [OT] VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places Message-ID: <20161020134221.B207818C098@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Random832 > Tapes are still bigger than disks, to my understanding. Makes sense. There's a lot more surface area on a tape than on a disk. Yes, mechanical considerations mean you can pack the bits on a disk in more densely, but not enough to offset the much greater surface area. Noel From grog at lemis.com Fri Oct 21 15:37:02 2016 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2016 16:37:02 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] Station wagon bandwidth (was: VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places) In-Reply-To: <20161020070612.GH62187@server.rulingia.com> References: <20161020011841.GC31179@eureka.lemis.com> <1476941060.1129501.761635617.09F711C6@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20161020070612.GH62187@server.rulingia.com> Message-ID: <20161021053702.GD31179@eureka.lemis.com> On Thursday, 20 October 2016 at 18:06:12 +1100, Peter Jeremy wrote: > On 2016-Oct-20 16:46:39 +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: >> On Thu, 20 Oct 2016, Random832 wrote: >> >>> Tapes are still bigger than disks, to my understanding. The state of the >>> art is 185 TB according to a quick google. >> >> As the old saying went, never underestimate the bandwidth of a >> station-wagon full of mag tapes... > > Actually, I think they've been eclipsed by microSD cards. A microSD > card weighs ~0.25g and you can fit ~6000/l, with 256GB on each. (And, > unlike the 185TB tapes, you can actually buy 256GB cards and readers). Clearly TUHS has its sight set back decades, not months. We discussed exactly this topic less than 3 months ago, for example http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2016-July/007270.html Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ram at rkrishnan.org Sat Oct 22 15:10:11 2016 From: ram at rkrishnan.org (Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 10:40:11 +0530 Subject: [TUHS] export TERM=aaa-60 Message-ID: <1477113011.2181978.763788369.50E588C1@webmail.messagingengine.com> Found this nice blog post today on the interweb that this group may find very interesting.... -- Ramakrishnan From clemc at ccc.com Sun Oct 23 00:00:02 2016 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 09:00:02 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] export TERM=aaa-60 In-Reply-To: <1477113011.2181978.763788369.50E588C1@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1477113011.2181978.763788369.50E588C1@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: Excellent - thanks for the pointer. I miss my AAA On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 12:10 AM, Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan < ram at rkrishnan.org> wrote: > Found this nice blog post today on the interweb that this group may find > very interesting.... > > > > -- > Ramakrishnan > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sun Oct 23 01:58:50 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 11:58:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] export TERM=aaa-60 Message-ID: <20161022155850.4662C18C0BC@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Clem Cole > I miss my AAA Well, I'm not sure I actually _miss_ mine (my old eyes prefer black on white), but I definitely have fond memories of it. It was such a huge thing when I finally managed to snag one to replace my (IIRC) VT52. You could actually have three useful windows in Emacs!! And the detached keyboard was definitely more ergonomic. Noel From clemc at ccc.com Sun Oct 23 02:02:42 2016 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 11:02:42 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] export TERM=aaa-60 In-Reply-To: <20161022155850.4662C18C0BC@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20161022155850.4662C18C0BC@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 10:58 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > my old eyes prefer black on white ​Fair enough.​ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grog at lemis.com Sun Oct 23 09:09:51 2016 From: grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2016 10:09:51 +1100 Subject: [TUHS] export TERM=aaa-60 In-Reply-To: References: <20161022155850.4662C18C0BC@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <20161022230951.GA97383@eureka.lemis.com> On Saturday, 22 October 2016 at 11:02:42 -0500, Clem Cole wrote: > On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 10:58 AM, Noel Chiappa > wrote: > >> my old eyes prefer black on white > > Fair enough. So do mine. But they did when I was young, too. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 163 bytes Desc: not available URL: From usotsuki at buric.co Sun Oct 23 10:04:32 2016 From: usotsuki at buric.co (Steve Nickolas) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 20:04:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] export TERM=aaa-60 In-Reply-To: <20161022230951.GA97383@eureka.lemis.com> References: <20161022155850.4662C18C0BC@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <20161022230951.GA97383@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 23 Oct 2016, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Saturday, 22 October 2016 at 11:02:42 -0500, Clem Cole wrote: >> On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 10:58 AM, Noel Chiappa >> wrote: >> >>> my old eyes prefer black on white >> >> Fair enough. > > So do mine. But they did when I was young, too. Mine still prefer 75% grey on black. xD Or phosphor green. -uso. From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Mon Oct 24 01:02:57 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2016 11:02:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix Message-ID: <20161023150257.38C5918C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> So, in a fit of brain-fade, I originally sent this to the Classic Computers list, when it was probably really more appropriate for this one. (Apologies to those who are subscribed to both, and are thus seeing this again.) So, I'm trying to do what VTServer was invented for - load Unix into an actual PDP-11, over its serial line, when one doesn't have machine-readable Unix on any mass storage for the machine. However, all the initial code that VTServer loads ('mkfs', etc) is V7-specific (V6 has a slightly different file system format) - and I want to install V6. Has anyone ever tweaked the programs which VTServer loads to do V6-format filesystems? I did a quick Google, but didn't see anything. Another option is to do something more V6-like, and copy a small bootable V6 file-system image over the serial line; that may be an easier way to go. No biggie if not, it won't be much work to adapt things, but I figured I'd try to avoid re-inventing the wheel... Note that the installation procedures for V6 and V7 are wholly different, something which confused a number of people on CCTalk. The 'Setting up Unix' documents are more checklists, they don't go into a lot of detail as to what is actually happening, so I have prepared two pages on the Computer History wiki: http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Sixth_Edition http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Seventh_Edition which go into more detail on what is actually happening. Noel From helbig at mailbox.org Mon Oct 24 16:11:50 2016 From: helbig at mailbox.org (Wolfgang Helbig) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 08:11:50 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix In-Reply-To: <20161023150257.38C5918C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20161023150257.38C5918C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: hi in my courseware http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helbig/os/index.html i tried to explain installing v6. greetings wolfgang From jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com Mon Oct 24 16:33:19 2016 From: jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 14:33:19 +0800 Subject: [TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix In-Reply-To: <20161023150257.38C5918C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20161023150257.38C5918C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <1CAAD214-07FE-4510-99EB-AE024AFC2719@superglobalmegacorp.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- These were the closest things I could find to official documentation on doing an install... If anyone has anything better, I'm all ears. I'll email Tore again about ID's I haven't forgotten.. On October 23, 2016 11:02:57 PM GMT+08:00, jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu wrote: >So, in a fit of brain-fade, I originally sent this to the Classic >Computers >list, when it was probably really more appropriate for this one. >(Apologies to >those who are subscribed to both, and are thus seeing this again.) > > >So, I'm trying to do what VTServer was invented for - load Unix into an >actual >PDP-11, over its serial line, when one doesn't have machine-readable >Unix on >any mass storage for the machine. > >However, all the initial code that VTServer loads ('mkfs', etc) is >V7-specific >(V6 has a slightly different file system format) - and I want to >install V6. > >Has anyone ever tweaked the programs which VTServer loads to do >V6-format >filesystems? I did a quick Google, but didn't see anything. > >Another option is to do something more V6-like, and copy a small >bootable V6 >file-system image over the serial line; that may be an easier way to >go. > >No biggie if not, it won't be much work to adapt things, but I figured >I'd try >to avoid re-inventing the wheel... > > >Note that the installation procedures for V6 and V7 are wholly >different, >something which confused a number of people on CCTalk. > >The 'Setting up Unix' documents are more checklists, they don't go into >a lot >of detail as to what is actually happening, so I have prepared two >pages on the >Computer History wiki: > > http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Sixth_Edition > http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_UNIX_Seventh_Edition > >which go into more detail on what is actually happening. > > Noel -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Oct 26 00:16:43 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 10:16:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix Message-ID: <20161025141643.8470A18C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > I'll start with getting VTServer to run under V6 (my only Unix, don't > have anything later :-) So, I just got VTServer runnin under V6: it successfully loaded a memory diagnostic from the 'server', into the 'client', using 'vtboot' on the latter. (Both running on emulated machines, for the moment - I thought I'd take all the hardware-related variables out of the equation, until I have the software all running OK.) It didn't require as much work on VTServer as I thought it might: I had to convert the C to the V6 dialect (no '+=', etc), and some other small things (e.g. convert the TTY setup code), but in general, it was pretty smooth and painless. Note that it won't run under vanilla V6, which does not provide 8-bit input and output on serial lines. I had previously added 'LITIN' and 'LITOUT' modes (8-bit input and output) to my V6; since the mode word in stty/gtty was already full, I had to extend the device interface to support them. I didn't add ioctl() or anything later, I did an upward-compatible extension to stty/gtty. (I'm a real NIH guy. :-) My only real problem in getting VTServer running was with LITIN; I did it some while back, but had never actually tested it (I was only using LITOUT, for my custom program to talk to PDP-11 consoles, which also did downloads, so needed 8-bit output). So when I went to use it, it didn't work, and it was a real stumper! But I did eventually figure out what the problem was (after writing a custom program to reach into the kernel and dump the entire state of a serial line), and get it working. (I had taken the shortcut of not fully understanding how the kernel serial line code worked, just tried to install point fixes. This turned out not to work, because of a side-effect elsewhere in the code. Moral of the story: you can't change the operation of a piece of software without complete understanding of how it works...) Is there any interest in all this? If so, I can put together a web page with the V6-verion VTServer source, along with the modified V6 serial line stuff (including a short description of the extended stty/gtty interface), etc. > so if you turn up whatever you used to boot V6, it would probably still > be useful. So I guess my next step, if I don't hear shortly from someone who has previously used VTServer to install V6, is to start on actually getting a V6 file system created. I'm still vacillating over whether it would be better to go V6-style (and just transfer a complete, small existing V6 filesystem), or V7-style (and get stand-alone 'mkfs', etc running with V6-format file systems). Anyone have an opinion? Noel From clemc at ccc.com Wed Oct 26 03:52:21 2016 From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 13:52:21 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix In-Reply-To: <20161025141643.8470A18C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20161025141643.8470A18C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 10:16 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > Is there any interest in all this? If so, I can put together a web page > with > the V6-verion VTServer source, along with the modified V6 serial line stuff > (including a short description of the extended stty/gtty interface), etc. > ​Yes please....​ > > So I guess my next step, if I don't hear shortly from someone who has > previously used VTServer to install V6, is to start on actually getting > a V6 file system created. > ​I think there are rk05 images in bit savers, check out uv6swre​ > > I'm still vacillating over whether it would be better to go V6-style (and > just transfer a complete, small existing V6 filesystem), > ​The issue is even at 9600 baud, you do need to download 2.4Mbytes which will take​ a few minutes. So you would need to create a very small root FS and then you get into how much is enough. > or V7-style (and > get stand-alone 'mkfs', etc running with V6-format file systems). Anyone > have an opinion? > ​Basically it depends how many commands you need. Clearly, you need to V6-afy the V7 standalone system and then for each app you need, you have to both v6-afy and add the #ifdef STANDALONE hacks. Clearly you need mkfs, and probably need a one or more other programs in the key of restor, tar, tp, dd or the like to copy things. That's going to be a bit a work - although once you have done it, it will be handy I suspect. Clem​ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dugo at xs4all.nl Thu Oct 27 04:44:28 2016 From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense) Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2016 14:44:28 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix In-Reply-To: <1CAAD214-07FE-4510-99EB-AE024AFC2719@superglobalmegacorp.com> References: <20161023150257.38C5918C0AB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <1CAAD214-07FE-4510-99EB-AE024AFC2719@superglobalmegacorp.com> Message-ID: On 2016-10-24 02:33, Jason Stevens wrote: > These were the closest things I could find to official documentation > on doing an install... If anyone has anything better, I'm all ears. SETTING UP UNIX − Sixth Edition is as official as it gets. There is the issue with the non-existing man command. What are other things you are missing? I'll gladly flesh out a simh EXPECT/SEND .ini with comments and more things than just the bare install it currently does. I initially wrote it to demo V6&BSD, running in simh, in linux, in jor1k, in javascript, in your browser. Unfortunately, anno 2016, it is too slow for prime time. The great thing about the builtin EXPECT/SEND is that it is easy to test if cookbook actually works. From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Oct 27 08:28:47 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2016 18:28:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] VTServer/etc for V6 Unix Message-ID: <20161026222847.BDE7D18C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Jacob Goense > There is the issue with the non-existing man command. My page on "Bringing up V6 Unix on the Ersatz-11 PDP-11 Emulator" has a section on man: http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/V6Unix.html#man It's pretty straight-forward. Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sat Oct 29 23:15:49 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2016 09:15:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] Booting PDP-11's from RX02's Message-ID: <20161029131549.54CB718C0B8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> So, I'm winding up to boot Unix V6 from an RX02 floppy. So I need two things: - Details of how DEC ROM bootstraps boot from RX02's. I vaguely recall seeing documentation of this somewhere (e.g. which sectors it loads, etc), but now I can't find it. Don North has dumps of the RX02 ROM's, but I'm too lazy to read through the code and figure out how they work. Is there some documentation which covers it? I did a quick Google search, but if there is anything out there, my Google-fu was inadequate. - Did anyone ever do an RX02 driver for the V6 disk bootstrap? (Well, I guess a V7 driver would work, too.) Note: what I need is _not_ either i) the Unix OS driver for the RX02 (I found one of those already), or ii) a driver for the v7 standalone second-stage bootstrap (which would probably be in C). The thing I'm looking for would be called rx.s, or something like that. Yes, I could write it, but again, I'm lazy! :-) Noel From ron at ronnatalie.com Sun Oct 30 07:32:18 2016 From: ron at ronnatalie.com (Ron Natalie) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2016 17:32:18 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Booting PDP-11's from RX02's In-Reply-To: <20161029131549.54CB718C0B8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20161029131549.54CB718C0B8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <005601d2322b$ee6bf240$cb43d6c0$@ronnatalie.com> I think just like everything else the boot rom just pulls in the first sector of the disk. I had RX02s on many of the BRL Gateways (my implementation that replaced your MIT Gateway while you were in exile). We put a V6 file system and I must have had a regular V6 boot block on it with a RX02. There might be someone still at BRL who might remember where this stuff is. I certainly don't have it. BRL PDP-11 kernels had both V6 and V7 file systems in them but I'd have to believe I was booting off a V6 one. From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sun Oct 30 22:47:31 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2016 08:47:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] Booting PDP-11's from RX02's Message-ID: <20161030124731.467BD18C0D3@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Don North > .. the hardware bootstrap reads track 1 sectors 1, 3, 5, 7 Ah, thanks for that. Starting to look at the code, I had missed the interleave. So does DEC do anything with track 0, or is it always just empty? Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Mon Oct 31 23:55:20 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 09:55:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] Booting PDP-11's from RX02's Message-ID: <20161031135520.1276F18C0C9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Don North > Track 0 is not used by standard DEC software I wonder why DEC did't use track 0. The thing is small enough (256KB in the original single-density) that even 1% is a good chunk to throw away. Does anyone know? (I had a look online, but couldn't turn anything up.) If I had to _guess_, one possibility would be that track 0 is the innermost track, where the media is moving the slowest, and as a result it's more error-prone. Another is that IBM used track 0 for something special, and DEC tried to conform with that. But those are pure guesses, I would love to know for sure. Noel