Re: Odd book
dwight wrote on Thu May 7 08:45:07 CDT 2020: > There are only a few winning and tying patterns for tic tac toe. There > was a fellow that made a relay logic that could play tic tac toe and > would win against a human of at least tie but never lose. Here's my version of tic tac toe in TTL logic: J/K flip flops and a ROM: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/TTL_TicTacToe Cheers, Warren
Re: unix developed on 11/20 with 20 on panel or machine that just said pdp/11?
Paul Koning wrote: >> The 1971 Unix Programmer's Manual mentions their 11/20 had 24 KB >> (surely KW?) memory rather than 28KW. > I would assume kW. In the PDP11 world we didn't normally speak of > bytes or kbytes, certainly not for memory and often not elsewhere either. The PDP-11 Unix source: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72/blob/master/pages/e00-01 says: orig = 0 core = orig+4 / specifies beginning of user's core ecore = core+2 / specifies end of user's core (4096 words) So: 4= 16KB for the kernel, 2= 8KB for the user program. Cheers, Warren
Re: unix developed on 11/20 with 20 on panel or machine that just said pdp/11?
Steve Malikoff wrote: > It states that their 11/20 had a KS-11 memory management unit, was that > mandatory for running v1 Unix on an 11/20? I case-insensitively grepped for 'ks.*11' in the Github repository here: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix-jun72 and I didn't see a mention. > The 1971 Unix Programmer's Manual mentions their > 11/20 had 24 KB (surely KW?) memory rather than 28KW. 28KB is right. The simh.cfg from the repo says: set cpu 11/20 set cpu 32K Cheers, Warren
Re: unix developed on 11/20 with 20 on panel or machine that just said pdp/11?
According to this page that Dennis Ritchie wrote, the original PDP-11 they used was indeed an 11/20 but it was before there were PDP-11 model numbers: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/picture.html And, of course, the PDP-7 Unix development came before the PDP-11 version :) Cheers, Warren
How were 32-bit minis built in the 70s/80?
I'm building my own 8-bit CPU from TTL chips, and this caused me to think: how were 32-bit minis built in the late 70s and early 80s? In particular, how was the ALU built? I know about the 74181 4-bit ALU, and I know (from reading A Soul of a New Machine) that PALs were also used. Did companies get custom chips fabricated, or was it all off-the-shelf chips with a few PALs sprinkled in? Thanks, Warren
Ultrix Tape: Block Size?
All, I received this request from Matthew who isn't subscribed to either the TUHS or cctalk lists. He knows how to read the lists archives. Many thanks for any help you can provide. Cheers, Warren - Forwarded message from Matthew Whitehead - Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2018 08:25:39 -0400 From: Matthew Whitehead Subject: Ultrix Tape Blocks Warren, I wonder if you can give me a referral. I want to install Ultrix-32 on my MicroVAX II using the ancient TK-50 tape drive. I know the tape files are on your archive, but I need to know the block size for each of the many files; it can vary a lot. Who might be able to help me with this? Matthew Whitehead - End forwarded message -
Re: Did we miss the 20th anniversary of classiccmp?
The "old Unix" mailing list has been running since October 1995: http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/ Cheers, Warren
Any faithful VT100 Emulators?
OK, so I don't have a real VT100, so I'm accessing an old 4.3BSD system with xterm and LXTerminal terminal emulators on Linux. Last night, for a laugh, I ran vttest from the 1980s and the terminal emulators performed woefully. Which raises the question, are there any _good_ VT100 terminal emulators, especially for Linux? For any other platforms? Cheers, Warren
Re: Introducing the UUCP/Usenet Project
Camiel wrote: > What would the requirements for the system be? How often would it need to > be online? I added an answer here: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/4bsd-uucp#joining-the-growing-uucp-network For central sites (like decvax) that had a lot of connectivity, you will be expected to run them continuously. For edge sites which only dial in to one other site to exchange news and e-mail, you can run them whenever you want. It's mostly simulated sites right now, but I'd love to see some real systems come up and connect in. Not sure how to connect the simulated sites (using TCP for the dialup links) and the real sites. Cheers, Warren
Introducing the UUCP/Usenet Project
Hi all, as part of the upcoming 50th anniversary of Unix in mid-2019, a bunch of people are working to rebuild the mid-1980s uucp/Usenet network using (real/simulated) period-accurate systems. To make things easier, we are simulating the dialup lines too. Details of the (nearly) turnkey software to do this is at: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/4bsd-uucp A map of what nodes we have so far is at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DoctorWkt/4bsd-uucp/4.3BSD/uucp.png If you are interested in participating, email me back. Cheers, Warren
Help needed for Unix anniversary in 2019
Hi all, some of you may know me as the guy who runs the Unix Heritage Society and the archive of old Unix systems: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tuhs, http://www.tuhs.org and http://www.tuhs.org/Archive Mid-year 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the creation of Unix and I've been quietly agitating for something to be done to celebrate this. Up to now, there's been little response. The original Unix user's group, Usenix, will hold its Annual Technical Conference on the west coast of the US at this time, so it would make sense to do something in conjunction with this conference. Some suggestions: - a terminal room with a bunch of period terminals: ASR-33s, -37s, VT100s, VT102s, VT220s - these connected to emulated Unix systems either locally or via a terminal server and telnet to remotely emulated systems - some graphical terminals: Sun pizza boxes, a Blit would be great - if possible, some actual real PDP-11s, VAXen - emulated systems: V1 to V7 Unix, 32V, the BSDs etc. In fact there are plenty of Unix versions that we could run in emulated mode. - Unix of course was one of the systems used to implement the Arpanet protcols, so it would be interesting to get some of the real/emulated systems networked together - how about an emulated UUCP network with Usenet on top of it, and some mail/news clients on the emulated systems. - retro workshops/tutorials: how to edit with ed, using nroff, posting a Usenet article, dealing with bang paths. I'm proposing to gather a bunch of people to start the ball rolling on the technical/demonstration side. We'd need people: - with terminals, portable PDP-11s and VAXen, Sun boxen - prepared to set up emulated systems - who can help bring the networking (UUCP, Usenet, Arpanet) back to life - willing to write and run workshops that show off this old technology - to help set up terminal servers and all the RS-232 to telnet stuff Some of this we can start doing now, e.g. rebuild an emulated Arpanet, UUCP, Usenet, get emulated systems up, build front-end telnet interfaces. Is there anybody willing to sign up for this? I think once we have some momentum, we can tell the Usenix people and get some buy-in from them. Post back and/or e-mail me if you can help. Thanks, Warren
